Working without having any goals in mind is not a good idea. It can make the work feel tedious and dull, and it can make the person doing the work much less productive. After all, if they have nothing to aim for, why should they work hard to achieve those aims? This is why, when you employ people, you are going to want them to have their own goals in mind, as well as those of the business as a whole. 

 

Some people, however, find it very difficult to set goals for themselves. They might be able to see the ultimate result they want, but if they can’t break that down into smaller goals, reaching it will be an almost impossible challenge. They might not even be able to see that ultimate goal at all. This is why, as an employer, you need to help your employees set goals and understand the importance of doing so. Read on to find out more. 

 

 

 

Create SMART Goals 

No matter what goals you are setting, they must be SMART. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely (as in, there need to be deadlines included within the goal setting to focus the mind). If a goal is all of these things, it can be done; if any aspect of the SMART system is missing, that goal is going to be much more difficult to accomplish. 

 

This is the first lesson that an employee will need to learn, and it’s something that will help them a great deal doing forward. It will help them to set goals that are in line with their own skillsets and knowledge, or show them where they need to learn more to achieve what they want to achieve. They might need more training about how to use on machine probing software, or information about digital marketing, or they might even need to go back to school to achieve additional qualifications. 

 

Long Term And Short Term Goals 

Long term goals might be what first comes to mind when thinking about setting targets to aim for. Where you want to be in five years’ time, or 10 years’ time, or when you retire, for example, are all important considerations to have plans for. 

 

Yet short term goals are just as important, and that is a lesson that anyone who needs to know more about goal setting has to learn. By setting short term goals, goals that should be accomplished in a year, six months, one month, maybe even a week, productivity will speed up. Although setting long term goals is great, it can mean that people are too focused on this aspect of their career and life, and forget that they need to push forward in the meantime. Short term goals will give them the push they need. 

 

Flexibility 

There are sure to be a variety of challenges that come up throughout the journey to reaching your goals, and this is only to be expected; life is full of surprises, some good and some bad. This is why it’s so crucial for people to understand that they need to be flexible when working out their goals. 

 

Having specific goals in place is, as we’ve said, ideal, but if something happens and those goals have to change, or the journey towards them needs to take a different path, then it’s important to have flexibility built into the goals too. In this way, although it might still be hard to change direction, at least there is an alternative path to take and the goal won’t have to be abandoned entirely.