Having a clear goal and a plan to achieve it is essential to employee engagement on the job, yet many managers take a hands-off approach to employee career planning. When you work together with staff to plan their careers, however, you build a stronger relationship, boost their ability to do quality work, and reduce the risk of turnover caused by a need for opportunities that don’t exist in your company.
Here’s how to help your team set and achieve career goals:
1. Talk to them about their goals.
Often, managers and their staff don’t address individual goals except during an annual performance review. Checking in more frequently, however, can help you better understand and support key goals. Consider holding “goal meetings” quarterly, rather than yearly.
2. Connect individual goals to company goals.
Your team members may have several goals in mind already – but how realistic is it for them to pursue these goals within the context of the business as a whole? By helping your employees make those connections, you and they can start to envision ways for staff to meet individual goals while also helping the company meet its larger goals.
3. Help staff set goals that are reachable, but not easy.
A goal that is unattainable will cause discouragement and disengagement. A goal that is too easy, however, can have the same effect. Rather, goals need to hit a spot between these two extremes, where they are reachable but challenging to complete. Work with each member of your team to find goals that demand growth in order to be fulfilled.
4. Create a plan for success.
Once you and your worker have goals in mind, choose one or two for the upcoming quarter and create a plan for success. Make the milestones on this plan as clear and concrete as possible, so that both you and your staff will know when they have been reached.
Is your team headed in the right direction?
At THE RIGHT STAFF, LLC, we can help you find the people you need to meet business goals and create a plan to help them thrive within your company. We connect our clients to some of the best talent available in the Twin Cities. To learn more, contact us today.
