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Setting work goals

Work Goals - think: 'what is it that I must achieve during this cycle?

Work goals are the things a staff member must achieve during the cycle, not all of the things the staff member must do. Work goals are outputs or outcomes, not tasks, activities or processes. Work goals describe what the results of successful performance should look like; they do not list every single step along the way.

Annual performance plans should take account of, or reflect, a staff member's whole job, but should not contain an exhaustive list of every task the staff member must perform. Many staff members will have both ongoing / processing / maintenance-type activities in their jobs, as well as projects, specific large tasks, or special work / quality improvement tasks. Some staff members will also have their own supervisory responsibilities. Annual performance plans can be split into key areas, such as 'core/ongoing work'; 'projects'; 'management', with one or two work goals under each. This makes the plans easier to work with, and ensures the whole job is reflected, without excessive detail.

Within the key areas, individual ongoing processing / maintenance tasks which are similar and have similar purposes may be grouped together, and the annual plan may reflect them as a single work goal. For example, it may be useful to group all similar processing tasks (eg transactions relating to students, relating to staff, relating to accounts, etc), and to reflect them in a single work goal of meeting all timelines, volumes and quality standards for those processing tasks.

Special tasks, projects and work / quality improvement tasks generally should each be the subject of separate work goals. These may have sub-goals related to particular project milestones.

There is no 'ideal' or 'prescribed' number of work goals for a staff member's plan - each staff member and supervisor need to consider how best to reflect the key things the staff member must achieve for the cycle. It is important that the plans do not contain too much detail (and so become hard to monitor and assess, with assessment of each work goal having less meaning) or too little detail (so that work goals are too big and general to be realistically achieved or assessed).

The staff member and supervisor must have a shared understanding of, and commitment to, the work goals.

Work goals should be SMARTA:

Specific	Each work goal should clearly reflect what it is the staff member must achieve - what the staff member is responsible for producing or making happen
Measurable	it should be clear how it will be known whether the staff member has succeeded in achieving each work goal - writing the work goals in output/outcome terms will assist this
Achievable	work goals must be possible for the staff member to achieve, and within the staff member's capacities and responsibilities, but should be stretching and challenging - most work goals should have an improvement objective
Relevant	work goals must fit within and support the work unit / Faculty / Division / Administrative Unit and University plans - they must be relevant to where the organisation is heading, and important to that direction
Timebound	each work goal should have a time frame, so that it is clear what must be achieved by when; work goals with completion dates beyond the end of one cycle should have interim goals within the cycle, so that performance can be meaningfully assessed
Agreed	have you got a solid agreement with your supervisor on your duties, your goals and targets so that everyone knows what is expected and who is accountable?

Measures - think: 'how will I know when work goals have been achieved?'

Each work goal must have at least one measure, so that the staff member and supervisor are clear on how they will assess the staff member's performance.

Measures can be either:

Quantitative	'objective' evidence of performance, usually gathered through existing reporting systems; eg budgets met; numbers of items produced or processed; turnaround or processing times for tasks, requests etc; error and/or rework rates; numbers of requests or complaints handled; etc
Qualitative	more 'subjective' evidence of performance usually gathered in the form of perceptions or feedback from the staff members themselves, their supervisors, peers, senior management, 'customers'

In setting the measures for a staff member's annual plan, it is important that the data and information required is readily and easily available. For example, there is no point including a measure based on customer perceptions and feedback if there is no established process or mechanism to capture this information. (NB Work units may decide to establish more performance related information gathering mechanisms as a result of their experience over time with performance management.)