SMART Goals
SMART Goals Specific – Answers the questions: What? Why? How? Who? • What is the desired result? • Why is this work important to the County? • How should the work be done (tools, resources, systems, processes, workflow, approach)? • Who will be involved in accomplishing the goal, and for whom? Measurable – Clear quantitative and/or qualitative indicators or evidence to demonstrate or determine whether or to what degree the goal is accomplished • How many or how much? • How often? • To what degree of accuracy? Attainable – Realistic and achievable but also challenging • Does the employee have the required skills and resources to accomplish the goal? • Does the employee have the time to balance goal success with continuing to perform required job duties successfully? Relevant – Fits in with the County / department / division mission, vision and/or strategic plan • Supports a specific strategic goal or effort • Has clear impact on the success of the unit, division or department Time Targeted – Includes timeframe for accomplishing the goal • When will the goal be completed? • When will certain milestones be met?
Olivia - Goal #1 Olivia’s interactions with other County employees have been strained over the past year and you’ve talked with her about this a few times. Olivia has engaged in some pretty negative verbal exchanges with individuals requesting reports, prompting complaints and other negative feedback. Ultimately, reports have been delivered late and Olivia is starting to get a bad reputation from the neighboring divisions that rely on her work. You assume your discussions regarding these concerns have prompted Olivia to draft the goal below. Improve ability to deal with stress, multi-task, and prioritize workload so that interdepartmental customer service improves. Which aspects of Olivia’s proposed goal are on-track and what is poorly drafted or missing? Positive:
Negative:
Re-write Olivia’s goal below. How can you assist Olivia in improving this goal and ensure you are able to fairly evaluate her performance?
Olivia - Goal #2 Clearly, there have been some accuracy issues with Olivia’s work this past year. As her manager, you would like to see a goal to address the errors affecting her work quality. Olivia is responsible for recording and calculating accurate customer payment information for your department, which is a manual process, and toward the end of last year when things were really busy you saw a number of incorrect calculations in Olivia’s work. The same calculations need to be applied to each set of figures so this should be pretty basic. Also, after auditing recently-entered data in the department’s system, you realize her data entry error rate is running at 10%. Some of the information on customer forms wasn’t even transferred into the database and important fields are left blank – resulting in glaring holes when reports are run. The two other staff members who share these data entry responsibilities tend to average a 3% error rate, but you have always counted on Olivia for 100% accuracy. In fact, Olivia has historically run reports to audit the other employee’s work so they could correct any errors before it’s too late. If she starts making mistakes now too, client outcomes will suffer and the regulatory agency auditing your work may place the County on an improvement plan. You’ve always relied on Olivia’s higher degree of accuracy to balance the others’ work and ensure the division passes these audits. Olivia appears to be getting sloppy on certain assignments and while she churned out a record number of reports after returning from an approved FMLA protected leave, a lot of those reports needed to be redone due to errors. It seems like Olivia recognizes at least part of the issues based on the goal she drafted below. However, you’re not sure if this will get her where she needs to be. Improve accuracy of calculations by January 15th. Double-check my work. Which aspects of Olivia’s proposed goal are on-track and what is poorly drafted or missing? Positive:
Negative:
Re-write Olivia’s goal below. How can you assist Olivia in improving this goal and ensure you are able to fairly evaluate her performance?
Olivia - Goal #3 After Olivia’s medical leave of absence this past year, there is still a huge list of overdue reports that need to be completed to get back on schedule. Originally, you had talked with Olivia about adding some desirable, but non-essential, information to the database during first quarter of the upcoming year. You expected to see this as one of her new performance evaluation goals. But now it is really a higher priority to address the backlog of reports before adding these new reporting fields and extra data. In fact, the data fields can’t be modified until all of the previously requested reports are run. Looking at this realistically, Olivia would have a full-time project stretching through at least first quarter just to get caught up. Since you’re not completely familiar with the steps required to process all the report requests, you would probably have to rely on Olivia to help determine a realistic timeline to complete this. There are some individuals in the on-call pool who have the relevant skills and knowledge to help and speed this up, but depending on the type of jobs in the queue, different areas of expertise will be required. Olivia’s proposed goal below was exactly what you discussed with her several months ago, but now you’re thinking it needs a complete overhaul. Create new data fields X and Y in the division’s tracking system, and update all customer records with the additional information by the end of first quarter. Run reports to audit work and ensure records have been updated accurately and for all customers. Identify the positive and negative aspects of Olivia’s proposed goal. Positive:
Negative:
Now re-write and/or replace Olivia’s goal with a better version below.
Olivia - Goal #4 One of your organization’s key objectives in the current County Strategic Plan is to “develop and improve technology infrastructure, systems, and applications to provide improved customer service and more efficient interactions for County customers.” New state requirements affecting your department will be implemented in the coming year and you know it will be difficult for staff to gather and track all the additional customer information required. New electronic forms would be helpful to replace the current paper versions. Right now, customers have to fill in the same fields on a new paper form each month with their identifying information, address, phone number, etc. In addition, someone will need to add fields to the department’s database to be sure reports can be run including this new information. Olivia normally maintains this database. Aggregate data will then be used by other department staff for reporting on important community initiatives. Olivia’s computer skills would be a great addition to the project team preparing for this implementation, so you’re pleased to see she is thinking along the same lines when you see her draft goal below: Join the project team for the new state mandates. When you take a second look at this the following morning, some aspects of this goal seem ontrack….but there is definitely room for improvement. What looks good and what is poorly drafted or missing? Positive:
Negative:
Re-write Olivia’s goal below. How can you assist Olivia in improving this goal and ensure you are able to fairly evaluate her performance?
Olivia - Goal #5 Olivia has expressed an interest in further developing her computer skills, which is a strong area of interest for her personally and with regard to her future career goal of taking on a higher level technology-focused position. She already excels in this area and has enhanced efficiency and service levels in your department by applying the things she is learning to current workflow processes and data management challenges, by working closely with other staff members. You know your department will benefit from Olivia’s increasing knowledge in this area until the point she is ready for a promotion, so you’re in support of Olivia’s proposed goal below. There are a number of areas your department’s primary database could be improved, but Olivia only has limited knowledge of how other users in your department need to work with the information. She typically doesn’t have a lot of interaction with some of the primary users - and the end product or any changes she makes would ultimately need to meet their needs. You’ll have to build on Olivia’s initially proposed goal: Complete database class and apply knowledge at work this year. Which aspects of Olivia’s proposed goal are on-track and what is poorly drafted or missing? Positive:
Negative:
Re-write Olivia’s goal below. How can you assist Olivia in improving this goal to meet stakeholders’ needs and ensure you are able to fairly evaluate her performance?
Olivia - Goal #1 Olivia’s interactions with other County employees have been strained over the past year and you’ve talked with her about this a few times. Olivia has engaged in some pretty negative verbal exchanges with individuals requesting reports, prompting complaints and other negative feedback. Ultimately, reports have been delivered late and Olivia is starting to get a bad reputation from the neighboring divisions that rely on her work. You assume your discussions regarding these concerns have prompted Olivia to draft the goal below. Improve ability to deal with stress, multi-task, and prioritize workload so that interdepartmental customer service improves. Which aspects of Olivia’s proposed goal are on-track and what is poorly drafted or missing? Positive:
Negative:
Re-write Olivia’s goal below. How can you assist Olivia in improving this goal and ensure you are able to fairly evaluate her performance?
Olivia - Goal #2 Clearly, there have been some accuracy issues with Olivia’s work this past year. As her manager, you would like to see a goal to address the errors affecting her work quality. Olivia is responsible for recording and calculating accurate customer payment information for your department, which is a manual process, and toward the end of last year when things were really busy you saw a number of incorrect calculations in Olivia’s work. The same calculations need to be applied to each set of figures so this should be pretty basic. Also, after auditing recently-entered data in the department’s system, you realize her data entry error rate is running at 10%. Some of the information on customer forms wasn’t even transferred into the database and important fields are left blank – resulting in glaring holes when reports are run. The two other staff members who share these data entry responsibilities tend to average a 3% error rate, but you have always counted on Olivia for 100% accuracy. In fact, Olivia has historically run reports to audit the other employee’s work so they could correct any errors before it’s too late. If she starts making mistakes now too, client outcomes will suffer and the regulatory agency auditing your work may place the County on an improvement plan. You’ve always relied on Olivia’s higher degree of accuracy to balance the others’ work and ensure the division passes these audits. Olivia appears to be getting sloppy on certain assignments and while she churned out a record number of reports after returning from an approved FMLA protected leave, a lot of those reports needed to be redone due to errors. It seems like Olivia recognizes at least part of the issues based on the goal she drafted below. However, you’re not sure if this will get her where she needs to be. Improve accuracy of calculations by January 15th. Double-check my work. Which aspects of Olivia’s proposed goal are on-track and what is poorly drafted or missing? Positive:
Negative:
Re-write Olivia’s goal below. How can you assist Olivia in improving this goal and ensure you are able to fairly evaluate her performance?
Olivia - Goal #3 After Olivia’s medical leave of absence this past year, there is still a huge list of overdue reports that need to be completed to get back on schedule. Originally, you had talked with Olivia about adding some desirable, but non-essential, information to the database during first quarter of the upcoming year. You expected to see this as one of her new performance evaluation goals. But now it is really a higher priority to address the backlog of reports before adding these new reporting fields and extra data. In fact, the data fields can’t be modified until all of the previously requested reports are run. Looking at this realistically, Olivia would have a full-time project stretching through at least first quarter just to get caught up. Since you’re not completely familiar with the steps required to process all the report requests, you would probably have to rely on Olivia to help determine a realistic timeline to complete this. There are some individuals in the on-call pool who have the relevant skills and knowledge to help and speed this up, but depending on the type of jobs in the queue, different areas of expertise will be required. Olivia’s proposed goal below was exactly what you discussed with her several months ago, but now you’re thinking it needs a complete overhaul. Create new data fields X and Y in the division’s tracking system, and update all customer records with the additional information by the end of first quarter. Run reports to audit work and ensure records have been updated accurately and for all customers. Identify the positive and negative aspects of Olivia’s proposed goal. Positive:
Negative:
Now re-write and/or replace Olivia’s goal with a better version below.
Olivia - Goal #4 One of your organization’s key objectives in the current County Strategic Plan is to “develop and improve technology infrastructure, systems, and applications to provide improved customer service and more efficient interactions for County customers.” New state requirements affecting your department will be implemented in the coming year and you know it will be difficult for staff to gather and track all the additional customer information required. New electronic forms would be helpful to replace the current paper versions. Right now, customers have to fill in the same fields on a new paper form each month with their identifying information, address, phone number, etc. In addition, someone will need to add fields to the department’s database to be sure reports can be run including this new information. Olivia normally maintains this database. Aggregate data will then be used by other department staff for reporting on important community initiatives. Olivia’s computer skills would be a great addition to the project team preparing for this implementation, so you’re pleased to see she is thinking along the same lines when you see her draft goal below: Join the project team for the new state mandates. When you take a second look at this the following morning, some aspects of this goal seem ontrack….but there is definitely room for improvement. What looks good and what is poorly drafted or missing? Positive:
Negative:
Re-write Olivia’s goal below. How can you assist Olivia in improving this goal and ensure you are able to fairly evaluate her performance?
Olivia - Goal #5 Olivia has expressed an interest in further developing her computer skills, which is a strong area of interest for her personally and with regard to her future career goal of taking on a higher level technology-focused position. She already excels in this area and has enhanced efficiency and service levels in your department by applying the things she is learning to current workflow processes and data management challenges, by working closely with other staff members. You know your department will benefit from Olivia’s increasing knowledge in this area until the point she is ready for a promotion, so you’re in support of Olivia’s proposed goal below. There are a number of areas your department’s primary database could be improved, but Olivia only has limited knowledge of how other users in your department need to work with the information. She typically doesn’t have a lot of interaction with some of the primary users - and the end product or any changes she makes would ultimately need to meet their needs. You’ll have to build on Olivia’s initially proposed goal: Complete database class and apply knowledge at work this year. Which aspects of Olivia’s proposed goal are on-track and what is poorly drafted or missing? Positive:
Negative:
Re-write Olivia’s goal below. How can you assist Olivia in improving this goal to meet stakeholders’ needs and ensure you are able to fairly evaluate her performance?
