Goal Management Workflow
  • 07 Mar 2023
  • 8 Minutes to read
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Goal Management Workflow

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Article summary

This workflow describes the typical process of working with company, org unit and employee goals in Lanteria HR.

Goal Management Prerequisites

Goals

  • Goal areas to be able to group goals by area when you set up company goals.
  • Goal ratings to be able to evaluate achievement of qualitative goals (goals that are not measured by the quantitative indicators).
  • Advanced settings:
    • Select the type of goals you use in the employees' performance assessment. In this scenario, the Both goal type is used to be able to assign both qualitative and quantitative goals to employees.
    • Select the Allow Goal Editing During Review Only check box if you want to allow employees to edit their goals during the performance review only. Selecting this check box will make the goals on the My Goals page non-editable.

Performance

Competencies (required for the workflow below only if competencies are assessed during performance review)

  • In case competencies are going to be used in the performance review, you need to also make sure that the Competencies settings have been configured.

Goal Management Workflow

The following diagram illustrates a typical workflow of setting company, org unit, and employee goals and assessing their achievement, and how goal achievement assessment is linked to the performance review process.img056(4)

Setting and Assessing Goals Workflow Description

1 Setting company goals

The initial step in this workflow is setting company goals, which is the highest level in the hierarchy of goals. Company goals are set by HR. Goals are divided into two categories: quantitative and qualitative goals. HR also selects org units for which a created company goal will be available for selection as a parent/aligned goal.

2 Setting org unit goals

Org unit goals are set up by the manager of the corresponding org unit. Org unit manager is a manager specified on the Organizational Units page (do not confuse with the people manager, which is specified on the employee card). Org unit manager creates org unit goals, both quantitative and qualitative, and, optionally, aligns some of the org unit goals with the company goals by selecting a company goals as a parent/aligned goal. The org unit manager can set goals for reporting (subordinate) org units if necessary.

However, note that setting company and org unit goals is not mandatory. You can still set and assess only personal goals. If you choose the goals cascading scenario shown in this workflow, please remember that you cannot align personal goals directly with the company goals. The correct way of aligning goals is when organizational unit goals are aligned with company goals, and personal goals are aligned with organizational unit goals.

Further steps in this workflow depend on whether assessment of goals achievement is going to be linked to the performance review process or not. Be aware that using performance review for setting and assessing employee’s goals is the recommended and primary scenario, while the scenario when employee’s goals are assigned and assessed only on the My Goals page is not typical, though technically possible.

3a Primary scenario: Assigning employee goals and assessing their achievement (linked to Performance Review)

If assessing achievement of goals is part of your performance review process, employee’s goals are assigned and assessed directly on the performance review form. The performance review form is expected to include a section with Objectives where organization goals (company and org unit goals) will be displayed and where employee goals are assigned and assessed.

In this scenario, after company goals and org unit goals are created, HR starts a performance review round to set current and future objectives, assess employees’ performance for a specific period, and calculate the performance score and bonuses. The performance review is based on a performance review form template, which defines the structure of the performance review form (which sections it will include), as well as on a performance review workflow, which defines the steps the performance review will include (in which order responsible people will fill in the performance review form). In this workflow, we are interested in the Objectives section because this section is directly related to goal assessment. This performance review section may display employee’s goals, org unit goals, and company goals.

Normally, employee’s goals, both quantitative and qualitative, are set directly on the performance review form in the Objectives section, where current objectives are displayed. To have the organization goals (company and org unit goals) included in this section of the performance review, the Include organization Goals and KPIs check box must be selected on the form when starting a review round. Otherwise, only employee’s goals will be included in the performance review. The organization (org unit and company) goals are not editable on the performance review – they are used in the score, weight and bonus calculation. Org unit and company goal assessment is performed by the org unit manager or HR correspondingly on the same page where they were defined.

Employee’s goals are automatically synchronized between the performance review form and the My Goals page where they can also be viewed. In case a performance review for the employee is active, we do not usually want employee’s goals to be editable on the My Goals page. Therefore, we recommend clearing the Allow Goal Editing During Review Only check box in the advanced Goals settings. However, if editing employee’s goals is allowed during performance review, newly assigned employee goals will be automatically added to the Objectives section of the performance review on condition the goal period (the period within which the goal must be achieved) is fully or partially coincides with the performance review period (the period over which an employee’s performance is assessed).

On the performance review form, the calculated score, which is displayed on the I (Information) tab, is calculated using the scores from the Objectives, KPIs and Competencies sections. The bonuses (if bonuses are set up), which are also displayed on the I (Information) tab are calculated on the basis of the score in the Objectives section.

When the last stage of the performance review comes, according to the performance review workflow, the last responsible person fills in the form and submits the performance review. The final score and bonuses are calculated.

3b Not typical scenario: Assigning employee goals and assessing their achievement (not linked to Performance Review)

If your company is not going to link the process of assessing achievement of goals to the performance review process, employee’s goals are set and assessed on the My Goals page independently of the performance review process. This page displays goals for all periods (as opposed to the performance review where only goals for the reviewed period are assigned and assessed), including company and org unit goals.

In this scenario, after company and org unit goals are set up, employee’s quantitative and qualitative goals are assigned to employees. Employee goals are assigned by employees themselves (My Performance > My Goals, and then select Assign Qualitative Goal or Assign Quantitative Goal) or by employee’s manager (My Team Performance > Goals > Employee Objectives > select an employee, select View, and then select Assign Qualitative Goal or Assign Quantitative Goal). Note that to have the ability to assign both qualitative and qualitative goals to employees, the Employee Goal Type setting must be set to Both (in the settings, Performance > Goals settings, on the Advanced tab). Otherwise, you will assign either only qualitative or only quantitative goals to employees, and only the Assign Goal action will be available.

After a certain period, defined in the goals or according to your business process, the achievement of employees’ (and later org units’ and company’s goals) needs to be assessed. Achievement of each employee goal is usually assessed by the manager on the same page where they were defined. The responsible person selects a goal, and then specifies its status (e.g. Not Started, In Process, Completed, Failed, Deferred), rating (Not Achieved, Minimally Achieved, Partially Achieved, Fully Achieved), or current % of completion. 

Note
In addition to the manager, employee can assess his or her goals as well. When there are several assessors,  the next person that assess an employee’s goal will change the previous assessment. The total score is based on the final assessment made by the last assessor.

4 Assessing Company and Org Unit Goals

Information about achievement of org unit goals is entered by the org unit manager, while the information about achievement of company goals is entered by HR, on the same page where the goals were defined. When exactly this assessment information for company and org unit goal is entered depends on the business workflow in your company. Technically it is allowed to do it at any stage. HR enters company goal assessment on the basis of information received from the company management.

To enter assessment information about achievement of an org unit or company goal, the org unit manager (in case of org unit goals) or HR (in case of company goals) selects a goal (on the page with org unit or company goals correspondingly), selects Edit Item, and then specifies its % of completion (for qualitative goals) or actual result (for quantitative goals).

As a result of assessment of employees’, org unit and company goals achievement, the Goals and Performance dashboards are updated to reflect the achievement of goals, which can be used for analysis purposes. Additionally, HR can run goal-related reports, such the Goal Map to view how the company, department and employee goals are aligned together or the Org Unit Goals report to view the goal statistics and how the department goals are aligned with the company goals.


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