What can I learn from this page? | Guidance on how to create, update, track, and view individual goals within the platform |
Who is this guide for? | Performance Users |
Individual Goal Setting
At the core of achieving better results and making your way toward success is a simple yet powerful approach: the smart use of developmental and business goals. Goals form the backbone and are a critical component of both the performance management and employee development processes. Goals help to create both alignment, and a shared understanding of what has to be achieved and what individuals have to do, learn, and develop to be successful.
The Importance of Individual Goals:
Goals can improve motivation, satisfaction and productivity, increase persistence in the face of obstacles and improve performance
Goals act as a trigger for knowledge and skills development. We might have to come up with new ways of working or learn about a new subject to be successful. Goals become the tool to acquire that skill or identify strategies to work around that gap.
In this article, we'll walk you through the steps to create Individual goals and how to view goals across all levels within your organization.
The goals feature allows you to track progress on work and development goals. There are four different categories of goals:
Individual
Department
Company
Who can create goals?
All users can create individual and team goals, and those with specific account permissions can create department and company goals.
All users can create individual goals.
Members of a team can create team goals. Learn more about team goals.
Those with specific account permissions can create Department and Company goals. These permissions are handled by your organization's Account Administrator. Learn more about User roles and permissions in Performance
š”Tip: Explore our courses about goals in Culture Amp Training for employees, managers, and administrators.
Create an Individual Goal
To create individual goals, click Goals in the top navigation bar. Go to the action button in the top right corner of the page and use the dropdown to select Individual Goal.
When creating an individual goal, you can customize the specifics:
Goal title: What is the main objective of the goal?
Description: Why is the goal important, and what is the plan to achieve it?
Due date: What specific date would you like to have this goal accomplished?
Goal type: Tag your goal as business or development.
Visibility: Who should have access? You can choose from Everyone in the company, Manager only, Only me, or Specify Users.
Priority: Is the priority level low, medium, or high?
Key Results: What key results should be used to track and achieve the goal?
Goal Owner: What colleagues should be accountable for managing the goal? The owners can also edit the goals.
Alignment: Align the goal with a team, department, and/or company goal.
To add Key Results, you can select the + Add a new key result (optional) button. The Key Results section opens and can be added with the default values or more specific values. Available options:
Percentage
Number (from 0 - 9,999,999)
When your Individual Goal is ready, click Create to complete the process.
Assign Goal Owners
You can assign any user as a goal owner for any goal. When you assign a goal owner, the user receives a notification that a goal has been assigned to them and who assigned it. Goal owners can remove themselves from a goal.
If a goal has been set to Manager Only and the goal has multiple owners, the managers of those Goal owners will be able to view the goal even if they are not a Goal Owner themselves. Things to note:
When a Goal Ownership Transfer has occurred, the Goal Creator (and Goal Creators Manager via the Digest if enabled) will continue to receive the notifications of updates rather than the newly assigned Goal Owner(s).
The Goal Creator can still access the goal via the notifications and may see the option to Edit, although any edits made will not be saved.
Goal comments ("Conversation with [manager name]") will display the name of the Goal Creators manager and not the Goal Owners manager. The Goal Owners manager still has visibility of the comments and the ability to add comments.
If the Goal Owner is deactivated, the ownership will partially transfer back to the Goal Creator and may therefore show under the Goal Creator name in Admin reporting.
When do we recommend assigning goal owners?
While you are able to assign goals to individuals by making them goal owners, keep in mind that employees are more motivated and committed to completing goals if they participate in the goal-setting process. Here are the most common and recommended use cases for assigning goal owners:
Administrators can assign company goals to executives who may not have time to input their own goals into Culture Amp
Anyone can add multiple goal owners to a goal to create a sense of shared ownership - rarely is a goal truly owned by a single individual!
Managers can assign goals to their direct reports - to make sure they are equally motivated as if they had participated in the goal-setting. Be sure to:
Explain the rationale behind the goal
Set appropriately challenging goals and be open to your direct reportās feedback on the goal
Invite Others to Collaborate on your Individual Goal
If you want to invite a colleague to collaborate or view your individual goal, click on your Individual Goal, head below into the comment section, and use ā@ā to tag them.
Note: If itās common for more than two people to collaborate on a goal in your organization, consider using Team goals
Create a new goal from your existing goal (Duplicate)
Rather than creating a goal from scratch, our tool allows you to copy a goal and paste it into a different part of the organization. This feature can help save time by freeing up the ability for team members to take existing organizational goals and personalize them according to their plans and priorities. It also encourages users to participate more fully in the goal-setting process.
A goal can be copied at any level (individual, team, department, or company). Restrictions will depend on your authorization level (e.g., an administrator could copy a company goal) and the visibility setting on the goal (e.g., a goal visible to anyone can be copied).
To copy an existing goal, select the goal from your Goals tab, select the 3 Dot Icon > Copy Goal option.
Once the goal is copied, users can replace existing details and personalize them to their new needs and priorities. For example, users can copy an existing team goal and create it for the next performance period.
Most of the information on the copied goal is retained, including:
Key results (which get initialized)
Goal alignments
When the new Goal is ready, click Create to complete the process.
View Goals Across Your Organization
Get a snapshot view of all visible and aligned goals in your organization via the tree view.
You can view goals that others have shared with you by clicking on an employee's profile picture. Go to the Find a colleague tile, and click Search directory. Then search for the colleague, click their profile tile, and click the Goals tab.
Managers can see all of the individual goals created by their direct reports. Go to Goals and select Direct Reports goals to see all goals in one view.
Account Administrators can see goals that have the visibility marked "Everyone" or "My Manager." Go to Goals and select Reporting under Admin. Account Administrators cannot view goals that have visibility set to Yourself.
š” Tip: If you have already created goals and are looking to update your progress take a look at our article Update and Track Goals in Performance
FAQs
Why can't I see my individual goal?
There may be a few reasons why you are not able to see the individual goal you created:
Date Range: The goal date range filter is not within your individual goal dates. Check the date range filter against your inputted individual goal end dates to be sure.
Be aware that if you remove any filters (such as the date), that selection will not stick when you navigate away and return to that page. However, if you select a different Date range (other than the default), such as a past or future Goal Cycle, that selection will stick if you navigate away and return.
Goal Owners: Confirm that you were not accidentally removed as a Goal Owner if you also assigned the Goal Owner to another user. If so, the Goal Owner would need to update the goal and add you on as another owner.
Goal Quantity: There are too many goals on the page; the current default list view for individual goals is limited to displaying only 50 goals. If you have more than 50 goals, youāll need to apply a specific date range to view the rest.
Why can't my manager see my individual goal?
If your individual goal is not visible by your manager, it is likely due to the visibility settings on the Individual Goal set to āOnly meā.
To resolve this, you (the direct report) will need to edit your Goalās visibility section and select a different option from the "Goals can be viewed by" section. The options that will allow your manager to view your goal are āEveryoneā, āYour Managerā, or āSpecific Peopleā (and tag your manager).
How do I view my co-workers' and colleagues' goals?
Get a snapshot view of all visible and aligned goals in your organization via the tree view
You can view goals that others have shared with you by clicking on an employee's profile picture. Go to the Find a colleague tile, and click Search directory. Then search for the colleague, click their profile tile, and click the Goals tab.
Managers can see all of the individual goals created by their direct reports. Go to Goals and select Direct Reports goals to see all goals in one view.
Can I archive old goals?
The option to archive goals is not currently available. As a workaround, you can take advantage of these available filters to customize your view:
Adjust the date range of the goals. You can filter the goals by a certain date range so you can easily view goals that have been achieved within a certain time frame.
Use the āStatusā filter to sort out goals that have already been accomplished, are currently in progress, or are Blocked.
The Team Goals tab is greyed out, how do I create Team Goals?
Team goals allow for cross-functional and agile teams to create and manage progress toward shared goals with peers, no matter the structure of the organization.
To access Teams and Team Goals, this feature must be enabled by Product Support. Any admin on the account can email support@cultureamp.com to have this enabled.