• Quality employee performance objectives will easily adhere to your business plan and goalsbusiness colleagues preparing for business meeting image by Vladimir Melnik from Fotolia.com
  
  According to performance-appraisals.org, employee performance objectives are like road maps. Without proper directions, your employees’ journey can be frustrating and highly inefficient. Employee performance objectives are an important component to guide your staff to achieving “maximum results” so that your company can achieve business plan goals. “Performance objectives establish how your business plan will be achieved.”
  
  

S.M.A.R.T.

• Ensure that your performance objectives are S.M.A.R.T. This means Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. Objectives should be specific, ensuring exact actions and results are clearly reflected. Ask yourself what needs to be achieved. Consider how you will track results. Objectives should be measurable, utilizing available data. Some results will be able to lend themselves to more objective, quantifiable data. Other results may need a more subjective approach resulting in a more qualitative nature. Ensure you set goals that can be attained; to have unreachable goals will be demoralizing to your staff. Objectives should be relevant, meaning they should be in alignment with your business plan, mission statement and company values. And lastly, your objectives should be timely. Objectives should be aligned with an action plan with time lines to ensure results flow with organizational needs always in connection to your business plan.
  
  

Writing

• According to the George Mason University document, “Writing Performance Objectives,” you should strive to meet four clear criteria when writing objectives. One: performance objectives should clearly convey employee objectives in easily understandable terms. Two, objectives should allow the supervisor to “more easily observe, document and coach.” Three, objectives should provide the employee with a self-evaluation tool. Four, objectives should allow for effective and accurate tracking. When writing these employee performance objectives, consider your organization’s mission, values and goals. Concentrate on the desired results instead of the actual tasks. Consider the employee or position that the objective will pertain to. According to the state of Missouri document, “Writing Performance Objectives for Job Components: A Brief Tutorial,” if you “believe there is any room for misinterpretation, rewrite the objective again.”
  
  

Implementation

• Consider using some basic components for your employees, such as those utilized by the state of Missouri: These include knowledge of work, quality of work, dependability, situational responsiveness and initiative. When implementing, be proactive in your approach to sharing these performance objectives. As ideal as it would be to merely announce objectives to your employees and have everyone buy in, realistically, you may need a more hands-on approach for some employees. Consider meeting with them individually to discuss the performance objectives. Have them explain what the objectives mean to ensure comprehension. Also discuss what successfully meeting that objective will look like in quantitative and qualitative terms.