31st March 2021 3 MIN READ •Talos Engage •Employee Engagement
Targeting is essential for maintaining a productive, well-managed workforce. There are many different structures and methods used by employers to track worker performance – some stronger than others. Here we discuss how SMART targets can help to keep your employees productive, and drive the best results.
What are SMART targets?
SMART targeting is a widely-practised method used by employers to manage and track employee performance. Building KPIs (key performance indicators) around this structure helps to keep employees engaged, while giving you visibility over their achievements.
SMART Targeting stands for:
Specific:
Laying out concrete goals for simple, focused planning and analysis. This helps your employees maintain a structured schedule, while allowing you to track their progress.
Measurable:
The success of each goal can be measured directly, allowing you to offer employees support, and track their performance.
Achievable:
The set goals are realistically attainable for the employee in question – focused on skill, workload, timeframe, and environmental factors.
Relevant:
Targets contribute directly to wider business goals and objectives – highlighting how these piece into the wider puzzle.
Time-based:
Each goal has a realistic, but specific deadline by which the task should be completed. This helps employees manage their workflow, while allowing you to track progress.
Why are SMART targets used?
SMART targeting is used for many reasons. It is a method proven effective for laying out specific goals for employees and their teams. Some of the key benefits of SMART targets include…
They help to manage workload and create structure
The specific, time-based nature of SMART targets allows your employees to effectively structure and manage their workload. This lowers the risk of staff burnout, while ensuring that tasks are completed by deadline, and to a high standard.
Ever struggled to formulate and follow a ‘to do’ list at work? SMART targeting can help you structure your working day – allowing for effective and advanced planning.
They drive productivity
Specific, time-set targeting helps to give your employees perspective on when and how tasks should be completed. This drives productivity by promoting organisation, and giving clear deadlines by which goals should be reached.
SMART targeting allows you to discuss tasks with employees in detail, allowing any questions/concerns to be raised beforehand. This helps to reduce problems down the line, and keep productivity & achievement high.
They allow you to measure performance
Managing a team of employees can be a challenge. For one, individual performance can be difficult to assess on a day-to-day basis. SMART targeting enables managers to track the real-time progress of their employees’ tasks – allowing them to provide support where needed, and promote productivity.
Structured targeting takes away the need for you to micro-manage employees – saving you time, and boosting employee morale and engagement.
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In summary
SMART targets are a way of setting structured goals for employees. These are characterised by the following qualities:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-based
Setting SMART targets has many benefits for both managers and their employees. They help workers to manage their day-to-day workload, drive productivity & achievement, and allow managers to easily measure progress.
