Employee Goal Performance Key Terms

Know the employee goal performance key terms that can boost productivity

By Michele Vrouvas

Driving profits by engaging employees is important for today’s businesses. But how many business owners really know how to use goal performance as a way to motivate employees to become top performers? You might start by implementing strategies that engage employees through a process of self-examination. While it’s probably necessary to rely on outside consultants for help, there’s no reason you can’t initiate this policy in-house by having your HR people get acquainted with employee goal performance key terms.

Vision

In terms of employee goal performance, vision refers to the ideals your employees have about their skills and abilities. It can include a company's vision of securing employees' trust, creating positive energy in the workplace and eliciting feedback from employees about defining performance goals.
Try: With its emphasis on the vision that businesses have for future development, Leading & Learning helps you understand how vision is related to employee goal performance.

Employee empowerment

One of the purposes of an employee goal performance program is to help HR managers understand the value of employee empowerment, the strategy whereby company leaders encourage employees to evaluate the resources they'll need to improve productivity.
Try: To understand how employee empowerment impacts your company’s employee goal performance strategy, read the discussion at 1000 Ventures. Find out why it’s important for managers to reach out as well as employees.

Performance appraisals

Performance appraisals can be effective in an employee goal performance program if they're used the right way. These appraisals are written by managers and attempt to measure an employee's productivity.
Try: Robert Bacal explains some misconceptions about the use of performance appraisals which can backfire on your plans to improve performance goals. Note the suggestion about using performance appraisals in conjunction with proactive and positive reinforcement techniques designed to drive productivity.

Performance management system

A performance management system sets forth the quantity and quality of work a company expects to achieve.
Try: ZPG fleshes out this term with its emphasis on the benefits of creating objective goals, ensuring your employees understand your company’s vision and creating benchmarks so your employees can gauge their own performance.

Professional development goals

Professional development goals allow your employees and managers to effectively gauge their work performance.
Try: Super Performance stresses the need for managers and employees to collaborate on defining this benchmarks and incorporating them into a company’s standard performance review process.

Performance gaps

Because performance gaps are unavoidable, your employee goal performance strategy should focus on how to identify and deal with them. The gaps represent the areas in which employees did not properly perform the task at hand.
Try: Go to Management Help to understand the impact of performance gaps on the entire performance management system. You’ll learn how and when to address these shortcomings and how the right employees can turn negatives into positives.