Assigning Goals to Your Direct Reports

Heading to your Employee Portal, you may be able to see the "Goals" module in the main menu on the left. If you have direct reports, you can view and manage their goals by going to Goals > Team Goals:

Clicking on "Team Goals" will open up a list of your direct reports and their open Goals. You'll also see the option to "+Add a Goal" beside each name:

All you need to do is click on the option to "+Add a Goal" and follow the steps on the page that opens up:

The various fields are as follows:

Description This is the main description of the goal that your employee is working on. Make it something short yet descriptive so they will instantly know what it is when they see it on their goal list.
Comments These are some long-form comments that can be used to add more description or specifics about the goal/objective.  These will be initially hidden from your staff, but they can click a button next to the description to expand it if they need to see it. Useful for detailing how or when to update the goal, or to lay out any procedures required for marking progress.
Type

This is the important differentiator for the goal.  The different types are:

  • Number - Allows them to record a number against the goal, e.g., recording the number of invoices they have processed so far this week, etc.
  • Currency - Allows them to track a dollar or currency value for the goal, e.g., the amount of sales revenue they have earned towards their quarterly sales goal, or the amount they have earned from upselling your company's product or services.
  • Counter - Gives them an incremental step counter to update, which is useful for tracking events such as the number of times they visited customers, etc.
  • Percentage - Allows them to move a progress bar tracker to track how close they are to achieving 100% completion on a particular goal.
  • Objective - is a simple checkbox which is useful for tracking an instant completion of a task or objective, such as attending a meeting or getting a certain qualification.

The type of entry screen they will see when updating the goal will be determined by the goal type above.

Due Date You can set a due date for this goal, or leave it blank to make it a perpetual goal with no expiry date. Setting a Due Date is optional.
Target Value With some goal types (Number, Currency, Counter), you can set an expected Target value that they are supposed to reach.  You can leave this at '0' to not measure them against a target, but sometimes you might have a selective quota they have to attain, and this will help them see how close they are getting.
Can exceed Target This setting determines whether they can keep going once they achieve the above set Target.  For some things, they may not want to go beyond your expected quota; however, in other cases, for instance, tracking Sales made, there is no problem with exceeding their target to further impress management.
Admin User can update This determines whether an admin user in your HR Partner company can update the goal progress for them.  In most cases, you won't want anyone but the staff member to update, but on occasion, you may need another party (who is an Admin User) to update progress based on other information that they may have.

Once you have updated all fields, you can click the 'Create Goal' button to save it.