Helping your employees set new goals for 2018 is a great way to motivate your workforce and accelerate their professional growth for career advancement. When all levels of the organization buy into a common set of goals it also improves employee engagement and creates a more positive work culture.

For leadership, a good first step in goal setting for the New Year is to review the status of last year’s goals. Recognition and celebration are in order for those targets that were hit. And where employees fell short, there is an opportunity for you as a leader to review lessons learned and act as a partner who is invested in your employees growth with the company.

For example you can explore if certain goals were unrealistic or if certain employee behaviors threw up roadblocks on their path to achieve success.

As a leader, you should reflect on your possible role in missed targets and take any corrective action. Was everyone crystal clear on the goal plan and did everyone share a common vision of success? Were there metrics available to monitor progress throughout the year and procedures in place to facilitate communication about slippage and missteps along the way?

The C-suite’s goal-setting agenda sets the tone for the rest of the company. These goals need to be clearly identified and communicated to the direct reports of executives, and those reports need to cascade those same expectations to all of the folks on their teams.

In addition to these top-down goal-setting efforts, management needs to be open to communications that percolate up from their reports and team members so goal-setting is a realistic and company-wide effort. There should always be two-way communication throughout the enterprise to balance both top-down and bottom-up goal setting expectations.

The availability of HR applications to continually review performance and offer employee feedback on their progress towards reaching goals could be very helpful here. Remember, the journey is just as important as the ultimate objective of hitting planned goals. You don’t want people to get frustrated and burned out when they feel their efforts amount to nothing more than spinning their wheels. HR software is another area where technology can improve communication and enhance collaboration to avoid these common pitfalls.

When employees buy into internal stretch goals they will feel more engaged with daily life at work. Ultimately, it pushes people to work outside their comfort zone and grow, which will contribute to both their professional and personal development.

Learn how to attract employees who are open to learning and challenging themselves with goal setting efforts by downloading our best practices Hiring Guide here: