With the New Year approaching, we’re approaching a time when many people begin forming goals for themselves, both personally and professionally. It's also a time when many company leaders begin to discuss where their company should be going next. It’s a great time to assess how a company performed in 2013 and what it could do better in the coming year.
Avionté Staffing Software was established in 2005 and has experienced tremendous growth over the years. Much of this success has come from the support of clients and employees. But another big factor of our success is based on the mentality the founders of Avionté used to build the company into what it is today. Avionté’s four partners took their passions and dreams to create a better staffing software company and product, and turned those dreams into reality by forming a plan, and setting step-by-step goals to see that plan through. What were the partner’s main goals? They are, and have always been, to consistently move towards a better and more innovative staffing software product, while maintaining a strong focus on customer and employee satisfaction.
Our efforts to follow this vision and our goal-setting processes have worked for us, and we have seen them work for others, too. However, a recent survey by Staples found that more than 80% of small business owners don’t track their business goals, according to Inc, and 77% of companies have not yet achieved their original vision for their company. This is a shame, considering countless studies indicate that creating company visions and goals is one of the best things a new and growing company can do to establish a foundation for measuring the success of its efforts over time.
Is your company like one of the 80% in the Staples survey? Or one of the 77%? Has your company made an effort to set competitive and measurable goals for 2014, and how does it plan to measure success in 2014? If you are struggling to answer these questions, you are not alone. But luckily, there is still plenty of time to create your plan for 2014.
This month, Avionté is redefining its 2014 company goals. Here are the two key things we’re doing to ensure we do it right:
1. Creating measurable goals. This month at Avionté, each department manager has been hard at work putting together a set of measurable goals, based on Avionté’s drive to be more innovative and purposeful in 2014 and beyond. The team has established company-wide and department-specific goals that are challenging (yet obtainable), easily measurable and based on performance.
2. Establishing ways to determine success. Each department or team will have its own set of metrics in place to measure goal achievement. Each goal set will be evaluated on a quarterly basis, with rewards and incentives given to employees for reaching those goals. For some, these goals are broken down even further and involve step-by-step processes, or activity-based task management. And these department goals all line up with our broader, company-wide goals.
There is no one good way to set company goals. Avionté’s 2014 goal-setting process is just the way we feel will work best for our company. There are many ways to build a better process for goal-setting, and how your company sets its own goals should be dependent on your unique company vision. So once you have established what that company vision is, strive to set specific and measurable goals for your employees to work towards in 2014.
This post originally appeared here.
To read about the goals Avionté set for 2013, see this post: Our Year-end Company Meeting, A Recap
By Jenna Campbell, Sales and Marketing Assistant at Avionte Staffing Software.