Goal setting can significantly improve employee performance and satisfaction. The Locke-Latham goal setting model demonstrates that specific, challenging goals lead employees to focus effort and persist towards goals, improving performance when abilities, commitment, feedback, and rewards are also present. Goals direct behavior, provide standards for performance assessment, and justify task performance. High performance is achieved when employees set challenging yet achievable goals and have the skills, commitment, and strategies to work towards rewards from goal attainment.

1. Goal Setting Motivation The information is taken from Slocum and Helriegel (2007)

2. The expectancy theory demonstrates the importance of rewards in relation to the effort-performance ratio. This lesson extends the knowledge of goal setting as a means of motivation employees to reach high levels of performance and satisfaction. At the end of the lesson students should be able to: Explain how performance is affected by goal setting. State the effects of goal setting on job satisfaction and performance. Describe reward systems for fostering high performance. Overview

3. Key terms: Goals Goal setting Goal – a future outcome (result) that individuals and groups strive to achieve. Goal setting – the process of stating goals toward which individuals, teams, departments, and organizations will strive to achieve. Objective: Explain how performance is affected by goal setting.

4. Goals guide and direct behaviour. Goals provide challenges and standards against which individual and organizational performance can be assessed. Goals justify the performance of a task and the use of resources. Goals define the basis of organizational design. Goals serve as an organizing function for a person’s work. Importance of goal setting

6. Goal clarity

8. Effort

9. Persistence

11. Goal commitment

12. Feedback

13. Task complexityConsequences Basic idea of the model is that a goal serves as a motivator. Persons can compare their present performance with that required to achieve the goal. If person believe that they will fall short of a goal, they will feel dissatisfied and work harder to attain the goal as long as they believe the goal can be achieved.

14. Features: Goals should be a challenge to the individual. The challenge is affected by goal difficulty, goal clarity, and self-efficacy. Goal difficulty – the goal should be challenging; not impossible to achieve. Goal clarity – the goal must be clear and specific Self-efficacy – a believe that the individual has the ability to perform. Locke –Latham model

16. Direction of attention- activities to keep individuals focus. Effort – the strengthexerted Persistence – willingness to work on the task over extended periods of time Task strategy – strategy for tackling the tasks. Mediators – factors supporting achievement of goals

17. Performance is a function of goal-setting. Performance is likely to he high when: Challenging goals are present Moderators are present Mediators are operating Three types of quantitative indicators can be used to assess performance: Units of production or quantity Dollars (cost, profits, income or sales) Time Performance

18. When employees attain high level of performance, reward can push individuals to continue to perform. Rewards

19. In Locke and Latham model, the primary focus is the degree of satisfaction the person feels with their performance Employees who set extremely high, difficult goals may experience less job satisfaction than employees who set lower, more achievable goals. NB: some level of satisfaction is associated with striving for difficult goals, for example: Responding to the challenge Making progress Believing that benefits may still be derived from the experience regardless of the outcome Satisfaction

20. Encourages people to develop action plans to reach their goal. Focuses people’s action on their relevant goal actions. Causes people to exert effort necessary to achieve the goals. Spurs people to persist in the face of obstacles. Impact of goal-setting on performance

21. Goals are difficult to achieve when employees lack skills and abilities needed to perform at a high level. Successful goals setting takes longer when employees are given complicated tasks that require a considerable amount of learning Goal setting can lead to major problems when rewards are given to wrong behaviours. Caveat