Employees work on two levels. On a fundamental level, they work for their own career and daily responsibilities, and on a greater level, they work for the company as a whole, upholding and advancing its mission and goals. The key to maximizing each employee’s value and commitment to both causes lies in the business’s ability to tie them together.

1. Crafting Performance Plans With
The Company In Mind

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Crafting Performance Plans With The Company In Mind
Contents
Introduction
Define Organizational Goals
Develop Desired Results
Tie Results Together
Weight Results
Evaluate and Follow Through
Performance Management Behind it All
03
04
05
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06
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07
Crafting Performance Plans
With The Company In Mind

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Crafting Performance Plans With The Company In Mind
Employees work on two levels. On a fundamental level, they
work for their own career and daily responsibilities, and
on a greater level, they work for the company as a whole,
upholding and advancing its mission and goals.
The key to maximizing each employee’s value and
commitment to both causes lies in the business’s ability to tie
them together. The workforce needs a greater good to work
toward - be it company culture or organizational objectives -
and if provided one, their own workload becomes that much
more satisfying and rewarding. The overall vision informs
the personal duty, which is then put toward improving the
company on the whole - again incentivizing and engaging
employees to perform their best.
The way to arrive at this virtuous cycle is through performance
management. By aligning individual goals and benchmarks
with company ambitions in performance management
planning, businesses link the pieces to the whole. And yet it
can go further, by crafting performance management plans for
teams, divisions, even departments, the company engineers a
structure of oneness. Each employee or group succeeds
by the company succeeding.
There are many considerations, however, with such planning,
Crafting Performance Plans
With The Company In Mind
Introduction
By aligning
individual goals and
benchmarks with
company ambitions
in performance
management planning,
businesses link the
pieces to the whole.

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Crafting Performance Plans With The Company In Mind
and to effectively strategize holistic performance management,
these steps must be addressed:
Performance management begins and ends with the
company’s aspirations and goals, so it is required they are first
known and communicable.
The best way to conceptualize these company goals is by
strategic planning, following formulaic and macro-based
processes for clearly delineating organization objective.
Often undertaken by senior leadership, strategic planning is
a necessary action because company goals that are clearly
conveyed and easily expressed are ideal for evangelizing and
incentivizing in performance management.
In short, goals need to be SMART:
Specific: The areas to improve are targeted and defined
(cost, quality, quantity)
Measurable: Indicators of progress or success are complied,
tracked and analyzed
Acceptable: The relevancy and essentiality of the goals are
agreed on by all
Realistic to achieve: Clear stages of achievability are laid out
Time-bound: Deadlines are established, timelines for
progress and success are constructed
Define Organizational Goals

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Crafting Performance Plans With The Company In Mind
Just as SMART goals are created for the company, SMART
employee goals are needed to guide and shape performance.
It also further emphasizes how important the goals and
performance qualities of the company and employee are shared.
For example, if an organization has targeted improved client
retention over new business for improvement, the means to
that ulterior objective must be reflected through individual
performance management. This could mean placing greater
value on fostering better customer satisfaction and enhancing
responsiveness to client needs and pain points by the employee.
Now that the goals have been created for both an
organizational and individual level - the results of each entity
must be tied irrevocably. The company needs to validate that
the work and the good the individual employee accomplishes
feeds directly back to attaining the firm’s communicated goals.
The key word there is “communicated.” It’s not enough to
have simple briefings on quarter two goals and dole out
individual regiments for improvement. Employees must know
exactly how their work helps to achieve company goals; not
only that, but also their overall importance to and fit in
these grand designs.
If an employee elevates their customer’s satisfaction, they
should be able to easily grasp how that helps the company
SMART employee
goals are needed
to guide and shape
performance.
Tie Results Together
Develop Desired Results

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Crafting Performance Plans With The Company In Mind
achieve better client retention. Leadership also has a part to
play in illustrating just how those ends are arrived at: working
harder to foster collaboration and pathos with the client or
even managing and delivering on high-priority client demands.
Charging every member of a specific team with elevating
their interdepartmental relationships and doing their part in
improving customer satisfaction is an example of how varied
goals (like those of account management versus production)
can still mesh with the overall vision.
The game plan is motion, but objective measures of progress
toward goals also need to be in place. Already considered as
the “M” in SMART, the specific criteria by which progress is
judged must be communicated and tracked.
For instance, with customer retention being the ultimate goal,
improved scores on customer satisfaction month over month
may mean more than dollar amount of new business attributed
to the employee.
If customer retention is to be improved by 10 percent, convey
the greater value and reward in improving client responses two
points on a 10-point satisfaction scale than solely focusing on
hoarding in new business.
Consistent evaluation and discussion on reaching targets is
Improved scores on
customer satisfaction
month over month
may mean more
than dollar amount
of new business
attributed to
the employee.
Evaluate and Follow Through
Weigh Results

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Crafting Performance Plans With The Company In Mind
critical to the success of any performance management plan,
and that of any company.
To ensure every party is on track to attain their goals - both
employee and company - there has to be a regular dialogue
on what is being done, how it’s being done and how well it
is being done.
Because customer retention is the object of improvement, a
company can engage an employee on what work they are
doing to improve satisfaction, how communicating more on
the phone is leading to more personal client relationships and
the objective results and performance measures that gauge
positive improvement.
Open and honest assessment and discussion is key to keeping
course and both individual and company goals.
As the framework to aligning individual and company goals
across all potential obstacles, performance management
is too valuable a discipline for companies to ignore.
Furthermore, the opportunities for advancement and
grow afforded to both individual and company at once by
engaging in strategic performance management planning are
clear hallmarks of leaders.
From the top to the bottom, the same goals are shared -
Performance Management
Behind it All
The company also
needs to measure
and evaulate
regularly, and
with purpose.

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though the means to them may not be common. And when
companies and their employees act and live on the same
plane of understanding and vision - the oneness of that
thinking and action carries profound benefits with it.
The first step is to define the company goals and disseminate
them across the workforce, which then needs to have their
own goals guided in the direction of those desired results
and improvements. The company also needs to measure and
evaluate regularly, and with purpose. The result is a strategic
performance management plan designed expertly to feed the
success of both company and individual.
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