Organizational Goals

Importance of organizational goals

Goals help define a company's purpose, assist its business growth and achieve its financial objectives. Setting specific organizational goals can also help a company measure their organization's progress and determine the tasks that must be improved to meet those business goals.

Goals need to be specific, measurable, achievable and timely. By setting clear, realistic goals, organizations have a clearer path to achieve success and realize its vision. Goal setting, and attaining them, can also help an organization achieve increased efficiency, productivity and profitability.

Organizations should clearly communicate organizational goals to engage employees in their work and achieve the organization's desired ends. Having a clear idea of organizational goals helps employees determine their course of action to help the business achieve those goals. Employees should also be equipped with the proper tools and resources needed as they do their work to help meet the overall organizational goals.

Setting goals can also help companies evaluate employee performance -- for example, creating individual employee goals that support overall organizational goals and measuring individual performance against those individual goals. While an organization can communicate its organizational goals through formal channels, the most effective and direct way to do so is through employees' direct supervisors. This enables managers to work with their staff to develop SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound) goals that align with the organization's goals. Setting organizational goals also helps build workplace harmony because it makes employees work toward attaining similar goals.

While developing sound goals helps organizations with planning, over time, goals might turn out to be unrealistic and need to be modified accordingly.