2023 is right around the corner, and there’s no better time than now to set both your business and your employees up for continued success in the coming new year. Having defined, attainable goals is a helpful tool in growing and supporting your business and employees. 

Specifically, let’s talk about Employee Goal-Setting.  

WHAT IS GOAL SETTING? 

Goal-setting is the process of taking active steps to achieve your desired outcome. Setting actionable goals gives your employees room to grow, creates loyalty, and opportunity within your business. Goals can range from increasing revenue to improving customer service to learning new skills.  

Setting goals is also mutually beneficial. As your employees grow, they can take on more responsibilities, allowing you, the business owner, the opportunity to step away and enjoy some freedom, too. Win-win.  

LEVERAGING SMART GOALS 

With Goal-Setting, you want to leverage SMART GOALS… goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. 

• Specific: What needs to be accomplished and the steps needed to complete the goal. 

• Measurable: Quantify your goal. For example, I like to use KPIS (key performance indicators) like book utilization, average revenue/hr, average client spend/visit, and rebooking rate/return rate.

• Achievable: Goal is realistic but challenging. (Example: hitting a monthly sales goal.)

• Relevant: How will this goal help the employee (and the business). (Example: training classes.)

• Time Bound: When will the task start and end (i.e. goals that are monthly, weekly, daily, and hourly). 

Following this goal guideline will ensure your team’s goals are clearly defined and attainable within a specific timeframe. 

SETTING GOALS FOR YOUR TEAM

Setting specific goals for the entire team can boost employee engagement and teamwork and make them feel genuinely invested in your business. Goals for your team should be realistic but challenging. After I determine the goal we are going to strive for that month, I then break my team’s goals down into Service Goals (80-90% of total monthly goal) and Retail Goals (10-20% of total monthly goal) that are structured by “time bound” increments.  I break the monthly goal down into monthly, weekly and daily goals. I assign my team a base goal to strive for $100 of revenue per hour, overall for the studio. 

By breaking larger monetary goals into smaller increments it helps employees to visualize the smaller numbers that they need to hit each day or week, that totals to their monthly goal. 

SETTING INDIVIDUAL GOALS

It is key to set separate SMART GOALS for your individual employees, which gives them personal accountability and ownership. This is the only way you can ensure that you hit those big team goals! 

There are a few ways that I calculate an employee’s individual goals.

• First, I assign each service employee a percentage (based off of their position or role) as to what I expect them to contribute to the overall service revenue goal for the month. For example, a Master artist may be assigned 20%, a newer esthetician may only be assigned 7%). This is a *Realistic* goal setting; you wouldn’t expect a newer employee to bring in as much as an established employee.

• I then will take the overall monthly goal for services and calculate each individual goal by using those percentages.  

• Furthermore I will take that new individual monthly goal and I will divide it by 4 weeks.  That gives them an average of what they need to hit each week to hit their overall goal.  

• Depending on how many days that employee works per week, they can take their weekly goal and divide it by that number of days to get an idea of how much they should be doing per day, as well. 

For individual retail goals:

• I take our monthly goal and divide it into weekly goals.  

• I divide the weekly goal by the total number of able-bodied employees that are able to sell product. This includes receptionists as well! This gives the employees a super small number they are each required to hit per week to hit their goal. Doing this has helped increase our retail revenue immensely. 

TIP: The more communication with your team the better. Weekly check-ins and tracking are a must. Monthly team meetings with your employees are also super helpful; you can use this time to also make sure they’re on track to completing their goals and they can see where they stand compared to their peers. 1:1 check-ins should be completed monthly or quarterly.

WHEN INDIVIDUAL GOALS HELP TEAM GOALS

Sales goals are a great example of when individual goals overlap with team goals, benefitting both. For example, 

• The Goal: Increasing sales revenue this month. 
• Individual Goal: Your employee’s sales goal for this week is X amount. 
• Team Goal: Your team’s goal is gross sales of X amount. 

Imagine telling your team, let’s hit $200,000 in sales this month. At first, that can sound overwhelming. But if you tell your team of 10 employees that you want them to each hit sales of $5,000 a week (equals $50,000 a week total) for the next 4 weeks, then it doesn’t sound so daunting. 

By breaking down your sales goal into two defined goals (what each employee needs to make each week and the gross sales amount for the team) it’s more realistic and achievable. 

Are you struggling to set goals for your employees? Need a little help narrowing which goals to focus on? Shoot me a message on Instagram @thetiffanimitchell and I’ll be happy to help!

xx – Tiffani