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Kpi meaning + 27 examples of key performance indicators.

As your organization begins to sketch out what your strategic plan might look like, it’s likely to come to your attention that you’ll need to gain consensus around what your key performance indicators will be and how they will impact your organization. If you haven’t thought much about your KPIs yet, that’s okay. We can help!

We’ve compiled a complete guide that includes an overview of what makes a good KPI, the benefits of good key performance indicators, and a list of KPI examples [organized by department and industry] for your reference as you develop your organization’s strategic plan and goals.

KPIs video

Video Transcript – How to Write KPIs

Hi, my name is Erica Olsen. Today’s whiteboard video is on key performance indicators, or KPIs for short. These are those things that are associated with either goals or objectives, whatever you’re calling them, those elements of your plan that are the expressions of what you want to achieve by when those quantifiable outcome-based statements.

So KPI’s answer the quantifiable piece of your goals and objectives. They come in three different flavors. So we’ll talk about that in just a minute. But before we do, putting great measures together and making sure they work well for you, you need to have these four attributes. And before I talk about those four attributes, so I just want to say the reason they need to work well for you is because KPIs are the heartbeat of your performance management process. They tell you whether you’re making progress, and ultimately, we want to make progress against our strategy. So KPIs are the thing that do that for us. So you’re going to live with them a lot. So let’s make sure they’re really good.

Okay, so the four things you need to have in order to make sure your these measures work for you.

Our number one is your measure. So the measure is the verbal expression very simply, in words, what are we measuring, which is fairly straightforward. The tricky thing is, is we need to be as expressive as we possibly can with our measures. So number of new customers, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. But a little bit advanced or a little bit more expressive, would be number of new customers this year, or number of new customers for a certain product or a certain service. So what is it is it? Yeah, so it is, so be really clear. And when it comes to measuring it on a monthly basis, you’re gonna want to be as clear as possible. So number of new customers, let’s say this year,

Number two, is our target, or target is the numeric value that we want to achieve. So a couple of things that are important about this is, the target needs to be apples to apples with when the goal date is set, or the due date is set. So we want to achieve 1000 new customers by the end of the year. So the due date in the target works hand in hand. The other thing is the measure and the target need to work hand in hand. So it’s a number. So this is a number, this is a percentage, this is a percentage, you get the idea.

Third thing, we actually run a report on this data. So where is it coming from? Be clear about what the source is. Most organizations have all sorts of data sources, fragmented systems. So making sure you identify where this data is coming from will save you a lot of time.

And then frequency. So how often are you going to be reporting on this KPI, ideally, you’re running monthly strategy reviews to report on the progress of your plan, at least monthly, in which case we’d like to see monthly KPIs. So you got to be able to pull the data monthly in order to make that happen. That’s not always possible. But let’s try to get there. Certainly some organizations are weekly and others are daily, monthly is a good place to start. So frequency. Great.

So now we know the components that we need to have in place in order to have our KPIs. Here are some different types of KPIs that you might think about as you’re putting your plan together.

So there are just straight up raw numbers, I call these widget counting, there’s nothing wrong with widget counting, they don’t necessarily tell a story. And I’ll talk about how to make this tell a story in a minute. But this is just simply widget counting number of things.

The second thing is progress. So this is really often used, it’s great. We use this, which is expressed as percent complete percent complete of the goal, percent completed a project, whatever it might be, it’s a project type measure. It’s a good measure, if if you don’t have quantifiable measures, or you can’t get the data, and you just want to track the performance of the goal as it relates to action items being completed under it.

The third type of indicator is a Change Type Indicator, like percent increase in sales, making this better would be percent increase in sales compared to last year. And the idea is 22%. So you can see how that starts to be more expressive, and work with the target. So this serves to tell a little bit more of a story than this one does, right? And if you want to actually make your widget counting measures tell more of a story like this one does, you might change something like this to read percentage of new customers acquired compared to same time last year. So that’s an example.

Okay, so now we know what we have to have in place and kind of different types of measures to get our ideas flowing. Let’s talk about one thing that you might take your measure writing to the next level and that is think about the fact that there are leading and lagging measures so are leading and lagging indicators. So percent increase in sales or sales is a lagging indicator it occurred as an outcome. If you want to make sure that you’re on track ACC, you might have a KPI in place, which is telling us whether we’re going to hit that increase such as your pipeline, maybe number of leads, or the size of your pipeline. So we don’t want to over rotate on this necessarily, but we do want to make sure we have a combination of leading and lagging measures when we’re looking at our performance on a monthly basis.

So with that, that’s all we have for today. Hopefully you have what you need to write great KPIs for your organization. Happy strategizing. And don’t forget, subscribe to our channel.

What is a Key Performance Indicator KPI — KPI Definition

Key performance indicators, also called KPIs, are the elements of your organization’s plan that express the quantitative outcomes you seek and how you will measure success. In other words, they tell you what you want to achieve and by when, and are crucial for evaluating the success of an organization. They are the qualitative, quantifiable, outcome-based statements you’ll use to measure progress and determine if you’re on track to meet your goals or objectives. Good plans use 5-7 KPIs to manage and track their progress against goals.

What is a KPI?

DOWNLOAD THE FREE KPI GUIDE

KPI Meaning & Why do you need them?

Key performance indicators are intended to create a holistic picture of how your organization is performing against its intended targets, business goals, or objectives. A great key performance indicator should accomplish all the following:

  • Outline and measure your organization’s most important set of outputs.
  • Work as the heartbeat of your performance management process and confirm whether progress is being made against your strategy.
  • Represent the key elements of your strategic plan that express what you want to achieve by when.
  • Measure the quantifiable components of your goals and objectives.
  • Measure the most important leading and lagging measures in your organization.

The Five Elements of a KPI

These are the heartbeat of your performance management process and must work well! They tell you whether you’re making progress or how far you are from reaching your goals. Ultimately, you want to make progress against your strategy. You’ll live with these KPIs for at least the quarter (preferably the year), so make sure they’re valuable!

Great strategies track the progress of core elements of the plan. Each key performance indicator needs to include the following elements:

  • A Measure: Every KPI must have a measure. The best ones have more specific or expressive measures.
  • A Target: Every KPI needs to have a target that matches your measure and the period of your goal. These are generally a numeric values you’re seeking to achieve.
  • A Data Source: Each of these needs to have a clearly defined data source so there is no gray area in measuring and tracking each.
  • Reporting Frequency: Different measures may have different reporting needs, but a good rule to follow is to report on them at least monthly.
  • Owner: While this isn’t a mandatory aspect of your KPI statement, setting expectations of who will take care of tracking, reporting, and refining specific KPIs is helpful to your overall organizational plan.

Elements of a KPI

Indicators vs. Key Performance Indicators

An indicator is a general term that describes a business’s performance metrics.

There can be several types of indicators a company may track, but not all indicators are KPIs, especially if they don’t tie into an organization’s overall strategic plan or objectives, which is a MUST!

Key Performance Indicators

On the other hand, a key performance indicator is a very specific indicator that measures an organization’s progress toward a specific company-wide goal or objective. We typically recommend you narrow down the KPIs your organization tracks to no more than 7. When you track too many goals, it can get daunting and confusing.

Pro Tip : You should only track the best and most valuable indicators that tie to your organization’s long-term strategic goals and direction.

Benefits of Good Key Performance Indicators

What benefits do key performance indicators have on your strategic plan, and on your organization as a whole? A lot of benefits, actually! They are extremely important to the success of your strategic plan as they help you track progress of your goals. Implementing them correctly is critical to success.

  • Benefit #1: They provide clarity and focus to your strategic plan by measuring progress and aligning your team’s efforts to the organization’s objectives. They also show your measurable progress over time and create ways to track your organization’s continued improvement.
  • Benefit #2: Key performance indicators create a way to communicate a shared understanding of success. They give your team a shared understanding of what’s important to achieve your long-term vision and create a shared language to express your progress.
  • Benefit #3: They provide signposts and triggers to help you identify when to act. A good balance of leading and lagging key performance indicators allow you to see the early warning signs when things are going well, or when it’s time to act.

How to Develop KPIs

How to Develop KPIs

We’ve covered this extensively in our How to Identify Key Performance Indicators post. But, here’s a really quick recap:

Step 1: Identify Measures that Contribute Directly to Your Annual Organization-wide Objectives

Ensure you select measures that can be directly used to quantify your most important annual objectives.

Step 2: Evaluate the Quality of Your Core Performance Indicators

Select a balance of leading and lagging indicators (which we define later in the article) that are quantifiable and move your organization forward. Always ensure you have relevant KPIs. Having the right key performance indicators makes a world of difference!

Step 3: Assign Ownership

Every key performance indicator needs ownership! It’s just that simple.

Step 4: Monitor and Report with Consistency

Whatever you do, don’t just set and forget your goals. We see it occasionally that people will select measures and not track them, but what’s the point of that? Be consistent. We recommend selecting measures that can be reported upon at least monthly.

The 3 Common Types of KPIs to Reference as You Build Your Metrics

Key performance indicators answer the quantifiable piece of your goals and objectives . They come in three different flavors. Now that you know the components of great key performance indicators, here are some different ones that you might think about as you’re putting your plan together:

Broad Number Measures

The first type of KPI is what we like to call broad number measures. These are the ones that essentially count something. An example is counting the number of products sold or the number of visits to a webpage.

PRO TIP: There is nothing wrong with these, but they don’t tell a story. Great measures help you create a clear picture of what is going on in your organization. So, using only broad ones won’t help create a narrative.

Progress Measures

Progress key performance indicators are used to help measure the progress of outcomes . This is most commonly known as the “percent complete” KPI, which is helpful in measuring the progress of completing a goal or project. These are best when quantifiable outcomes are difficult to track, or you can’t get specific data.

PRO TIP: Progress KPIs are great, but your KPI stack needs to include some easily quantifiable measures. We recommend using a mixture of progress KPIs and other types that have clear targets and data sources.

Change Measures

The final type of KPI is a change indicator. These are used to measure the quantifiable change in a metric or measure. An example would be, “X% increase in sales.” It adds a change measure to a quantifiable target.

The more specific change measures are, the easier they are to understand. A better iteration of the example above would be “22% increase in sales over last year, which represents an xyz lift in net-new business.” More expressive measures are better.

PRO TIP: Change measures are good for helping create a clear narrative . It helps explain where you’re going instead of just a simple target.

Leading KPIs vs Lagging KPIs

Part of creating a holistic picture of your organization’s progress is looking at different types of measures, like a combination of leading and lagging indicators. Using a mixture of both allows you to monitor progress and early warning signs closely when your plan is under or over-performing (leading indicator) and you have a good hold on how that performance will impact your business down the road (lagging indicator). Here’s a deep dive on leading versus lagging indicators:

Leading Indicator

We often refer to these metrics as the measures that tell you how your business might/will perform in the future. They are the warning buoys you put out in the water to let you know when something is going well and when something isn’t.

For example, a leading KPI for an organization might be the cost to deliver a good/service. If the cost of labor increases, it will give you a leading indicator that you will see an impact on net profit or inventory cost.

Another example of a leading indicator might be how well your website is ranking or how well your advertising is performing. If your website is performing well, it might be a leading indicator that your sales team will have an increase in qualified leads and contracts signed.

Lagging Indicator

A lagging indicator refers to past developments and effects. This reflects the past outcomes of your measure. So, it lags behind the performance of your leading indicators.

An example of a lagging indicator is EBITA. It reflects your earnings for a past date. That lagging indicator may have been influenced by leading indicators like the cost of labor/materials.

Balancing Leading and Lagging Indicators

If you want to ensure that you’re on track, you might have a KPI in place telling you whether you will hit that increase, such as your lead pipeline. We don’t want to over-rotate on this, but as part of a holistic, agile plan, we recommend outlining 5-7 key performance metrics or indicators in your plan that show a mix of leading and lagging indicators. .

Having a mixture of both gives you both a look-back and a look-forward as you measure the success of your plan and business health. We also recommend identifying and committing to tracking and managing the same KPIs for about a year, with regular monthly or quarterly reporting cadence, to create consistency in data and reporting.

KPI Examples

27 KPI Examples

Sales key performance indicators.

  • Number of contracts signed per quarter
  • Dollar value for new contracts signed per period
  • Number of qualified leads per month
  • Number of engaged qualified leads in the sales funnel
  • Hours of resources spent on sales follow up
  • Average time for conversion

Increase the number of contracts signed by 10% each quarter.

  • Measure: Number of contracts signed per quarter
  • Target: Increase number of new contracts signed by 10% each quarter
  • Data Source: CRM system
  • Reporting Frequency: Weekly
  • *Owner: Sales Team
  • Due Date: Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4

Increase the value of new contracts by $300,000 per quarter this year.

  • Measure: Dollar value for new contracts signed per period
  • Data Source: Hubspot Sales Funnel
  • Reporting Frequency: Monthly
  • *Owner: VP of Sales

Increase the close rate to 30% from 20% by the end of the year.

  • Measure: Close rate – number of closed contracts/sales qualified leads
  • Target: Increase close rate from 20% to 30%
  • *Owner: Director of Sales
  • Due Date: December 31, 2023

Increase the number of weekly engaged qualified leads in the sales from 50 to 75 by the end of FY23.

  • Measure: Number of engaged qualified leads in sales funnel
  • Target: 50 to 75 by end of FY2023
  • Data Source: Marketing and Sales CRM
  • *Owner: Head of Sales

Decrease time to conversion from 60 to 45 days by Q3 2023.

  • Measure: Average time for conversion
  • Target: 60 days to 45 days
  • Due Date: Q3 2023

Increase number of closed contracts by 2 contracts/week in 2023.

  • Measure: Number of closed contracts
  • Target: Increase closed contracts a week from 4 to 6
  • Data Source: Sales Pipeline
  • *Owner: Sales and Marketing Team

Examples of KPIs for Financial

  • Growth in revenue
  • Net profit margin
  • Gross profit margin
  • Operational cash flow
  • Current accounts receivables

Financial KPIs as SMART Annual Goals

Grow top-line revenue by 10% by the end of 2023.

  • Measure: Revenue growth
  • Target: 10% growt
  • Data Source: Quickbooks
  • *Owner: Finance and Operations Team
  • Due Date: By the end 2023

Increase gross profit margin by 12% by the end of 2023.

  • Measure: Percentage growth of net profit margin
  • Target: 12% net profit margin increase
  • Data Source: Financial statements
  • *Owner: Accounting Department

Increase net profit margin from 32% to 40% by the end of 2023.

  • Measure: Gross profit margin in percentage
  • Target: Increase gross profit margin from 32% to 40% by the end of 2023
  • Data Source: CRM and Quickbooks
  • *Owner: CFO

Maintain $5M operating cash flow for FY2023.

  • Measure: Dollar amount of operational cash flow
  • Target: $5M average
  • Data Source: P&L
  • Due Date: By the end FY2023

Collect 95% of account receivables within 60 days in 2023.

  • Measure: Accounts collected within 60 days
  • Target: 95% in 2023
  • Data Source: Finance
  • Due Date: End of 2023

Examples of KPIs for Customers

  • Number of customers retained
  • Percentage of market share
  • Net promotor score
  • Average ticket/support resolution time

Customer KPIs as SMART Annual Goals

90% of current customer monthly subscriptions during FY2023.

  • Measure: Number of customers retained
  • Target: Retain 90% percent of monthly subscription customers in FY2023
  • Data Source: CRM software
  • *Owner: Director of Client Operations

Increase market share by 5% by the end of 2023.

  • Measure: Percentage of market share
  • Target: Increase market share from 25%-30% by the end of 2023
  • Data Source: Market research reports
  • Reporting Frequency: Quarterly
  • *Owner: Head of Marketing

Increase NPS score by 9 points in 2023.

  • Measure: Net Promoter Score
  • Target: Achieve a 9-point NPS increase over FY2023
  • Data Source: Customer surveys
  • *Owner: COO

Achieve a weekly ticket close rate of 85% by the end of FY2023.

  • Measure: Average ticket/support resolution time
  • Target: Achieve a weekly ticket close rate of 85%
  • Data Source: Customer support data
  • *Owner: Customer Support Team

Examples of KPIs for Operations

  • Order fulfillment time
  • Time to market
  • Employee satisfaction rating
  • Employee churn rate
  • Inventory turnover

Operational KPIs as SMART Annual Goals

Average 3 days maximum order fill time by the end of Q3 2023.

  • Measure: Order fulfilment time
  • Target: Average maximum of 3 days
  • Data Source: Order management software
  • *Owner: Shipping Manager

Achieve an average SaaS project time-to-market of 4 weeks per feature in 2023.

  • Measure: Average time to market
  • Target: 4 weeks per feature
  • Data Source: Product development and launch data
  • *Owner: Product Development Team

Earn a minimum score of 80% employee satisfaction survey over the next year.

  • Measure: Employee satisfaction rating
  • Target: Earn a minimum score of 80% employee
  • Data Source: Employee satisfaction survey and feedback

Maintain a maximum of 10% employee churn rate over the next year.

  • Measure: Employee churn rate
  • Target: Maintain a maximum of 10% employee churn rate over the next year
  • Data Source: Human resources and payroll data
  • *Owner: Human Resources

Achieve a minimum ratio of 5-6 inventory turnover in 2023.

  • Measure: Inventory turnover ratio
  • Target: Minimum ratio of 5-6
  • Data Source: Inventory management software
  • *Owner: perations Department

Marketing Key Performance

  • Monthly website traffic
  • Number of marketing qualified leads
  • Conversion rate for call-to-action content
  • Keywords in top 10 search engine results
  • Blog articles published this month
  • E-Books published this month

Marketing KPIs as SMART Annual Goals

Achieve a minimum of 10% increase in monthly website traffic over the next year.

  • Measure: Monthly website traffic
  • Target: 10% increase in monthly website
  • Data Source: Google analytics
  • *Owner: Marketing Manager

Generate a minimum of 200 qualified leads per month in 2023.

  • Measure: Number of marketing qualified leads
  • Target: 200 qualified leads per month
  • Data Source: Hubspot

Achieve a minimum of 10% conversion rate for on-page CTAs by end of Q3 2023.

  • Measure: Conversion rate on service pages
  • Target: 10%
  • Due Date: End of Q3, 2023

Achieve a minimum of 20 high-intent keywords in the top 10 search engine results over the next year.

  • Measure: Keywords in top 10 search engine results
  • Target: 20 keywords
  • Data Source: SEM Rush data
  • *Owner: SEO Manager

Publish a minimum of 4 blog articles per month to earn new leads in 2023.

  • Measure: Blog articles
  • Target: 4 per month
  • Data Source: CMS
  • *Owner: Content Marketing Manager
  • Due Date: December 2023

Publish at least 2 e-books per quarter in 2023 to create new marketing-qualified leads.

  • Measure: E-Books published
  • Target: 2 per quarter
  • Data Source: Content management system

Bonus: +40 Extra KPI Examples

Supply chain example key performance indicators.

  • Number of On-Time Deliveries
  • Inventory Carry Rate
  • Months of Supply on Hand
  • Inventory-to-Sales Ratio (ISR)
  • Carrying Cost of Inventory
  • Inventory Turnover Rate
  • Perfect Order Rate
  • Inventory Accuracy

Healthcare Example Key Performance Indicators

  • Bed or Room Turnover
  • Average Patient Wait Time
  • Average Treatment Charge
  • Average Insurance Claim Cost
  • Medical Error Rate
  • Patient-to-Staff Ratio
  • Medication Errors
  • Average Emergency Room Wait Times
  • Average Insurance Processing Time
  • Billing Code Error Rates
  • Average Hospital Stay
  • Patient Satisfaction Rate

Human Resource Example Key Performance Indicators

  • Organization Headcount
  • Average Number of Job Vacancies
  • Applications Received Per Job Vacancy
  • Job Offer Acceptance Rate
  • Cost Per New Hire
  • Average Salary
  • Average Employee Satisfaction
  • Employee Turnover Rate
  • New Hire Training Effectiveness

Social Media Example Key Performance Indicators

  • Average Engagement
  • % Growth in Following
  • Traffic Conversions
  • Social Interactions
  • Website Traffic from Social Media
  • Number of Post Shares
  • Social Visitor Conversion Rates
  • Issues Resolved Using Social Channel

Conclusion: Keeping a Pulse on Your Plan

With the foundational knowledge of the KPI anatomy and a few example starting points, it’s important you build out these metrics with detailed and specific data sources so you can truly evaluate if you’re achieving your goals. Remember, these will be the 5-7 core metrics you’ll live by for the next 12 months, so it’s crucial to develop effective KPIs that follow the SMART formula.

A combination of leading and lagging KPIs will paint a clear picture of your organization’s strategic performance and empower you to make agile decisions to impact your team’s success. KPI software allows your business to monitor and analyze performance trends over time by centralizing your data and using relevant data points and calculations. If you’d like more information on building better ones, check out the video above and click here to see why not all KPIs are created equal.

Our Other KPI Resources

We have several other great resources to consider as you build your organization’s Key Performance Indicators! Check out these other helpful posts and guides:

  • OKRs vs. KPIs: A Downloadable Guide to Explain the Difference
  • How to Identify KPIs in 4 Steps
  • KPIs vs Metrics: Tips and Tricks to Performance Measures
  • Guide to Establishing Weekly Health Metrics

FAQs on Key Performance Indicators

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicators. KPIs are the elements of your organization’s business or strategic plan that express what outcomes you are seeking and how you will measure their success. They express what you need to achieve by when. KPIs are always quantifiable, outcome-based statements to measure if you’re on track to meet your goals and objectives.

The 4 elements of key performance indicators are:

  • A Measure – The best KPIs have more expressive measures.
  • A Target – Every KPI needs to have a target that matches your measure and the time period of your goal.
  • A Data Source – Every KPI needs to have a clearly defined data source.
  • Reporting Frequency – A defined reporting frequency.

No, KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are different from metrics. Metrics are quantitative measurements used to track and analyze various aspects of business performance, while KPIs are specific metrics chosen as indicators of success in achieving strategic goals.

16 Comments

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HI Erica hope your are doing well, Sometime Strategy doesn’t cover all the activities through the company, like maintenance for example may be quality control …. sure they have a contribution in the overall goals achievement but there is no specific new requirement for them unless doing their job, do u think its better to develop a specific KPIs for these department? waiting your recommendation

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Thanks for your strategic KPIs

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Hello Erica, Could you please clarify how to set KPIs for the Strategic Planning team?

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Hi Diana, check out the whitepaper above for more insight!

Hello Erica, Could you please clarify, how to set the KPIs for the Strategic PLanning team?

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exampels of empowerment kpis

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I found great information in this article. In any case, the characteristics that KPIs must have are: measurability, effectiveness, relevance, utility and feasibility

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How to write methodology guidelines for strategy implementation / a company’s review and tracking (process and workflow) for all a company’s divisions

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support on strategizing Learning & Development for Automobile dealership

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Could you please to clarify how to write the KPIs for the Secretary.

Check out our guide to creating KPIs for more help here: https://onstrategyhq.com/kpi-guide-download/

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That’s an amazing article.

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Could you please to clarify how to write the KPIs for the office boy supervisor

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Could you please clarify how to write KPIs for the editorial assistant in a start up publishing company.

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Kindly advice how I would set a kpi for a mattress factory

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performance objectives and measures for business plan

Blog · OKRs

May 4, 2022

Performance Objectives - What Are the 5 Business Objectives?

The five key business performance objectives for any organization include quality, speed, dependability, flexibility, and cost.

Joseph Garvey

by Joseph Garvey

Performance Objectives - What Are the 5 Business Objectives?

When it comes to business performance objectives you're likely aware that efficiency and productivity are crucial. But how do you successfully achieve these? The key to having good all-round performance is five performance objectives: quality, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost.

five key performance objectives

Performance Objective 1: Quality

Quality is the visual sign of how well an operation does what it does. It's a consistent indicator which customers and staff base their expectations around.

Does the product work as it should? Or has it been made with low-value parts that undermine its integrity? Quality is a fundamental aspect of performance and, because of this, has a huge influence on whether a customer is satisfied or not.

For example, giving each individual warehouse packer the responsibility to pack their own boxes improves quality as mis-packs are made less likely to occur.

In terms of the operation principles, quality can create the potential for better services and products which reduce costs in the long run thanks to having more satisfied customers.

Performance Objectives Quality

Performance Objective 2: Speed

Speed is the turnaround time between customers ordering a product or service and the point at which they receive it. When an organization delivers the goods or services on time, the more likely a customer is to be satisfied with their experience.

If you can provide a service or product faster than other companies without compromising on quality then you are already off to a winning start.

In terms of operation principles, high speed can allow for faster delivery of services, therefore saving costs.

Performance Objectives Speed

How can you keep track of your business performance objectives? Goal setting , whether it's through Objectives & Key Results or SMART Goals gives you a framework to track your targets, progress and results, and helps you to communicate these company-wide.

Performance Objective 3: Dependability

Dependability means that customers can rely on your organization to receive their goods and/or services as and when promised. While this may not affect the chances of a customer selecting the service - as they have already 'consumed' the product - it influences whether the customer returns to make a future purchase or recommends your business.

No matter how cheap or fast a pizza is made by a takeaway company, if the customer can't depend on it to be delivered on time or to the correct address, then they will go elsewhere.

In terms of operation principles, dependability is important in providing the reliable delivery of service and products.

performance objectives dependability

The Essential Guide to OKRs will show you how to create an Objectives & Key Results process that you can implement across the organization to track your performance objectives.

Performance Objective 4: Flexibility

Flexibility is the means of changing an operation to match a customer's requirements. This may involve changing what the operation does or how it works so that the service is bespoke.

Customers are likely to require change for four reasons:

  • Product/service flexibility occurs in order to introduce a new or modified product.
  • Mix flexibility is the ability to have the variety of products available grow.
  • Volume flexibility involves the output of a process and being able to produce different quantities/volumes.
  • Delivery flexibility is being able to change the timings of delivery in a product/service.

Being flexible gives the potential for a business to hold a competitive edge due to their wider variety, different volumes and varying delivery dates.

performance objectives flexibility

Performance Objective 5: Cost

Cost is an important factor for companies which compete directly on rates. The lower a company can keep its production costs, the lower they can have their customer-facing prices.

Even companies who do not compete on price want to keep their costs as low as possible while still maintaining the levels of quality, speed, dependability and flexibility that their customers demand.

The minimalization of costs is as important so that resources can be spared to grow other areas of the business.

performance objectives price

These performance metrics are relatively straightforward and should be applied to all aspects of your business operatiosn. By achieving each of these performance objectives you can satisfy customers and improve your profit.

Build any HR process on PeopleGoal.

Create an account and start building on the PeopleGoal platform. All accounts start with a 7-day free trial and can be cancelled at any time.

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How to Measure Your Business Strategy's Success

A team of exectuives analyzing a chart outlining their business strategy

  • 04 Jan 2024

Measuring your business strategy’s success is vital to strategy execution .

Despite its importance, research by SurveyMonkey shows that only 35 percent of business owners set benchmarks or goals. Among those who set them, 90 percent consider themselves successful. Of those who don't, only 71 percent report the same.

If you want to achieve organizational objectives and avoid common strategic planning pitfalls , here’s why it’s important to evaluate your strategy.

Access your free e-book today.

Why Is It Important to Evaluate Your Strategy?

Evaluating your strategy can help your organization achieve its goals and objectives while highlighting necessary adjustments for long-term success.

Its benefits include:

  • Ensuring organizational alignment
  • Establishing accountability
  • Optimizing operations

Assessing your business strategy is an ongoing process. To ensure it’s set up to succeed, you must evaluate it pre-, during, and post-implementation. Here’s how to do so.

How to Measure Your Strategy’s Success

1. revisit goals and objectives.

Every business strategy needs clearly defined performance goals. Without them, it can be difficult to identify harmful deviations, streamline the execution process, and recognize achievements.

After establishing goals and objectives, plan to revisit them during and after implementing your strategy. According to Harvard Business School Professor Robert Simons in the online course Strategy Execution , the best way to do so is by comparing them to critical performance variables —the factors you must achieve or implement to make your strategy succeed.

For example, if your company’s value comes from customer loyalty, one of your critical performance variables could be customer satisfaction. When customers no longer receive value from your products or services, that could impact your company’s bottom line.

The best way to verify critical performance variables is by analyzing them against your strategy map —a visual tool outlining the cause-and-effect relationships underpinning your strategy. Those variables should also receive high importance on your balanced scorecard , which translates your strategy into goals and objectives.

By taking these steps, you can identify performance measures worth reviewing.

Custom graphic showing an example strategy map and balanced scorecard

2. Review Measures

Evaluating business performance requires measures —quantitative values you can scale and use for comparison—and they must tell the right story.

According to Strategy Execution , you should ask three questions when reviewing measures:

  • Do they align with my strategy?
  • Are they objective, complete, and responsive?
  • Do they link to economic value?

For example, if you want to improve your company’s brand loyalty, metrics worth monitoring include the number of new customers, average purchases per customer, and the number of social media followers.

A balanced scorecard can provide a holistic view of your business performance measures—ensuring all your employees are on the same page.

“You can have the best strategy in the world,” Simons says in Strategy Execution . “But at the end of the day, what everyone pays attention to is what they're measured on. So, you need to be sure that measures throughout the business reflect your strategy, so that every employee will devote their efforts to implementing that strategy.”

3. Supervise Monitoring Systems

While balanced scorecards are powerful diagnostic control systems —formal information systems used to monitor organizational outcomes—they don’t provide visibility into all measures of success. That’s why you need additional systems to streamline strategic plans’ evaluation.

For example, you can use customer relationship management systems’ analytics tools to generate reports that align with business goals and objectives. To boost customer loyalty, you can automate reports on:

  • Purchasing patterns
  • Purchase frequency
  • Customer survey scores

“But to ensure that these systems are effective, you need to invest considerable time and attention in their design,” Simons says in Strategy Execution . “You must not only spend time negotiating and setting goals—as we've discussed—you must also design measures for these goals and then align performance incentives.”

Strategy Execution | Successfully implement strategy within your organization | Learn More

4. Talk to Employees

Employee feedback and buy-in are other useful tools for measuring success.

For example, creative software company Adobe is known for its loyal employee base. That was put to the test when the company shifted to a subscription-based model, launching Adobe Creative Cloud .

Company leaders briefed employees on strategic changes and how they provided value to customers. They also encouraged employees to contribute ideas and feedback throughout the transition. With minimal internal pushback and a boost in collaboration, Adobe knew its strategy would succeed and ensure relevance in a constantly evolving market.

“The best businesses motivate their employees to be creative, entrepreneurial, and willing to work with others to find customer solutions,” Simons says in Strategy Execution .

Related: How to Create a Culture of Strategy Execution

5. Reach Out to Customers

Customer feedback is a key measure of your strategy’s success. According to a recent report by Zendesk , 73 percent of business leaders believe customer service directly links with business performance—with 64 percent attributing customer service to positive business growth.

Feedback can also reflect how well initiatives align with customer needs and expectations when it comes to value creation , making it important to consistently seek out ways to monitor attitudes toward your company and its strategy.

In Strategy Execution , Tom Siebel, CEO of C3 AI, shares his thoughts on customer satisfaction when measuring success.

“Everything that's important to the business, we have a KPI and we measure it,” Siebel says. “And what could be more important than customer satisfaction?”

Unlike your company’s reputation, measuring customer satisfaction has a more personal touch in identifying what they love and how to capitalize on it.

“We do anonymous customer satisfaction surveys every quarter to see how we're measuring up to our customer expectations,” Siebel says in the course.

Your customer satisfaction measures should reflect your desired market position and focus on creating additional value. When customers are happy, profit margins tend to rise, highlighting why this should be the final step in measuring your strategy’s success.

How to Formulate a Successful Business Strategy | Access Your Free E-Book | Download Now

Success Is within Reach

Measuring your strategy’s success is a continuous process that requires understanding your company’s goals and objectives.

By taking an online strategy course , you can develop strategy execution skills to measure performance effectively. Strategy Execution provides an interactive learning experience featuring organizational leaders who share their successes and failures to help you apply course concepts and excel in your career.

Want to learn how to measure your strategy’s success? Explore Strategy Execution —one of our online strategy courses —and download our free strategy e-book to begin your journey toward implementing strategy successfully.

performance objectives and measures for business plan

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KPI.org

HOW TO DEVELOP KPIS / PERFORMANCE MEASURES

The Balanced Scorecard Institute’s (BSI) Measure-Perform-Review-Adapt (MPRA) framework is a disciplined, practical, and tested approach for developing and implementing a KPI system. It gives organizations a way to systematically articulate a shared vision of what you are trying to achieve, set practical goals, develop meaningful indicators that can be managed and used for decision-making, and establish long-term discipline around getting things done.

performance objectives and measures for business plan

These practical step-by-step methodologies and tools were designed to help organizations:

  • Select and design performance measures that are far more meaningful than simple brainstorming or benchmarking can produce
  • Get buy-in from staff and stakeholders to enthusiastically own performance measurement and improvement
  • Bring measures to life in a consistent way, using the right data and with the right ownership
  • Design insightful and actionable reports and dashboards that focus discussion on improvement
  • Convincingly hit performance targets, and make measurement about transformation

Measurement development is only the starting point for the improvement process. Once measures have been established, the Perform-Review-Adapt cycle gives the organization a chance to take improvement actions, assess impact, and adapt. Adaptation can take the form of incremental reforecasting for the next quarter or more dramatic changes in strategic intent. Rather than “setting and forgetting” their KPIs, teams use this review cycle as the discipline needed to keep their teams on track and adjust to changes in their strategic environment. It borrows the key principle from the agile world that assumes that we cannot possibly know everything about our strategic intentions at the beginning of the process and so need a disciplined learning process.

Always begin by articulating your strategy properly. Use one of the many popular frameworks for strategy or goal setting (Balanced Scorecard, SMART, MBO, OKRs, WIGs, or other) to set objectives/goals and determine your strategy for achieving them. If you don’t know what you are trying to accomplish, it is too early for KPIs!

Pre-Measurement

Launch the program.

The program is launched by project champion(s) and key stakeholders. Existing measurement materials and results are examined, a performance management good practice gap analysis is completed, key stakeholders are interviewed, and other assessment activities are completed to customize workshops to incorporate work done to date. Key activities covered during the program launch include:

  • Engaging Leadership
  • Communicating “Why formally measure performance?”
  • Establishing Teams and Roles
  • Agreeing on Process and Procedures
  • Considering Automation
  • Fostering a Performance Culture

Articulate Strategic Intent

Before discussing measures of success, first one must understand what you are trying to accomplish. Even the most narrowly focused operational activities can be more efficient by better communicating intent. We recommend using one of the many popular frameworks for strategy or goal setting (e.g., Balanced Scorecard, SMART, MBO, OKRs, WIGs, or other) to structure the conversations around goals and your strategy for achieving them. If you don’t know what you are trying to accomplish, it is too early for KPIs!

There are four process components within the measurement development phase of the MPRA framework:

  • Identify objectives and intended result(s)
  • Understand alternative measures
  • Select the right measurement(s) for each objective
  • Define and document selected performance measures

Identify Objectives and Intended Results

The development of meaningful measures starts with Objectives. The building blocks of strategic intent, Objectives are the linchpins of a successful KPI system, whether it is focused on strategy or operations. Objectives are qualitative, continuous improvement actions (outcomes) critical to strategy success. Once the objective is identified, unambiguous intended result(s) of the objective are defined. Once agreement is reached on the 0bjective and intended result, it’s easier to explicitly define what to measure.

Understand Alternative Measures

Once the objective and intended result are clear, alternative measures can be identified. The first option includes any direct measure of the intended result. If the intended result cannot be measured directly, more indirect measures will be identified, usually by analyzing measurable components of the objective based on a hypothesis around correlation or contribution to the result. The logic model, cause-effect analysis and/or process flow analysis are three popular tools that can be used to better understand measurable components before selecting indirect measurements.

Select the Right Measure(s) for Each Objective

Narrow down the potential measures identified in the previous steps and select final measures using a disciplined system that scores options based on their relative strength and data availability. Choose metrics that have meaning and relevance, and:

  • Answer key user questions about the organization’s performance towards strategic objectives
  • Provide information needed to make better strategic decisions
  • Are valid and verified, measuring what is intended
  • Encourage desirable employee behaviors
  • Avoid an undue data collection burden or unintended consequences

Define and Document Selected Performance Measures

The Performance Measure Data Definition Table is used to document the essential information comprising every performance measure on a scorecard. This is a critical step for transitioning from performance management system development to implementation and use. It is important to document the details of the measure so that the measure is consistently calculated and presented from reporting period to reporting period, allowing for more meaningful performance analysis and conclusions.

The performance review cycle follows a regular pattern (usually quarterly) organized around a simple pattern: set targets, implement improvement actions, track performance, and learn from the results. In the Perform phase employees organize their activities around two process components:

Set Targets and Thresholds

Implement improvement initiatives.

Describing desired performance levels and determining how data is interpreted is as important as selecting the measure. Performance is based on targets, the desired level of performance for a specific reporting period, and thresholds, the upper and lower limits of desired performance around a target value. Thresholds create the exact points where an indicator displays green for good performance, yellow for satisfactory or red for poor.

The team will generally not achieve objectives and hit performance targets without taking action. Actions or improvement initiatives are developed, prioritized, and implemented to achieve objectives. Rather than create a long list of potential actions and projects, the organization focuses on a short list of experiments designed to make the biggest difference in desired outcomes.

In the Review phase of the process, data is transformed into evidence-based knowledge and understanding. The Review phase is organized around two process component steps:

Collect and Visualize Performance

Analyze and draw conclusions.

Gathering and tracking data on the historic levels and current trends in performance encompasses more than just counting things and capturing data. Creating meaningful visual comparisons enables deeper interpretation and better decisions. Visualizing performance over time identifies trends that show data direction and development and provide context for the underlying story relative to strategic intent.

Effective analysis helps people make better decisions that will drive improved strategic outcomes. The key is to evaluate the effect of each improvement action on an ongoing basis using the same principles and methods deployed in the earlier steps, monitor performance data for the desired signals relative targets and thresholds, enable dialog around conclusions, and maintain a continuous process improvement focus.

The Adapt phase of the process explores whether improvement strategies were effective and correctly executed, and if assumptions turned out to be valid. It includes an assessment of quarterly performance results, which can lead to a reforecasting of performance targets, a new set of actions or initiatives, or a complete recalibration of strategy, as needed. Sometimes the Adapt phase leads to the continuation of current activities and sometimes it means refocusing Strategic Intent based on a changing strategic environment. This phase focuses on identifying what worked well and what didn’t, taking corrective action and becoming a high-performance organization.

Report, Share, and Learn

Reporting and sharing information are the first steps toward making better decisions and acting on the information in a way that improves overall performance. Review meetings are held to review, interpret, and discuss performance information. These meetings are organized around desired results and highlight progress toward the intended results, as well as towards actions designed to improve gaps in performance. This gives the team an ongoing indication of whether actions taken are effective. The information and knowledge from this process should continuously feed the strategic planning cycle.

UpSkillCoach

The Top 5 Performance Objectives (And Why You Need To Know Them)

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You are currently viewing The Top 5 Performance Objectives (And Why You Need To Know Them)

If you are in a management position or aiming to get into one, you’ll have heard about the 5 performance objectives. For an organisation, performance objectives are valuable ways to stay focused, achieve goals and be successful. 

In this post, we’ll give you a condensed guide to what five key performance objectives are and what they can bring to your business. These top five are objectives that you would learn about in business school.

What is a performance objective, anyway?

What exactly is a performance objective, and why should you care about it?

A performance objective is a fancy word in the field of operations management. At a company-wide level, a  performance objective  is a singular goal that enables the organisation to plan, organise and execute to achieve a predetermined result. They are mostly measured with quantitative metrics such as time or money. 

Think of it this way. If you’re a CEO and you want your business to succeed, what types of activities should you promote so that your company is financially viable and successful? What goals need to be met to produce a quality good or service?  The answers to those questions are your performance objectives.

What are the 5 performance objectives?

Over time, academics and experts have agreed about 5 performance objectives that apply to most organisations. To make this applicable to real life, we can use the example of a manufacturing company. Let’s get into it:

 You’re probably not surprised to find this financial indicator on this list. The lower the cost of business operations, the lower the price can be for customers. Cost is one of the fundamental elements of competition, and so it’s an attractive performance objective to almost every business model out there.

When a manufacturing company can decrease direct and indirect costs, they are able to provide their product at a lower price. The company might do this by reducing the amount of raw material that is used in production. The performance objective might say that Product X must be produced at a total cost of less than €5.00. This increases the profit margin and allows the business to invest in further innovation.

 It’s all about “doing things right.” Quality is how a company can maintain consistency in meeting customer expectations. It can make or break a company’s product or service because it’s frequently the thing that is most visible to customers.

In manufacturing, quality can be measured in the number of defects per batch, the amount of the product that fails inspection for the first time, or any other measurable factors. For a service company, quality can be measured many ways. For example, some customer feedback websites give stars for the quality of service, or allow customers to write their own review.

Speed is a massive part of a customer’s decision-making process. The faster they can receive a product or service, the more likely they are to purchase it. In that way, the speed at which a company can meet a customer’s needs can increase sales. It can also reduce the reliance on inventories and reduce other risks such as forecasting errors or costly inputs.

In manufacturing, speed is often a huge factor in the decision of which suppliers to buy from. Speed would refer to the time it takes from placing the order to receiving the shipment. The performance objective, in this case, could be measured in the number of shipments which fail to meet a deadline.

Dependability

  When a company meets its promises and commitments, it is perceived as dependable. And that’s a great thing for a business to strive for – it increases trust with customers and saves time and money in operations.

Say a buyer orders a 500 piece shipment from the manufacturing company, and it is promised in 10 days or less. Is the manufacturer actually able to do what they have promised? This performance objective can be measured by the rate that the customer receives their exact order at the time and location promised.

Flexibility

 In business, flexibility means the ability to alter operations in response to changes. That could mean increasing production volume to meet a rise in demand or introducing new services to meet shifting customer preferences. Flexibility as a performance objective can speed up response time, save cost and promote dependability.

For a manufacturing company, flexibility would allow you to adapt to a customer’s orders on the fly. If you are all of a sudden unable to have incoming shipments of raw material (perhaps due to a global pandemic), can you still make enough products to complete a purchase order?

To read more about the 5 performance objectives, we suggest you pick up an introductory business textbook.

We chose Operations Management 5th Edition by Slack, Brandon-Jones and Johnston

A  business coach near me  can help you identify what the performance objectives are for your business.

Related:  What is performance coaching?

What happens when you don’t set performance objectives?

In reality, there are lots of performance objectives that can be a priority for your business. These 5 are just the ones that have been standardised by years of study and analysis by business schools and experts.

Whether you know it or not, you’ve probably worked in an organisation that used performance objectives in some way.

What would happen if a company did not use any form of performance goal-setting?

Without clear performance objectives, a company might exhibit some of the following consequences:

  • All business-related activities are done without purpose or meaning. Performance objectives give purpose to short term and long term tasks.
  • Managers do not understand how to prioritise the time of their employees. Performance objectives give structure to all operations in the business so that no time is wasted.
  • Management does not maximise the talent of key individuals. Performance objectives coupled with  employee profiling  make sure that each person’s talent is used effectively in the business.
  • Without performance objectives, the company provides its staff with no  intrinsic or extrinsic motivation .
  • Challenges are difficult to overcome because there is a lack of direction. By implementing performance objectives, there is more clarity on how to solve which problems.
  • Important operational decisions are made slowly. 
  • Promises to customers are frequently broken. Performance objectives ensure that some goals are not sacrificed to meet other goals.
  • Customers complain about price or quality. Performance objectives set standards so that price and quality can improve rather than worsen.
  • Collaboration with colleagues or other departments is challenging. Performance objectives are company-wide goals so that departments and colleagues work together, not against one another.

Unfortunately, these symptoms are all too common at many workplaces. If you find that your business is facing some of these challenges, a business coach may be able to help set performance objectives so that your company has a clear vision and a reliable plan.

Tips for using the 5 performance objectives in your business operations

What’s often overlooked by traditional instruction about performance objectives is just how important they are for a business’ day-to-day operations. A company is misguided if it hurriedly slaps together 5 important objectives into an annual plan and then puts them up on the shelf to collect dust.

Instead, performance objectives should be part of everyday business. Executives, managers and all other staff should have at least a cursory knowledge of the goal-setting process so that they can find value in their work and contribute to the company’s overarching goals.

Here are some of our favourite tips and tricks to apply  performance objectives :

  • Create metrics and set targets to monitor your performance toward meeting your company’s main objectives.
  • Be transparent about your company’s performance objectives. Make sure every staff member is aware of how their efforts contribute to the goals.
  • Make sure there is a single “truth” about your performance objectives. Prevent variations from being created in different departments by publicising them to the entire organisation.
  • Continue the dialogue about performance objectives throughout the entire year. Ensure that executives and managers talk about objectives and make them a year-round priority.
  • Set up rewards (and consequences) for a meeting (or failing to meet) the objectives. Doing so ensures that the performance objectives are part of the daily operations, not just left to high-level strategy.

Making performance objectives work for your team

A basic understanding of performance objectives is an integral part of your daily professional life. That’s true whether you’re an entrepreneur who is interested in improving the operations strategy of your business, or a manager who needs to understand your company’s performance plan.

Just remember that while a business can emphasise a wide array of performance objectives, the top 5 most agreed-upon goals are cost, quality, speed, dependability and flexibility.

By integrating those goals into your business’ planning exercises, you’ll be well ahead of countless others. Just don’t forget to write them down, commit to them, and continue the dialogue about them as part of everyday company culture.

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Goals and Objectives for Business Plan with Examples

NOV.05, 2023

Goals and Objectives
 for Business Plan with Examples

Every business needs a clear vision of what it wants to achieve and how it plans to get there. A business plan is a document that outlines the goals and objectives of a business, as well as the strategies and actions to achieve them. A well-written business plan from business plan specialists can help a business attract investors, secure funding, and guide its growth.

Understanding Business Objectives

Business objectives are S pecific, M easurable, A chievable, R elevant, and T ime-bound (SMART) statements that describe what a business wants to accomplish in a given period. They are derived from the overall vision and mission of the business, and they support its strategic direction.

Business plan objectives can be categorized into different types, depending on their purpose and scope. Some common types of business objectives are:

  • Financial objectives
  • Operational objectives
  • Marketing objectives
  • Social objectives

For example, a sample of business goals and objectives for a business plan for a bakery could be:

  • To increase its annual revenue by 20% in the next year.
  • To reduce its production costs by 10% in the next six months.
  • To launch a new product line of gluten-free cakes in the next quarter.
  • To improve its customer satisfaction rating by 15% in the next month.

The Significance of Business Objectives

Business objectives are important for several reasons. They help to:

  • Clarify and direct the company and stakeholders
  • Align the company’s efforts and resources to a common goal
  • Motivate and inspire employees to perform better
  • Measure and evaluate the company’s progress and performance
  • Communicate the company’s value and advantage to customers and the market

For example, by setting a revenue objective, a bakery can focus on increasing its sales and marketing efforts, monitor its sales data and customer feedback, motivate its staff to deliver quality products and service, communicate its unique selling points and benefits to its customers, and adjust its pricing and product mix according to market demand.

Advantages of Outlining Business Objectives

Outlining business objectives is a crucial step in creating a business plan. It serves as a roadmap for the company’s growth and development. Outlining business objectives has several advantages, such as:

  • Clarifies the company’s vision, direction, scope, and boundaries
  • Break down the company’s goals into smaller tasks and milestones
  • Assigns roles and responsibilities and delegates tasks
  • Establishes standards and criteria for success and performance
  • Anticipates risks and challenges and devises contingency plans

For example, by outlining its business objective for increasing the average revenue per customer in its business plan, a bakery can:

  • Attract investors with its viable business plan for investors
  • Secure funding from banks or others with its realistic financial plan
  • Partner with businesses or organizations that complement or enhance its products or services
  • Choose the best marketing, pricing, product, staff, location, etc. for its target market and customers

Setting Goals and Objectives for a Business Plan

Setting goals and objectives for a business plan is not a one-time task. It requires careful planning, research, analysis, and evaluation. To set effective goals and objectives for a business plan, one should follow some best practices, such as:

OPTION 1: Use the SMART framework. A SMART goal or objective is clear, quantifiable, realistic, aligned with the company’s mission and vision, and has a deadline. SMART stands for:

  • Specific – The goal or objective should be clear, concise, and well-defined.
  • Measurable – The goal or objective should be quantifiable or verifiable.
  • Achievable – The goal or objective should be realistic and attainable.
  • Relevant – The goal or objective should be aligned with the company’s vision, mission, and values.
  • Time-bound – The goal or objective should have a deadline or timeframe.

For example, using the SMART criteria, a bakery can refine its business objective for increasing the average revenue per customer as follows:

  • Specific – Increase revenue with new products and services from $5 to $5.50.
  • Measurable – Track customer revenue monthly with sales reports.
  • Achievable – Research the market, develop new products and services, and train staff to upsell and cross-sell.
  • Relevant – Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, profitability and cash flow, and market competitiveness.
  • Time-bound – Achieve this objective in six months, from January 1st to June 30th.

OPTION 2: Use the OKR framework. OKR stands for O bjectives and K ey R esults. An OKR is a goal-setting technique that links the company’s objectives with measurable outcomes. An objective is a qualitative statement of what the company wants to achieve. A key result is a quantitative metric that shows how the objective will be achieved.

OPTION 3: Use the SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for S trengths, W eaknesses, O pportunities, and T hreats. A SWOT analysis is a strategic tool that helps the company assess the internal and external factors that affect its goals and objectives.

  • Strengths – Internal factors that give the company an advantage over others. 
  • Weaknesses – Internal factors that limit the company’s performance or growth. 
  • Opportunities – External factors that allow the company to improve or expand. 
  • Threats – External factors that pose a risk or challenge to the company.

For example, using these frameworks, a bakery might set the following goals and objectives for its SBA business plan :

Objective – To launch a new product line of gluten-free cakes in the next quarter.

Key Results:

  • Research gluten-free cake market demand and preferences by month-end.
  • Create and test 10 gluten-free cake recipes by next month-end.
  • Make and sell 100 gluten-free cakes weekly online or in-store by quarter-end.

SWOT Analysis:

  • Expertise and experience in baking and cake decorating.
  • Loyal and satisfied customer base.
  • Strong online presence and reputation.

Weaknesses:

  • Limited production capacity and equipment.
  • High production costs and low-profit margins.
  • Lack of knowledge and skills in gluten-free baking.

Opportunities:

  • Growing demand and awareness for gluten-free products.
  • Competitive advantage and differentiation in the market.
  • Potential partnerships and collaborations with health-conscious customers and organizations.
  • Increasing competition from other bakeries and gluten-free brands.
  • Changing customer tastes and preferences.
  • Regulatory and legal issues related to gluten-free labeling and certification.

Examples of Business Goals and Objectives

To illustrate how to write business goals and objectives for a business plan, let’s use a hypothetical example of a bakery business called Sweet Treats. Sweet Treats is a small bakery specializing in custom-made cakes, cupcakes, cookies, and other baked goods for various occasions.

Here are some examples of possible startup business goals and objectives for Sweet Treats:

Earning and Preserving Profitability

Profitability is the ability of a company to generate more revenue than expenses. It indicates the financial health and performance of the company. Profitability is essential for a business to sustain its operations, grow its market share, and reward its stakeholders.

Some possible objectives for earning and preserving profitability for Sweet Treats are:

  • To increase the gross profit margin by 5% in the next quarter by reducing the cost of goods sold
  • To achieve a net income of $100,000 in the current fiscal year by increasing sales and reducing overhead costs

Ensuring Consistent Cash Flow

Cash flow is the amount of money that flows in and out of a company. A company needs to have enough cash to cover its operating expenses, pay its debts, invest in its growth, and reward its shareholders.

Some possible objectives for ensuring consistent cash flow for Sweet Treats are:

  • Increase monthly operating cash inflow by 15% by the end of the year by improving the efficiency and productivity of the business processes
  • Increase the cash flow from investing activities by selling or disposing of non-performing or obsolete assets

Creating and Maintaining Efficiency

Efficiency is the ratio of output to input. It measures how well a company uses its resources to produce its products or services. Efficiency can help a business improve its quality, productivity, customer satisfaction, and profitability.

Some possible objectives for creating and maintaining efficiency for Sweet Treats are:

  • To reduce the production time by 10% in the next month by implementing lean manufacturing techniques
  • To increase the customer service response rate by 20% in the next week by using chatbots or automated systems

Winning and Keeping Clients

Clients are the people or organizations that buy or use the products or services of a company. They are the source of revenue and growth for a company. Therefore, winning and keeping clients is vital to generating steady revenue, increasing customer loyalty, and enhancing word-of-mouth marketing.

Some possible objectives for winning and keeping clients for Sweet Treats are:

  • To acquire 100 new clients in the next quarter by launching a referral program or a promotional campaign
  • To retain 90% of existing clients in the current year by offering loyalty rewards or satisfaction guarantees

Building a Recognizable Brand

A brand is the name, logo, design, or other features distinguishing a company from its competitors. It represents the identity, reputation, and value proposition of a company. Building a recognizable brand is crucial for attracting and retaining clients and creating a loyal fan base.

Some possible objectives for building a recognizable brand for Sweet Treats are:

  • To increase brand awareness by 50% in the next six months by creating and distributing engaging content on social media platforms
  • To improve brand image by 30% in the next year by participating in social causes or sponsoring events that align with the company’s values

Expanding and Nurturing an Audience with Marketing

An audience is a group of people interested in or following a company’s products or services. They can be potential or existing clients, fans, influencers, or partners. Expanding and nurturing an audience with marketing is essential for increasing a company’s visibility, reach, and engagement.

Some possible objectives for expanding and nurturing an audience with marketing for Sweet Treats are:

  • To grow the email list by 1,000 subscribers in the next month by offering a free ebook or a webinar
  • To nurture leads by sending them relevant and valuable information through email newsletters or blog posts

Strategizing for Expansion

Expansion is the process of increasing a company’s size, scope, or scale. It can involve entering new markets, launching new products or services, opening new locations, or forming new alliances. Strategizing for expansion is important for diversifying revenue streams, reaching new audiences, and gaining competitive advantages.

Some possible objectives for strategizing for expansion for Sweet Treats are:

  • To launch a new product or service line by developing and testing prototypes
  • To open a new branch or franchise by securing funding and hiring staff

Template for Business Objectives

A template for writing business objectives is a format or structure that can be used as a guide or reference for creating your objectives. A template for writing business objectives can help you to ensure that your objectives are SMART, clear, concise, and consistent.

To use this template, fill in the blanks with your information. Here is an example of how you can use this template:

Example of Business Objectives

Our business is a _____________ (type of business) that provides _____________ (products or services) to _____________ (target market). Our vision is to _____________ (vision statement) and our mission is to _____________ (mission statement).

Our long-term business goals and objectives for the next _____________ (time period) are:

S pecific: We want to _____________ (specific goal) by _____________ (specific action).

M easurable: We will measure our progress by _____________ (quantifiable indicator).

A chievable: We have _____________ (resources, capabilities, constraints) that will enable us to achieve this goal.

R elevant: This goal supports our vision and mission by _____________ (benefit or impact).

T ime-bound: We will complete this goal by _____________ (deadline).

Repeat this process for each goal and objective for your business plan.

How to Monitor Your Business Objectives?

After setting goals and objectives for your business plan, you should check them regularly to see if you are achieving them. Monitoring your business objectives can help you to:

  • Track your progress and performance
  • Identify and overcome any challenges
  • Adjust your actions and strategies as needed

Some of the tools and methods that you can use to monitor your business objectives are:

  • Dashboards – Show key data and metrics for your objectives with tools like Google Data Studio, Databox, or DashThis.
  • Reports – Get detailed information and analysis for your objectives with tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, or SEMrush.
  • Feedback – Learn from your customers and their needs and expectations with tools like SurveyMonkey, Typeform, or Google Forms.

Strategies for Realizing Business Objectives

To achieve your business objectives, you need more than setting and monitoring them. You need strategies and actions that support them. Strategies are the general methods to reach your objectives. Actions are the specific steps to implement your strategies.

Different objectives require different strategies and actions. Some common types are:

  • Marketing strategies
  • Operational strategies
  • Financial strategies
  • Human resource strategies
  • Growth strategies

To implement effective strategies and actions, consider these factors:

  • Alignment – They should match your vision, mission, values, goals, and objectives
  • Feasibility – They should be possible with your capabilities, resources, and constraints
  • Suitability – They should fit the context and needs of your business

How OGSCapital Can Help You Achieve Your Business Objectives?

We at OGSCapital can help you with your business plan and related documents. We have over 15 years of experience writing high-quality business plans for various industries and regions. We have a team of business plan experts who can assist you with market research, financial analysis, strategy formulation, and presentation design. We can customize your business plan to suit your needs and objectives, whether you need funding, launching, expanding, or entering a new market. We can also help you with pitch decks, executive summaries, feasibility studies, and grant proposals. Contact us today for a free quote and start working on your business plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the goals and objectives in business.

Goals and objectives in a business plan are the desired outcomes that a company works toward. To describe company goals and objectives for a business plan, start with your mission statement and then identify your strategic and operational objectives. To write company objectives, you must brainstorm, organize, prioritize, assign, track, and review them using the SMART framework and KPIs.

What are the examples of goals and objectives in a business plan?

Examples of goals and objectives in a business plan are: Goal: To increase revenue by 10% each year for the next five years. Objective: To launch a new product line and create a marketing campaign to reach new customers.

What are the 4 main objectives of a business?

The 4 main objectives of a business are economic, social, human, and organic. Economic objectives deal with financial performance, social objectives deal with social responsibility, human objectives deal with employee welfare, and organic objectives deal with business growth and development.

What are goals and objectives examples?

Setting goals and objectives for a business plan describes what a business or a team wants to achieve and how they will do it. For example: Goal: To provide excellent customer service. Objective: To increase customer satisfaction scores by 20% by the end of the quarter. 

At OGSCapital, our business planning services offer expert guidance and support to create a realistic and actionable plan that aligns with your vision and mission. Get in touch to discuss further!

OGSCapital’s team has assisted thousands of entrepreneurs with top-rate business plan development, consultancy and analysis. They’ve helped thousands of SME owners secure more than $1.5 billion in funding, and they can do the same for you.

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Relationship Between Performance Objectives & Key Performance Indicators

  • Small Business
  • Business Planning & Strategy

Key Performance Indicators

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Advantages & Disadvantages of Setting a Performance Target

How to expand customer base, how to design an advertising campaign.

  • The Importance of Measuring Progress in Business
  • How to Identify the Marketing Mix for a Marketing Plan

Depending on what definition you use, performance objectives are outcome goals for your staff or department, or measurements that judge how well they do their jobs. Key performance indicators are benchmarks or measurements that let you gauge how well you are doing in meeting goals. Using the two together in a coordinated effort will help you set, track, modify and evaluate your business strategies and improve your bottom line.

Outcome vs. Performance

When you set goals, they are either outcome-oriented or performance-oriented. An outcome goal is an end result you want, such as a sales volume, number of units produced or profit. A performance goal is an objective that helps you improve the way you reach outcome goals. For example, avoiding using overtime hours to produce your desired number of units or hitting your sales volumes using more in-house phone calls rather than costly road trips are examples of performance goals. Performance goals often provide less measurable results than outcome goals, but it's important to add them to your management efforts. Some people use the term “performance objective” as a synonym for “outcome objective,” so it’s important to determine how you and your team use the term.

Outcome-Based Performance Objectives

If you consider a performance objective an end result, such as a sales goal, it’s important to set realistic goals. To do this, use historic results as your starting point. Next, meet with the people who will be responsible for meeting these performance objectives, and get their qualitative feedback on goal setting. Once you have created realistic goals, set the methods for achieving these goals, list the resources you’ll need, set deadlines and create a backup plan to assist your staff in the event your original plan isn’t working.

Pure Performance Objectives

If you consider a performance objective a way of doing something better rather than an end result, meet with all of the people responsible for your goals to discuss how you will meet them. Each person will have a part to perform and should explain it to the group. The group can then question each participant, asking if the staff member can eliminate steps, if he needs more resources or if his current deadlines are realistic. For example, if the company has an outcome goal of selling more products online, performance goals might include reducing website outages, making the ordering process easier, increasing social media marketing, extending telephone support hours and adding more payment options.

Once you have set your outcome and performance objectives, create key performance indicators that let you know throughout your timeline how you are doing. For example, if your goal is to sell 100,000 units of your product this quarter, you might determine you need to sell 50,000 online, 25,000 in retail stores and 25,000 through catalogs. Based on the time it takes to sell via a catalog versus online, you might see an initial rush of online sales after you start advertising that tapers off toward the end of the quarter, with more catalog sales coming in toward the final month. Your key performance indicators might include website traffic statistics, phone calls from your catalog recipients and weekly sales figures. If you have low online visitor and traffic sales the first few weeks, these are key performance indicators that tell you that your marketing aimed at driving online traffic isn’t working. If your phones are ringing off the hook with calls from potential catalog customers who begin ordering soon after they receive the catalog, this is a key performance indicator that your catalog marketing is working.

  • InetSoft: Learning about Key Performance Indicators

Sam Ashe-Edmunds has been writing and lecturing for decades. He has worked in the corporate and nonprofit arenas as a C-Suite executive, serving on several nonprofit boards. He is an internationally traveled sport science writer and lecturer. He has been published in print publications such as Entrepreneur, Tennis, SI for Kids, Chicago Tribune, Sacramento Bee, and on websites such Smart-Healthy-Living.net, SmartyCents and Youthletic. Edmunds has a bachelor's degree in journalism.

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Introduction of business goals, key factors that shape effective goal setting, what is a good performance objective for someone who needs to improve their teamwork skills, how to write sales goals & objectives for a new year, how to get a sales team to set specific goals that work, project performance feedback, new year business marketing plan & annual strategy goal update, effective goal setting questions, agenda vs. goals, most popular.

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What are performance objectives 5 top objectives.

What Are Performance Objectives? 5 Top Objectives

Any business’s strength depends on the performance of employees, as well as the business itself. When you’re running a small business, it’s important that it’s performing effectively and efficiently. But how can you make that happen? The best way to make sure that your business is performing adequately is by setting performance objectives. Also called performance goal-setting, these strategies can give your business a competitive edge.

Here’s What We’ll Cover:

What Is a Performance Objective?

5 key performance objectives for your business, key takeaways.

The term performance objective is just a fancy way of identifying a large business goal. However, it should be mentioned that goals are the results that you seek. Objectives are the way that you reach your goals. For the most part, performance objectives are related to business or employee performance. These two areas of performance are crucial to your business running smoothly.

performance objectives and measures for business plan

The Key Elements of a Good Performance Objective

When you’re writing performance objectives, there are some key elements that you should look to abide by.

  • Clear Language: Performance objectives need to be written with clear language. Each objective should have an action verb in it, as well. This is the action to be carried out by your business and employees. When you write a performance objective, it’s ideal to provide it in multiple forms of communication with examples.
  • Measurable Outcomes: Performance objectives need to be attached to measurable outcomes. For example, if your performance objective has to do with marketing, it can be supported with marketing metrics.
  • Perform with Meaning: All performance objectives need to be carried out with purpose or meaning. If things are being done without meaning, performance will be less than effective.

When you’re writing performance objectives for your business, there are 5 that you should start with.

One of the first performance objectives you should set for your business has to do with costs. Of course, the cost of business operations should be considered at all times. When you’re looking to increase business performance, you should be looking to reduce costly inputs. Of course, this shouldn’t be done without consideration. Costly inputs are often necessary for a business, in certain circumstances.

Quality doesn’t have to do with products alone. Quality relates to any and all work being done by your business. As such, these are the second most important objectives you can write for your business, behind cost. These performance objectives are based on doing things the right way.

Often, you’ll find that quality objectives have to do with the care of customers. High-quality customer service leads to customer retention. Customer retention is important for any small business.

3. Dependability

This applies to all businesses as well, and has a lot to do with quality. However, dependability is more about doing what your business says it will. Customer expectations need to be met for dependability to be high. To be dependable, a business must fulfill its promises and commitments.

If your business has a guarantee on any of its products or services, that is a performance objective. Guarantees can be measured in a number of ways. If a product has a lifetime guarantee, but it has a high rate of return, then the objective isn’t being met.

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Speed makes a big impact on a business’s reputation. Making a delivery on time to customers is about being dependable, but being able to do it quickly is another thing. In the world that we live in, instant gratification is important. Customers want a quick response time on nearly everything. It is important that performance objectives based on speed also have to meet quality guidelines, however.

5. Flexibility

The best way to thrive in business is by being adaptable. Adaptation makes up a big part of being successful as a small business. Many performance objectives about meeting customer needs at “any cost” rely on adaptation. Being flexible can provide a number of benefits, like better response times and cost savings. Overall, flexibility is what’s going to save you should something happen that’s out of your control. A rolling stone gathers no moss, after all.

Performance objectives are a way of making sure that your business is doing what it needs to be. Writing clear performance objectives based on the 5 areas listed above can make or break a small business. If you’re looking for more information to help you write your performance objectives, check out our resource hub . It has plenty of inspiration to help you get your business where it needs to be!

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Employee performance goals & examples: The ultimate guide

performance objectives and measures for business plan

Research shows that employees with clear performance goals are over three times more likely to be committed to their company and over six times more likely to recommend their company as a great place to work than those without measurable goals. The best work performance goal examples align with larger organizational objectives, making this effect even stronger. Employees who understand how their goals contribute to the bigger picture are an impressive ten times more inspired and motivated to take action at work than those who don’t. (1)

However, according to recent Leapsome data, a third of employees are unhappy with the current performance goal-setting and measurement process at their companies. (2) 

Defining ambitious, aligned, and achievable employee performance goals is no simple task. If you focus too much on organizational or team-level objectives, you’ll end up focusing on performance metrics that aren’t really under your employees’ control. Going too far in the other direction will leave you with work performance goals that don’t move the needle on the company’s strategic aims. 

The most effective way to empower your team members for success is by working together to establish goals that are both impactful and realistic.

This article will show you how to do just that. We’ll discuss what makes a great employee performance goal and share our top eight examples of performance goals for employees. Let’s get started.

1. BI Worldwide , 2021

2. Leapsome Workforce Trends Report , 2023 ‍

🌟 Want to help your employees reach their full potential?  Use our best-practice question template to run performance reviews that enable and empower your people. 👉 Download now  

Definition of performance goals 

Performance goals are strategic objectives that guide employees towards fulfilling the requirements of their role and contributing to team and company success. Individual performance goals are tailored to each employee, serving as a roadmap for what they’re expected to accomplish within a specific timeframe.

It’s generally best to define performance goals in collaboration with the relevant employees. By involving them in the process, you can co-create effective, realistic objectives that they’re invested in. Setting good business goals for employees builds a culture of accountability and excellence, where every team member understands their role in the bigger picture and strives to perform at their best.

There are slightly different definitions of performance goals according to different models.  ‍

The OKR framework breaks goals into objectives (clear, inspiring statements of what the employee should aim to accomplish) and key results (measurable outcomes that show progress toward the objective). 

Let’s look at two individual performance objectives examples with relevant key results:  ‍

Employee objective:

  • Develop my leadership skills over the next 6 months

Example key results: 

  • Mentor two colleagues and get positive feedback on my mentorship skills from them in my next 360 review.
  • Lead two company-wide presentations by the end of Q3 ‍
  • Deliver an exceptional customer experience in 2024
  • Proactively engage five customers per month on new offerings and solutions by end of Q2
  • Get a customer satisfaction score of 5 out of 5 for 80% of my customers by end of Q3 ‍
John Doerr, author of Measure What Matters , highlights the importance of clear, numbers-driven key results:  “Key results benchmark and monitor how we get to the objective. Effective KRs are specific and time-bound, aggressive yet realistic. Most of all, they are measurable and verifiable. As prize pupil Marissa Mayer would say, ‘It’s not a key result unless it has a number.’”

SMART goals 

SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound objectives.  

A SMART performance goal example: 

Onboard 35 new paying clients (specific) as measured in the CRM tracking system (measurable) based on current sales capacity increasing 10% quarterly (achievable) to contribute towards the company’s client acquisition goals (relevant) by the end of Q4 2024  (time-bound).

Below, we’ll go more in-depth on how to use SMART goals to map out exactly how, when, and why you’ll achieve your objectives. ‍

How to set performance objectives

Great performance goals help employees feel connected with their company’s mission,  boost engagement rates, prioritize employee development and communicate expectations effectively. They are also essential for defining fair performance improvement plans (PIPs).

Use the steps below to set strong goals for work performance. ‍

1. Collaborate with employees

Setting up effective, realistic goals is no easy task, but collaborating with employees will make the process a lot easier — and your results, more powerful. 

Whether you’re dealing with a departmental or individual conversation, an employee’s contribution to goal setting is invaluable. Collaboration lets employees discover how their actions contribute to their company’s long-term growth , increasing autonomy and ownership.

But collaboration on performance goal setting shouldn’t be limited to delegation. When employees have been actively engaged in establishing objectives, both team and individual goals have higher chances of being met. If you need help, our guide on setting team goals will walk you through the process. ‍

2. Align your objectives with your company mission

It would be pretty ironic if you owned a startup that wanted to revolutionize the world of data but didn’t give employees a work environment suitable for creativity, innovation, and change.

If your company wants to promote open communication and a flat hierarchy, your top goals should be things like: 

  • For management roles  — Become a people-centric leader
  • For teams — Take on regular collaboration initiatives  ‍
  • For individuals — Level up communication skills

Ideally, each employee’s personal goals should focus on their own development, while team goals should be tied to the company’s overarching mission. For example, Leapsome’s mission is to make work more fulfilling for everyone. That determines what our company stands for and how we run it.

Image of a group of people discussing team goals

Employees also feel more motivated when they understand how they fit into the big picture. Leapsome’s Goals & OKRs module can help you align your company mission with individual performance objectives, promoting transparency and accountability throughout the organization. ‍

3. Focus on growth

Some of your best talent is sitting there just waiting to excel. And if you don’t support their growth, they’ll move on and excel somewhere else. 

Performance objectives don’t only benefit the business: they should help employees grow within their organizations — enriching the company itself. 

Growth should be the primary focus of any performance objective, especially when job searchers rank career growth opportunities as one of their top criteria when looking for a new position. That statistic shows that you risk losing your best talent to competitors if you don’t focus on employee development. 

But you must equip your people with the right skill sets to help them grow. And a career progression framework is perfect for that. It allows you to map out the skills and qualities your employees need to progress in their roles, which you can regularly check in on during performance evaluations .

Screenshot of Competency Framework showing different skills for different employee seniority levels

4. Make your performance objectives SMART

Remember that SMART means specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based. 

Here’s an example of how to make a goal SMART. 

Take a general goal:

❌ Increase productivity  ‍ [vague & not measurable]

Then, add a timeline and a clear metric for success:  

🚀 Improve productivity by increasing the average number of high-priority tasks completed each week by 10% by the end of February [specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, time-based]

You can then get even more granular by defining related success metrics (e.g., reduced project time, error rates, efficiency goals) and how exactly your employee should work to achieve the goal (e.g., completing a particular training or implementing a new project management system).  ‍

📆 Pro tip: Make sure you’re setting realistic timelines, keeping in mind that larger, transformational goals often require multiple milestones to reach completion. Break annual performance goals into quarterly and monthly targets to keep your larger objectives on track.  For example, yearly goals for employees like “Increase personal sales rate 20% by December 2023” could be subdivided into quarterly targets (“Generate five qualified sales opportunities from leads contacted in Q1”) and monthly targets (“Schedule two demo meetings each week”). 

5. Build cascading goals

Let’s consider another goal-oriented example. A C-level team is pushing to increase revenue by 10% over the upcoming quarter. But what does that mean for each team and individual at the company? Would simply increasing everyone ’s output (and workload) by 10% (e.g., HR hiring 10% more people) help achieve that? Probably not.

This imaginary C-level team needs to work on cascading goals to get where they want to be.

Developing cascading goals is the process of structuring goals and promoting alignment at all levels in the organization. With cascading goals, plans at the leadership level trickle down and shape the objectives of all other company employees. When that happens, you get measurable and attainable individual goals that align with the company’s mission.

Screenshot of Leapsome’s Goal Tree showcasing cascading OKRs

🎯 Let’s build unifying goals your team can get behind Leapsome is the tool you need to build successful goal cycles and align your whole team behind your company mission. 👉 See it in action

Overview: 8 examples of performance goals

Goal setting isn’t a create-and-forget exercise. Performance objectives are designed to motivate employees to do better and help managers and companies invest in their growth. Setting and measuring employee performance goals is a key tactic to increase team efficiency, help companies grow, and encourage employees to prosper in their careers. 

Here are our top eight employee objectives and goals examples:

  • Collaboration  — Employees offering their support to colleagues to help increase efficiency ‍
  • Professional development  — Employees upskilling and furthering their careers within the company ‍ ‍
  • Self-management  — Follows the “manager of me” concept in which employees are their own primary managers ‍ ‍
  • Soft skills — Determine how employees communicate and collaborate with other colleagues ‍
  • ‍ People management — Teaches employees how to motivate others, make themselves heard, and be better team players ‍ ‍
  • Problem-solving — Encourages employees to resolve issues that come up both individually and with their team ‍
  • ‍ Creativity & innovation — Prompts employees to be creative in their solutions and encourages participation ‍
  • ‍ Communication — Enables employees to effectively communicate tasks, procedures, and deadlines ‍
👉 Customize the eight key goal areas above according to your company’s requirements and the skills you’d like individual employees to develop.

Examples of measurable employee goals & objectives

Use our examples of goal setting for employees to inspire you and your team members. If you’re asking team members to set their own goals, it’s especially important to give them sample performance goals so they’re clear on the approach and level of detail expected. 

We’ll talk you through why each example is important, and give you actionable tips and employee goal ideas you can implement right away in your organization‍. ‍

1. Employee goals examples for collaboration

Collaboration is essential for all teams and departments and directly impacts employee motivation, productivity, and job satisfaction. With collaboration and teamwork, employees also become more innovative and better problem solvers.

But since collaboration isn’t an easily measurable performance objective, we suggest assigning employees collaborative tasks and measuring success based on communication, legibility, and effective collaboration. ‍

💡 Example of a collaboration objective If the collaboration between your sales and marketing teams is limited and inefficient, suggest specific ways they could work together, like:  • Exchanging weekly reports • Marketing and sales managers sitting in on at least three cross-departmental meetings each month • Collaborating on a specific upcoming project or internal initiative

2. Employee goals examples for professional development

A striking 87% of millennials (the largest generation in the workforce) rate learning and development opportunities as important to them at work. As an employer, that’s great news; after all, your people want to do their jobs well and grow — all they need from you is a helping hand.

Incorporating development goals into performance reviews in a meaningful, growth-oriented way can help. In general, setting up professional development goals and ensuring employees follow through on them ensures they know you’re invested in their future. This ups engagement, retention, and productivity, which is a true win-win situation. ‍

💡 Example of a professional development objective Imagine your new social media marketing hire mentioned they’d like to learn more about performance marketing.  A great professional development goal would be encouraging your new hire to choose a course they’re interested in — or perhaps you already have a learning path available that caters to that development need.

User interface of Leapsome’s Learning module for employee learning and development

3. Employee goals examples for self-management

Self-management can include anything from employees taking ownership of a project to adapting to changes at work and managing deadlines without getting sidetracked by distractions. By practicing self-management skills, employees consistently show up ready to give their best effort and take on the day.

‍ Self-management can help boost productivity, improve performance, and achieve professional and personal goals. For managers, it also means not micromanaging — and instead, letting employees flourish. Self-management means developing self-awareness and helping employees feel successful in their roles. ‍

💡 Example of a self-management objective Employees who struggle with deadlines but generally work efficiently may have issues with time management. A great self-management goal could be learning how to prioritize.

4. Employee goals examples for soft skills

Generally speaking, no one wants to work with an unempathetic person who doesn’t communicate with team members. Fortunately, soft skills can often be learned. 

Goal setting for soft skills should ensure that employees invest time and effort to optimize how they relate to and communicate with their colleagues. ‍

💡 Example of a soft skills objective Consider asking your employees to put together individualized, three-month action plans that can help them become better communicators.  As an example, you may manage an employee that excels at working autonomously but struggles to work just as effectively in a team. By keeping track of their own learning progress throughout their journey, they can learn to identify their shortcomings and work on them.

5. Employee goals examples for people management

Gone are the days when people management was a skill necessary only for leadership. Now, it goes beyond managerial tasks and also encompasses fruitful collaboration, the ability to motivate peers, and communication across teams. 

Setting goals for better people management means encouraging all employees to be open to receiving and giving constructive feedback and giving credit when it’s due.  ‍

💡 Example of a people management objective Encourage your employee to head one or more projects each quarter.

6. Employee goals examples for problem-solving

Problem-solving is a skill that’s as useful when a crisis strikes as it is in day-to-day life. A good problem solver is an analytical thinker and creative doer who will save their company time and money in the long run.

Image depicting employees gathered in a boardroom strategizing and problem solving.

💡 Example of a problem-solving objective Ask each member of the finance team to come up with three problems they face in their day-to-day work and how to overcome them in a detailed plan. Their specific goal could be to develop an actionable plan in Q3 and implement it by the end of Q4.

7. Employee goals examples for creativity & innovation

By nurturing innovation and creativity in-house, companies empower their employees to contribute improvements, tackle challenges, and maintain a competitive edge. 

Creativity shouldn’t be restricted to jobs conventionally associated with design and ideation — it’s important in every role. Creativity can be a marketing team figuring out new ways to A/B test emails or a product manager effectively helping different teams communicate. Innovation at work can be as simple as adopting a more efficient way to run meetings . Giving employees those kinds of opportunities in the workplace helps them feel valued and appreciated. ‍

💡 Example of a creativity and innovation objective If your website isn’t performing as well as you’d like, you could ask the marketing team to propose different versions of the homepage’s copy. By challenging your employees to come up with multiple solutions instead of the one best solution , you’re encouraging them to think outside the box and develop creative thinking skills.
Pro tip: When setting creativity and innovation goals for new hires, begin with learning-focused objectives. As they gain experience, transition towards measurable outcomes and contributions.  New employee goals could include: First 30 days — Collaborate with a senior colleague on at least two brainstorming sessions, contributing a minimum of three innovative ideas during each session. ‍ First 90 days — Propose, develop, and execute one small creative improvement to an existing product or process, and set a clear KPI (e.g. achieving a 10% increase in efficiency). ‍ First 6 months — Lead an innovation project aimed at overhauling a work process, developing a new feature, or launching a new marketing initiative, and define a clear goal for the project (e.g. increase customer satisfaction scores by two points).

8. Employee goals examples for communication

Actively working towards better communication improves productivity and relationships at work. The 7 Cs of communication is a great framework for setting clear goals and improving communication skills for teams and individuals. 

Effective communication at work looks like: 

  • Clear communication without ambiguity
  • Good relationships between individuals, teams, and departments
  • Clear deadlines
  • Effectively communicated tasks 
  • Positive changes with reinforcement 
  • Knowledge shared  across teams ‍
💡 Example of a communication objective Encouraging employees to take initiative in team meetings and prompt colleagues to speak up is a great communication performance objective. To take things a step further, Leapsome’s surveys are an excellent tool for employees to share their opinions anonymously and communicate easily.

Screenshot of engagement survey results in Leapsome’s people enablement platform

Better performance goal setting for a stronger team

Setting goals for work performance requires a strategic, collaborative approach and a commitment to tracking progress and following through is crucial. With the right tools, continuous goals and performance management can be both effortless and effective.

Screenshot of Leapsome AI goal generator with visualization of goal progress

With customizable, expert-backed templates, and AI-powered features, Leapsome’s Goals module simplifies the process of setting employee performance goals and OKRs. Goal trees show every team member how their individual targets contribute to team objectives and company goals. Leapsome’s goal analytics visualize and track performance goals so employees can own their progress and managers get a clear sense of how the team is performing and where support may be needed. You can also link professional development goals with our Competency Framework feature to promote a growth-oriented company culture.  

Our Goals module integrates seamlessly with our Learning , Meetings , Reviews , and Surveys tools, so you can easily follow up on goals at every stage of your workflow and increase their impact. 

Leapsome’s tools for setting and achieving performance goals unite your teams around a shared vision of success. ‍

🧐 Take the guesswork out of assigning performance objectives Leapsome’s frameworks and tools help employers create and track high-impact performance objectives that boost productivity and align with your company’s mission. 👉 Start improving performance now

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Module 9: Financial Strategies in Retail

Performance objectives and measurements, learning objectives.

  • Compare various performance objectives and measurements

A performance metric measures an organization’s behavior, activities, and performance. It should support a range of stakeholder needs from customers to shareholders to employees. While traditionally many metrics are finance based, inwardly focusing on the performance of the organization, metrics may also focus on the performance against customer requirements and value. In project management, performance metrics are used to assess the health of the project and consist of the measuring of seven criteria: safety, time, cost, resources, scope, quality, and actions.

A criticism of performance metrics is that when the value of information is computed using mathematical methods, it shows that even performance metrics professionals choose measures that have little value. This is referred to as the “measurement inversion”. For example, metrics seem to emphasize what organizations find immediately measurable—even if those are low value—and tend to ignore high value measurements simply because they seem harder to measure (whether they are or not).

To correct for the measurement inversion other methods, like applied information economics, introduce the “value of information analysis” step in the process so that metrics focus on high-value measures. Organizations where this has been applied find that they define completely different metrics than they otherwise would have and, often, fewer metrics. For projects, the effort to collect a metric has to be weighed against its value as projects are temporary endeavors performed with finite resources.

There are a variety of ways in which organizations may react to results. This may be to trigger specific activity relating to performance, such as an improvement plan, or to use the data merely for statistical information. Often closely tied in with outputs, performance metrics should usually encourage improvement, effectiveness, and appropriate levels of control.

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Performance Management

How to create a performance management plan.

performance objectives and measures for business plan

The People Strategy Leaders Podcast

performance objectives and measures for business plan

With so many elements to manage, your performance management plan must work well for HR professionals and your employees. In this article, we will discuss how to create a performance management plan that will motivate your employees and help them be the best they can be in their job roles. Whether you’re dealing with high performers or those who need improvement, this article will help you manage them well.

Learn how to determine benchmarks and goals, communicate effectively, and follow up with employees to create an effective performance management plan for your company. Along with HR, we have interacted with leaders from accounting, IT, sales, marketing, customer service, and management who have all shared their tips on how to design a PMP that works well in their organizations. 

What is a Performance Management Plan?

A performance management plan is a strategic process that organizations use to improve employee performance and achieve business goals. It involves setting expectations, defining goals, providing feedback, and evaluating performance to enhance productivity and align individual objectives with organizational success.

Performance management plans are required to document an employee’s goals and objectives related to the organization’s goals, along with the skills and competencies needed to achieve these goals. Effective performance management plans can help an organization thrive, and they can even help keep your employees happy and engaged in their jobs! 

How to Create a Performance Management Plan? 

The following section talks about the performance management planning processes. It is important to have skilled and experienced HR leaders on board while planning the process. It will help steer the team in the right direction and avoid any discrepancies from creeping in. 

  • Document goals clearly : Once you know the direction to be taken, it’s time to create clear and measurable goals.
  • Communicate with your employees: Once the goals have been created, it’s important to communicate them with employees so they can work towards them. Check-ins are an effective way of providing feedback to employees on their progress and rewarding them when they do well. 
  • Provide feedback regularly : It’s also important to provide regular feedback to your employees by monitoring their progress. By checking in regularly with your employee, you’ll learn how they’re doing and provide helpful guidance as needed. When there are problems, give timely and constructive feedback so they know where they stand.
  • Keep track of progress: There’s no point in holding back until the end of the year to evaluate performance! Track your employees’ progress throughout the year and make adjustments where necessary. At least once a quarter, review past assessments with your team members to identify any changes that may be needed going forward.

Questions to Consider While Creating a Performance Management Plan

As an HR professional, you need to be clear on the business objectives of your organization to create an effective performance management plan. What are the goals of the company? What does success look like? Once you have answers to these questions, you can begin to create a plan that will help employees achieve these objectives.

  • Define what the organization’s goals are and what success looks like.
  • Assess where the organization is currently at in terms of achieving these goals.
  • Identify any gaps between where the organization is currently and where it wants to be.
  • Develop strategies for closing these gaps. 
  • Determine how each strategy will help the organization reach its goal. 
  • Determine who needs to be involved in this process, including managers and staff members who should be measured using this process 
  • Establish a timeline for implementing each strategy (e.g., set specific dates by which certain tasks must be completed). 
  • Put everything together into one document—preferably with short sections and bulleted points – so that it’s easy to read and understand.
  • Send out to appropriate stakeholders or colleagues for feedback or edit as needed

Get Up-to-date Responses

This will give you insight into how others perceive your work and where you can improve. Here are some tips for getting started: 

  • Talk to your manager – ask for specific feedback on your recent performance and where improvement is needed. 
  • Talk to your peers – ask them how they perceive your work and what areas they think you could improve in. 
  • Use performance review tools – many online tools can help you assess your performance, such as 360-degree feedback tools or performance appraisal software. These types of assessment tools will provide you with objective data about how well you’re doing in certain aspects of your job and can help guide your development.
  • Identify strengths and weaknesses – make a list of both the strengths and weaknesses that were identified by others, then take some time to explore these ideas. Consider the possibility that some of the perceived weaknesses may be strengths in disguise!  

Also Read: The Ultimate Guide: Develop a KPI System for Performance Reviews

Measure current performance.

To create an effective performance management plan, you first need to measure current performance . This will give you a baseline against which you can measure future progress. There are several ways to measure performance, but some common methods include surveys, interviews, focus groups, and data analysis .

All these methods have pros and cons. Hence, you need to identify what is most appropriate for your company. Once the right approach is known, you need to set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable (and specific), Realistic (and challenging), and Time-bound (to define when objectives should be met)) goals. Next comes the tricky part – determining what type of disciplinary action or reward system is apt for your employees’ needs.

Here are some tips on how to go about this process: When defining punishments for bad behavior or rewards for good behavior, keep in mind that there are two different types of motivation – extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic motivations come from outside sources like money, recognition, promotion, etc., while intrinsic motivations come from within sources like personal growth and accomplishment. So make sure to pay attention to both extrinsic and intrinsic when designing your reward/punishment systems. Also, remember that the severity of punishment or reward should match the severity of the infraction – never give a minor punishment for a major infraction or vice versa.

Important Steps to Follow 

The steps below outline the process for creating a plan and should be followed when creating new plans or updating existing ones.

  • Define what you want to achieve with your performance management system: What do you hope to gain from this system? How will it help improve organizational culture? How will it support succession planning efforts? Why is this important for the company’s growth and success? 
  •  Assess your current performance management system: Do evaluations happen annually or more often? Do employees know their strengths, areas for improvement, goals, objectives, and competencies? Are 360 reviews used in addition to the manager’s feedback? Is formal training provided before starting a new position or after each evaluation cycle starts (6 months)? Does everyone get constructive feedback no matter their job level or rank within the company? 
  • Define what you want to achieve with your performance management system
  • Assess your current performance management system
  • Identify gaps in your current performance management system
  • Choose the right performance management software for your needs
  • Implement your performance management system
  • Train employees on how to use the system
  • Evaluate and adjust your system as needed
  • Establish an appropriate timeline
  • Monitor the results of your new system by looking at metrics and employee feedback surveys
  • Check in periodically to see if there are any changes or issues that need attention, and make adjustments accordingly

Set Goals and Start Working For it

  • Set up performance goals and objectives early on
  • Align those goals with the company’s overall strategy
  • Involve employees in setting their own goals
  • Monitor progress against goals regularly
  • Use data to identify issues and areas of improvement
  • Address problems and give feedback promptly
  • Celebrate successes and lessons learned along the way 
  • Ensure that all parties understand their roles and responsibilities
  • Give regular, meaningful feedback that supports your employees’ development
  • Revisit performance management throughout the year as needed to support employee growth and business success
  • Follow through on corrective action plans, based on conversations and/or documented behaviors
  • Document everything! 
  • Evaluate if there is a need for any changes before starting over again with the same process at the end of every year
  • Commit to the ongoing dialogue about an employee’s performance from both sides to foster an environment where everyone feels heard and valued

Design an Incentive Plan to Nudge Employees in the Right Direction

If you want your employees to perform better, you need to give them a reason to do so. That’s where incentives come in. By offering rewards for meeting or exceeding goals, you can encourage your team to put forth their best effort. But how do you design an incentive plan that will work? Here are a few tips to keep in mind when designing an incentive plan: 

  • Incorporate at least two different types of rewards (cash and non-cash) 
  • Offer larger prizes for reaching ambitious targets 
  • Use well-established company metrics as your criteria 
  • Offer prizes every quarter instead of waiting until the end of the year – Pay out large sums of money incrementally over time to increase interest 
  • Put together a committee with representation from across the organization before creating an incentive plan

Make it Easy for Employees to Track Progress Towards Goals

It can be difficult for employees to keep track of their progress toward goals if there is no system in place. By creating a performance management plan, you can make it easy for employees to track their progress and see how they are doing. This will help them stay on track and motivated to achieve their goals. The performance management plan should include specific objectives that the employee is working on. 

These objectives should align with the company’s strategic goals and the employee’s personal career goals. When determining objectives, managers should consider the needs of both themselves and their team members before deciding what an objective might be. After establishing the objectives, supervisors need to monitor employees’ progress against their goals regularly.

Ideally, reviews should happen every six months but this timeline may vary depending on the situation. Objectives could also change throughout the year as new priorities arise and evolve.  The final part of any performance management plan is annual reviews which take place during the first quarter of each year at most companies. Reviews usually involve a conversation between supervisor and employee about how well they achieved their goal targets over the past year and plans for next year.

Metrics & Dashboards

Employees need to know where they stand to improve or maintain their performance. Regular feedback loops are essential, which is why managers and employees need to use objective data (aka metrics) and visual dashboards when communicating progress.

This way, both parties can see if an employee is on track with his or her goals. It will also make it easy for employees to look back on how they were performing at specific times of their careers for reflection purposes. If you want your employees to succeed, you need to give them opportunities for training and education. Formal classroom training is good, but hands-on experience—whether through internships or apprenticeships—is even better. 

Training gives your team new skills and knowledge while improving existing ones. Training may cost money upfront, but there’s no better investment than in your team’s future capabilities. Investing in their development now ensures that they’ll continue to be valuable members of your organization long into the future. 

Provide Necessary Training and Resources to Employees

Employee development is essential in an employee performance management plan. Employees who underperform and those who do well need ongoing training to achieve optimal levels of competence. A range of training and development methods can be integrated into a performance management plan. Performance management software allows business leaders to see an overview of the organization’s composition.

Organizational charts and people databases reveal the distribution of skills and qualifications across teams and departments. Experienced employees often take on mentoring new employees because they can share knowledge and insight with someone who hasn’t been doing the job for long. Through one-on-one coaching, mentors can answer questions and get to know their protegees better while allowing the employer flexibility in managing other roles. Although this means experienced workers have less time for themselves, they understand what needs to be done to keep their company running smoothly.

The most difficult part of creating an effective performance management plan is making sure that it is based on solid data. When you base your performance management plan on numbers and real-time information, it becomes easier to create goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (aka SMART). 

After assessing each employee’s strengths and weaknesses, use those details to craft individualized plans for each team member. This step is crucial because employees react better when there is personal involvement in their career path. With clear expectations, insight into how their performance impacts other workers, and regular feedback from managers/leaders/supervisors, employees can get clarity around what needs improvement or what they should do if something goes wrong.

As long as all parties are communicating with one another, everyone has access to information at all times. This makes it easy for everyone involved to stay up-to-date on where things stand at any given moment and solve problems before they spiral out of control into something much bigger down the road.

Also Read: How to Implement SMART Employee Goal Setting in Your Company

Want to know how Engagedly can help you in developing a performance management plan? Book a live demo with us.

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Srikant Chellappa is the Co-Founder and CEO at Engagedly and is a passionate entrepreneur and people leader. He is an author, producer/director of 6 feature films, a music album with his band Manchester Underground, and is the host of The People Strategy Leaders Podcast . He is currently working on his next book, Ikigai at the Workplace, which is slated for release in the fall of 2023.

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performance objectives and measures for business plan

  • Government efficiency, transparency and accountability
  • Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK: corporate plan 2024 to 2025
  • Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK
  • Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office

Commonwealth Scholarship Commission business plan 2024 to 2025

Published 14 February 2024

performance objectives and measures for business plan

© Crown copyright 2024

This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: [email protected] .

Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.

This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/commonwealth-scholarship-commission-in-the-uk-corporate-plan-2024-to-2025/commonwealth-scholarship-commission-business-plan-2024-to-2025

1. Strategic context

One of the Commonwealth’s finest innovations and UK’s best soft power icons, the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission stands out from HM Government’s other scholarship platforms through its robust support for the UN Sustainable Development Goals - which align well with the FCDO ’s international development priorities. Over its 65-year history, this prestigious and much-respected global brand has supported over 31,000 individuals, of the 36,000 funded under the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan. By empowering talented individuals across the modern Commonwealth to learn, innovate and co-create knowledge and solutions for tackling global development challenges, the CSC helps to transform societies and build a safer, healthier, more prosperous world for all.

Supporting talented individuals to catalyse sustainable development across the modern Commonwealth will remain a critical focus for this plan period.

The CSC will continue to be highly collaborative. Our commitment to partnering with governments, universities and organisations with shared interests across the modern Commonwealth will be sustained and enhanced, with a view to extending life-transforming opportunities to talented individuals and enabling them to pursue sustainable development priorities pertinent to their respective countries.

Working together with governments, universities and other organisations to transform talent and societies will remain a key priority for the CSC during this plan period.

The CSC also actively supports candidates of outstanding academic ability from disadvantaged backgrounds with scholarships and fellowships to gain the skills and knowledge required to innovate for and lead sustainable development. This priority supports key aspects of HM Government’s strategy for international development , its Integrated Review Refresh 2023: Responding to a more contested and volatile world and its International women and girls strategy 2023 to 2030 .

Supporting candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds will continue to be a distinctive feature of CSC scholarships and fellowships during this plan period.

In addition to the CSC ’s distinctive contributions to the UK’s international development priorities, it plays an important role in attracting the best and brightest talent to UK universities in support of the UK’s International Education Strategy . The CSC promotes research excellence and innovation through international collaboration, enabling individuals and institutions across the Commonwealth to build sustainable partnerships. The CSC ’s programmes are a unique and innovative contribution to the ambitions of UK’s Research and Development Roadmap .

Attracting outstanding Commonwealth talent to contribute to the UK’s research and innovation base and international networks will continue to be a key priority.

As demonstrated by our cutting-edge evaluation programme, the CSC delivers impact as well as value for money for the UK taxpayer – attracting over £5 million in partnership funding annually. Innovations such as Shared Scholarships (jointly funded by UK universities), Distance Learning Scholarships, and Split-site Scholarships have facilitated this cost effectiveness. The latter 2 pathways entail scholars studying for Master’s and PhDs from their home country on distance learning or split-site basis respectively.

Value-enhancing innovations, including scholarship schemes enabling awardees to study from their home country, will continue to be prioritised during the plan period.

The CSC is proud to reaffirm its commitment to development, equity, access, and relevance. This plan sets out priorities and pathways to the CSC ’s continuing delivery of impact and enhanced value to the UK taxpayer, the UK government, and the modern Commonwealth.

2. Objectives and priorities for 2024 to 2025

Between 2022 to 2023 and 2024 to 2025, the CSC ’s objectives are:

To provide a world-class scholarship scheme that contributes to sustainable development across the Commonwealth

To ensure that our programmes promote equity and inclusion, reward merit, and deliver widespread access, especially to those from disadvantaged backgrounds

To support and encourage cutting-edge research, innovation, and knowledge exchange across the Commonwealth

The CSC ’s priorities during 2024 to 2025 will be:

Strategic priorities

To celebrate the global impact of Commonwealth Scholarships in the UK in the CSC ’s 65th Anniversary Year.

To ensure that all scholarships and fellowships are focused on 6 development- related themes and to integrate further the themes into CSC programming and impact reporting

To agree the balance of awards across programmes and countries based on the strategic priorities of the CSC and the UK government

To embed the cross-cutting priority issues of climate change and global health across the CSC ’s communications, engagement, alumni, and evaluation programming

To finalise the mechanism for reviewing the scholarship and fellowship programmes based on evidence of impact, to include an analysis of overhead costs

To deliver the CSC ’s Time Limited Programme focussed on a specific theme which responds to current political or environmental challenges facing the Commonwealth. The theme in the current financial year is ‘Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Job Creation’.

To embed and promote the unique nature of the CSC offer – namely its focus in all its programming on Commonwealth needs in relation to research and development

To sustain high level doctoral research opportunities and to scale up the number of Split-site Scholarships, recognising the unique opportunities this Programme provides in building collaboration and partnerships

To increase the number of Distance Learning Scholarships which provide vital opportunities for online study to Scholars otherwise unable to benefit from a mobility Scholarship.

Organisational priorities

To review operational efficiency across the Commission and the Secretariat

To grow and diversify income in order to support the demand for high-calibre applicants across programmes and to seek to maximise opportunities for candidates across the Commonwealth

3. Key performance indicators 2024 to 2025

The CSC has agreed 5 key performance indicators in 2024 to 2025 which will be used to measure success against our objectives and priorities:

  • The gender of candidates selected for each CSC programme will be at least 45% female and 45% male
  • Partnerships with UK universities will generate at least £4.5 million in matching contributions
  • Thirty 5 alumni profiles of CSC Women Leading Change and alumni impacting climate change will be published demonstrating the CSC ’s support of cutting-edge research, innovation, and knowledge exchange throughout the Commonwealth
  • Ten alumni profiles will be published demonstrating research which promotes equity and inclusion and supports those who have been left behind
  • Ten in-depth Evaluation Case Studies will be produced to demonstrate the CSC as an innovative world-class scholarship and fellowship scheme that delivers impact on sustainable development across the Commonwealth

4. Budget and award allocation 2024 to 2025

Table 1 below shows the full budget illustrated for 2024 to 2025 presented to the CSC Finance Committee in November 2023 based upon an indicative budget of £28.224 million from FCDO and £452,000 from DfE. The direct award costs in Table 1 are based on the award numbers in Table 2.

Table 2: Award allocation 2024 to 2025, at November 2023

*This number is to be confirmed as the programme design for the Entrepreneurship TLP develops

**The total allocation of awards budget on doctoral research (ODA and non-ODA) is 50%

5. Membership

Under the terms of the Act, the CSC comprises up to 14 members, in addition to the Chair.

Membership of the CSC during 2024 to 2025 is:

Members and the Chair are normally permitted to serve up to 2 three-year terms, depending on re-appointment by the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs. All appointments to the CSC are publicly advertised, in accordance with the regulations of OCPA.

6. Published information

As laid out in its publication scheme, [footnote 1] the CSC publishes the following information:

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/commonwealth-scholarship-commission-in-the-uk/about/publication-scheme  ↩

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  6. How to Measure Your Business Strategy's Success

    1. Revisit Goals and Objectives Every business strategy needs clearly defined performance goals. Without them, it can be difficult to identify harmful deviations, streamline the execution process, and recognize achievements. After establishing goals and objectives, plan to revisit them during and after implementing your strategy.

  7. What Are Objective Performance Measures? (With Examples)

    An objective performance measure is a method of evaluating how well an individual, team or organization accomplishes tasks or goals. It's also known as key performance indicators (KPIs). Departments within an organization often set specific KPIs for employees relevant to their activities.

  8. 30 KPIs To Measure Performance (& How To Choose & Track Them)

    January 4, 2024 Strategic Planning If you manage a team, there's a good chance you've heard of key performance indicators (KPIs). In its simplest form, a KPI is a type of performance measurement that helps you understand how your organization or department is performing. (Keep reading for a more in-depth discussion around "What is a KPI?")

  9. HOW TO DEVELOP KPIS / PERFORMANCE MEASURES

    Convincingly hit performance targets, and make measurement about transformation Measurement development is only the starting point for the improvement process. Once measures have been established, the Perform-Review-Adapt cycle gives the organization a chance to take improvement actions, assess impact, and adapt.

  10. The Top 5 Performance Objectives (And Why You Need To Know Them)

    Tips for using the 5 performance objectives in your business operations. ... or a manager who needs to understand your company's performance plan. Just remember that while a business can emphasise a wide array of performance objectives, the top 5 most agreed-upon goals are cost, quality, speed, dependability and flexibility. ...

  11. 6 Keys to Planning and Measuring the Performance of Your Business

    2. Embody the goals and objectives of the business. Make sure your future demand plan embodies a holistic view of the business, including achievement of strategic objectives, market share ...

  12. How to Measure Business Performance in 3 Steps

    Until you don't know what you want to measure, you can't measure what you have. Here are examples of business goals: Lead generation. Increasing sales. Better customer service. Increasing profit margin. Increasing production efficiency. Capturing bigger market share. From the goals, establish critical success factors.

  13. Goals and Objectives for Business Plan with Examples

    NOV.05, 2023 Goals and Objectives for Business Plan with Examples ( 2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Article General Business Plans Table of Content Every business needs a clear vision of what it wants to achieve and how it plans to get there.

  14. How To Effectively Measure Business Performance in 7 Steps

    Updated June 24, 2022 Effectively measuring business performance can help organizations improve their processes, evaluate the success of their strategies and alert them to potential risks. There are many methods businesses can use to evaluate their performance.

  15. Relationship Between Performance Objectives & Key ...

    A performance goal is an objective that helps you improve the way you reach outcome goals. For example, avoiding using overtime hours to produce your desired number of units or hitting your...

  16. Performance Management

    At its best, performance management centres on two-way discussion and regular, open and supportive feedback on progress towards objectives. It brings together many principles that enable good people management practice, including learning and development, performance measurement and organisational development.

  17. What Are Performance Objectives? 5 Top Objectives

    Objectives are the way that you reach your goals. For the most part, performance objectives are related to business or employee performance. These two areas of performance are crucial to your business running smoothly. The Key Elements of a Good Performance Objective. When you're writing performance objectives, there are some key elements ...

  18. Employee Performance Goals & Examples (Tips & Tricks)

    (1) However, according to recent Leapsome data, a third of employees are unhappy with the current performance goal-setting and measurement process at their companies. (2) Defining ambitious, aligned, and achievable employee performance goals is no simple task.

  19. 5 Methods to Effectively Measure Performance Management

    5 methods for measuring performance management. Companies might use a variety of systems to measure the effectiveness of a performance management strategy. Here are five methods to consider when attempting to collect data or create a structure for measuring performance management: 1. Numeric rating scales.

  20. Performance Objectives and Measurements

    Learning Objectives. Compare various performance objectives and measurements. A performance metric measures an organization's behavior, activities, and performance. It should support a range of stakeholder needs from customers to shareholders to employees. While traditionally many metrics are finance based, inwardly focusing on the ...

  21. How To Create A Performance Improvement Plan (PIP)

    Here's how to create a performance improvement plan (PIP) in five steps: 1. Determine If a PIP Is Appropriate. PIPs are appropriate for every situation. If, for instance, an employee is creating ...

  22. What Are Performance Objectives and Why Are They Important?

    Performance objectives, or performance goals, are short term or long-term goals managers or companies expect employees to achieve, generally within a certain amount of time. Management typically creates specific objectives for employees based on their position and responsibilities. For example, a sales representative may have an objective to ...

  23. How To Create A Performance Management Plan?

    To create an effective performance management plan, you first need to measure current performance. This will give you a baseline against which you can measure future progress. There are several ways to measure performance, but some common methods include surveys, interviews, focus groups, and data analysis. All these methods have pros and cons.

  24. Commonwealth Scholarship Commission business plan 2024 to 2025

    The CSC has agreed 5 key performance indicators in 2024 to 2025 which will be used to measure success against our objectives and priorities: The gender of candidates selected for each CSC ...