The goal setting process can help the organization a lot, when the organization uses goal setting process properly. Many companies have difficulties to select the strategic activities and to set the goals to employees with the strategic vision in the mind of managers.
The goal setting process should be managed centrally to produce good results. When the managers are navigated freely and just the recommendations are given to the management, what goals should be given to employees, the organization cannot guarantee the common approach across different units in the organization.
The goals set to employees have to aligned with the overall business strategy and the best and efficient way to set the goals strategically aligned is to use top down way of setting the goals to the individual employees.
Most organizations use the top down methodology for setting the goals, but there is usually lack of effort at the top levels of the organization and the next management level sets the goals for itself and the goals are comfortable.
The recession can change the focus of the top management on the overall goal setting process. During the strong economic growth, the goal setting process is not important as the market growth makes the life of the company much easier. In the recession, the top management has to manage the whole goal setting process to make sure, the employees and management follow the strategic vision of the company.
The top management has to play an active role in the goal setting process and they have set the goals setting process as their priority for the beginning of the year. The top management has to discuss the goals of the company, they have to agree on the split of the goals among the members of the top management and the individual top managers have set goals properly for their managers. Additionally, they have to follow the setting process and they have to discuss the progress of the organization every week.
The HRM Function has to develop a new monitoring tool for the goal setting process as the top management can monitor the whole process and the good review of the goals can be done. It is not possible to check the goals per the individual employee and the monitoring tool should provide the possibility to see the goals per group of employees and to see the totals.
The HRM Function is not prepared for the monitoring of the goal setting process and monitoring the evaluation of the goals. The top management had no need to ask for the results and both top management and HRM Function have to co-operate on developing new goals setting process.
