Goal Management overview

Administrators can define organizational goals for organization units and cascade organizational goals from one parent organization unit to all or some of its subordinate organization units. They can also align organizational goals with other organizational goals.

Goal leaders can define organizational goals that use the goal categories that they have been assigned to by the administrator. They can define organizational goals for any organization unit. They can also cascade the organizational goals that they have access to from one parent organization unit to all or some of its subordinate organization units and align the organizational goals that they have access to with other organizational goals.

Managers can create organizational goals for their organization units and align them with organizational goals in higher level organization units.

Administrators, goal leaders, and managers can flag the organizational goals they create as templates that can be copied by employees when creating their own goals. The template can control what employees can change when they copy the organizational goal.

Employees can define individual goals for themselves and align them with organizational goals. They can create the resource goal from scratch, copy an organizational goal that is defined as a template, or copy another resource goal that is defined as public. They can make their own goals public so that other employees can copy them.

Note: Employees have a New Goal Wizard action that guides them through the steps of requesting a goal, along with the traditional Request New Goal action.

Administrators and goal leaders can also create goals for individual employees. Goal leaders can only create goals for a goal category that they have been assigned to.

Administrators can mass create goals for a group of employees defined in an eligibility group, or for up to ten employees.

Goal leaders can mass create goals with the goal categories they have been assigned to for a group of employees defined in an eligibility group, or for up to ten employees.

Managers can mass create goals for their direct reports, dotted line reports, or both.

Configurable features enable organizations to enable action plans, external results, and reviews for their goals.

The goal type, which is required on a resource goal, determines whether action plans and external results are used. In addition, goal types determine whether a goal is rated, whether it can be used as a bonus objective, and whether all goals created with this goal type for a resource must be approved by year. Multiple goal types can be used for bonus objectives.

If a goal type has the Use Action Plan, Use External Results, or Approve Goals By Year options selected, any goal that uses the goal type requires the use of a goal year. The goal year determines:

A schedule for the action plans. For example, Monthly or Quarterly.
A start and end date for the goals that use it.
For goals that are approved by year, a determination of whether the employees or the managers initiate the goals.
Note: This is a scenario where you cannot have both initiating goals, since these goals must be submitted and approved together.
For goal types that have Use Action Plans enabled, the ability to make the action plans required for that goal type and year, and the ability to require action plans for that goal and year to be approved.
Note:
If an action plan is not required, but is enabled, the employee can still create an action plan.
For goal categories associated with the year, the ability to set weight ranges and limits for resource goals created for that goal category and year.

Goals that are approved by year must be submitted together (Submit All Goals action); approved or rejected together by the manager (Approve All Goals/Reject All Goals); or accepted and returned together by the employee (Accept All Goals/Return All Goals). When they are in Approved status (active), they can be edited only if the administrator uses the Revert All Goals action to return the goals to Draft status. They must then be resubmitted and re-approved together.

External results, if used, can be specified on an organizational goal and cascaded to either directly aligned resource goals or all aligned resource goals. Resource goals are aligned to the organizational goal and resource goals are aligned to the descendant organization units. External goals can also be specified directly on a resource goal.

Rating scales can be associated with an eligibility group. Multiple rating scales can be defined to be used for employee goals.

Administrators can set up automatic email notifications for employees and managers when either an employee or a manager performs an action on a goal.

Employees can be notified when their manager mass creates a goal, submits a goal to them for acceptance, rejects a goal they have submitted, approves a goal they have submitted, updates a goal, approves their action plans or reject their action plans.
Managers can be notified when a direct report submits a goal for their approval, accepts a goal the manager has submitted, returns a goal the manager has submitted, updates a goal, or submits an action plan for approval, or updates an action plan.

Administrators can define generic goal instructions that are displayed when employees access Employee > Manage Goals.

Organizations that use Compensation can define goal types to be used for bonus objectives. Bonus objectives are resource goals used in the context of compensation programs to assess a variable bonus payout based on goal attainment.

Note: Bonus objectives can be defined in Goal Management and attached to a bonus objective period in Compensation, or they can be defined directly in Compensation.

Bonus objectives that are defined in Compensation must use a goal type that only has the Use For Bonus Objectives option selected. The goal type cannot have the Use Action Plan, Use External Results, or Approve Goals By Year options selected.
Bonus objectives that are defined in Goal Management can use a goal type that have all or any of these options selected in addition to the Use For Bonus Objectives option.
For more information on bonus objectives, see the Compensation User Guide.