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Personal business objectives are aims that individuals need to accomplish in order to: achieve their team’s goals as defined in their department business plan; make the most of their skills and abilities; and gain experience in line with career aspirations.
You will normally help your team to set their personal business objectives during the ‘determining performance expectations’ part of the performance management cycle, as proposed by Torrington and Hall.[1] As shown in the diagram below, this part of the cycle involves looking forward, and it is here that you will discuss and agree, with individual team members, the direction of their whole job, key responsibilities and objectives, and how their performance will be measured.
Source: D. Torrington and L. Hall, Personnel Management: Human Resource Management in Action, 1995. The Performance Management Cycle
Prentice Hall 1995.
The table below demonstrates the influences that help determine personal business objectives, and how the objectives relate to personal, departmental and organizational development:
The arrows indicate directions of influence.
This diagram illustrates that objective setting often cascades throughout organizations so personal business objectives are aligned to the department business objectives. For instance, when developing the organization development plan, direction would be taken from both organizational objectives and patterns emerging from departmental and personal development plans.
