by B Borcyk

Created on: December 12, 2010

In many businesses, employees require objectives in order to be able to measure efficiency. Objectives are the same thing as goals, and they can be immediate, short-term, or long-term. Different employees may use them in different ways, and some may even be required for submission to managers in order to be integrated into evaluations.

Objectives are fairly easy to set, but they require some time management skills. Depending on the employee’s schedule, more or less may be needed to fill up the day. The benefit is that setting many of them can make a boring workday’s time seem to pass quicker.

The following steps will illustrate how objectives could be set. Each step will have an example, using the position of an administrative assistant.

Step 1 – Set aside half an hour or so before the end of the work day for the next business day. This may seem like a waste of time, but it is well worth it to take some time at the end of one’s day to make the next day more organized. Anyone who’s ever been an administrative assistant or part of large office personnel understands.

Step 2 – Know the deadlines. Knowledge of specific deadlines is critical. If the administrative assistant is required to visit the printer’s for a full-color advertisement due at the end of the week, and she was assigned a Power Point presentation to turn in by noon the next day, she will most likely ensure the presentation is ready to go before heading to the print shop.

Step 3 – Prioritize. Knowing deadlines makes it easier to prioritize. However, some tasks do not have a deadline, yet they seem to be always pushed off to the next day, every day. Immediate deadlines take priority over tasks without deadlines.

Step 4 – Establish immediate goals. Immediate goals are higher priority goals. They require completion as soon as possible. Anything with an immediate deadline is an excellent immediate goal, and it feels great when they are accomplished. If there is no immediate deadline, short-term goals are next.

Step 5 – Establish short-term goals. Short-term and immediate goals seem similar, and they are. The difference is that immediate goals are pressing issues. Short-term goals are objectives that can be completed soon. Everyone’s idea of short-term and long-term are somewhat different, so for the sake of this article, short-term is within a week, and long-term is something that can be accomplished anytime but still needs to be accomplished. An example of a short-term objective could be to file all of the paperwork sitting in the junk drawer. Another example could be to send out the weekly newsletter to the other employees.

Step 6 – Establish long-term objectives. These objectives could be difficult to achieve, or they could be easy to achieve yet are not due for another six months or so. For an administrative assistant, a difficult-to-achieve long-term objective could be to begin coordinating the summer office party. If it’s still early in the year, and the party is normally in August, a long-term goal could be to get the committee together. The deadline for the committee could be to have it set by June. (An immediate objective dealing with the same issue could be to set a date and secure a location. After all, locations are usually booked in the summer months very quickly).

Step 7 – Get to work! Once objectives are set, the next day should be able checking them off. Efficient employees can manage their time and/or use multitasking skills to complete one or two objectives at a time. It is important to try and utilize the steps mentioned, and some employees may find that they can fine-tune this guide to make it work for different positions.  

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