Objectives and Appraisals are a process that many will dread; your work objectives will be set for the next year. However, you should not be dreading your objectives; you should plan them carefully and look at them for an opportunity to improve yourself in the year.

Appraisals – Performance Management

Within your objectives, you will be writing what is expected from you in your job but there should also be an option to include all that you need in training and how you would like to develop yourself. These two points are key opportunities for you to steer your career in the direction that you want. The outlining of your jobs expectation is also an opportunity because it is the basis for your end of year appraisal, which determines your promotion potentially. Therefore, you should spend time ensuring that these are written in a way that you can benefit from them.
When you are outlining your career you should ensure that there are plenty of caveats. It is often the case that you cannot deliver a project or work as well as you should due to items arising that change the focus of your job and other things out of the norm. This means that you should protect yourself from these eventualities and avoid being hit by any unforeseen issues in your appraisal.

Objectives – Performance Management

Also, be sure not to include every element of what you feel you can do in your objectives, this will mean that you hold back some items for your end of year review.  You can use this success to demonstrate that you outperformed the expectations and did more than your objectives. This is ideal for gaining promotions, more responsibility, pay raises and bonuses.

You can also add an element of what you expect to get your career going in the long term direction you require. Here you can add the type of exposure you would like to gain. Therefore, you could potentially get a more interesting role and improve aspects that you would like to change. However, make sure you get the training that you would like to take in the next year.
Do not just say I want to train in Minute taking, but do a little research of the best training out there for what interests you. You may find that there are more interesting training courses than you expected. Then make sure that you get them added to your objectives so that your manager and company feel that they more need to put you through this training. This is an opportunity for you to take control of your future and career, so act now.
Find out more about our training programmes at on our training courses page