# 8 Employee Goals Examples for Your Performance Review Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/employee-goals-examples-performance-review/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/employee-goals-examples-performance-review.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving working with your manager at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Eight employee goals examples for a performance review - output, quality, development and behavioral - plus how to pick ones your manager will agree to. ## Key facts - Title: 8 Employee Goals Examples for Your Performance Review - Category: Working with Your Manager - Primary skill: Working with Your Manager - Related skills: Building Self-Awareness, Setting Goals - Primary keyword: employee goals examples performance review - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/employee-goals-examples-performance-review/ ## What this page covers - Eight employee goals examples for a performance review - output, quality, development and behavioral - plus how to pick ones your manager will agree to. - Practical guidance for employee goals examples performance review - How this topic connects to Working with Your Manager ## Detailed explanation A good performance review goal names one specific thing you will do, a way to measure it, and a date — for example, cutting errors in your work by 25% this quarter by adding a review checklist. The strongest employee goals examples for a performance review are the ones tied to results you personally control. If you have been asked to bring goals to your review and the blank form is staring back at you, that is the ordinary starting point; almost nobody is taught what a defensible goal looks like. The eight examples below cover the main families you can borrow from — and one filter decides whether yours survive the conversation with your manager. ## What a performance review goal has to contain Nearly every guide on this topic runs the same framework: [SMART](/knowledge/setting-goals/smart-criteria-for-goals/) — specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. It tells you how to phrase a goal, not which one to pick. The rule that does more work comes from TechTarget's guide to performance review goals: the outcome has to be under your control, and external factors should not decide whether you hit it. If your goal depends on a budget approval, another team's roadmap, or a client renewing, you have written a wish — and at review time you will be arguing about things nobody can fairly attribute to you. The second thing to know is that these goals are not a form you submit into the void. Performance-management guidance from Trakstar and ClearCompany describes [goal-setting](/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/performance-goals/) as something the manager and the employee do together, with goals revisited at mid-year and again at the annual review — quarterly at organizations that take it seriously. That changes what you are doing here. You are not guessing what your manager wants; you are opening a conversation about what the coming year gets judged on. ## 8 employee goals examples for a performance review These are the families that recur across the example lists, with the kind of wording that survives a [review conversation](/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/performance-reviews/). Pick two or three, not eight: most managers expect a short list, and every extra goal dilutes the rest. Adapt the numbers to your actual job; a target invented to sound impressive is the fastest way to spend a year missing it. ### 1. An output or revenue goal The most common family in the example lists: a number attached to what your role produces. Sales versions run like "increase monthly revenue by 15% within the next quarter" or "generate 1,000 qualified leads through social campaigns this quarter." Non-sales versions do the same with throughput — "increase completed tasks by 15% over the next quarter," or "reduce project completion time by 10% within six months." What makes these work is naming the mechanism alongside the number. A percentage with no method behind it reads as optimism. ### 2. A quality and accuracy goal Output goals reward volume; quality goals keep volume from becoming a problem. Typical wording: "reduce errors in work output by 25% over the next quarter by implementing a review checklist," or "improve data entry accuracy to 99.5% within the next year." A close relative is the process-improvement goal — "streamline workflow processes to reduce repetitive task time by 30%" — which aims at how the work gets done rather than at your own error rate. These land well because the baseline is usually already tracked, so nobody argues later about whether you hit it. ### 3. A time management and deadline goal Common phrasing: "improve time management by completing 95% of assigned tasks by their deadlines," or "boost productivity by 20% within six months through better workflow organization, priority setting, and eliminating time-wasting activities." This family is worth considering if deadlines have come up in your feedback before, because it turns a vague complaint into something countable. The risk is setting it at 100%: a goal you can only meet by never being interrupted is one you will fail on a technicality. ### 4. A skill-building or certification goal Development goals are the ones most likely to be genuinely yours rather than handed down. Standard versions: "complete two online courses related to my job function by the end of the year," or "complete an advanced certification relevant to my role within six months." Indeed's guidance on writing your own review goals is to build these from the [weaknesses you identified](/knowledge/setting-goals/strengths-and-weaknesses/) in your self-assessment, which is what stops a development goal from looking like a course you wanted to take anyway. Say what the skill will let you do differently, not just what you will finish. ### 5. A communication goal These read softer, so they need harder edges. The better examples build in something observable: "improve active listening by summarizing and asking clarifying questions in team meetings," or "improve written communication by completing a business writing course and applying it to all client-facing documents." Another version targets frequency instead of quality — "set up biweekly check-ins with stakeholders to improve interdepartmental communication." If you choose one here, agree in advance with your manager on what evidence would count, or you will both be assessing it from memory a year later. ### 6. A cross-team collaboration goal These signal reach beyond your own desk, which is why they show up on the goals of people being considered for more responsibility. Examples: "lead at least one cross-departmental project in the next six months," "partner with colleagues from three different departments on joint projects," or "host two cross-functional workshops before the end of Q3." The useful thing here is that it stays largely within your control even early in a career: you can volunteer for a project, but you cannot decide the company's revenue. ### 7. A customer or stakeholder goal If your work touches customers, these tie your goals to something the business already measures: "improve customer satisfaction scores by 20% in the next quarter," or "reduce support response time to 24 hours by the end of the year." The catch is the control rule again — satisfaction scores move for reasons that have nothing to do with you. Scope it to the part you genuinely own — your own response time or resolution rate — rather than a team-wide score. ### 8. A mentoring or knowledge-sharing goal This family is most often skipped early in a career, on the assumption that it belongs to senior staff. Examples: "mentor two junior colleagues over the next six months," or the manager-level version, "lower team turnover by 10% by the end of Q2 through feedback sessions and recognition." Without a title, the achievable version is documenting something only you currently know, or owning the onboarding of the next new person. It is also the goal that builds a reputation across a team rather than only a record with one manager. ## How to choose which of these to put on the form Indeed's advice for writing your own goals is to start from your job description and the feedback you have already received during the year, rather than from a list. A list gives you the shape; your own record supplies the content. The same guidance warns against general statements: use specifics that apply only to your company, because a goal that would fit any employee anywhere tells your manager nothing about you. A reasonable mix is one goal aimed at output, one at a habit that has actually come up in your feedback, and one development goal. Set them challenging but achievable — a goal you are certain of wastes a year, and one you privately know is impossible costs you credibility when you miss it. The development goal is usually the hardest, because it asks you to name a gap out loud. If you are unsure which gap is worth twelve months of your attention, it helps to get a [read on your work skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) first, so the one you commit to is real rather than simply the one that came to mind. ## The skills that decide how your goals land Two people can submit the same goal and get very different years out of it. What separates them happens around the form rather than on it — in how the goals got agreed, how honestly the gaps were named, and whether the goals pointed anywhere the person actually wanted to go. **Working with Your Manager** is what turns a submitted goal into an agreed one. Goal-setting is where you and your manager align expectations, and the people who do it well come prepared, argue for goals that are demanding but reachable, get clear on how much decision-making authority the goal actually carries, and keep their results visible through the year instead of reconstructing them the week before the review. They also stay future-focused, treating the review as the place next year gets set rather than where last year gets relitigated. **Building Self-Awareness** is what makes a development goal worth having. Naming a gap takes an honest read of your own strengths and of the feedback you have already been given — including the developmental comments that arrived in passing during the year, not only the evaluative verdict in the review itself. The habit that helps is to take feedback in, add your own perspective, then reflect, rather than defending on the spot. It is also what keeps you from committing a year to a weakness nobody but you was worried about. **Setting Goals** operates a level above the form. It asks what the goals are for: whether the year you are about to commit to sits in work you are genuinely good at, whether the horizon is realistic rather than a rigid multi-year plan, and whether any of it fits what you actually want from a job. Choosing goals that build on your strengths, instead of spending twelve months patching a weakness, tends to produce both better reviews and work you would choose again. None of these is a personality you either have or do not — each is a habit, built the way any other work habit is. They also belong to a wider set of twelve work skills that keep mattering long after this particular review is filed, and a quick assessment will show you [where each of yours stands](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) — including the ones that will count in the next role, not just this year's goals. ## What this means for you Some of this may already match how you work: keeping a note of what you have delivered, wanting feedback straight rather than softened, thinking about the review before it appears on the calendar. If so, reading about goals before you have to write them already puts you ahead of the colleagues who fill in the form the night before. None of these skills is fixed; they build on top of how you already work, and you do not have to become a different person to improve at them. What changes is the weight they carry. The more responsibility you take on, the less your goals look like an HR exercise and the more they decide your raises, your projects, and what you get trusted with. So the useful move now is a clear read on where you are starting from. That read is what the Work Skills Test gives you. It is a **free**, roughly seven-minute self-assessment of the twelve work skills this article keeps circling — the manager relationship, the honest look at your own strengths, the sense of what you want your work to add up to — and it tells you which are already working for you and which would repay attention over the coming year. That is a better starting point for a goals conversation than any list of examples: instead of borrowing a goal that sounds right, you would choose one against an honest picture of your own skills. The only thing left is to see where yours stand. ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Eight employee goals examples for a performance review - output, quality, development and behavioral - plus how to pick ones your manager will agree to. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Working with Your Manager. It also relates to Building Self-Awareness, Setting Goals. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/setting-goals.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/employee-goals-examples-performance-review/ Preferred summary: "Eight employee goals examples for a performance review - output, quality, development and behavioral - plus how to pick ones your manager will agree to." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.