Organizational Wellness

Master Your HR Goals With the SMART Goal Strategy

Last Updated Nov 11, 2024

Time to read: 10 minutes

Your HR department is the driving force behind your company’s future success. The goals you set aren’t just ticking off boxes—they’re charting the course for where your organization is headed. Strategic HR goals are the game-changers that align your team’s efforts with the company’s mission and deliver real, lasting impact.

But crafting those goals takes more than guesswork. You need a strategy that’s bold, actionable, and measurable — especially if you want to be part of the elite 8% of people that actually reaches their goals.

Ready to set HR goals that will elevate your team and power your company’s future? Let’s break down how to make it happen.

Strategic HR Goals, Explained

There are two main categories of HR goals: operational and strategic.

Operational HR focuses on what employees need to excel here, now, today. Strategic HR is more future-oriented, setting the course for the organization long-term.

For example, an operational question might be, “What does the sales team need to improve conversions this week?” A strategic question looks more like, “How can we close the ground to our top competitor within the next five years?”

Strategic goals usually must support the organization’s broader mission, vision, and values. They’re long-term in nature, so must align with the long-term trajectory of the company.

Setting strategic HR goals can turn your department into an engine powering the organization where it wants to go. For example, improving employee retention and engagement can boost efficiency, which can help to close ground on a tough competitor.

The key challenge will be setting long-term strategic goals you can achieve. This brings us back to the SMART framework and using it to improve efficiency in the workplace.

What are SMART Goals? How Do You Set Them?

SMART is an acronym where each letter represents a specific trait of the goal you’re trying to set: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Each step helps you refine your goal, improving your odds of achieving it.

Specific

Improving employee retention is a great goal, but this alone is too vague to be helpful. You also need to answer questions like, “What steps can we take to improve retention?” and “Who will be responsible for those actions?”

For example, don’t just say you want to improve employee retention. Say you’ll improve it by leveraging your in-house creative team to share more guides and resources that can make employees’ jobs easier. This type of specificity is the first step toward setting a SMART HR goal.

Measurable

You also need to be able to track your progress toward a goal over time. This requires a measurable benchmark.

For example, you don’t just want to increase app downloads, you want to get 1,000 more downloads than what you have today. Putting this metric on it gives you a clear destination to work toward.

You’ll also know when you need to make changes to stay on pace. For instance, if you want 1,000 more downloads and only have 100 more at the end of the quarter, that could be a sign you need a new strategy.

Achievable

It’s tempting to set ambitious goals upfront, but nobody wants to set their team up for failure. You can always choose a follow-up goal after achieving your first. This can be better for employee morale because it gives your team a realistic opportunity to succeed.

For example, you might want 10,000 new customers using your app. But if that’s going to take five years to achieve, it’s often smarter to set smaller incremental goals on the path to that larger milestone, such as for 1,000 new customers first.

Relevant

Next, make sure the goals you choose are relevant to your company’s broader objectives. For example, improving employee retention can lower costs and boost productivity to increase bottom-line revenue. That makes it a relevant goal for an organization that’s trying to improve its profits.

Compare that to a goal like hiring more graduates from your local university. This could have positive side-effects like improving external perceptions of your business. However, it may not align with your company’s overarching objectives.

Time-bound

Finally, include deadlines with your goals. This makes it easier to identify when adjustments are necessary.

For instance, you might want to decrease employee complaints by 20% over the next 12 months. If you get six months into that process and only have a 5% reduction, it’d be a sign you need to change something to meet your original timeline.

When your goals aren’t bound by time, it’s easy to view any progress as positive — even if you’re far behind where you could be with a strategy shift.

Examples of SMART Goals in Key Strategic Areas of HR

The SMART framework helps professionals make more efficient progress toward their goals. Now that you know how to use it, you can apply SMART to the following three key areas of HR strategy.

Talent Acquisition and Retention

One of HR’s most important jobs is hiring and retaining talent. Attracting high-level employees makes businesses more efficient and creative — boosting profitability. Retaining talent saves companies money on recruiting and training while helping with knowledge retention and morale.

You can use SMART goals to drive improvement in each area.

For example, one aspect of attracting top-flight talent is curating an effective company brand. Setting SMART goals around public perception could help you attract more applicants. You might also need to revamp your hiring process to make sure you’re consistently identifying applicants who will be effective workers.

To boost retention, set SMART goals around onboarding, career development, or compensation and benefits. This could look like soliciting and responding to more employee feedback, revamping your training program, or curating a more inclusive company culture.

Here are some examples of SMART goals in employee acquisition and retention to get you started:

Improve employee satisfaction scores by 20% within the next 12 months
Reduce your cost-per-hire by 15% with an improved onboarding experience or training program
Hire new employees who are 10% more productive with a more robust candidate screening process
Get employee turnover under 5% within the next two years by offering more personalized benefits packages

Employee Engagement and Development

Workplaces with engaged employees are 18% more productive and 23% more profitable, according to recent research from Gallup. That’s why you can also consider setting SMART goals in the areas of worker engagement and development.

There’s a three-step checklist for employee engagement, according to The Harvard Business Review:

Connect what employees do to what they care about.
Make the work itself less stressful and more enjoyable.
Create time affluence (e.g., extra time off or benefits to help with house-cleaning, meals, and other time-intensive personal tasks).

Your SMART goals in this area can connect to one of those three points. For example, you could create employee recognition programs that offer time-based rewards, such as an extra day off for the employee of the month.

You could also focus on tracking performance more closely and offering personalized training based on employees’ strengths and weaknesses. This can make it easier for employees to do their jobs, which should reduce stress and improve enjoyment.

Plus, developing internal employees shows that you’re investing in their careers. This keeps your department’s initiatives tied to what employees actually care about, while still helping the business achieve its goals.

Here are some examples of SMART goals in employee engagement and development:

Make 75% of leadership hires through internal promotions within the next two years.
Reach a 100% employee survey response rate within the next six months.
Create personalized development plans for 100% of employees within the next year.
Develop a mid-year review program for recognizing and rewarding top performers.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

DEI goals are becoming increasingly important to HR departments, and for good reason. Companies with diverse workforces are more vibrant and innovative, and those in the top quartile of ethnic and gender diversity outperform those in the bottom quartile by 39% and 27%, respectively, according to McKinsey.

That means setting SMART DEI goals helps companies achieve key business objectives. But how do you do it?

You can start by setting goals for diversity hiring. This could mean ensuring a certain percentage of each team’s workforce comes from underrepresented groups. You may also need to share your job listings in more diverse locations to attract a more diverse group of applicants.

Another element of DEI is making sure that employees from underrepresented and marginalized groups feel comfortable at work. You can get there by setting goals around unconscious bias training and fostering an inclusive workplace culture.

It can even be helpful to solicit feedback from existing employees belonging to these groups. This can help you understand your company’s DEI performance today so you can find out where it needs to go tomorrow.

You can also use employee surveys to assess the efficacy of your initiatives. For example, comparing DEI scores today and after you institute SMART goals will tell you if the actions you’ve taken have achieved the progress you want.

Here are some examples of worthwhile SMART HR goals in this area:

Increase diversity hiring by 20% over the next two years.
Reach 30% higher DEI employee survey scores in the next 12 months.
Share at least two diversity resources with employees every month for the next year to improve group dynamics.
Run quarterly DEI meetings for employees to voice their feedback for the next five years.

How to Show How Your HR Goals Contribute to the Company's Bottom Line

It’s one thing to set HR goals and another to get them approved by leadership. To do so, you often need to show that any money or time spent on your goals will impact the company’s bottom line. You can follow this three-step process to do it.

Connect Your Goal to a Business Objective

Start by zooming out and considering your company’s high-level business objectives. These often include increasing profitability, boosting revenue, and decreasing costs.

You want to connect your HR objectives to one of your company’s stated goals. The easiest way to do this is with statistics.

For example, companies in the top quartile of gender diversity financially outperform those in the bottom quartile by 27%. You could point to this when telling leadership that you want to spend company resources on revamping your DEI strategy.

Show Objective Improvement

Using the SMART framework can help you get buy-in from company leadership. It does so by giving you a clear way to show if the initiatives you start have the intended impact.

For instance, you might say you want to reduce training costs by 15% over the next year with a better onboarding system. Leaders will easily be able to track your progress toward that 15% reduction goal, which can make them more likely to say yes to your strategy.

Make Adjustments as Necessary

Finally, the strategies you use to achieve your SMART goals won’t always work immediately. You’ll sometimes have to make adjustments to get the results you want.

It’s important to show leaders that you recognize this and are comfortable updating tactics when key HR KPIs show it’s necessary. You’ll get more leeway if leadership can count on you to adapt and overcome on a consistent basis — especially if you always remain within your operating budget.

Supercharge Your Strategic HR Goals with Wellbeing Programs

Strategic HR goals like boosting retention, engagement, and productivity are tough, but they don’t have to be. With the right approach, you can drive long-term success while supporting your employees today.

Wellbeing programs are the perfect solution to supercharge your efforts. These programs can slash turnover by more than 40% and spark a boost in productivity — all while creating a culture of thriving, engaged employees.

By investing in your team's wellbeing, you’re investing in the future success of your organization. Speak with a Wellhub Wellbeing Specialist to power up your HR strategy and achieve your most ambitious goals!

Company healthcare costs drop by up to 35% with Wellhub! (* Based on proprietary research comparing healthcare costs of active Wellhub users to non-users.) Talk to a Wellbeing Specialist to see how we can help reduce your healthcare spending!