he importance of setting performance goals for an organization is evident in years of study in academia and decades of real-life examples in workplaces around the world. Goals motivate: They help improve employees’ performance and keep them focused. There are only positives involved … right?
ASU management professors Mike Baer and David Welsh beg to differ — at least with the notion that there are no downsides to setting employee performance goals. According to their newly published research, the negatives can be real and significant.
“We’re not trying to say that goals are bad, but they’re not the cure-all for what ails employees and companies,” says Baer. “Sticking your head in the sand and saying, ‘They’re all good,’ is not accurate. Managers don’t seem to recognize this, but should.”
In their new paper, “Hot Pursuit: The Affective Consequences of Organization-Set Versus Self-Set Goals for Emotional Exhaustion and Citizenship Behavior” (June 2019), Baer and Welsh challenge the convention that it doesn’t matter who sets an employee’s performance goals. Their research, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, found that the opposite is the case — and it’s all about emotions.
he importance of setting performance goals for an organization is evident in years of study in academia and decades of real-life examples in workplaces around the world. Goals motivate: They help improve employees’ performance and keep them focused. There are only positives involved … right?
ASU management professors Mike Baer and David Welsh beg to differ — at least with the notion that there are no downsides to setting employee performance goals. According to their newly published research, the negatives can be real and significant.
“We’re not trying to say that goals are bad, but they’re not the cure-all for what ails employees and companies,” says Baer. “Sticking your head in the sand and saying, ‘They’re all good,’ is not accurate. Managers don’t seem to recognize this, but should.”
In their new paper, “Hot Pursuit: The Affective Consequences of Organization-Set Versus Self-Set Goals for Emotional Exhaustion and Citizenship Behavior” (June 2019), Baer and Welsh challenge the convention that it doesn’t matter who sets an employee’s performance goals. Their research, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, found that the opposite is the case — and it’s all about emotions.
Getting skin in the game motivates extra-mile efforts
Baer and Welsh discovered that when employees aren’t involved in setting a particular goal, their anxiety will rise and their enthusiasm will wane — a powerful one-two punch that can lead to burnout.
And that’s just the beginning: The research also showed the downstream effect that employees will be more likely to shun so-called “citizenship behavior.” They’ll be less likely to go above and beyond by helping other co-workers, staying late, or reaching beyond their assigned duties for the betterment of the organization.
Getting skin in the game motivates extra-mile efforts
Baer and Welsh discovered that when employees aren’t involved in setting a particular goal, their anxiety will rise and their enthusiasm will wane — a powerful one-two punch that can lead to burnout.
And that’s just the beginning: The research also showed the downstream effect that employees will be more likely to shun so-called “citizenship behavior.” They’ll be less likely to go above and beyond by helping other co-workers, staying late, or reaching beyond their assigned duties for the betterment of the organization.
“You may be thinking, ‘Oh, I set a goal for an employee to build 10 widgets and they built 10 widgets,’ but you might miss some of the unintended consequences that come along with this,” says Welsh, who has more than a decade in the goal-setting field. “They might not be doing other things that you would value in an employee — but they’re not part of the goal, so you missed them.”
Taking it to the field and lab
The findings were based on a two-year study that began with the researchers and then-ASU doctoral student Hudson Sessions spending several months tracking officers and supervisors in two urban police departments in the southwestern United States. The officers were tasked with organization- and self-set goals, and later were surveyed about their enthusiasm, anxiety, and burnout. Supervisors, meanwhile, were asked about the “citizenship behavior” exhibited by the officers. One hundred fifty-three officers and 68 supervisors completed the study.
Next, the researchers took their work back to campus in an environment where they could more closely control the variables: They brought 132 undergraduate students into the laboratory and watched and recorded their responses to being given a self-set or organization-set goal. Researchers measured the students’ performance, with the “citizenship” component tested by asking the students to voluntarily spend time assisting the researchers after the completion of the study.
Making sure employees succeed
Baer and Welsh, who both came to ASU in 2015, say the results were consistent across both studies and prove useful in providing lessons for both managers and employees.
“As managers set difficult goals for their employees, the first thing they can do is try to involve employees more and help them feel part of the process,” Baer says. “There’s something psychological about setting the goal yourself that makes you see it as more achievable.” Providing more support or additional resources for employees also can improve the situation, the researchers say. They also noted that managers might reduce the anxiety and burnout that stem from difficult goals by conveying that they understand failure is part of the process.
Welsh says it’s key that managers take a big-picture look at goals, performance, and the potential fallout. “Think about what you can do as a manager or as an organization to use goals effectively to get more performance out of your employees, as well as on other things you care about.” — David Schwartz