What are Totara goals?

Goals are an important tool for organisations to drive alignment and for managers to help their employees plan and assess their performance.

You can choose between two different goal-setting tools in Totara: Totara goals and legacy goals. If you're not sure which system you're using, you can check by going to Quick-access menu > Configure features > Perform settings and checking what is selected for the Enable goals setting. We strongly recommend using Totara goals as they offer a range of benefits, which are outlined below.

Why use Totara goals?

Totara goals can be embedded directly within the performance management workflow, allowing users and their managers to collaboratively add, review and update goals as part of their performance conversations. There is a dedicated page for Totara goals, and a user’s Totara goals will appear on their Performance overview page, allowing them to monitor progress against their goals and ensure that goals aren't forgotten. Totara goals include a numerical target, and the user’s progress can be represented with a progress bar.

Totara goals drive alignment in your organisation in several key ways:

• Enabling planning as part of the performance review cycle, allowing employees and their managers to outline their intentions and specific, achievable targets. Totara goals can be created, reviewed and updated within the flow of performance activities, meaning they are fully integrated into your performance management processes.
• Providing a shared view and understanding between employees and their managers, ensuring that teams are on the same page about how to achieve their goals. The Goals page provides a single interface for both parties to monitor the user's goals.
• Allowing managers to effectively monitor their team members' progress towards their goals, and recognise when they might need extra support or more ambitious targets. Using Totara goals' progress bars and Target fields, managers can easily verify that their team members are on track to achieve their goals.

Totara goals also make it simple to plan and measure users' goals in the following ways:

• Users can provide a target value (e.g. 30 new leads generated), then update their progress towards that target over time
• Users can outline a time period in which they will need to complete each goal, allowing them to set goals in line with their performance review cycle
• Users and their managers can report on progress towards goals and the completion of goals

Totara goals in context

Totara goals aren't just for supporting professional development. When embedded into organisational processes, Totara goals can support strategic initiatives for your organisation, improving knowledge and skills around a specific topic, and improving the associated outcomes.

When introducing a goal-driven initiative, there are three layers to consider:

• Tactical: Employees and their managers having access to content and tools
• Operational: Your organisation's processes and ways of working
• Strategic: The impact and key performance indicators (KPIs) of the initiative

Firstly, at the tactical level, you need to give users the tools they need to set and achieve goals. In Totara, this can mean configuring performance activities that allow users to set and review goals, and a catalogue of relevant courses that can be assigned to their goals.

At the operational level, you want to set up your processes to encourage employees to set and actively monitor goals in alignment with the broader initiative. For example, this could mean setting up a schedule of quarterly performance reviews, in which users create a range of Totara goals with tasks and linked courses. This ensures that employees are actively thinking about how their personal development relates to the initiative and organisational goals, and looking at the resources available to help them to achieve their goals.

Finally, at the strategic level, the L&D team can set up a variety of reports to measure the initiative's success. For example, you could create a report to see how many times each course has been linked to a goal, which would highlight which training is particularly engaging or useful. Alternatively, you could configure a report to see the progress of each goal and how many courses are assigned, which may reveal whether your learning resources make it more likely that users will complete their goals. See Reporting on Totara goals for more information.

Watch this video to see an example of how a business could use Totara goals to support a wider initiative:

Viewing Totara goals

Users can view their Totara goals via the Goals page (Develop > Goals) or their Performance overview page (Develop > Performance overview).

Managing and monitoring the goals of direct reports is a crucial part of a manager's role. There are multiple ways for managers to view their direct reports' goals:

• Go to Develop > Team, then click Goals under a team member's name
• Go to Develop > Team, then click Performance overview under a team member's name
• Managers can also review and create goals within a performance activity

See Create, edit and delete Totara goals for information on managing goals via these interfaces.

Totara goal types

By default, there is a single goal type available for Totara goals. Developers can add additional goal types with different attributes. Totara goals using the default goal type contain the following elements.