How global businesses can establish clear company-wide goals

Introduction

Making sure all your employees are engaged and on the same page concerning the company’s mission and goals is a challenge that accompanies a global workforce. Cultural backgrounds and local regulations influence people's feelings about work and productivity, making it challenging to agree on some goals.

For example, you may have the best intentions when setting your sales goals for the year, but if your remote employees have to work overtime to meet these goals, you could alienate people from countries with strict overtime rules. Asynchronous work can make employees feel disconnected since some may work odd hours and infrequently interact with coworkers. Skuad PE can serve as an employer of record, helping you understand global HR compliance while setting goals that drive your business forward.

Fortunately, these challenges are easier to overcome when you involve your remote team in goal-setting. Letting them share their insights and implementation ideas gives you more robust and achievable goals in the global marketplace. Follow these steps to set your goals as a team and tackle your global business issues.

Use proven strategies for defining company-wide global team goals

Getting everyone to agree on your company’s focus is one of the most challenging parts of goal setting, even when your whole team is in one office. Use these tools to enable your remote teams to communicate and create goals that work for you.

Request input from your global team

You may have introduced your team to your business plan during onboarding and have yet to mention it. While this is easy to do once everyday tasks pile up, it’s important to celebrate the company’s culture with your whole team.

When starting the goal-setting process, request feedback from your global team. Ask them to identify what you do well and where they think you could improve. Have your employees' detail areas your company should focus on in the coming year.

While getting globally based employees to the table in one meeting is tricky, try hosting brainstorming sessions at various times to involve people in different time zones. Have them record their sessions and take detailed notes so your business planning team can consider feedback from each meeting.

Conduct a competitive analysis

Staying on top of your competitors' actions is an excellent way to benchmark your own goals and progress toward meeting them. If you work with a global remote team, evaluating the success of your competitors can also help you steer your ship. It also gives you a better understanding of how you stack up and what you can improve.

If you already know your main competitors from market research and other data analysis, see if you can find any of their strategic planning initiatives. You can look through annual reports, press releases, blogs, and other promotional materials to see where your competitors are headed.

You may find new insights that inform your own goals through your research. The point of this task isn’t to change your whole culture but to offer a unique perspective on how you could be doing business. When setting goals, align your objectives to your company’s mission and values.

Listen to your customers.

If you have a global team, you have a global customer base. Interview your customers and evaluate them to see what they need and how you can help them. You can involve your remote team by asking those in direct contact with customers to engage with them to get their opinions.

Your customers can give you insights into how you are perceived in various markets, which can inform goals on a global scale.

Conduct a SWOT analysis of your remote team

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It is a crucial part of the goal-setting process. You may have done a comprehensive analysis as part of your business and marketing plan, but you can narrow this SWOT analysis to your remote team.

Make a list of the benefits associated with your global team. Evaluate what you’re doing well and take suggestions from your team on how the process could improve. Ask your remote employees what they like about working remotely and what they would like your company to do better.

These insights will help you set goals as a team, strengthening your culture and positioning yourself to attract and retain top talent.

Learn how to achieve goals as a team

Once you’ve set your goals, let your team brainstorm strategies for achieving them. Your global team is diverse and likely have different ideas for meeting goals. Involve your team in setting a strategy for each goal and key performance indicators (KPIs) to help measure progress. Giving your global remote team a hand in setting goals lets them tie their performance goals into your overall objectives. Here are some ways to involve your team.

Assign responsibilities

You can show your remote employees how much you value their work and opinion by assigning them various responsibilities in achieving company goals.

You could add these responsibilities to their daily duties, or they could involve work your remote workers are already doing.

Make use of brainstorming platforms that let remote workers collaborate like they would if they were in the office together. These sessions let your global team create a community and learn from each other to do their jobs more effectively. Have employees from different regions collaborate on setting goals and identifying performance metrics so they can access other perspectives. Your global reach is integral to your business, so use it.

Establish benchmarks

Set up monthly or quarterly benchmarks to help your remote workers determine how much of their time to focus on company-wide goals. Goal setting is usually done yearly or biannually, with employees working on steps to achieve each goal throughout the year. Set up regular touchpoints to measure progress.

Identify the resources and people required

Your goals might require you to hire more people. You may explore permanent establishments like contractor-to-employee conversion. In this case, working with the best employer of record in Skuad can help you navigate the hiring process as you prepare to launch large company-wide initiatives. Avoiding employee misclassifications and other global HR compliance issues will let you quickly and efficiently bring your new international remote workers up to speed.

Maximize productivity for globally distributed teams

Involving everyone in the goal-setting process can inspire them to be more excited about your company and its vision for the future. Showing employees that you value their input is a great way to boost morale and improve productivity. Take it further by giving your global team a chance to learn new skills and achieve some of their personal career goals.

Ensure they have access to the technology needed to do their jobs. Further, schedule some meetings around their schedule, so they know their time is valued. These steps let you fit people into your company culture regardless of background.

How to improve your team’s performance

Goal setting is essential when working with a global team. Smart goal setting helps you communicate with everyone in your company. They can prioritize and spend time on the most critical tasks. Giving them access to your broad vision helps them understand how their daily work fits into the company.

Communication helps you scale your team

Clear communication is key to scaling a global team – particularly when everyone works autonomously with minimal supervision. Your remote team is likely full of people with great ideas to grow your business and achieve all your yearly objectives. But you won’t know unless you get them involved.

Use a tracking system

With collaborative tools, you can approach goal setting like any other project. Set specific tasks with due dates and assign them to various team members. This way, everyone knows which parts of your strategic plan are their responsibility, and they can measure their progress toward meeting these objectives.

Let Skuad help you manage your remote team

When you have a remote team, it is best practice to partner with an Employer of Record platform to stay compliant with local employment laws and carry out employment-related activities without setting up a subsidiary in multiple countries.

An Employer of Record platform like Skuad handles the entire employment lifecycle of your business. By partnering with Skuad, you can scale business operations globally, ensure efficient HR management for your team, and conduct business activities in compliance with country-specific employment laws.

To know more about Skuad, book a demo today.