As of 13 August 2026, AI can create SMART goals for employees.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the employee's role description, team plan and current performance records, then gather the responsibilities, priorities, baseline evidence, deadlines, dependencies, resources and available support.
   2. Paste those facts into the prompt, replacing each bracketed slot and leaving a slot marked as unknown where the information is not available.
   3. Ask the chatbot to produce the draft goals and its list of missing information, assumptions and potentially unfair or unrealistic targets.
   4. Compare every proposed outcome and measure with the employee's actual responsibilities, current baseline and authority, removing targets that depend mainly on other people or unavailable resources.
   5. Ask the chatbot to revise any goal that lacks a clear baseline, measure, deadline, milestone or support arrangement, without allowing it to invent figures.
   6. Send the revised draft to the employee and a manager or HR colleague, then record agreed changes, support, review points and the final owner of each goal.

   Prompt

   Create draft SMART goals for an employee using the information below. Write nothing that is not supported by the information provided, and list any missing information before drafting.
   
   Organisation or team priority: [insert]
   Employee role and main responsibilities: [insert]
   Employee's current performance or baseline evidence: [insert]
   Desired outcomes: [insert]
   Review period and deadline: [insert]
   Available resources, authority and constraints: [insert]
   Relevant dependencies or other teams: [insert]
   Support or training available: [insert]
   
   Produce:
   1. Three to five draft goals.
   2. For each goal, label the specific outcome, measure, baseline, target, deadline, milestones, dependencies and support required.
   3. Use measures the employee can reasonably influence and distinguish activity measures from outcome measures.
   4. Add a short explanation of how each goal supports the stated priority.
   5. Identify assumptions, missing evidence and any goal that may be unrealistic or unfair.
   6. Suggest review questions for the manager and employee.
   
   Do not base a goal on a protected characteristic, an undisclosed personal circumstance or a factor outside the employee's reasonable control. Do not present the goals as final. Use plain UK English and keep the tone suitable for a performance conversation.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.