Betterworks: 60% of business leaders say priorities change at least quarterly, but only 37% say goals keep up. 6 fixes to keep goals live.

A Tuesday question for People leaders in Dublin, London, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Tallinn: since your goals were set this year, how many times has the business changed direction? A new product bet, a hiring freeze, a re-org, a big customer lost or won. Now, how many of those changes made it into the goals your managers will use in the year-end review?

New research puts numbers on that gap. In 2026 performance management survey: What 61% of 934 leaders couldn’t prove to their CEO (5 October 2026), Aimie Lim reports on a Betterworks survey run in August 2026 of 488 HR leaders and 446 business leaders in the US and UK, all Director-level or above at organisations with 500 or more employees.

1. What the survey actually found

In plain language:

• Confidence is ahead of proof. 84.8% of HR leaders are very or extremely confident that performance management improves organisational priorities. Only 43.9% say they could answer the CEO with clear business metrics today, and 23.2% would mainly point to engagement or activity metrics. Among business leaders, only 34.3% say they could show clear business metrics.
• Priorities move faster than goals. 69.7% of HR leaders say business priorities change quarterly, monthly or continuously, but only 50.8% say goals update that fast. For business leaders it’s 59.6% against 36.8%.
• The review is still the centre of gravity. 69.1% of business leaders describe their formal process as annual or semi-annual reviews, alone or with periodic check-ins. Only 28.0% describe an ongoing model.
• Everyone agrees where it breaks. Measuring outcomes (40.8% of HR leaders, 41.0% of business leaders), goal alignment (38.5% and 39.2%) and feedback (37.1% and 36.5%).
• They disagree on why. HR leaders most often pick technology limitations (31.4%); only 16.8% of business leaders do. Business leaders point more to admin burden on managers (26.9%), lack of time (25.8%), managers unsupported in coaching (24.9%) and goals changing too quickly (24.7%).
• Both want the same thing next. Continuous goal alignment is the top future capability for both groups (35.9% of HR leaders, 39.9% of business leaders).

Two honest caveats. First, this is vendor research: Betterworks sells performance management software (so does Revolut People, where I work), and the full methodology is available on request rather than published. Second, the sample is US and UK organisations with 500 or more people, and the answers are self-reported. It’s a useful signal for UK and European mid-market teams, not a controlled study.

2. The mid-market hurdle: goals set in January, business changed by March

In a 200–600 person company, the pattern is easy to spot. Goals are agreed at the start of the year, often in a spreadsheet or a slide. By the end of the first quarter, leadership has re-prioritised at least once. The new priorities live in the all-hands deck and the leadership Slack channel, but nobody goes back to update the individual goals. Managers quietly work to the new plan and the old goals sit untouched until review time.

Then the year-end review asks people to be rated against goals that stopped being true months ago. Managers rebuild the year from memory, employees feel judged on work they were told to drop, and HR still can’t show the CEO how performance management helped the company hit its real priorities. That’s the gap between the survey’s 59.6% and 36.8%, and it explains a lot of the gap between 84.8% confidence and 43.9% proof.

3. 6 fixes to keep goals live when priorities move

1. Agree three outcomes with the business first. The survey’s first recommendation is to agree with business leaders on three to five outcomes performance management should influence, with a baseline, before planning locks in. Start there, not with the review form.
2. Make company priorities the top of the goal tree. Every team goal should hang off a company priority, and every individual goal off a team goal. If a goal links to nothing, ask whether it still matters. In Revolut People: Goals cascade from company to team to individual, so each person can see which priority their work supports.
3. Trigger a goal review on events, not the calendar. The survey suggests agreeing specific events that trigger a goal review: a strategy change, a re-org, a market shift. When one happens, check which team and individual goals it touches and update them that month. In Revolut People: because goals are linked, a change to a company or team goal shows you which goals underneath it need a look.
4. Let goals be revised, paused or retired mid-cycle. A goal that no longer fits isn’t a failure; keeping it is. Give managers permission to change goals without waiting for the next HR cycle, and keep a short note of why. In Revolut People: goal updates are kept on the goal, so the review shows what changed and when.
5. Cut manager admin before adding process. Business leaders named admin burden and lack of time ahead of technology. Remove any review step that doesn’t feed a decision or a development conversation, and don’t ask managers to rebuild the year from memory.
6. Report alignment, not completion. Swap “percentage of reviews submitted” for measures the survey suggests, such as the percentage of goals linked to current priorities, time to realign goals after a strategy change, and manager time spent on admin. Get a quick baseline with the performance health check.

The PDF goes to your work email. The call is 15 minutes, calendar only.

4. Where Revolut People fits, and where it doesn’t

Revolut People started as the in-house system Revolut uses to run performance. The part that maps to this survey is Goals: company, team and individual goals linked in one cascade, so when the business changes direction you can see which goals are affected and update them during the year, and the review then scores the work people were actually asked to do.

To be straight about the limits: software won’t decide your priorities for you, and it won’t make a leadership team tell managers when the plan has changed. That takes a short, regular habit of checking goals against strategy, and leaders who own it. What a tool can do is make the links between goals visible and take the spreadsheet admin out of keeping them current. Related reads: goals that don’t cascade, McKinsey on goal setting, and the CIPD on closing the loop from objectives to feedback.

Bottom Line

Betterworks’ survey of 934 US and UK leaders says most companies change priorities at least quarterly, but far fewer update their goals to match, and that’s a big reason HR struggles to prove performance management helps the business. For a mid-market People team in the UK, Ireland, Benelux, the Nordics or the Baltics, the fix isn’t a new review form. It’s a goal tree that starts from company priorities, a rule that big changes trigger a goal check, and reporting on alignment instead of completion. Try it with one department this quarter: after the next priority change, measure how many days it takes for individual goals to catch up.

FAQ

What did the Betterworks 2026 performance management survey find?

In August 2026 Betterworks surveyed 488 HR leaders and 446 business leaders in the US and UK, all Director-level or above at organisations with 500 or more employees. 84.8% of HR leaders were very or extremely confident that performance management improves organisational priorities, but only 43.9% said they could answer their CEO with clear business metrics today. Among business leaders, 59.6% said priorities change quarterly, monthly or continuously, while only 36.8% said formal goals update that fast. The findings were published by Aimie Lim on 5 October 2026.

Where does performance management break down most often?

HR and business leaders named the same top three breakdowns: measuring outcomes (40.8% of HR leaders, 41.0% of business leaders), goal alignment (38.5% and 39.2%) and feedback (37.1% and 36.5%). Business leaders more often pointed to administrative burden on managers (26.9%), managers lacking time (25.8%) and goals changing too quickly (24.7%).

Is this independent research?

No. Betterworks sells performance management software, so it is vendor research, and the methodology is available on request rather than published in full. The sample is US and UK organisations with 500 or more employees, and the answers are self-reported. Treat it as a useful signal, not a controlled study. Ash also works for a performance management vendor, Revolut People.

How often should goals be updated?

The survey doesn’t set a rule, but its advice is to stop tying goals to the calendar: agree specific events that trigger a goal review, such as a strategy, structure or market change, show which team and individual goals a change affects, and let goals be revised, paused or retired without waiting for a new HR cycle.

Is Revolut People available in the UK, Ireland, Benelux, the Nordics and the Baltics?

Yes. Revolut People is available to businesses with a registered entity in the UK, the EEA or the US, which covers Ireland, the Benelux, Nordic and Baltic countries.