Aren’t you tired of juggling hundreds of apps to track employee communication and drive employee feedback? Log in to one app to share feedback and praise on a job well done; log in to another to set your goals and track them; and then yet another to communicate with the entire organization. Well, those days are done. Gear up to AMP up with Engagedly.
We have the genie in a bottle that’ll pack all those tedious and tiresome actions in just one place- your Email.
By integrating its modules with AMP‘s unique characteristics, Engagedly simplifies your work. Now, complete numerous tasks on Gmail or MS Outlook, such as taking action, participating in conversations, fostering interactions, and boosting involvement. Along with saving you time and effort, it greatly lowers app overload.
How does it do what it does?
Previously, you had to log in to one portal to share feedback, another to post surveys, and maybe another for internal communications. Fret no more. Now, with AMP emails, you can interact dynamically with content directly in the email message. Talk about easy breezy interaction with no app overload!
The modern app functionality is now accessible via email. Thanks to AMP for Emails, senders can now integrate AMP components and create rich, engaging emails. This dynamic email format offers a subset of components for usage in email messages.
How good is it?
The fun and engaging way to encourage engaging conversations
Promotes interactions and increases participation or completion by 2x
Picture of convenience with no app overload
Friction and procrastination take a nosedive
Fosters two-way communication
Interact and take actions directly from the mail
Major time-saver
No more context switching
Looking for more AMP advantages? Here you go!
Feedback faster than Flash!
Enjoy the power of interactive emails in your Google or Microsoft Workspace with Engagedly. You may answer, nudge, and leave a comment directly from the inbox thanks to AMP’s cutting-edge technology. Responding to requests for feedback is quick and done while on the go when you AMP up with Engagedly!
Simplicity leads to productivity!
Track your goals, engage in target-oriented conversations, and update your progress… all in one place. That’s right, inside your Gmail or Outlook inbox. Save time to dig deeper into your goals and achieve them with ease. It really is super convenient to goal it away on G Suite email.
Do you need to compliment someone, thank them for a compliment, or wish to like or comment on a compliment? Do all that and everything all at once, in one place!
Has your team or a colleague given you the report well in advance? Praise them directly from your Gmail or Outlook.
Social on the go!
Interact with your colleagues, keep track of important announcements, write a post, leave a comment, and share views with up-vote/down-vote acknowledgment – without breaking your rhythm of work. How? Because it’s all done on G Suite email or Outlook. In a nutshell, it redefines convenience. All thanks to Engagedly’s Social platform!
No more skipping surveys!
Another cumbersome survey to take? So much work to do and on top of that a survey to complete? Turn that frown upside down. AMP makes sure that you never miss out on surveys as it brings them right into your Google or Outlook workspace.
You can now respond to surveys, weekly team pulse, and engagement surveys… right from your Google or Outlook Workspace. It also accelerates your survey response rate with Engagedly’s interactive surveys. When it comes to surveys it’s time to say, “Yes, we can!”
In a nutshell
Staying ahead of the curve and the pack. Engagedly’s exclusive integration with AMP is all about making your work life easier and more fun. AMP up with Engagedly and be ready to combat app overload which is a major hurdle to efficiency.
The average organization has over 250 apps with less than 50% showing any meaningful engagement. Additionally, switching between apps frequently causes friction and encourages procrastination. The ability to communicate inside users’ preferred apps holds the key to the answer.
Be on top of everything without breaking a sweat! Convenience, efficiency, and productivity, all at once!
Imposter syndrome is an internal experience when an individual denies believing they are competent as others consider them to be. They also worry about being tagged as incompetent or incapable of meeting workplace expectations.
You aren’t alone in experiencing this syndrome when sometimes it becomes hard to cope. It’s also challenging to confess these feelings to others. Managers intend to support their team, but identifying and addressing the syndrome may not be easy.
Imposter syndrome is not what only new hires experience, rather, all people experience it. Research shows that 62% of workers experience imposter syndrome, and 42% of employees are experiencing both the syndrome with burnout worldwide.
The 2020 pandemic caused a rise in imposter syndrome. Self-doubt became a byproduct when employees started to work in isolation. Due to this, 33% of professionals reported how the pandemic, along with problems like imposter syndrome, impacted their professional confidence.
The symptoms intensified with fewer chances to connect and celebrate success with coworkers.
Signs of Imposter Syndrome
The head of Early Career Insights, Laura Mills, told Workest that employees with signs of imposter syndrome face difficulty accepting praise or compliments. They can even abstain from asking for help as, to them, it is a sign of failure.
Giving others credit for your success
You don’t realize success or accomplishments. You give accolades for other reasons except for the one you are to be praised for. These are types of imposter syndrome. People with a healthy knowledge of self-esteem can take credit for any hard-earned achievements. They will praise others but have problems accepting it themselves. No matter how privileged you feel, accept credit when it’s due at the workplace.
Taking up unnecessary pressure on yourself
Do you over-prep for every meeting and stay back to work even after your co-workers have left? Perhaps you are constantly comparing yourself and cannot handle the constant anxiety saying that you are yet to give your best. If this sounds similar, these are obvious signs of imposter syndrome and try to come out of it. People with the syndrome have a tendency to overcompensate with fear to avoid being ‘found out’. However, with success, the fear also worsens, resulting in an escalating cycle leading to an unbearable situation overall. Constant fear leads to procrastination.
Doing too much self-sabotaging
You receive an ambiguous email from your boss and get trapped in a spiral of anxiety. The email is enough to convince yourself that you may get fired. You keep on thinking that whatever you bring to the table to your boss might devalue you and hamper your future promotions.
You are already preoccupied with a story to make you unnecessarily anxious. Even when things aren’t falling into place with personal relationships or office colleagues and friends, deep down, you start believing that you don’t deserve to be happy. And that you have to take risks and will get hurt eventually.
Struggling with burnout
You may be struggling with burn out for years, leading to imposter syndrome problems. Burnout is a condition that is caused due to persistent occupational stress, and you may struggle to cope with it. Three characteristics to understand it is:
Exhaustion or fatigue
Lower work effectiveness
Feeling increased pressure and negativity from the job and being mentally distanced from the job
This shows how imposter syndrome gives rise to burnout situations. If you only overthink and never feel proud of your accomplishments, it can eventually lead to feeling low and getting a negative perspective on your occupation. Once this happens, you will stop caring about your professional performance in the workplace.
The situation can come up in different ways. An individual may be reluctant to negotiate for salary when hired. That reluctance to negotiate for salary again comes from the feeling that you are a fraud and getting the job is enough for you, no matter the pay scale.
It impacts self-care and doesn’t even take benefits like vacations or others. But you work hard throughout the day without leaving any stone unturned at your workplace.
These are some of the signs of imposter syndrome at work that both managers and employees can experience. If you recognize any of these signs with behavioral changes, try to acknowledge them. Whichever signs you relate with, it is important to find what drives you to those behaviors and the associated causes.
How to get rid of imposter syndrome?
Before holding on to negative self-talk when suffering from imposter syndrome, try the following to get rid of it.
Go by facts and not feelings
Imposter syndrome aggravates your feeling that your performance isn’t up to the mark. These are often based on fear and are not real. Try to combat imposter syndrome with facts, and don’t let your negative feelings win. That way, you can take actionable steps for what you cannot control.
You cannot stop your brain from creating stories, but you can try to center your thoughts around facts. When feeling trapped in an imposter syndrome, go by facts rather than feelings.
Look for Guidance
Look for guidance from a mentor who can help improve your soft and hard skills. This way, when you feel that you aren’t good at any task, you can get back confidence with the belief that you are trying your best. The mentor should be someone from your field with practical experience to support you. Moreover, if you trust the person, you can better share imposter syndrome as an employee and how you feel.
Learn from your teammates
A common instinct is to compare yourself with your teammate and think each member can outdo you. While comparing becomes a habit, try to reframe your perspective.
Next time you feel like comparing yourself with teammates, take a step back and try to learn from what you think are their superior qualities. You will have teammates who excel in various fields, and there’s a lot to learn from each, including yourself. That won’t make you less worthy. Instead, it’s an excellent opportunity to help others grow in a team. Recognize others’ good work and use it as a tool to improve yourself to deliver better in the future.
If you are a team manager, your priority should be to support each and reduce signs of imposter syndrome at work. A few ways can be:
Provide opportunities for connection
Every team member should have ample chances to connect with each other. Mentor any new member of the team and help them mingle better. Similarly, all the members should be aware of any available resources.
Clarify ways for communication
Without a clear sense of communication norms, it can be intimidating how to approach other team members. It can simplify the initial hurdle of communicating. Make sure to use the correct tool and person to contact when having doubts.
Keep a frequent check
Have a check-in during a meeting where team members can feel free to express how they are doing. Have a check-in during a meeting where team members can feel free to express how they are doing. Regular one-on-one meetings are also an effective way for managers to create a safe space for employees to discuss their concerns and build trust.
If managers are transparent about sharing thoughts, it encourages team members to do the same. So, when someone is putting a lot of pressure to give their best, managers can help them with positive feedback.
Get into the habit of sharing frequent feedback
More often, imposter syndrome isn’t based on a real situation. Situations leading to imposter syndrome can improve with comforting and frequent feedback from team members and managers. Once you have a sense that you are doing it right, it can work with confidence. A little feedback now and then, can boost your confidence and help grow the basis of working hard.
It is how managers can help team members conquer the syndrome with confidence and proper guidance. Managers should support the growth interests of team members, giving them the adequate confidence boost they require.
In conclusion: Can imposter syndrome affect your work?
If imposter syndrome seems to hold you back at work, try to identify the psychological discomfort behind the role. It is a temporary state of being in a person who is always thinking about whether they can give their best performance. If you are aware of workplace microaggressions, you must know how they can lead to imposter syndrome. So, challenge the lies beneath imposter syndrome and prevent it from aggravating. This syndrome can affect any area of activity, if you don’t let your negative feelings go.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. How does an HR handle imposter syndrome at work?
Ans. The role of an HR is to encourage managers with the latest tools and knowledge and create healthy expectations in the workplace. When an employee is not respected in a workplace it can lead to imposter syndrome. This is when managers should focus on inclusion, which can make one feel validated. Acknowledge hard work publicly that can boost an individual’s motivation.
Q2. Why is Imposter Syndrome a problem?
Ans. There are types of Imposter Syndrome that can lead to problems like:
Reduce wellbeing and increase the chance of mental health problems
Isolates an individual and impacts their interpersonal relationships
The sufferers fear of failing and fail to try new things due to failure
Q3. How to deal with imposter syndrome before it can hinder success?
Ans. Know the signs, and you aren’t alone in it. Try to distinguish between fear and humility. You can seek help from a mentor or manager who can show you the best ways to overcome those negative thoughts.
“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.” — Tony Robbins
Fierce competition, ever-changing technology, and a capricious business landscape, coupled with the great resignation and aftermath of the pandemic, are the leading factors that are shaping global business.
In this uncertain environment, how are organizations keeping pace with growth and development?
While goal setting helps organizations keep track of their performance, it is essential to involve every employee in organizational success. So, how do you ensure that the entire workforce is committed to the organization’s goals and create initiatives that help meet those goals on time?
One of the ways that organizations can create, implement, and measure goals, is by adopting the OKR framework. It is one of the most popular and effective techniques that is used by organizations to achieve ambitious and aspirational goals. Through this framework, leaders and managers can keep track of employee initiatives and ensure their time and effort go into the most productive activities.
For decades, organizations have been using different approaches and methodologies to create and track employee goals. While there are multiple approaches available for goal setting, OKRs are one of the most widely appreciated and widely accepted throughout the world. It helps in articulating the organizational goals into simple objectives and provides measures to track and check the progress of every employee. Furthermore, it increases transparency in the organization and makes departments, teams, and individual employees more accountable for their key results.
As organizations are steering through pandemic-led challenges, it is difficult to track the progress and inputs of every employee. Moreover, setups like work-from-home and hybrid environments create barriers to communication, collaboration, and connection, which ultimately leads to less productivity and engagement. OKRs are a great mechanism to tackle such challenges and offer insights into employees’ deliverables.
Before we dive deeper into the intricacies of objectives and key results, let’s take a closer look at what it means to the organization and how it provides actionable insights to leaders.
OKR Templates
An OKR template is a document that helps organizations, teams, and individuals set up challenging and ambitious goals that are aligned. Also known as the OKR tracking template, it provides great insights into the achievements of team members and helps managers constantly track the progress of different goals.
The leading industrial and HR experts at Engagedly have created a number of OKR templates that accompany different aspects of goal setting and tracking. You can customize these templates to use them for your organization and keep track of the most important organizational goals.
What Are OKRs?
“One: set inspiring and measurable goals. Two: make sure you and your team are always making progress towards that desired end state. No matter how many other things are on your plate. And three: set a cadence that makes sure the group both remembers what they are trying to accomplish and holds each other accountable.” — Christina Wodtke1, Author of Radical Focus.
Objectives and Key Results” (OKRs) is a goal-setting and leadership framework. With OKRs, businesses can communicate their desired outcomes and identify key milestones to achieve them. OKRs help companies align their teams with their overall strategy and drive meaningful progress towards their goals.
It became a globally accepted and acclaimed strategy after Google started using it in the 1990s’. Thereon, it has found its way from Silicon Valley to innumerable startups and the world’s leading organizations, like Microsoft, Dell, Baidu, and Adobe.
But what makes it different from the other goal-setting methodologies like MBO (management by objectives) and SMART goals? Even though OKRs originated from MBOs, there are multiple differences in the structure, approach, goal review frequency, and degree of autonomy. OKRs help define the success strategy of the organization while encompassing the “What and How”, meaning they highlight the organizational objectives to be achieved and also provide a set of measures as key results.
To have a clear understanding of how OKRs impact the organization, let us first look at its components.
OKR is a great leadership exercise that can be conducted either monthly or quarterly. It helps align the efforts of resources toward achieving organizational goals by clearly outlining their objectives and the quantifiable actions necessary to achieve them. Keeping the focus on some specific and major objectives makes it easier to track their progress and ensures that the workforce is committing their efforts to achieving them.
What Are Objectives?
In simple terms, objectives are what is to be achieved. They are short, inspirational, organized, and clearly defined goals that lead to major changes in the organization. Objectives are aligned throughout the organization and are qualitative. Properly designed and effective objectives ensure that the workforce does not lose sight of the goals and puts their maximum effort into them.
The process starts with leadership deciding on 3-5 objectives to be accomplished. Then the departments and various teams under them set their own objectives based on the organizational objectives. The crux is to ensure the achievement of organizational objectives by channelling the efforts of every team member.
An example of an objective: Increase overall traffic to the website blog
Qualities Of Objectives
Every objective in the OKR bears some unique qualities. It is crucial to understand them to set relatable and clear objectives. Some of them are discussed below.
Very Clear: It is critical to have clear, unambiguous, and direct objectives that are understandable by every employee in the organization. They should be written in a manner that is easily interpretable and quickly understood.
Challenging: Challenges make teams and departments in an organization collaborate and work towards the mission. You can either bore your employees by making them work on something easily achievable, or you can flex them by putting a challenging objective in front of them. But it is important to ensure that objectives are not impossible to achieve, as this may lower the morale of the team and put them off track.
Actionable: Some objectives put your team to the test and offer them something challenging and actionable to work on and then some objectives seem vague and will put your team off. Creating actionable objectives is the key to imbibing enthusiasm in your employees.
Inspiring: Your employees should be energized while working toward your goals. By setting inspiring objectives, you can increase employee engagement and productivity and ensure they have something to look forward to.
Key results are a mechanism to measure the achievement of the objectives. Usually, every objective is followed by 3-5 key results that help in its accomplishment. They are measurable, specific, time-bound, and verifiable. They are signifiers that the objectives are in place and they support their evaluation by everyone in the organization.
Additionally, organizations create scoring systems to evaluate the key results. Usually, the system is in the form of a score varying from 0 to 1. The movement on the scale indicates the achievement of the key results.
Examples of key results
Below are the sample key results required to achieve the objective of increasing the overall traffic to the website blog.
Increase year-on-year traffic to the website by 100%
Optimize 50 articles every month
Publish 70 articles every month
Qualities Of Key Results
For key results to be effective and actionable, they should have the following qualities in them.
Measurable And Quantitative: Key results should be easily measurable in a unit or scoring system as defined by the organization. It should highlight the progress of the team or an individual towards the defined objective.
Supports Accomplishment Of Objectives: Achieving key results should be directly linked to objectives. A key result cannot exist on its own and must be related to the team or individual objectives.
Clear: Key results should be clearly defined and easily understood by the teams and individuals. The initial value and target score should be stated while setting the key results.
Time-bound: Setting a timeframe helps employees stay focused on the activities. Hence, it is important to fix the start and end of all the key results. All team members must be notified about the dates of key result activities.
History Of OKRs
The history of OKRs goes back to 1974, when Peter Drucker2, an Austrian-American management consultant and business enthusiast, invented Management By Objectives, popularly known as MBO. It became the predecessor of OKRs. Drucker’s purpose was to enhance the productivity and performance of an organization by introducing objectives that were agreed upon both by the leadership and employees.
It was in the 1970s that the co-founder and CEO of Intel Corporation, Andy Grove3, revolutionized the concept of objectives and key results. He used this concept to enhance the performance of Intel and increase revenue by manifolds. He used the MBO framework and tied the objectives with key results to create business excellence.
In 1975, John Doerr joined Intel and learned the concept of OKRs. He found it to be immensely useful in achieving objectives and empowering the employees. He then went on to teach the concept to the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as an advisor while working at the venture capitalist firm, Kleiner Perkins.
At that time, Google was in its initial stages and quickly adopted the concept. Since then, thousands of companies, from multinationals to startups and even kindergartens, have adopted OKRs and used them to become tremendously successful.
There are two types of OKRs: committed OKRs and aspirational OKRs. Committed OKRs are objectives that are achievable and realistic, while aspirational OKRs are more challenging and ambitious. Both have different purposes and methods for achieving them.
Categorization of OKRs is done based on two questions: the first one is “What does the organization want to achieve?” and the second one is “How do we achieve it?”. By answering these questions, leaders can segregate the OKRs into two baskets: committed OKRs and aspirational OKRs.
Understanding the differences between the types of OKRs helps organizations organize their resources and adopt the methodology that is most suitable for bringing in the key results, driving culture change, and increasing employee engagement. As the purpose of the OKRs is to align the resources towards the most important organizational priorities, it is therefore important to categorize the OKRs to get the most out of the time and efforts of the employees. Let us understand the differences between them and which methodology works best for the organization.
Committed OKRs
Also known as “roof shot goals,” these OKRs highlight the focus areas where the teams are expected to have a 100% achievement rate. An organization sets committed OKRs to focus the efforts of teams on such parameters whose achievement is critical to the success of the organization.
Even though these OKRs are ambitious, they are still realistic and achievable. Hence, the teams are expected to deliver 100% on them. In a scenario where a department or a team finds that the committed OKR cannot be achieved in the current cycle, they must consult with the leadership and create solutions and alternatives to get the goals back on track.
Please note that there is no room for failure in committed OKRs. They represent the utmost priorities of the organization. Team members need to put their heads together to ensure the achievement of the objectives.
Aspirational OKRs
Aspirational OKRs, in contrast to committed OKRs, are stretch goals which are impossible to achieve in a given cycle. The purpose of creating them is to push the departments, teams, and individuals to go further than the committed goals and think better in their approach and execution. Also known by the name “moonshots,” aspirational OKRs drive team efforts towards creativity and innovation. As long as the organization sees considerable and meaningful success, falling short on the achievement of aspirational OKRs is not considered a problem.
Having a 100% achievement rate in aspirational OKRs is rare, and it turns out that if the teams were able to achieve it, then the OKRs weren’t aspirational. In such a scenario, an organization needs to work on improving the methodology of setting OKRs.
Committed Vs Aspirational OKRs: How To Choose?
A global multi-sector survey4 conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) with 500 senior executives from organizations with revenues of $1 billion or more found the following about goal setting.
Right implementing goals is critically important: 90% of the respondents shared that they failed to achieve all of their strategic business goals of wrong implementation.
Workforce capabilities define the success: 55% of executives found their business exposed to competitors because of inadequate delivery capabilities.
The above statistics highlight the importance of goal setting in the workplace and how it should be done in tandem with workforce capabilities. That’s why selecting the right mix of OKRs is important for organizational success. While an organization may want to have only aspirational goals to push their team to work hard and achieve more, having only aspirational OKRs can demotivate the team and exhaust them for never achieving their targets.
On the flip side, having only committed OKRs will inhibit the innovation, creativity, and problem-solving abilities of the team. They will never be attuned to failure and will be discouraged from risk-taking.
The best approach to selecting aspirational or committed OKRs is based on the organizational culture and strategy. For innovative organizations like Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft, going beyond the comfort level is imperative, and setting aspirational OKRs is a must. And for organizations that are more into operational activities, committed OKRs will serve the purpose. However, in the long run, as the organization grows, it is crucial to have the right mix of aspirational and committed OKRs to pivot the organization towards success.
OKRs are the key to successful business planning. Organizations that have implemented OKRs found it to be immensely useful in creating an impact on the culture, business outcomes, engagement, and communication. Let us explore some of the benefits of using OKRs.
OKRs are the key to successful business planning. Organizations that have implemented OKRs have found them to be immensely useful in creating an impact on the culture, business outcomes, engagement, and communication. Let us explore some of the benefits of using OKRs.
Business Success
Time and again, it has been proven that organizations that opted for OKRs had tremendous success. The biggest benefit of OKRs lies in making organizations more agile and transparent. It aids in streamlining employees’ efforts to achieve real-world business outcomes.
By giving ownership to the teams to set their own objectives in cadence with the organizational goals, it increases accountability and makes them feel involved in the decision-making process. There is no doubt that organizations like Google, Netflix, and Microsoft have embraced OKRs and focused their efforts on achieving specific goals.
Strategic Alignment
Chris Zook and James Allen, in their book “Profit From The Core5” mention that between 1988 and 1998, out of 1,854 large corporations they surveyed, seven out of eight could not achieve profitable growth. Yet 90% of these organizations had detailed plans for growth.
The startling statistics highlight how important it is to align organizations and employees with goal setting. While you are burning the midnight oil to prepare plans for growth, not having the goal alignment will not lead the organization to its desired objectives.
OKRs help leaders, managers, and individuals align their efforts and focus on the most important goals of the organization.
Cultural Shift
For long, organizations have focused on output rather than focusing on outcomes. While many leaders still use the terms interchangeably, there is a lot of difference between them. In simple words, output is what the organization or a team does, and an outcome is the change accompanied by the output.
By focusing on outcomes, OKRs help drive employee engagement, higher performance, and transparency in the organization. When continued for a long time, it embeds into the organizational culture and brings purpose, commitment, and innovation into the system.
Clear Communication
As per a report6 by HBR, around 95% of employees are unaware of the organizational strategy. The key to connecting, empowering, and engaging employees is clear communication. An organization that fails to communicate its objectives clearly, suffers losses and employee disengagement.
Using OKRs can solve the challenges of communicating organizational, departmental, and individual goals to every employee. Weekly and monthly check-ins help create a communication channel to highlight any issues in the progress of any objectives.
The purpose of writing and implementing OKRs is to align the efforts of resources towards the achievement of core organizational objectives. They help bring purpose and meaning to the organization and offer employees something to look forward to. Even though all organizations create short-term and long-term business strategies, only a handful are able to execute them effectively and efficiently. Furthermore, non-alignment of resources with the objectives leads to substandard results and ineffective business delivery.
Most organizations opt for OKRs to bring accountability, transparency, and alignment to the system to implement and execute business strategies. It is important to have leadership involved in the end-to-end process to get actionable results and bring substantial change to the organization.
Creating and implementing OKRs can be cumbersome. It requires integration of teams and leadership to understand the complex problems to be solved and the mechanisms to follow. Let us now understand the process of getting started with OKRs.
The Ultimate Goal
A company’s ultimate goal is a pivotal point for the whole workforce. Departments and teams create their OKRs based on the objectives set by the leadership team. Hence, it is crucial to understand which objectives will solve the organizational challenges and which ones will offer growth opportunities. While there can be innumerable problems to tackle, concentrating on the mission and vision of the organization will help narrow down the most important aspects of organizational growth.
An example of an ultimate goal could be “to become the most preferred IT training provider in the APAC region.”
The best way would be to convert your mission and vision into overarching objectives and key results. This will provide a focus area for various departments and teams to create their OKRs that will support and contribute towards fulfillment of the ultimate objectives.
OKR Cadence
The frequency with which the organization and teams set their OKRs is known as the cadence. Usually, there are two cadences in OKRs: quarterly and annually. As organizational objectives are directional and take a longer time to accomplish, their cadence is set annually.
Departmental and team OKRs are more actionable and are set quarterly. The short-term cadence of departmental OKRs helps leadership change the strategy and direction if they are not contributing towards organizational objectives.
Setting an OKR cadence requires meticulous planning and understanding of the business environment. Refer to the following points while selecting the cadence:
Uncertain market conditions require setting up a short cadence to accommodate the recurrent changes.
For startups that aim to achieve more in less time, it is preferable to set up a monthly or quarterly cadence.
For organizations that are prone to technological changes and stiff competition, a shorter cadence will work well.
Cultural and behavioral changes in the organization can be achieved through a short OKR cadence.
A long cadence is generally suitable for large and stable organizations that are prone to sudden changes in the business environment.
Writing Organizational Objectives
Having a single objective will keep the energy and efforts of the whole workforce focused and channeled. However, based on the industry, size, and growth prospects, an organization can create 3 to 5 objectives after taking input from various teams.
It is important to involve all the key stakeholders in order to share their inputs regarding the most important organizational objectives for the next 12 months. The inputs collected from employees have to be evaluated against the company’s strategy and market position and then converted into objectives. Objectives should be specific, clear, and in agreement with what the organization should achieve in the next 12 months.
Keep the following pointers in sight while writing the organizational objectives.
Refer to the organization’s mission and vision statements.
Take past objectives into consideration and look at their key results.
Understand the most important business priorities that need to be addressed
Look at the OKRs that are performing well in the current cycle.
Understand the business and market complexities and decide what could be the pivotal point for the organization.
Writing Departmental And Team Objectives
Now that the leadership has decided the objectives to be achieved, it is time for departments and teams to create their objectives. They need to chart out the activities that will help the organization achieve its long-term objectives. The activities help keep the focus on the most important tasks that are vital for accomplishing the objectives. As team OKRs follow a quarterly cadence, it is important to craft objectives that can be achieved in the given cycle.
Setup OKR Scoring Method
How will you understand the progress your team has made towards an objective? To determine how well a team delivers on an objective, it is important to fix a scoring method.
There are different scorecards used by organizations to indicate progress. One such method is using a scale of 0 to 1, where 0 indicates no progress made by the department or a team on the objective. One can also use a 10 point scale for scoring OKRs.
The next step in measuring progress is labeling or benchmarking the scorecard. Labels help in understanding the overall accomplishment of an objective. For example, you can use labels like “30–40% as average progress and 50–75% as good progress.”
Communicate OKRs To Everyone
Sharing organizational and teams’ OKRs publicly helps in increasing the transparency in the system. Additionally, it brings more visibility regarding the organization’s most important priorities and helps employees collaborate to achieve their objectives.
Track OKRs
Successful implementation of OKRs lies in frequently tracking their progress by weekly check-ins and conducting a quarterly OKR review at the end of each cycle. OKR tracking assists in the following ways: understanding progress made on objectives, addressing any shortcomings, resolving any challenges encountered by the team, and motivating the team to continue putting in efforts.
OKRs are an impressive tool to track and measure the progress of organizational objectives. But there are times when things can go haywire. And to prevent such events, it is best to follow OKR’s best practices that help avoid any hiccups and inefficiencies in the process.
Onboard An OKR Champion
Creating and implementing OKRs is a challenging process, and many organizations fall prey to poor OKR adoption and implementation. To successfully incorporate OKRs into culture and business, it is crucial to have an OKR champion. A person with expertise in the adoption, rollout, modulation, and review of the OKRs helps channel and streamline the processes effectively. Furthermore, having an OKR champion will reduce the risk of running an incompetent and ineffective process.
Communicate OKR Benefits
To get the full range of benefits from the OKR methodology and framework, every employee in the organization must be well-informed about the process. By communicating the OKR benefits through different communication channels, leadership can ensure higher adoption and more visibility in the system.
Autonomy To Set Employee OKRs
Involving employees in setting their own OKRs increases their accountability, transparency, and trust towards the organization. Moreover, it will help employees choose the projects, tasks, and challenges that are more suitable for their skills and professional growth. Managers can hold discussions with the team members to understand their expectations and help them align their OKRs towards organizational objectives.
Hold Organization-wide OKR Review
To understand the overall impact of the OKR on the organization, it is important to hold an organization-wide review that discusses the achievements, setbacks, and improvement measures for the next OKR cycle. Such reviews provide OKR champions with insights to understand where the process is lacking and to suggest changes. It is important to note that the whole workforce should be part of the review meeting to incorporate the values of OKRs in them.
Mix Of Aspirational And Committed OKRs
As discussed in the previous sections, having the right mix of committed and aspirational OKRs keeps the workforce motivated and drives them towards organizational success. Additionally, labelling OKRs as committed and aspirational will allow employees to understand how much effort they have to put into a particular objective.
Incorporate Learning In The Next OKR Cycle
The weekly check-ins and quarterly OKR reviews provide valuable insights to the leadership to enhance the effectiveness of the process. Before setting the OKRs for the next cycle, it is important to look back at the feedback collected from the process and the managers and integrate them into the system.
Use Both Top Down And Bottom Up OKRs
An organization that is new to OKRs will naturally use the top-down cascading method, meaning the objectives are set up by the leadership and they trickle down to different teams and finally to the individual OKRs. On the other hand, the bottom-up approach allows employees to set up OKRs and convince the management of their adoption.
Much research has pointed to using a mix of both top-down and bottom-up approaches. It helps in keeping up the motivation and involvement of employees in their work and also ensures the leadership vision and objectives are met.
Performance Review, Promotion, And Compensation
The purpose of creating OKRs is to align the efforts of the resources in reaching organizational objectives.But some organizations make the mistake of tying compensation, promotions, and performance reviews to OKRs, which can kill their essence of transparency and accountability. Employee performance evaluation is an entirely different aspect of a business and must not be married to OKRs.
The above pointers help to avoid common OKR mistakes that organizations make while creating and implementing OKRs.
Setting up OKRs can be challenging for first-timers. But with experience and due diligence, one can create OKRs that bring in results. It is important to refer back to the past OKRs to avoid mistakes. Additionally, OKR examples can also provide quick insights to set up goals for various departments and teams.
Below are some of the OKR examples to kick-start the process.
OKR Examples For HR
Objectives
Key Results
Create an employee wellness program
Organize 5 mental health sessions per quarter for every team
Organize 5 physical wellness sessions per quarter for every team
Conduct an online webinar per month on physical and mental health
Increase employee registration for physical fitness activities by 50%
Improved training and development opportunities for managers
Increase manager enrollment in learning courses by 70%
Ensure 100% course completion rate by quarter end
Increase assignment submission rate by 80% for every course
OKR Examples For Information Technology
Objectives
Key Results
Enhance client data security measures
Reduce security breaches by 100% by the quarter end
Conduct 5 cyber security training sessions throughout the organization
Increase compliance score by 50 points by the end of the quarter
Reduce website and application load time
Decrease server response time by 3 seconds.
Increase code quality through code optimization from 2 to 3 by quarter end.
Product Management OKR Examples
Objectives
Key Results
Increase the count of daily active users on the application
Enhance the notification feature to increase daily notification from 1 to 10
Provide an application widget to directly sync the user’s calendar for the upcoming webinars
Increase reliability and scalability of the product for external stakeholders
Increase database security by 10% through the latest updates and code enhancements
Ensure all new joiners take mandatory data security training within 60 days of their induction
Resolve all outstanding client issues by the end of the quarter.
Sales OKR Examples
Objectives
Key Results
Increase quarterly revenue to $500,000
Work to increase lead conversion from 5% to 15% by the quarter end
Increase customer upsell from 7% to 10% by the end of the quarter
Increase customer acquisition in the APQC region from 10% to 15%
Increase high net-worth corporate client base
Target corporations with more than $100,000 turnover.
Increase promotional outreach from 10 to 30 clients per month.
Customer Success OKR Examples
Objectives
Key Results
Provide state-of-the-art customer enablement tools
Implement the latest updates to reduce downtime and lags by 50%
Enable query automation to reduce waiting time
Launch mandatory tool updates every month
Reduce customer response time by 50% by the end of the quarter
Increase customer involvement activities
Increase mandatory training activities from 5 to 7
Launch 7 free certification programs for inactive customers
Increase email outreach for latest guides and white papers from 4 to 8 every month
OKR Examples For Operations
Objectives
Key Results
Increase organizational productivity
Automate file keeping, record maintenance, accounting, and bookkeeping tasks
Provide 1 training session every month to employees to reduce recurring tasks.
Incorporate a learning management system to increase productivity and efficiency
Launch 5 team-specific training programs every month
Ensure an 80% completion rate from all the departments
Mentor and coach 5 employees from every department for managerial positions
OKRs have gained phenomenal success in the last two decades. From startups to multinationals, thousands of organizations have embraced it to reach their ambitious and most challenging goals. Due to its simplicity in setting up and tracking key business results, many renowned leaders have used it for personal and professional success.
Technically advanced OKR software, such as Engagedly, makes it easier to adopt and implement OKRs quickly. It offers excellent insights into understanding the progress of your important objectives and provides an execution-focused approach to aligning and tracking performance outcomes across the organization.
Every company’s success is dependent on its employees. However, not all organizations have a well-coordinated people strategy to support, connect, and interact with their workforce. Research by Gartner shows that a lack of people-centric policies, especially in post-pandemic virtual or remote workplaces, affected employee performance and well-being.
Organizations will only achieve their strategic goals if they prioritize their people. And this is where a people strategy alignment comes into the picture.
A people strategy entails more than just filling immediate hiring needs or implementing an onboarding program. It governs the entire employee-employer relationship. And it is up to HR leaders to develop an influential people strategy to attract and retain talented employees in today’s workplace.
What is a People Strategy?
A people strategy is a company’s overall plan for attracting, engaging, training, and retaining employees. It establishes the strategy for a company’s relationship with its workforce at all stages of the employee lifecycle, from recruitment to offboarding.
Leaders should collaborate with the rest of the C-suite, line managers, and finance to develop a people strategy. This collaboration serves two purposes: For starters, it keeps everyone on the same page. Second, it ensures that the people strategy achieves the organization’s overall business objectives.
As these groups come together, it’s critical to clarify what you want to achieve with a people strategy and keep these goals in the forefront of everyone’s minds to ensure everyone stays focused on them. According to Boston Consulting Group research, an influential people strategy should allow a company to:
What is the Importance of People and Strategy Alignment?
1. Increased decision-making speed
Indecision can stifle productivity, lead to missed deadlines, and have a domino effect throughout an organization. Organizational goals and alignment clarify who has decision-making authority over each work activity. Aligned organizations make better decisions and take less time to execute. Employees can also focus on doing their jobs rather than determining who needs to be consulted when making decisions.
2. Increased employee engagement
Most employees want to enjoy their jobs, believe their work matters, and know they are making a difference. An aligned organization communicates an employee’s work to the organization’s overall strategy. Employees are more satisfied and effective when they understand how their work relates to company strategy.
3. More resources are not necessary
An aligned organization clearly distinguishes between activities that promote growth and those that serve as a support function. It ensures that the company focuses its limited resources on the appropriate actions to promote growth, and align functional and business priorities. This enables businesses to do more with less, resulting in cost savings while increasing performance.
4. Enhanced self-government
Employees develop a clear vision of their work, priorities, and, most importantly, decisions as a natural result of a well-aligned organization. Because there is less ambiguity surrounding their responsibilities, employees have the confidence to make decisions independently rather than waiting to be told what to do or asking permission.
5. Reduce customer confusion
Customers and external stakeholders expect assurance and deliverables to be met consistently. An aligned organization develops mechanisms to ensure that processes within the organization exactly deliver what the customer expects. This way, the organization can consistently ensure customer satisfaction.
How to Attain Strategic Alignment?
Ensure that all leaders are on the same page
The executive team is responsible for outlining clear and compelling options for where to play and what actions to take. When done correctly, a successful strategic plan positions a company to outperform the sum of its parts.
Before you can expect your teams to consistently execute the strategy across the company, your leadership team must all agree that the strategy is clear, credible, and implementable.
Invest the time and effort necessary to align your leaders on your vision, mission, values, target market, unique value proposition, success metrics, and strategic priorities.
Next-level leaders (one level below the executive team) must buy into and commit to the strategic direction to achieve accurate strategic alignment. They must be actively involved in the strategy design process to accomplish this.
After you’ve got the executive team on the same page in step #1, we recommend getting honest and direct feedback from next-level leaders on what needs to be clarified, added, changed, or deleted for the strategy to be clear, credible, and implementable enough to move forward in unison. Then, have an open discussion with next-level leaders about the changes you did and did not include in your strategic plan and the reasoning behind your decisions.
Demonstrate how line managers and individual contributors contribute to the success
Line managers and employees will be far more invested in the strategic plan for success if they have a clear view of their role. Every employee contributes, from the cafeteria worker who understands that a nutritious and appealing meal sends employees back to work well-fed to the accountant who understands that accurate and timely reporting expedites decision-making.
Ascertain that everyone understands the overall strategy, and then assist them in defining their specific goals, roles, success metrics, and unique contribution.
Maintain the Plan in the Foreground
Your strategy communication should be clear, consistent, and ongoing. Every meeting should cover strategic links, progress, issues, and how to solve emerging problems before they become too big to handle.
The plan and progress should be communicated to all employees via emails, one-on-one meetings, company newsletters, social media, or any other means available to you. Be innovative while remaining transparent.
How Engagedly Helps to Achieve People and Strategy Alignment?
Creating a solid strategy is something that every organization strives for. A highly effective strategy assists organizations in establishing a competitive position, increasing market share, and thriving in a harsh business environment. Or they become obsolete and die slowly. However, here we will tell you why the Engagedly learning feature is the right tool to execute that strategy and bring the strategic processes to life.
1. Improve the onboarding process for new employees
The process of including new employees in an organization is known as onboarding. It’s critical to understand the distinction between onboarding and orientation. Orientation is a one-day event that usually kicks off the onboarding process. However, onboarding can last for months or even years after an employee is hired.
When hiring new employees, many businesses need to pay more attention to the importance of onboarding. 22% of businesses don’t have a formal onboarding program yet, and 49% have a partially successful process. What does lousy onboarding look like? New employees are less productive, stressed, disconnected, and more likely to seek alternative employment.
Companies spend a lot of money on employee turnover because of poor onboarding procedures. Onboarding increases employee engagement. The process benefits both new and returning employees, and company leaders.
The first days of a new job leave an indelible impression on an employee and lay the groundwork for their overall engagement with the organization. Engagedly tools such as LMS, goal-setting module, 30-60-90 reviews, file drive feature, and social sharing platform can assist you in providing your employees with the tools, knowledge, and roadmap they require from day one.
2. Maintain regular check-ins and project reviews
A check-in meeting allows managers to receive updates on current projects and challenges, reinforce team goals, and identify potential engagement issues as they arise. In other words, a check-in allows you to take the temperature of your team.
They are more akin to one-on-one discussions between managers and employees about their work, goals, well-being, and development plans. They will assist you in better understanding what your employees are working on and how you can help them. Employees are 3.5 times more likely to contribute to their full potential when they feel like they belong at work, which regular check-ins facilitate.
Employee engagement is becoming increasingly important for employees, as they feel isolated and unsupported due to remote work. According to Harvard Business School, 40% of those polled felt physically and emotionally isolated from their workplace.
Engagedly is a tool that provides tools for teams working on projects across departments and regions to conduct regular check-ins and project reviews. You can ensure progress and accountability across your organization with our ongoing check-ins, 360 assessments, OKR, and goal-setting software.
Conclusion
A people culture solidifies an organization’s foundation as a people-focused enterprise. Employees’ needs should be heard, acknowledged, and addressed. Great people managers are the critical missing link in developing a great organizational culture. Encourage good people management by including it in key performance indicators for managers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What is the relationship between HR and business strategy?
Employees in the organization reflect all elements that contribute to the actualization of the Business strategy, such as skill, attitude, competencies, reward, recognition, satisfaction due to effective promotion policy, desired behaviors to keep customers satisfied, performance, required passion, team spirit, and so on. This translates into business numbers like productivity, growth, and profits.
Q2. How do you get ready for a strategic planning session?
Several factors can impact how you prepare for a strategic planning session. What type of preparations are required heavily depends on where the group is in the strategic planning process. For example, if a company’s management team is starting, it may indicate that building clarity and alignment around the planning approach is critical.
Q3. Why is strategy formulation more difficult than strategy implementation?
Strategy implementation is transforming a previously developed strategy into a set of concrete actions. Strategy implementation is more complex than strategy formulation because it necessitates significant work and coordination. Implementation necessitates resources, time, and effort to ensure the plan is carried out effectively.
Did your Director just thrust his hand toward your face while you were speaking in a board meeting? Was this just to get the POV of your male colleague? We have all been there. The humiliation. The sheer unprofessionalism of that one solitary gesture. Yes, you guessed it right. Today, in this blog, we are going to dive head-on to unravel the five major gender equality challenges women leaders face in today’s global economy. We shall also try to find tips and tricks to combat these challenges and triumph!
The prejudice and discrimination, silent and sinister, have created gigantic hurdles for female leaders everywhere. In an idyllic statement, Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook, professed that “In future there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.” But how far are we from that idealistic world? Why is that Utopia, where there are no gender equality challenges, still a distant dream?
Why is there such a blatant gap in employment in the workforce between men and women?
Why to this day do such rampant gender equality challenges abound?
The global women leaders summit organized by GIWPS and The Rockefeller Foundation on June 20-23, 2022 addressed the urgent need for action to advance gender equity. One of the signatories, Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, announced that “Women leaders are a catalyst for change.” But this begs the question that why is the percentage of these catalysts so low in the global workforce?
A report published in 2021 highlighted that the industries with the lowest share of female representation in the overall makeup of the industry were Technology, Agriculture, Energy, Supply Chain and Transportation, Manufacturing, and Infrastructure.
Why is it that when it comes to hiring women in leadership roles, organizations take a one-step-ahead-and-two-steps-back approach?
Let’s dive right into the heart of these problems and work our way through the tips to combat the challenges.
The Vicious Loop of Bias-Prejudice-Discrimination
The biggest hurdles many female leaders face are bias, gender stereotypes, and preconceived attitudes about female capabilities. It can also be the manifestation of a socially conditioned brain thinking, “Oh! She’s just a woman. Women can’t lead.”
Prejudice against female employees is fatal in management and leadership spheres. It makes it onerous a task for female leaders to become women who climb to executive levels.
In today’s society, outright bias and discrimination are unethical and disapproved of. Many female leaders daily fight the subconscious judgment prevalent at their workplace. Therefore, they are often less likely to be promoted.
How to fight this loop?
Many businesses spend time considering how to bring in a more diverse workforce without having a clear strategy. Culture and organizational paradigms play a role in this.
More than just laws and hiring procedures, creating an inclusive workplace matters. Everyone should feel respected, heard, and be able to make a difference while advancing their careers.
The single most effective action a company can take to encourage more women leaders is to foster a culture of “Conscious Inclusion” by increasing people’s motivation, awareness, and ability for decision-making. Lead, consider, and take action with the awareness of involving everyone. Business leaders need to walk the talk and lead by example.
Even if equal compensation for women executives should be a goal, that alone is not the answer to this problem. We have Chidi King, Director of the Equality Department of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), stating a fact that women are still getting paid 23% less than men in the same jobs.
Companies must check the availability of promotions. Women are frequently found in lower-paid leadership roles. Because they have less chances to achieve “high-paying” C-suite positions, these female leaders are compensated less.
How to bridge the gap?
Samir Modi, Managing Director of Modicare Enterprises, has shared an interesting two cents on this.
He says, “Women bosses exude positivity and can handle immense responsibilities with great finesse. They also bring in natural leadership attributes such as empathy and display higher emotional quotient, which are absolutely necessary in navigating through the complex business environments that we operate in.” He also goes on to expound that one must practice equality at home to achieve it at the workplace.
The only way to master this hurdle is to make a stand.
Leaders must create a safe work environment where any employee who has put in the effort, doesn’t shy away from reaping the rewards.
People leaders and managers must be trained and groomed to be approachable so that no one hesitates to talk to their immediate supervisors.
Business leaders have a love for data. Leaders should inculcate the culture of data-oriented analysis and discussions throughout the org.
The Arduous Chain of Expectations, Rising Stress Levels, and Burnout
One of the key insights that we have unearthed from Deloitte’s Women at Work 2022 report is that almost half of the women polled report feeling burned out, and 53% report that their stress levels are higher now than they were a year ago. This has, thus, become a major player in the gender equality challenges that we perceive worldwide.
Only 43% of people feel comfortable discussing mental health issues at work. The “always on” culture is still prevalent. Just over one-third of women evaluate their ability to switch off from work as bad or very poor. 42% of that group are concerned that their professional advancement will be hampered if they are not always available.
The question that pops into our mind is a resounding ‘Why?’.
Why is it that women leaders and workforce are not able to adapt to and adopt this ‘hustle culture’ with aplomb?
There are multilinear narratives to answer that. The major factors are:
There are frequently less demands placed on female leaders than on their male colleagues. Even in senior management roles, women are more likely to report feeling compelled to:
-Balance being liked and respected
-Overcome assumptions
-Deal with gender-related expectations
These lead to a constant condition of walking on a tightrope, especially for women leaders.
Furthermore, global research continues to show that women often have lesser career advancement opportunities and are less likely to be assigned “authoritative” roles.
Even brilliant women leaders, thus, feel the need to constantly prove their mettle to survive in the corporate jungle.
While the hybrid method of working offers advantages, such as the ability for many to keep the flexibility that remote working can provide, it also raises the possibility of exclusion for those who are not physically there. Nearly 60% of women who work in hybrid contexts believe they have been left out of significant meetings, and nearly half claim they do not have enough exposure to leaders, a crucial factor in career advancement and sponsorship.
Companies must set the bar high enough and control unfair demands if they are sincere about supporting a culture that empowers female workers.
Women must be given appropriate tasks and well-deserved promotions to prove their leadership ability.
The best way to promote career advancement for women is to ensure equal access to promotions and new leadership positions.
Mentorship programs and development strategies will be a huge boost to their careers and network.
The Oppression of Sexual Harassment and Microaggressions
Yes, even after the mega-publicized and still ongoing #metoo movement, there still exists gender-based harassment at every nook and cranny of today’s global economy.
Women who hold leadership positions are sometimes thought to be less deserving than their male counterparts. This may result in decreased collaboration and unprofessional behavior from people toward female leaders. One explanation for this is that women in positions of authority are more likely to encounter a range of unfavorable situations, such as sexual harassment, discrimination, microaggressions, unconscious bias, etc.
As women leaders advance toward higher positions in management and leadership, they face the most traumatic hurdle of the gender barriers in the workplace, which is sexual harassment. This demon is like the mythical monster Hydra, with many ugly heads, like:
Sexual animosity
Undesirable body language or gestures
Derogatory statements or innuendos
Lewd and salacious intent and attempts
The Deloitte report divulges that the majority of women (59%) have experienced harassment (such as unwanted physical advances or repeated disparaging comments) and/or microaggressions (such as being interrupted or talked over, being patronized, and so on) over the past year at work, an increase over the 52% who reported experiencing harassment and/or microaggressions in 2021.
To deal with the harassment, many women are compelled to leave their professions, switch careers, or cut back on their work hours. Such behaviors could compel individuals to pass up important opportunities and further impede their job growth.
How to battle this?
Business leaders worldwide need to, rather, should be forced to implement anti-harassment training for each and every vertical of their companies. But, people have a tendency to be deaf as a post to the message conveyed in training and workshops. So, conducting sessions won’t do. Leaders need to set an example.
A zero-tolerance policy needs to be prioritized and set.
Lenient work culture and attitude toward harassment encourages such lewd advances more. Transgressors should be dealt with utmost severity and punishment.
Ignoring the victim’s complaint leads to a betrayal of trust and further shatters the victim’s morale. This should never happen. Every organization must have an anti harassment committee which needs to hear both parties and pass on fair judgment.
The Uphill Climb Toward Becoming a C-Suite Leader
“One of the greatest gender equality challenges that our women leaders face these days is making their way to the sacred C-suite. More and more women are bagging the roles of managers and supervisors, but walking in the hallowed walls of C-suite in the corporate world is still a distant dream for many female leaders today.”, says Aishwarya Khan Bhaduri, the Marketing Manager at Engagedly.
The glaring factors we stumbled upon, while doing a root cause analysis, are: the significant lack of mentorship and preconceived notions.
Anyone who has held a position in a huge organization is aware of the value of sponsors and mentors in advancing one’s career. Men still outperform women when it comes to creating a strong professional network, though. In certain circumstances, women are over-mentored and under-sponsored.
According to Dr. Konrad, an Ivey Academy professor, research reveals that people are much less inclined to recognize women’s expertise than they do men’s.
“Decision-makers at the highest levels in the largest, most-powerful business organizations continue to be men,” Dr. Konrad says. “Men prefer to be led by other men, and show a clear anti-female bias in their ratings of leadership effectiveness.”
How to scale up?
Leaders should drive toward helping promising female leaders break the proverbial glass ceiling and rise to the executive ranks.
Every vertical in an organization should have advocates, mentors, and sponsors for guidance.
Women in the C-suite must not be reluctant to participate in discussions about modifying current procedures and structures in order to foster a more inclusive environment.
Each and every leader today should imbibe the mantra of ‘be the change to make the change’ and throw away all preconceived notions of gender bias that have been mentally conditioned since times immemorial.
A big no-no to the culture of patronizing the ‘little woman’. Gender equality will then be a predominant truth and not a challenge.
Women leaders need to empower themselves and remember that their worst adversary is equivocation. They need to know what they want and take the bull by its horns.
General Motors Chair and CEO Mary Barra shared her encouragement for women in the workplace by pleading with all women employees to “Find your voice. Have a point of view.” “Too often”, she said, “women are discouraged from speaking up, which can close the door to future opportunities.”
Many businesses are ignorant of the gender equality challenges that women encounter at work. The only effective approach to learn is to evaluate the culture of your company, then figure out how to improve the culture and provide female leaders with the resources they need.
Leena Nair, CEO, Chanel, equivocates that “to create a balance we need to change the men, the women and the culture.” Before joining Chanel, she was the Chief HR Officer at Unilever where she in her own words, “…feel especially honored in steering Unilever to a more balanced future.
As a woman who has experienced being in the minority, I have empathy for anyone who feels marginalized. I take it personally.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What are the top five challenges faced by female team members?
Ans. Female team members face quite a few challenges at the workplace. A few them would be:
Gender discrimination and prejudice
Lack of acknowledgment for hard work
Opinions and ideas not being valued
Sexual harassment and other types of microaggressions
Anxiety
Q2. How does gender inequality affect leadership?
Ans. Women are seriously underrepresented in leadership. Authoritative roles in decision-making and management are, often, not assigned to women leaders.
Q3. What is the best solution for gender inequality?
Ans. Here are the top five solutions to battle gender equality challenges at the workplace:
Office designs speak volumes about the type of organization you are trying to position yourself as. And it is no surprise that office designs tend to play a huge role in retaining current employees and welcoming future employees.
People want different things — it’s no secret. Depending on their social and economic status, education level, or unique preference, every person has their own set of priorities. And it is these priorities that determine what they want out of a job.
But while we, as a society, may be aware that people need and want different things, the truth is that modern management strategies still haven’t figured out that there’s one considerable obstacle to leading a team to success: age.
Because 19% of the modern workforce is actively disengaged (Gallup’s technical term for being miserable at work), it’s easy to conclude that great leaders need to find new ways to bring workers together. And that’s not just for the sake of organizational success but also to achieve higher job satisfaction levels, which, in turn, drive company-wide results.
So, if you’re a small business owner or manager looking to do what’s best for their multigenerational team, here are the best strategies that will allow your team to thrive.
Understand What Drives Workplace Satisfaction for Your Team
As you work towards developing your leadership style that will encourage success, you have to find out one thing: what is it that makes your employees happy?
By taking the time to understand your team and analyzing employees’ feedback to identify any discrepancies in terms of priorities, you can adjust your leadership style, set team goals, and even encourage your workforce to discover new meaning in their day-to-day tasks to make everyone happier and more productive.
Obviously, the best way to understand your multigenerational team is to conduct a survey and ask about their top priorities at work. However, if you don’t have the time or resources to do that, you can still find plenty of resources on what people want to get from their jobs.
In July 2019, SurveyMonkey and CNBC conducted an online survey asking people what made them happy at the office. The results revealed that most workers’ job satisfaction was boosted by finding meaning in their work. But it’s worth knowing that monetary compensation, autonomy, development opportunities, and recognition also played significant roles in helping people feel satisfied with their work.
And a recent article from Flamingo collected data from multiple resources, identifying the five most desired employee benefits. According to the company’s research, these include health insurance, PTO, retirement plans, flexible work, and wellness programs, and the guide gives plenty of great advice on how to provide these benefits and what to expect in return.
Define Communication Preferences and Expectations
One of the greatest difficulties for multigenerational teams is that every age group has specific preferences regarding the proper way to communicate at work.
And, sure, it may not seem that significant whether you assign tasks via email, face-to-face, chats, or Slack. However, research shows that defining communication guidelines (and stating why they need to be followed) might be one of the most impactful things you can change to lead your team to success.
According to a survey conducted in 2017, individuals over the age of 55 have a strong preference for voice communication. Conversely, younger employees (aged 18-44) favor digital communication methods like text and email.
So, an older employee may find it oddly strange (or even disrespectful) that their manager prefers to send them an email regarding a relevant matter than a call. Yet, data shows that over 20% of people still think it’s inappropriate to call someone without texting them first.
The good news is, leading a multigenerational team does not have to mean communication struggles. In fact, the solution can be as simple as doing a couple of easy things.
First, ensure that your employees know what to expect from you regarding team communication. If you insist on managing projects through online tools so that all information is easily accessed by those working remotely, just say so. Your employees will understand.
Secondly, find out people’s unique preferences. If you need to communicate with someone one-on-one, ask them how they prefer to do it. Then, be prepared to meet them halfway.
Yes, older employees can change their way of thinking and accept modern, informal, or faster communication methods they’re not entirely comfortable with. But, if you can do them the courtesy of having important conversations face-to-face, you’ll show that you’re a leader who cares about them and nurtures intimacy and trust, both of which are crucial for a team striving for success.
Identify Strengths and Encourage Stimulating Work
A recent survey from Gallup revealed that as many as 58% of job seekers think that the way to achieve job satisfaction is to be allowed to do what they do best.
So, as a leader of a multigenerational team, you need to understand that one of the most impactful things you can do to drive success is to identify your employee’s strengths and encourage them to do work they find stimulating.
The fact that your employees belong to different generations gives you the advantage of having multiple points of view on the same topics. Plus, working with a diverse group of people could also allow you the flexibility to find out what your workers love to do. You can offer them the opportunity to spend at least a portion of their workday on tasks that feel meaningful (or downright exciting).
For instance, if you check out a business like Eachnight, you’ll see how well multi-generational (and multi-disciplinary) teams can work together to solve consumer pain points.
Because it targets people of all ages, Eachnight understands that producing valuable content requires different approaches. And, thanks to the fact that its team includes a large number of people — from well-established and experienced surgeons to health and wellness coaches to young content creators — the brand is capable of creating unique resources.
For example, the mattress quiz shown below is a piece of interactive content that none of the company’s competitors offer. And the way Eachnight acquired it is by simply allowing employees to do what they do best and what they find exciting.
Create Opportunities for Bonding and Collaboration
If the above example teaches us anything, it’s that success must be preceded by collaboration. So, if your goal is to successfully lead your multigenerational team, it might not be a bad idea to set aside a generous amount of time for team building.
Now, you can choose a host of team-building activities, depending on whether you want to help people bond, encourage creative thinking, or nurture their problem-solving skills. But the one thing you should remember is that, in general, people form stronger bonds when they have the opportunity to interact face-to-face.
With this in mind, it might not be a bad idea to insist on your entire team coming together at least once a year.
Yes, getting everyone in the same room might sound like it’s outside your budget. But there are always ways to work around financial constraints. So, if you’re thinking about organizing a team retreat to encourage employees to build closer relationships, make sure you do your best to plan something fun, and rest assured that the results will more than justify the cost.
Don’t Neglect Your Own Growth as a Leader
Finally, as you explore ways to help your multigenerational team to do better, don’t forget that your role as a leader is just as important as your employees’ role in achieving success.
With this in mind, you must work on your leadership skills as diligently as you work towards helping your employees achieve the desired results.
Explore resources that will open your eyes to new leadership techniques. Be prepared to gather and accept employee feedback (yes, even if it’s negative). And learn to acknowledge your mistakes and commit yourself to always trying to do better.
Is perfect leadership a destination you will ever reach? Most likely not. But rest assured that if your team sees how hard you are working on improving yourself, they will be just as inspired to invest in their own professional growth. Moreover, they’ll be more ready to widen their horizons, learn new skills, and collaborate with peers whose points of view they may not entirely understand (yet).
In Closing
There you have it, some of the best tips for leading multigenerational teams to success.
As you can see, the best way to bring people together, regardless of age, doesn’t necessarily depend on technical tools or strategies. Instead, the most impactful thing you can do is practice open and honest communication and encourage everyone to keep an open mind.
As a leader of a multigenerational team, don’t be afraid to do things differently and disregard age-ist stereotypes. Work with your team to build strong relationships, encourage lifelong learning in your organization, and accept that our differences aren’t an obstacle but an opportunity to come together and do something great.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What is a multigenerational workplace?
Ans. A multigenerational workplace includes employees from different generations such as baby boomers generation, Generation X, the millennial generational, and Generation Z.
Q2. What are some of the challenges in a multigenerational workplace?
Ans. Some of the challenges include:
Communication issues
Negative stereotypes
Varying employee expectation
Q3. What are the significant benefits of a multigenerational workplace?
Ans. The benefits of a multigenerational workforce are:
Learning/mentoring opportunities
Knowledge transfer
Problem-solving abilities
Different perspectives
Unique relationships
This article is written by Natasha Lane.
Natasha is a lady of a keyboard and one hell of a geek. She has been working for, and collaborating with, individual clients and companies of all sizes for more than a decade. Natasha specializes in writing about design, branding, digital marketing, and business growth. She is also addicted to art in all its forms and grilled tofu.
Performance reviews play an important role in an employee’s work life. They decide if an employee had worked well enough to get a promotion, a raise, etc. Most people are conscientious about how they handle performance reviews. After all, nobody wants to be the bad guy, even if an employee’s performance isn’t up to par.
An effective performance management system helps identify employees’ issues and find solutions for the same. This will improve their quality of work and in turn, increase productivity.
Quiet quitting has become a social media sensation in recent days, especially among Gen Z and millennials. It might sound like someone is silently putting in their resignations, but the reality is different altogether. In fact, quiet quitting is a trend wherein the employees of a workplace stick to a bare minimum. It is a rebellion against the ‘hustle culture’ where employers ask employees to go above and beyond to get work done.
The COVID-19 pandemic affected everyone’s lives in more than one way. It caused people to reconsider their chosen career paths. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 71.6 million people quit their jobs during the Great Resignation, which went on from April 2021 to April 2022, for a monthly average of 3.98 million. This also paved the way for another phenomenon called “Quiet Quitting.”
Let’s explore all you need to know about this new phenomenon happening at work, but first, let’s answer what quiet quitting is.
What is quiet quitting?
Quiet quitting doesn’t mean employees leaving their jobs. They limit their tasks to only what is strictly required to match their job description. For some, quiet quitting is a form of rebellion against the hustle culture.
When employees choose to quit, they just want to do the bare minimum instead of working for extended hours or taking up any additional work. Their main concern is to get the job done. Therefore, they are setting boundaries for their professional work and focusing more on their work-life balance.
These employees are still performing their jobs, but they are not adhering to the ‘work is life’ culture in order to lead their careers and stand out to their employers. They stick to their job description, and when they get home, they put work aside and concentrate on non-work obligations and activities.
Quiet quitting, on the other hand, could indicate that a person is dissatisfied with their job or is suffering from burnout. Quiet quitting is a strategy for an employee to deal with burnout and relieve stress. It could also indicate that they are ready to move jobs or are already seeking one.
Who are the employees quietly quitting?
According to Deloitte’s 2022 Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey, Boomers and Gen-X approach work very differently from other generations. While older workers like the “up and grind” mindset, current generations are more focused on a healthy and balanced lifestyle.
According to a survey conducted by ResumeBuilder.com, 25% of employees across all ages stated they perform the bare minimum at work, but this figure rises to 30% among millennials. In comparison, just 8% of workers aged 54 and up reported decreasing productivity. While millennial employees are more inclined to be quiet quitters, unhappiness in other generations is evidently widespread.
What’s the reason behind quiet quitting?
The biggest reason for quiet quitting these days is burnout. According to a Microsoft survey of 30,000 workers, 54% of Gen Z employees don’t hesitate to quit their jobs. This is mainly because they want to get into jobs they prefer suitable for themselves.
The World Economic Forum rates youth disillusionment one among the many immediate dangers in its 2021 Global Risks report. According to the findings, mental health has deteriorated since the onset of the pandemic, leaving 80% of the youth workforce vulnerable to despair, anxiety, and disillusionment.
All of these factors are a big reason for quiet quitting. We have listed here a few other factors responsible for quiet quitting to gain popularity among working professionals.
Promotes mental wellness
Several studies have found a correlation between work-life balance and mental health. This movement seeks to restore balance where work has infiltrated your personal time. It can also assist you in distancing your self-worth from your work. When all you have is work, it’s difficult not to derive a sense of worth from it.
Protects against burnout
Burnout was recognized by the World Health Organization in 2019 as an occupational syndrome. The characteristics can be emotions of depletion, tiredness, cynicism, mental alienation from work, and poor performance. Overwork causes burnout, which can have long-term physical, emotional, and mental health consequences. Overwork and a lack of self-care can lead to burnout, which can be harmful to both the individual and the business.
Many people who suffer from burnout wind up taking time off work or working at less than full capacity. Quiet quitting can improve the balance of work and personal life, potentially preventing burnout before it occurs.
Improves workplace relationships
When employees are content, their productivity rises. This can even help if you’re preoccupied or don’t want to be present. Furthermore, when people are joyful, they are less tense and find it easier to establish friends at work.
Another effect of the quiet quitting trend is that simply completing your job eliminates the bad impact of continuously feeling in competition with colleagues.
Experts say that rather than being concerned about lost productivity, employers can take advantage of the silent quitting trend. They can encourage employee well-being and provide a conducive workplace.
Quiet quitting signs might vary based on the employee’s reasons for wishing to take a break from work. If an employee is actually dissatisfied, the indicators may be far more visible than if they simply seek a better work-life balance.
As an employer or a team leader, it is important to know why employees are quitting. Then only you can find a solution. But how are you going to know that? Here are some quiet quitting examples by which you can understand the phenomenon better.
Skipping work-related meetings
Late arrivals and early departure
Low productivity
Low participation in team activities
Lack of enthusiasm for work
Impact of this quiet quitting trend on businesses
According to the Gallup State of the Global Workplace study, employees who are alienated at work cost the world economy $7.8 trillion in lost output.
With fears of an approaching economic slump circulating, employers are concerned about productivity levels. For instance, non-farm worker productivity in the United States declined by 2.5 percent in the second quarter of this year compared to the same period last year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this is the steepest yearly reduction since 1948.
Companies such as Google are indicating that layoffs are inevitable in reaction to decreased productivity. These layoffs are costly for both employees and companies, with the cost of laying off one person equal to 200% of the employee’s income.
Impact of this quiet quitting trend on employees
Slacking off at work can produce tension among coworkers because some are left to compensate for others. This, in turn, fosters a toxic working culture, which may compound employee unhappiness.
While the Great Recession resulted in more jobs relative to experienced workers, an impending recession has shifted the calculus in favor of employers.
According to a new poll conducted by consultancy firm PwC, half of the respondents in the United States planned to reduce their staff, including companies such as Apple, Peloton, and Walmart. According to a July research by a job-search service, 60 percent of job searchers feel a greater need to find work now before economic conditions worsen.
This suggests that employers have an advantage over employees. Quiet quitters or those accomplishing the bare minimum may be the first to depart in this scenario. Quiet quitting can jeopardize their future possibilities as well. Furthermore, underperforming employees may build a terrible reputation that will accompany them for the rest of their lives, especially when HR services are being outsourced and digitalized.
What can businesses do to counter the impact of quiet quitting?
Organizations must ensure that employees don’t suffer from burnout. Employees should be allowed to set realistic boundaries. For example, most employees feel guilty about taking yearly vacations as they feel it might impact their careers.
To combat the bare minimum norms, employers must urge employees to take care of their health. Furthermore, they should encourage breaks. If a company wishes to have a great working culture, it must respect the emotions of employees.
Favorable work culture will most likely result in increased production and productivity. Only then companies can finally solve the true issue with ‘quiet quitting.’ No one wants to feel like they’re getting a bad deal at work. If you want the best deal for your company, allow employees to have open discussions about what they feel and how they like to see things at the workplace.
Promote open dialogue
Employees must feel safe approaching their bosses with any problems or challenges they may be having. Managers should also make a point of checking in with their personnel rather than waiting on them. Employees who can approach their superiors openly are considerably more likely to discuss topics that are important to them, which affects their job engagement.
Encourage a good work-life balance
Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is critical to keeping your workers interested and satisfied at work. Assure that your workforce has the ability to take a vacation, sick leaves, or personal day offs as needed. If possible, avoid scheduling too many meetings on late evenings or weekends.
Make sure your staff feels appreciated
Employees who feel respected, valued, and appreciated at work are more likely to be happy, committed, and interested in their roles. To keep staff engaged, make sure they receive both positive and constructive feedback. It is also an excellent idea to take the time to recognize your employees’ efforts. Do this in the best way possible for them, whether publicly or privately.
Employees that are overworked are more likely to be burnt out, stressed out, and unhappy at work. You should avoid scheduling too many overtime hours or placing employees under too much pressure to reach unrealistic targets. Overworking your employees will just add to your stress and obligation.
Create opportunities for career growth
If a person feels trapped in a dead-end job, they are more likely to be unhappy and disengaged at work. Create possibilities for people to grow and rise within the firm to avoid this. Offer courses and training programs to employees for upskilling themselves and learn interesting new things.
Take feedback from your team
Your employees are the most reliable source of information about what it’s like to work for your company. As a result, you must pay attention to what your staff says and consider their recommendations. This will show them that you respect their opinion. This will also allow you to take the required actions to create a better work culture. When the work environment is conducive and employee-friendly, output and efficiency from employees will also be the highest.
Invest in an employee engagement tool
Employee engagement tools are another creative way to enhance engagement in the workplace. They can help you boost employee engagement with technology by integrating all of your engagement initiatives together on a single user-friendly platform.
Companies can use such employee engagement tools to keep their staff and employees meaningfully connected and extract better outputs. Here is how an employee engagement tool can help your company:
It improves overall employee engagement.
It improves the employee retention rate.
It gives employees an excellent channel to convey their concerns and opinions.
It enhances employee productivity and makes way for creativity and innovation.
It encourages a higher attendance rate.
It helps to create a conducive and happy work environment.
It keeps track of employee performance and gives feedback when needed.
It helps in the timely distribution of rewards and recognition.
It improves team coordination and enhances team output.
The bottom line
Quiet quitting may be a temporary trend that is viral on social media, but it originates from real-world issues that employees encounter on a daily basis. That is why it is important to pay close attention to why this trend started in the first place.
All stakeholders should consider a human resource specialist approach to redesigning the work culture. This can be accomplished by acknowledging the existence of an issue and committing to resolving it rather than abandoning it entirely.
The key result has to be measurable. But in the end, you can look, and without any arguments: Did I do that or did I not do it? Yes? No? Simple. No judgments in it.
When it comes to setting goals and being successful, the one organization that comes to our mind is Google. Google’s OKRs are legendary and a lot of the company’s success can be attributed to their OKRs.
As a result, it’s no secret that everyone wants to emulate Google’s goal setting method and perhaps their meteoric success as well.
OKRs stand for ‘Objectives And Key Results’. OKRs are a popular approach for goal-setting which allows employees to execute individual as well as company objectives.
Objectives are something that you want to achieve, and key results are a measurable way to keep track of how close you are to achieve your goals.
OKR software helps employees with task management and to track the progress of their goal easily. But with too many options available in the market, it becomes a difficult job for an organization to select one.
OKR Software Features To Look For
The section below highlights the best OKR software features to look for before you invest in a tool.
1. Easy And Simple to Use By Everyone
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” — Leonardo da Vinci.
The OKR software should be user-friendly and easy to use. Users should be able to understand how the software works with little or no training. The user interface should be clean and not cluttered with useless information. The simpler the software, the easier it would be for everyone to use. Understanding and managing the software should not be a new project in and of itself for all employees. Additionally, it should support easy integration with other tools or processes. The adoption rate of software depends on its user-friendliness and simplicity of use.
OKR software should be flexible and support easy customization. OKRs/Goals check-ins can be in the form of a percentage, quantity, or milestone. The software should give users the flexibility to check in on their goals as per their needs. Flexible and customizable software will be useful for the organization in the long run.
3. Allows Comment
OKRs have a shelf-life and are generally set every quarter. The ability to comment on OKRs allows managers and employees to discuss it regularly. OKR platform with comment functionality promotes two-way communication and helps in setting a culture of regular feedback and a healthy work culture.
OKR software should possess the basic functionality to align and cascade OKRs and goals. OKRs and goals are often shared responsibility. Cascading goals will allow the sharing of goals from one level of the organization to the next. For example, a manager can cascade his goals down to his direct reports.
Goal alignment, on the other hand, helps everyone visualize the bigger picture. It allows individuals to engage in goal alignment and goal management. For example, if one of the organization’s main goals is to break into an as-yet untapped market, the ability to align goals shows an employee how exactly they are contributing to this specific goal.
5. Dashboards and Insights
OKR software tools should present actionable dashboards and insights. It should be easy to understand and analyze so that it is actionable. Moreover, it should highlight the number of goals, the percentage of completion, goal alignment, and their status. It will help employees know whether any goal will be a bottleneck and needs attention. Moreover, an OKR software with an actionable dashboard and insights will help employees stay aligned and focussed.
A team always looks up to its leaders, especially, self-motivated leaders. Businesses always look out for mantras to motivate managers and leaders. Self-motivation in leadership team is the primary essence of a successful brand. Great leaders are surprisingly approachable, open, and always motivated. Read more to find few tricks or tips that self-motivated leaders follow.
1. Setting Goals
Even before learning how to motivate managers and leaders, any good organization first focuses on setting goals. Self-motivated leaders, with their organized minds, set goals for themselves which they want to achieve. Setting non-achievable goals do not mean that they cannot be achieved. Leaders always strive to reach their goals and do not get discouraged or let negative thoughts stop them. When you can set gigantic goals for yourself, you imbibe the capability to achieve them.
Set goals and set up a plan to achieve those goals!
Motivation in leadership can only stem from the inherent flexibility to adapt to change. With the changing dynamics of work culture and the current global scenario, rigidity means being obsolete. Being open to change is a refreshingly cool trait to have. This shows how flexible you are and how well you can handle yourself in case of any uncertainty.
Great leaders believe that values change with time, so they constantly and consistently adapt to and adopt change.
3. Learning from People Around Them
Modesty and being respectful to people around them is another quality that makes self-motivated leaders successful. Great leaders believe that no one is superior or inferior to anyone. Everyone has their challenges to face and their ways of overcoming those obstacles. They learn from everyone around them. Leaders are observant and good at conversations. They try to be unbiased and imbibe the good things from people they interact with. That’s how they grow!
In the journey of being successful leaders, it is important to know where we are going wrong and how we can improve. Successful leaders reflect on their progress toward their goals frequently and work hard to improve themselves.
Self-motivated leaders stay motivated because of their constant laser-sharp focus on their goals. They strive to achieve the impossible, always. This is how they leave a mark on their team and the world! Teams get motivated seeing the zeal in their leaders.
5. Balancing Emotions
We are all human beings and not automatons, ergo we have feelings and emotions. Sometimes our emotions can be so strong that they can either make us extremely happy or extremely sad. Feelings have the ability to make us successful or a failure. Motivation in leadership comes from channeling the feelings in a positive and productive way. Successful leaders do not dwell on negativity. They try to perceive failure as a learning to improve the next time and not as a failure per se. They carefully balance their emotions to make the best possible decisions.
Leaders try to focus and improve themselves by trying to be the best version of themselves. When teams sense this passion to improve and prove, they reciprocate the same traits. When such self-motivated leaders try to achieve goals, overcome any challenges, streamline processes, bring in innovative initiatives, their team follows them with enthusiasm and excitement.
Organizational culture can be defined as the set of shared values, goals, and practices that characterize an organization. It’s about how people think about their work, what values they believe in, where they see the company, and what they do to get there. These characteristics represent the personality and culture of an organization.
Why is Company Culture Important?
Company culture is as important as business strategies, as it either strengthens or undermines the objectives. A positive culture is significant and here are 5 reasons why it is important:
1. Increased employee engagement
A work environment with organizational culture is driven by goals and clear expectations. This encourages employees to be more engaged in their work and in their interactions with others. It also leads to higher levels of employee engagement, which increases productivity. A strong connection between an organization and its employees creates a positive atmosphere that is hard to ignore.
2. Raised Productivity
It helps improve productivity and overall performance levels when employees have the resources and tools they need to succeed. Organizational culture influences the structure of the workplace in ways that bring people with the same skills together. People with similar backgrounds and skills can work together more quickly on corporate projects.
A company’s organizational culture reflects its public image and reputation. People make assumptions about companies based on their internal and external interactions. A lack of organizational culture or a bad image can make customers hesitant to do business with someone associated with your brand. Companies with strong brand identities tend to attract more businesses and job seekers with similar values that support their mission.
4. Successful Onboarding
Organizational cultures increasingly rely on effective onboarding practices to train new hires. Onboarding practices, including orientation, training, and performance management programs, help new hires access the right resources and achieve a better transition to the role. This promotes employee longevity and loyalty and reduces the frustration some employees experience when they don’t have the information they need to do their job well.
5. Healthy Team Culture
Organizational culture contributes to the improvement of work processes and guides the decision-making process. It also helps teams break down barriers of ambiguity. Team members who are well informed and knowledgeable about a particular process are often more motivated to complete the project. A clear culture that connects employees and promotes an organized work structure helps people work together in a goal-oriented way.
How to Improve Company Culture?
Communicate Well
Knowing how to communicate well is the best way to improve your company culture. Misunderstandings are the main reason people are dissatisfied with their jobs and look for other opportunities. Improve your team’s experience by doing your part and communicating well. When sending emails and joining meetings, try to share your ideas as clearly as possible. It may be helpful to provide some background information on the topic or give a specific example.
Listen to Concern And Welcome Ideas
If you are in a leadership position, provide your employees with a public or anonymous platform where they can easily share their opinions. Encourage one-on-one meetings with members of the team, giving them the opportunity to talk openly and confidentially about sensitive issues. Employees feel valued by letting them know they can count on you for questions.
Encourage Feedback
If you identify a particular aspect of your business that needs improvement, take the time to provide feedback on the issue and encourage others to do the same. While some businesses have strict standards requiring a procedure for submitting feedback, others are more relaxed. When providing comments, be sure to communicate in a professional and genuine manner. Discuss details and potential alternatives to the company’s challenges.
Consistency
Consistency in leadership efforts helps people feel stable. Once your company’s organizational structure is in place, do your best to maintain processes and procedures. Treat everyone professionally and equally and avoid preferential treatment.
20 Company Culture Ideas
A successful company culture that includes clear and concise policies, effective communication strategies, and fair and equal treatment helps employees feel engaged and valued. Beyond base pay and benefits, check out these 20 company culture ideas that can make your small business a better place to work and ultimately more successful.
1. Launch a company culture committee
A cultural committee can be a very valuable tool for boosting moraleand cohesive teams. The committee should be responsible for developing and implementing policies that promote a positive work environment (e.g., developing codes of conduct and setting standards of behavior for employees) and should consist of representatives from all departments and levels of the company. By establishing a cultural committee, employers can ensure that their employees have the resources they need to succeed in their roles.
2. Company culture in job descriptions
A job descriptioncontains some of the most important information a company can provide when hiring a new employee. These can not only specify the requirements of a particular role but also provide a snapshot of the company’s culture and values. This allows you to attract qualified candidates and high salaries. With this in mind, job descriptions should always reflect company values and employee expectations.
3. Include company culture in your employee handbook
As an employer, you want your employees to feel welcomed and valued. But what about communicating your company’s culture? How do you make your employees aware of this? One way is by including a culture section in your employee handbook. This creates a common ground for all employees and ensures that everyone knows what is expected of them.
4. Establish town hall meetings
Town hall meetings are company-wide gatherings to discuss policies, procedures, events, and employee recognition. This is a great time to make sure all employees are on the same page when it comes to expectations at work. Additionally, these gatherings promote open communication. It provides a forum for employees to raise concerns and ask questions while allowing companies to receive feedback on internal culture and opportunities for improvement.
5. Categorize diversity & inclusion
Diversity and inclusion are key values in the workplace, as they help create a welcoming and supportive environment for all employees. Cultivating a culture that prioritizes these can improve communication and teamwork, reduce stress in the office, and ultimately improve employee productivity and happiness.
6. Evaluate office workspaces
The majority of office space is rooms and booths lined up against walls and interiors, giving employees a sense of self-containment. You can contribute to collaboration, employee well-being, and the overall well-being of your company culture. Start by getting rid of cubicles and creating a more open workspace. This has many benefits, including improved communication and collaboration. An open workspace also allows creativity to flourish.
7. Develop culture with benefits
Benefit packages are one of the most important benefits for employees. You can strengthen your company culture by creating something full of traditional benefits. Start offering typical benefits such as paid vacation, health insurance, life/disability insurance, and retirement plans. Next, consider extras who can demonstrate and support your company’s culture and values.
8. Offer remote and hybrid work schedules
To reduce commute times and improve work-life balance, remote work and flexible working hours are growing in popularity in today’s competitive job market. As mentioned earlier, offering these types of options can improve company culture and help attract and retain top talent. Flexible working hours can also reduce stress and increase employee productivity.
Encouraging employees to use paid time off is an important way to keep employees happy and productive. This is a direct result of a healthy corporate culture. There are many ways to make paid time off available to your employees, including:
Make sure your PTO policy is clear and concise. Employees need to know exactly what rights they have and when they can exercise them
Require an employee to use a certain number of his/her PTO days per year
Unused PTO Rollover Permit
10. Promote work-life balance
Too much work can lead to burnout, while too little work can make employees feel bored or undervalued. Employers must ensure a healthy work-life balance for their employees. There are several ways to do this:
Setting clear and reasonable deadlines
Providing flexible working hours
Provision of maternity and childcare leave
Creating an environment where employees can easily take time off
By enforcing certain policies and practices, businesses can help employees manage their time and workload in a productive and enjoyable way.
11. Create collaborative teams
A collaboration team is a group of people (usually from different departments) working together to achieve a common goal. This can take the form of a brainstorming team, a project team, or a scrum team. It is an integral part of an organization’s success and helps reduce conflicts and improve communication among employees by enabling them to share knowledge, skills, and ideas. All of this leads to increased productivity.
12. Recognize employee achievement
Recognizing employees for their contributions to the company is an easy way to develop company culture. This can be done through praise and appreciation, recognition on important occasions, and awarding employee perks such as employee discounts and free tickets to company events. These simple actions contribute to a positive work environment.
13. Provide growth opportunities
Corporate culture is stagnant and ambitious. To break this cycle and improve employee engagement, companies must offer professional development opportunities. This may include training and development programs, mentoring partnerships, and other opportunities to help employees expand their skills and contribute to the company’s success.
14. Offer wellness program
When it comes to creating a healthy work environment, many companies overlook one of the most important factors: wellbeing. Wellness programs help employees feel better physically and emotionally, which in turn can improve organizational culture.
15. Provide company merchandise
Merchandise placement is the simplest way to push your business. There’s nothing better than having your company’s employees wear your company’s logo on their t-shirts, mugs, and pens. This is often called ‘company swag’ and maybe a product that showcases your name and logo.
16. Give performance incentives
Incentives are a vital part of performance management and are shown to be effective in motivating employees. There are various sorts of incentives, each with its own benefits and disadvantages. It’s important to settle on the correct form of incentive and ensure it’s appropriate for the staff involved.
17. Encourage volunteer work
Employees are passionate about more than what they do. You have desires and goals outside the workplace. Help your employees nurture their passion by offering them incentives to volunteer in their communities. This shows that employers care about their employees and what they do outside of work, rather than just focusing on the productivity they bring to the organization.
18. Use employee engagement survey
Employee engagementsurveys help to assess employee satisfaction, morale, and motivation. By understanding employees’ opinions, organizations can make informed decisions about a way to best serve their customers and employees. Surveys may also be accustomed to identify areas of improvement.
Onboarding is the first point of contact for new hires. To improve the onboarding process, companies should focus on creating a welcoming environment for new hires.
This can be done by:
Create a welcoming culture
Ensure all new hires are properly introduced to the company and its purpose
Ensure new hires are provided with clear instructions and expectations of their role within the organization, as well as customer-facing guidelines.
20. Mentoring
Mentoring is a great way to develop and encourage an employee’s career. Employees who have a mentor feel more involved in their work, stay with the company longer, and communicate better. The benefits of mentoring go beyond individual employees. Companies that mentor their employees are seeing lower turnover, increased creativity and productivity, and increased innovation.
Real-world Examples of Company Culture
Google
Google is known for being an excellent employer that has pioneered many of the perks and advantages that startups are now known for. Google’s employees are hardworking, talented, and enthusiastic. For its employees, Google’s corporate culture is a treasure trove of perks and bonuses. Free meals, employee vacations and parties, cash bonuses, open speeches by high-level executives, employee recognition, gyms, and a pet-friendly atmosphere are all available at Google. It’s no surprise that Google’s company culture is the gold standard by which all other IT firms are judged.
Zappos
Zappos’ culture is now well-established and well-known. They concentrate on hiring to keep things going. The goal of the hiring process is to discover people who share the company’s values. Zappos devotes a significant amount of time and resources to employee team building and culture promotion. They want every employee to embody the company’s principles. Customers can even tell that Zappos staff are happy.
DHL
DHL is unique in how it benefits from its dynamic, multicultural environment. With a variety of programs, such as the unique integrated learning platform that fosters talent development, the organization looks after its employees throughout their careers.
Another pillar is workplace wellness, which includes annual events and long-term activities to protect employee health.
What conclusions can be drawn from company culture?
A company’s culture includes values, beliefs, behaviors, norms, and artifacts that connect the members of an organization. As in all other cultures, an organizational culture develops over a long period of time with the participation of the members. Through studying or analyzing the culture of a company, people can come up with various conclusions. These include conclusions about the resistance of culture, performance, communication, and leadership styles. These conclusions can be helpful for managers and consultants seeking to encourage better company cultures.
Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs, are used to focus a group or an individual on a bold objective.
Google, a current high-growth company to which many aspire, was first introduced to OKRs in 1999!
This demonstrates that the benefit of utilizing this approach to measure performance has not diminished. However, we now use OKR software to help us plan (and track) these goals. With several software solutions available, it might be tough to figure out exactly what you’re looking for in terms of your overall business goals.
What Are The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) Related To OKR Tracking Software?
To assist you in your search for the finest OKR tool, we have a set of frequently asked questions that you’d like to consider when you compare the various solutions. If you’re persuaded of the advantages of using an OKR tool, let’s look at the important questions you should ask to determine the best one for the specific company’s needs:
1. Why is it important to know what your goal is?
Begin by making a set of demands or objectives that your OKR program should meet.
Do you want your OKR tool to just create goals, or do you want it to provide maximum visibility, transparency, and accessibility for all employees? Make sure everyone in your company understands what you want to accomplish with your OKR tracking software.
2. What are the benefits of measuring the team size and scaling up requirements?
OKR tracking software is tailored to specific team sizes. As a result, you must consider the number of employees who will use the product. Furthermore, if your firm is rapidly expanding, you will most likely need to extend your workforce size shortly and OKR will help you to do that.
As a result, choose a tool that allows you to scale up (or down) without investing money from your pocket.
3. What integrations do I need to use?
If you already have to switch between various tools, your staff will unlikely use the OKR tracking software. As a result, determine the most important integrations your team uses and make sure the tool you chose supports them.
Engagedly, for example, offers advanced integrations with systems like GChat, MS Teams, and Slack, as well as data and project management apps like Jira, Github, Trello, HubSpot, MySQL, and a host of others.
4. How should I work and find out my OKR experience?
If you’re introducing the entire OKR framework, for the first time, look for software that includes coaching from specialists and onboarding assistance for all users.
The right software will help you set the right goals and implement best practices to get the most out of your OKRs.
5. How would knowing your company’s budget assist you?
When choosing the correct OKR tool, you must also consider your budget and money. If you’re in the early stages of your company’s development, you may have budgetary constraints and must pick a solution that meets your needs while staying within your budget.
Begin by establishing a list of the fundamental functions you want from your OKR software and building a budget around that. Then, using that list, evaluate the OKR tools in the marketplace to make an educated decision.
6. Why do I need OKR tracking software for a user-centered approach?
The success of the OKR tracking software will ultimately be determined by how well your team uses it. As a result, concentrating on the user experience is critical.
Answer the following questions:
Does your team have to switch between platforms to use the OKR tool?
Is the platform compatible with mobile devices?
Are the directions easy to understand?
How quick is customer service?
These are some factors to consider to determine how users (members of your team) will respond to the tool and just how many hours they will require to manage it.
7. How does OKR Software help me in understanding Data Protection Compliance?
Finally, you’ll use your OKR to share a lot of critical information about your organization and team members. Such data and information must be safeguarded, and anonymity must be respected.
You must verify that your chosen software complies with the primary data security and GDPR. You would normally speak to your sales consultant about this.
8. Does the OKR software provide the whole roadmap for the business?
Many OKR programs will just provide you with an overview of what you want to do, not the overall picture. They’ll mostly use a quantitative approach, providing you with knowledge in the form of data sets and statistics.
However, you should select a tool that can assist you in making insights from each data item. The correct software should comprehend the difficulties your team is encountering. Otherwise, you may accomplish the desired outcomes, but you will be sacrificing the correct culture.
You might be planning to expand pretty quickly if you’re growing quickly. However, you must consider if you will be able to boost with the software you have chosen. Preparing for a circumstance when your team has increased significantly is ideal.
For example, you might want to integrate OKRs throughout the business, or create separate teams – can your software be customized to match your growing needs?
10. How well does the OKR program assist you in tracking your progress?
The greatest OKR software not only assists in establishing goals and aligning duties tracking but also in tracking progress. This way, you’ll be able to keep track of the status and take practical steps to accelerate it.
Engagedly, for example, enables enhanced goal transparency and cooperation among departments of an organization by allowing team leaders to link OKRs and measure collective progress. It also allows you to combine OKRs and 1:1 check-ins to ensure that all members and leaders are always on top of high-priority objectives.
11. Is the software capable of increasing engagement?
Finally, huge targets and critical outcomes should not frighten your team members while using an OKR tool. It should concentrate on fostering an inspiring culture in which employees are empowered and aware of their role in the organization’s success. This will encourage them to do better.
The correct OKR software should assist in starting the right discussions so that team members can give feedback on what is and is not working. They can invariably shift the discussion narrative from a top-down perspective to guarantee that issues are addressed before they stifle progress and that cooperation is seamless.
12. What features should an OKR tool have?
Actionable dashboards, as well as insights, should be provided by OKR software products. It should be simple to comprehend and evaluate to be useful. It should also emphasize the number of objectives, the proportion of goals completed, goal alignment, and goal status.
13. In Microsoft teams, how do I keep track of OKRs?
To keep track of your goals, add live OKR dashboards as a tab to any team channel or personal chat. To understand target status, compare OKR improvement over time.
Conclusion
OKR is a common management method for setting goals and tracking progress. It promotes alignment and participation in quantifiable objectives. It was first used at Intel in the 1970s and has since expanded throughout the technology industry as a tool to assist employees to know and participate in the company’s charter.
Engagedly connects your business model to technical prowess. Engagedly gives a clear perspective into targets, key results you measure, and the effort toward fulfilling objectives, whilst OKRs monitor the results of execution. The native OKR capabilities in Engagedly let your team become oriented, remain aligned, and integrate work with value delivery instantaneously.
If you’re looking to find out more about OKRs, then take a look at our Ultimate Guide to OKRs – we‘ve included some nifty templates to get you started today.
Is a video message enough to offboard employees who have been serving your company for years? Well, this is precisely what happened at the leading UK shipping company P&O Ferries. P&O made a decision of firing employees over a video call.
The company announced sudden mass layoffs over a video conference which led to many civil and criminal investigations against the firm. Multitudes of people suggested putting the owners behind bars.
Such a scenario was inevitable, because no one expected losing one’s job so abruptly, just over a video call. P&O employees did not have any idea that they would be laid off even hours before the actual thing happened.
This begs the question: how could the HR personnel have avoided such an unpleasant scenario? Laying off is normal, but not this way. What are the acceptable practices for termination? Let us find out the common HR practices for mass layoffs and how they can be improved.
P&O, a leading shipping firm in the UK, fired around 800 employees on March 17th, 2022 in a move to restructure its operations that would guarantee the company’s future viability. According to company officials, “no unions could accept our proposals”.
While wage negotiations often lead to a deadlock, what is more surprising in this case is that the termination notice came just minutes before the actual action took place which led to widespread protests and chaos at the Port of Dover.
In a 24-second-long video clip received byBBC on March 17th, a person from the P&O office in Dover is seen saying that the company has decided that they would be going forward with a third-party crew provider. The company said, “Therefore, I am sorry to inform you that this means your employment is terminated with immediate effect on the grounds of redundancy. Your final day of employment is today.”
According to sources, one of the P&O officials told a leading magazine that it was necessary to take this step to keep the business afloat. They have incurred huge losses, around £100 million over the years. Such a situation urged the company to take necessary actions without which the business would not be viable.
How Did This Sudden Layoff Impact Employees in the Post-Covid Era?
Such an abrupt action has undoubtedly set an unhealthy example for companies around the world. Companies decide to lay off employees usually after thorough strategic planning to enhance organizational efficacy. Employees should at least be given a heads-up that the company might downsize soon to prepare for layoffs.
In a survey released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about one-third of US employees battled anxiety about their companies shutting down during the COVID 19 pandemic. Such anxieties are not only detrimental to the employees affected by layoffs but also to the growth and productivity of the company and the remaining employees.
Company officials confirmed that they had to suspend all sailings immediately after the protests started. Due to this sudden suspension of services, the company lost one million pounds each day.Cross-party MPs and Nautilus Unions called for stringent actions to be taken across the ports of Liverpool, Dover, Hull, and Larne.
To add to their woes, the shipping companylost the Border Force Contract that was supposed to bring in huge revenue. The UK Home Office terminated the contract to provide contingency services over the company’s sudden decision of mass layoff.
How Should HR Personnel Handle Mass Layoffs?
HR teams should be aware of thevarious ways to manage remote workers, especially during these post-Covid times. Here are some common practices that HRs can follow to keep things under control:
Before conducting an exit interview, company HRs should serve a notice for termination and settle the severance pay. HRs need to have meetings with the employees who are to be laid off and send out a clear message on the termination. A better thing to do is notifying the employees about the impending layoffs before the actual announcement.
The point to be noted is that P&O suffered dire consequences not just because of its random and sudden decision of mass layoffs. It suffered because of the way that decision was communicated to the employees. Company HRs should consider this a great learning. News regarding layoffs should be imparted to employees well before the actual event, that too with empathy.
Check out how Engagedly can help you find the right performance management software for your remote workplace. Book a live demo with us.
You will find it difficult to successfully operate a team without defining proper goals and objectives. It would be taking a stab in the dark. Your bright personnel will be useless if they don’t have a shared goal to strive toward. That is where setting apt OKRs come in to play.
Have you ever wondered how the industry’s behemoths slaughter the market with ever-increasing profits? The key is to use OKRs.
You might be wondering what setting OKRs are and how they operate.
Without further ado, continue reading to find how to create a sustainable OKR approach as well as some practical examples you can use in your management to accomplish more in less time.
What Is an OKR?
OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. It’s a goal-setting strategy that dates back to the 1970s. OKR was popularized by John Doerr, a prominent venture capitalist. It lays the groundwork for outlining your organization’s goals over a given period of time.
We know that every project or task needs to be completed on time. OKRs are often created and assessed during the lifetime of a project. They may also be used in the future to see how successfully you completed the tasks before.
The fundamental principle to follow while setting an OKR is to set an aim and three to five expected or desired outcomes. These important outcomes are clear and quantifiable actions and contribute to the achievement of goals.
An essential reason behind setting OKRs is ensuring that everyone understands what they want, need to accomplish, or is expected of them.
Now that you have learned about OKRs, you might be wondering how they differ from another similar concept which is KPIs or Key Performance Indicators.
OKRs vs. KPIs
Although both can be considered as performance indicators, they serve a distinct and different purpose. Here are a few differences between OKRs and KPIs:
KPI
OKR
KPIs are critical measures used to assess how well a team is meeting its objectives. These measurements are often quantitative in form and correctly describe the current state of the product.
OKRs, on the other hand, are related to wider corporate goals. KPIs are primarily tied to individual ability.
KPIs are used to control daily operations and assess the performance of a certain process or activity. OKRs, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with measuring goals and priorities in order to measure operational success.
The OKR framework places a greater emphasis on strategic goals, identifying a goal, and brainstorming strategies to achieve it.
Advantages of OKR
Do you know how the giants like Google, Intel, Spotify, Target, Airbnb, and ING have become these huge beacons of success?
They are some of the major businesses that employ OKRs in their daily operations. Of course, you don’t need a large workforce to get the benefits. The continuous usage of OKRs by small and big businesses demonstrates the value of goal management in providing direction and objectivity.
Implementing and setting OKRs will offer you an edge over your competition when it comes to getting the job done and keeping yourself and others accountable. “At the end, you may look, without any kind of arguments: Can I do it or can I not do it?”, remarked the Father of OKRs, Yes? No? Simple. There are no judgments in it.”
The primary question that needs to be answered is how to set up an org-wide process of setting OKRs.
Setting up a procedure for OKR alignment might take varying amounts of time and effort based on the scale and structure of your business. We’ll go through the fundamentals in this part to help you plan for success. You may use the sample OKR cycle shown at the conclusion to figure out how to get started right away, after reviewing the following considerations for setting the OKR process.
1.Timing
Timing is a crucial consideration while setting up the procedure. Our goals should not just be time-constrained. We need the goals modeled in a way that will surely give us some feedback on our work. The best way is to set achievable targets and regularly monitor them. Many businesses follow a quarterly schedule, but it’s important to include time for planning, implementation, and assessment.
2.Keeping It Simple
Concentrate on goals you believe you can accomplish in the specified time. Many employees believe they must contribute to every department’s goal and end up overstretching themselves. Prioritize your goals based on what the company most requires. Remember that the amount of targets you should have depends on how difficult they are and the time and energy you have.
3.Cascading the Objectives
Employees, sometimes, struggle to recognize how their profession contributes to overarching corporate goals and achievement. What can a payroll clerk do to assist their organization in reaching 10,000 users? The answer is cascading the goals from the corporate level to the department level to the individual level.
4.Be Specific
When establishing objectives, consider multiple approaches to achieve the desired outcome. Create a detailed strategy on how to reach your goal. Consider how performance may be measured for each major result. The more precise you are in setting goals, the more clear your expectations will be. With clear objectives, you’ll know precisely everything you need to accomplish your aims.
5.Stop Worrying About Stretch Goals
Managers are sometimes concerned that setting simple goals may be a hindrance for an employee in the way to reach their full potential. Are stretch goals, on the other hand, a good idea? It depends entirely on how authentic they are. Employees will not like being given unachievable assignments if incentives are used to inspire them. Ambitious objectives are excellent, but they shouldn’t be set up to fail.
6.Connection to Performance
Considering the fact that setting OKRs should push us beyond our perceived boundaries, it’s critical to establish a criteria for success and separate them from the performance evaluation process. For example, some companies, like Google, utilize a 70 percent success rate as a metric. We’re just not thinking big enough if we’re constantly reaching 100 percent. However, if it appears that we aren’t functioning to our full potential because we don’t meet the maximum level of our OKR, it can be disappointing and daunting.
If your organization and the employees solely connect setting OKRs with an assessment process at the end of a year or month, they’ll be more motivated to set objectives that are simple to attain. While quantification aids in benchmarking and identifying opportunities for improvement, our entire performance is much more than a collection of numbers.
7.Celebrate the Achievement
When you accomplish a goal, reward and acknowledge yourself and others. Positive behavior helps in the maintenance of optimal practices. Don’t only acknowledge work at the conclusion of a project; acknowledge incremental progress as well. Encourage everyone on your team to post their OKRs openly and form a support system.
Conclusion
Executive leadership should maintain that the organization, as a whole, shares both the triumphs and mistakes as a method of identifying areas for development and celebrating hard work. Personal development should be greatly promoted because it is tied to corporate performance and growth. As there is a high level of faith in individual responsibility, being accountable should not be something to be afraid of but rather an opportunity to shine. Thinking outside of established boundaries should be encouraged, resulting in a work atmosphere where any ambition appears feasible.
Does this seem like a place you would want to work at? If you want to create the perfect workplace, start by establishing an OKR-based culture of continual development and progress, helpful feedback, and transparency.
Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you set up a perfect OKR system in your organization? Book a live demo with us.
Most employees spend more than half of the time at their workplace. But it is sometimes frustrating to see the fellow employees not following basic office etiquette rules just because they are unwritten.
Don’t be the one employee everyone hates because of the lack of etiquette. Here are 7 unwritten office etiquette rules that you should follow.
1. Plug in – No loud music
Listening to music might be make you feel really energized but not necessarily everyone has the same taste in music. And everyone doesn’t want to listen to music at the same time; you don’t want to be a disturbance to people around you. So plug in your headphones and listen your music.
2. Respect Co-worker’s Privacy
No matter how close you are to your co-worker, you have to respect their privacy. Always ask before entering their cubicle. And never take their stuff without their consent. If you happen to borrow your co-worker’s stationery stuff or anything, return it as soon as possible without fail! (And in working condition)
When you are on phone, your colleagues don’t have to know what the conversation is. So stop screaming and yelling; keep your voice to yourself. Be calm and smooth when on phone so that your conversation doesn’t disturb anyone around you.
4. Re-organize Messy Space
Your work-space is not only in view of your colleagues but also the visitors at your office. No one wants to see a messy, smelly and dusty table at workplace.
It creates a really bad impression on you as a person as well as on the organization. So make some efforts to re-organize and clean your work-space from time to time.
5. Dress Appropriately
This is a very important part. When someone looks at you, the first thing they observe is your dressing. You don’t have to wear a really costly dress, just a clean, simple and appropriate-to-work dress. Dress codes vary from industry to industry but no one wants you to dress as if you are going to a carnival down the street.
You might really need someone to talk at your workspace sometimes, but do not pop into your co-workers’ cubicle and start the conversation. They might be in the middle of something important, so wait till lunch break or tea break to talk to them. Do not steal their work time!
7. Mind Your P’s and Q’s
No one will tell you this but it is really important to use ‘Please’, ‘Thank You’ and ‘sorry’ in your conversation with your co-workers.
Being at your best behavior can make a huge difference (In a good way!).
Interested in knowing how Engagedly can help you with communication and employee engagement?
Most working professionals are always connected to their work through their smart phones, laptops, i-pads, etc. But it is also important to disconnect yourself from work during the weekends. Everything in life needs a break, and so do you from your daily work.
“A mission keeps you on the rails. The OKRs provide focus and milestones.” -Christina Wodtke
The world of business is goal-oriented. Every business organization and different teams within the company have their own goals to chase. These goals are in alignment with the overall vision and mission of the company. If we observe closely, the task of setting goals is easier, but the task of accomplishing them is challenging.
To continue, while pursuing goals, our vision often gets blurred as we only know the finish line. We know where we want to go, but we don’t often know how far we have come or how close we have come to our final destination. Consequently, a lack of a sense of progress inhibits our motivation.
Realizing these things, John Doerr, one of the richest American investors and venture capitalists, came up with the term, “Objectives and Key Results.” OKRs help you set measurable goals. When you measure your goals, every day is a saga of progress that takes you ahead toward your final objectives. To validate, as per statistics, 95% of the U.S. adults who use the OKRs goal-setting framework know and understand how their work contributes to achieving their company’s business objectives.
However, if your team doesn’t feel inspired to meet OKRs, despite setting the best key results to achieve along the way, you cannot meet your objectives as per the schedule. This implies that when it comes to accomplishing the OKRs, a lot depends on how motivated your team is.
This blog provides 9 refreshing ways to inspire your team to achieve their OKRs.
9 ways to encourage your team to meet OKRs
Involve your team in the goal-setting process
This is one of the best ways to motivate your team. Involve every team member in the goal-setting process. Consider their ideas, opinions, and visions when it comes to setting goals. Even if you have some predefined goals, ask your teammates what they think about the key results that you should achieve while progressing towards your ultimate goal. This is important because when you make your team feel heard, you inspire them to give their best every day.
As they answer these questions, you can try to link their goals and aspirations with the team objectives and then get their assistance in defining the key results. Moreover, when your team members see that you have set their suggested key results, they feel elated. Consequently, they feel motivated to achieve those goals.
Celebrate every milestone accomplished
Don’t be deluded by the idea that only big milestones are to be celebrated. No, that’s not how it is. You should celebrate every milestone your team accomplishes on the path to achieving their objectives. Whether it is big or small, celebrate it. These celebrations are motivation boosters. They are a token of praise for your team’s efforts and motivate them to perform even better and pave their way towards many more such celebrations.
Furthermore, every celebration should also include a short gap analysis where you all together see where you have reached and how far you still have to go. This analysis will gear everyone up for the next mission.
Exhibit trust in your team’s capabilities
Many times, we just need a little external push to evolve into the best possible versions of ourselves. Hence, you should exhibit trust in your team’s capabilities and let everyone know that you are there for them at all times. You should not only express these things through your words, but your actions should demonstrate them.
For example, you can’t say that you trust your team when you engage in micromanagement. If you trust your team, there is no question of micromanagement. You give everyone the autonomy to work freely in the office without any control. As a leader, you have a lot of pressure on your shoulders, but the more you trust your team and delegate responsibilities without micromanaging, the more you’ll feel at ease and the better the overall performance of your team will be.
Communicate effectively
Effective communication leads to effective leadership. It is the key to inspiring your team to achieve their OKRs. When there is a communication gap between you and your team, you aren’t connected with them emotionally. The lack of this emotional connection is one of the prime reasons why often, team members don’t feel as inspired to pursue the goals you want them to pursue.
Given that, you should engage in effective conversations with your team members. These conversations should always be two-way. This will ensure that your team is emotionally inclined towards you and feels encouraged to leave no stone unturned to keep you happy.
Moreover, you should also remind your team about the OKRs to be achieved. This will assist in enhancing their efficiency and will assist you in attaining the SMART goals of your business.
Be a role model for your team: Inspired leaders lead to inspired teams
Whether you believe it or not, your team is a reflection of you. If you exhibit high levels of enthusiasm towards your work, your team will exhibit high levels of enthusiasm too.
Quite the contrary, if you don’t take things seriously, your team doesn’t either. If you exhibit low levels of professionalism, your team will do the same too. In short, your team looks up to you and reflects your personality as a leader. Given that, if you aspire to inspire your team to meet the OKRs, you should be inspired to do the same first.
Incorporate team play sessions into the daily schedule
It is imperative to know that all work and no play makes employees dull workers. Yes, that’s true. When our professional lives get filled with too much work, dullness seeps in.
The best way to prevent that is to incorporate team play sessions into the daily schedule. Devoting 20 to 25 minutes to these play sessions can be a game-changer. Try this out and see the results for yourself. You’ll find your employees happy and energized, which will eventually lead them to meet the OKRs.
Focus on improving team engagement
Did you know that engaged team members are more likely to meet the OKRs? That’s true because engaged team members have a strong inclination not only towards their work but towards their team as well. This inclination inspires them to give their best for themselves and for their team.. Moreover, as per the report, highly engaged businesses successfully generate 21% more profitability compared to non-engaged ones.
Whereas, disengaged team members do the exact opposite. With that said, engaging your team members can go a long way in inspiring them to accomplish the OKRs. Further, below are multiple strategies that you can implement to engage your team members.
Appreciating everyone for their efforts, however small it isTake
anonymous feedback to resolve their issues
Organize happy hours
Establish cordial connections within your team
The relationships between your team members have a significant impact on their overall performance. When you are a part of a team, you are impacted by the relationships with your team members. If you don’t have a good relationship with them, you feel elated in their presence. But, if you have a poor relationship with them, you will feel irritated and agitated in their presence. Your mood obviously impacts your work performance.
Given that, it is imperative for you to focus on the relationships between your team members. The major reason behind the same is that positive, cordial relationships add to the happiness of employees, which further enhances their productivity. To substantiate, according to the University of Oxford, happy employees are 13% more productive and efficient.
Hence, there should be cordial bonds between them if you have to derive the best performance from your team. Further, informal discussions, weekly team outings, and involvement in sports are some of the most effective tactics to form cordial relationships between your team members.
Design your workplace in a captivating manner
The type of workplace we work in also impacts our productivity and potential. If it is chaotic, doesn’t have an appealing appearance, or radiates positive vibes, we can’t function at our full potential. Hence, it is imperative for you to design your workplace in a captivating manner. Try to add some color to your workplace, bring in some plants, and allow your employees to bring their pets if you feel okay. These things will together contribute to uplifting the energy level of your employees, which will eventually help them meet the OKRs.
The above-discussed methods are some of the tried and tested ways to motivate your team to meet their OKRs. Do try them out and see the results for yourself. We hope that these tactics truly impact your team and that you, together, achieve all that you aspire to accomplish.
Author’s Bio
Jessica Robinson is a charismatic corporate leader, a selfless educator, and a versatile content creator. Despite a management degree, her vision behind blogging is not only to follow her passion but to create more informed societies. Her selflessness reflects in every piece of her work on The Speaking Polymath.
Occasionally, you hear about organizations gaining popularity owing to their performance and achievements. However, the real story of how they got there is rarely told. To elaborate, some of the most recognizable brands, like Google, Apple, and Amazon, began with objectives and they all had one commonality: they all used the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) approach or OKR best practices.
When properly enforced, the OKR framework aligns organization, team, and employee objectives with quantifiable outcomes.
According to Google co-founder, Larry Page, OKRs have the potential to lead to “10x growth” in the long term.
OKRs are a straightforward yet effective method for establishing objectives and monitoring progress. Techniques that other businesses have tested and improved should also be beneficial to your company — when you follow the tried-and-tested OKR best practices.
Continue reading to understand the best practices of OKR for your teams! Managers and executives may use OKRs to enhance accountability, openness, and alignment of objectives with performance in their businesses.
Differentiating factors of OKRs and their effectiveness
Setting goals, a fundamental component of every performance management strategy, assist organizations in increasing their productivity. OKRs are a common goal-setting framework that organizations use to establish and monitor achievement at various organizational levels. OKRs foster creativity, unify teams and establish a clear roadmap for organizations to reach the next level when applied successfully.
OKR structure framework’s primary objective is to align employees, working company-wide, to direct their efforts toward clearly stated objectives. OKRs apply on a global, department, workgroup, and/or team level.
OKR best practices provide a tangible method for measuring progress. In addition, they provide the flexibility to fulfill your goals. They enable you to concentrate on outcomes rather than micromanaging the execution of activities.
Other important reasons for employing OKRs include:
— Improving collaboration by aligning individual efforts with shared objectives
— Increasing employee commitment and motivation.
— Enabling managers to provide effective performance evaluations and constructive criticism.
Companies can utilize OKRs in five fundamental ways to manage performance:
Arrangement
OKRs ensure every employee understands what agendas and objectives teams are working on; their purpose, and how they can contribute to the company’s success.
Establishing priorities
OKRs fill the void between high-level objectives and everyday tasks. This provides employees with the ability to prioritize daily chores and long-term ambitions.
Openness
OKR best practices build transparent organizational cultures by apprising everyone, from the CEO to the intern, about the priorities and goals of multidisciplinary teams.
Accountability
OKRs outline the responsibility and goals of each employee and eliminate any ambiguity about who is accountable for achieving certain objectives.
Trust and confidence
OKRs allow employees to see the results of their efforts and feel in control of their own progress.
Are the objectives and the key results the same?
No, the objectives and the key results differ in concept and definition. We have described each of them individually so that you can get a better understanding of them.
Objective
An objective is a desired accomplishment and hence, conveys the “what” has to be achieved by employees. By nature, thus, an objective is both decisive and realistic. It is measurable, distinct, and should be obvious whether a goal has been achieved. Most significantly, an objective must provide unambiguous and specific value to an organization.
Key Result
A Key Result is associated with an objective and offers an understanding of how well an organization is performing and whether it is on the intended track to meet its objectives. It’s a measuring stick for the milestone or the target (objective). An objective should preferably include no more than five key results.
An example of differentiating objective and key results for a marketing team is:
A step-by-step implementation guide of OKR best practices
Setting objectives is not a one-size-fits-all approach. To implement an OKR management framework successfully, an organization must plan out a variety of processes before, during, and after implementing the OKR checklist. Given below are some step-by-step guidelines for implementing OKR practices.
Goal, vision, mission, and strategy
In order to get the most out of an OKR program, organizations need to clearly understand their goals, mission, vision, and business strategies. OKRs should be based on your goals and business strategies; serve as a vehicle for fulfilling your vision, and be consistent with your overall mission statement.
Make sure the OKRs are simple
Ensure that OKRs are simple to understand and achievable. Too many objectives may make prioritizing and implementation difficult. Hence, begin by making OKR objectives separately for an organization and its teams. Ideally, each team should have a maximum of five objectives and three Key Results per objective.
Familiarizing employees with best practices of OKR
The ability to establish goals is a taught rather than being an intrinsic talent, thus, organizations must offer employees with sufficient directions on how to set achievable OKRs. Workshops are an excellent tool for helping newcomers to get familiarized with the OKR process.
Analyzing essential elements before developing OKRs
The business environment of an organization should define its methodologies for achieving objectives. Before developing OKRs, businesses should analyze several facets of their day-to-day operations, including headcount, management structure, and business processes.
Employee Participation
Occasionally, it may not be possible to include every employee in every step of the OKR-setting procedure. Employees should understand who is accountable for defining and monitoring OKRs at each level; which projects and KPIs they should prioritize; why the company is implementing a new goal-setting process, and how their work relates to the business.
Allow employees to contribute to the development of their own OKRs
Empower employees to actively participate in their own OKRs in order to foster autonomy. This may enable individuals to concentrate on initiatives that pique their interests; maximize their skill sets and advance their careers. Their supervisors may help ensure alignment with departmental and corporate OKRs, as well as fulfilling business requirements.
Defining OKRs in advance before each quarter
Start establishing OKRs prior to the beginning of the quarter, particularly company-level objectives. Developing team OKRs may also require significant work, preparation, and consensus.
In addition, you will need time to outline the strategies and programs that you will implement to achieve success on the Key Results. It is ideal to prepare OKRs two weeks before the beginning of the quarter. This way, you will be prepared when the OKR cycle begins.
Integrating Departmental OKRs with Organizational OKRs
OKRs for a specific department are distinct from those for the whole organization. However, they must align to support the organizational objectives to produce optimal outcomes. You can start working as a team today by using Engagedly’s solution (OKR/Goal Alignment platform), which offers you the best functionalities and ideas to create OKR for both department and organization.
Dedicated goal tracking software to maintain the quantitative nature of OKRs.
Tracking OKRs may be a difficult procedure for businesses of any size. To keep OKRs transparent and quantifiable, you may use a goal tracking software, which includes OKR performance evaluation tools and a specialized goal-tracking program.
Grading is the method through which organizations assess OKR performance objectively. OKRs are scored on a scale, ranging from 0.0 to 1.0. Each key outcome is rated, and the average of those grades is used to determine the grade for each goal.
If an employee consistently receives a perfect score on your OKRs, create more challenging objectives. Similarly, if an employee frequently scores less than 0.3 on your goals, it may be time to revise your objectives and key outcomes.
Sharing Developments
Meetings to review OKRs are crucial. Every quarter, employees, managers, and higher management should meet to review OKRs achievement, established at the beginning of the previous goal cycle. Managers’ review of feedback and management of direct reports should include OKRs in their one-on-one sessions.
Reward your employees for achieving OKRs
Reward your team after they have successfully met their OKRs at the end of a quarter since recognition is more like positive reinforcement. However, note that OKRs work as an efficient tool for goal alignment than for employee performance appraisal. Use OKRs with other assessment elements, such as agile metrics and workplace behavior, to analyze team success.
Analyzing to get insight and make corrections
Grading is an objective assessment, while learning is the process of examining success and failure within the OKR cycle. Evaluation of OKRs should occur often, but each cycle should also involve a more in-depth analysis of what went well; what did not go well, and what lessons may be transferred to the following cycle.
Top advantages of adopting the best OKR practices
Determine how the planned progress aligns with the mission, vision, strategies, and key objectives
Align and link your employees to your organization’s objectives
Make better judgments that are more effective and well-founded
Provide each team and employee with clear guidance
Increase productivity by concentrating on your objectives
Analyze the underlying reasons why goals are not met and work on them with the corrective measures
Enhance allocation of resources and their efficiency
Achieve transparency, accountability, and clarity.
Utilize weekly updates to gain perspective and understanding
Measure regular progress toward objectives
Manage accomplishment and execution with increased responsibility and transparency
Your goal-setting approach may help employees to feel more empowered and engaged
Enhance executive-level visibility and openness across the company
Establish clear and explicit objectives
Identify and document cross-functional linkages across teams
Summing up:
The OKRs framework is a potent instrument for assisting organizations in defining objectives and the corresponding quantifiable activities. Here are some concluding recommendations for making OKRs work for your organization:
Keep your OKR checklist simple and adaptable
Use the lessons learned from previous OKRs to iterate, design, and build new OKRs.
Establish OKRs periodically – preferably quarterly, or set OKRs at least every six months.
Ensure OKRs are aspirational, quantifiable, and transparent
Use technologies that facilitate and prioritize OKR tracking
To understand more about OKR best practices or how Engagedly software can enable you to better organize, measure, and accomplish your objectives, check out its features and book a demo. You can chat with one of our OKR specialists about your organization’s OKR or management requirements.
Want to know how Engagedly can help you manage your hybrid employees better? Request us for a demo.
Performance appraisals are important, but conducting them effectively and efficiently is even more important. Many managers and employees dread employee performance evaluations because of their complexity and convoluted structure. But what if we provided you with a performance appraisal checklist that lays out all the steps in a structured and easy-to-understand manner?
This article will discuss some important checks that every manager and employee should follow to get the most out of the evaluation process. Feel free to customize the list based on business and industrial requirements.
Performance Appraisal Checklist For Managers
The following performance review checklist will help managers in conducting a detailed evaluation of an employee.
☑ Have feedback sessions before the performance review
In the time leading up to the performance review, schedule feedback sessions with the employee, be they formal or informal. The appraisal process shouldn’t hit the employee like a lightning bolt from nowhere. Preparation is key!
☑ Lay out clear expectations
Setting out clear expectations should definitely be on your employee evaluation checklist. Do not assume employees know what is expected of them. Clarity is good for everyone involved in the review process.
☑ Create goals and objectives
Before you meet with an employee, review their past goals and objectives and outline the goals and objectives you would like for them to tackle this year. Having a good understanding of an employee goals will help you in providing them with clear and open feedback. Therefore, it must be a part of your employee performance review checklist.
It’s always good to review the past feedback an employee has received (assuming you have collected some of that feedback in a place). This allows you to carry out a more nuanced review process rather than relying on just your memory.
☑ Be prepared to listen to feedback about yourself
A review process should not be a one-way street. When you share feedback about an employee’s performance, likewise employees too should be allowed to share feedback about your performance as a manager. After all, an employee’s performance also depends on how their manager leads them.
☑ Discuss long term plans
A performance appraisal is also a good time to discuss an employee’s future plans at the organization. Irrespective of whether those future plans will come to fruition or not, it’s good to discuss to where the employee envisions himself two years down the line or so. It can help you and the employee chart out prospective goals, inter-departmental moves, new job descriptions etc.
☑ Leave open room for negotiation
Don’t end the review process with a refusal to discuss it any further. Instead, the end of the review process should be like a free period, where you and the employee can discuss anything other than what was brought up during the review process. Employees too need room to express opinions and thoughts. Like I said before, a review process is not a one-way street. Communication should go both ways!
☑ Be ready to make some hard decisions
On the off chance that the review process is not going the way you envisioned, be ready to take a hardline. During the review process, you might find that you and the employee have completely different ideas of good work. Or you might discover egregious errors that have been previously swept under the rug etc. Alternatively, an employee might get recalcitrant or even worse, make a scene. It’s best to be prepared for any such eventuality, though if you have been communicating with the employee much before the review process even began, you will at least have an idea of what’s going on.
Performance Appraisal Checklist For Employees
The following performance review checklist will help employees in preparing for a strategic and open discussion with the reviewer.
☑ Do your homework
The first thing on your performance appraisal checklist should be a list of all the contributions you have made for the team. By doing your homework, I mean you need to think of all the possible situations your manager will discuss during the review process. You could always conduct a mock review to prep yourself for the actual review!
☑ Come prepared with facts and figures
Sometimes your manager might remember the specifics of all that you have done. Sometimes they might not. If you come to the review process armed with the right facts and figures, or proof of your work, it becomes easier for your manager to review your performance and adds more weight to the review.
☑ Steel yourself- Stay Calm and Think Rationally
When I say steel yourself, I don’t say you should go into a review meeting dreading the worst. What I do however mean is that you need to be mentally prepared to deal with all that the meeting throws at you. This means, that if you hear something you do not like, about your work, or the way you work, then you should be able to react calmly and rationally and get your point across, rather than getting angry, losing your temper or dissolving into tears. Emotions are not bad. However, they definitely do have their place and a performance review is not the place for them.
☑ Discuss about your future plans
A discussion about your future plans might be inevitable during the review process. Especially, if the review comes around at the end of the year. You should have at least some idea of what you want to work on. The idea in itself need not be concrete or set in stone. It should, however, give your manager and you an indication of what avenue you would like to pursue next.
☑ Draw up your own goals and objectives for the following year
Your manager might have his own set of goals prepared for you, but there’s no reason why you should not set a few goals of your own as well. These goals will give your manager a broader understanding of your work as well as your areas of expertise.
We hope the performance evaluation checklist discussed in this article will be helpful to you. Share your thoughts on what more an employee review checklist should contain in the comments below.
One of the most widely accepted frameworks for strategy execution in an organization is Objectives and Key Results, often abbreviated as OKRs. For the success of an organization, each team and department in the entity should work towards the fulfilment of its overall business plan. The short-term objectives should align with the key results, and a consistent feedback mechanism should ensure performance management.
The importance of implementing the goal-setting framework for an entity cannot be overstated. However, it is essential to understand that each organization differs in its size, goals, mission, core values, etc. Hence, your OKR tool has to align accordingly.
If you plan to roll out OKR for your team, the market has many tools to offer. These tools differ in their functionalities and the issues they prioritize. Hence, finding the right software for your business becomes quintessential. The selection process begins with obtaining an understanding of the framework and finding the right match to create a high-performance culture.
What is an OKR Management Platform?
Goal setting is a quintessential step in an organization’s journey to success. For most organizations, setting objectives and Key results begins with a simple spreadsheet. However, as an organization grows, it branches out in multiple directions, with each team contributing to the overall business strategy.
OKR software provides a convenient tool for setting goals, tracking progress, and measuring results in an organization. It also offers a platform for communication with subordinates and peers to ensure that the challenges are tackled before they become critical.
OKRs help organizations drive real performance by making employees accountable for their activities. Our expert guide on OKRs talks about how businesses just like yours can get started with them.
An OKR software follows the objective and key results methodology and ensures the fulfilment of business goals. With so many OKR tools in the market, choosing the right one for your business can become a tedious task. However, considering a few factors can help you find a perfect match for your organisation.
User-friendliness
Quality of user experience is the most important factor in the success of an OKR management software. The OKR software for your business should have a simple, clean interface that attracts and engages the users. The interface should be easy to navigate and use, even by members who lack a strong grip on the technology.
Getting new users on the platform, editing objectives and key results, and tracking progress should be hassle-free. The OKR tools should have a responsive design that offers optimum performance irrespective of the user device. The layout and instructions should be clear, even for new users. Also, you need to check the kind of customer support offered by the developers.
Size of the business
The size of your enterprise is an essential consideration when choosing the best OKR software for your business. You need to consider the number of members who will use the software. Also, the prospective size of the organization plays a critical role. Hence, plans for scaling up your company in the near future must be taken into consideration before choosing the OKR tool.
Business goals
Every organization has different reasons for choosing OKR tools. Your choice will depend on the type of organizational culture and the business needs you aim to fulfil.
To understand your requirements, you need to assess:
What are the key benefits that you wish to achieve from OKR framework execution?
Which of these goals are immediate?
What is the time frame for the other goals that you want to accomplish?
What are the challenges you plan to tackle with the OKR tool?
The answer to the above question will help you understand your requirements and streamline the selection process.
Some reasons for implementing OKR software are:
To set clear and specific business goals
To align employee performance with the business objectives
To enable employees to measure their contribution to key business results and boost engagement
To create accountability and empowerment for the workforce
To facilitate clear communication between management and team members
Despite the popularity of the OKR framework, many organizations are unaware of the tools and the best OKR practices. Even the most effective OKR tool may fail to create the desired impact for your business if it is not executed and used in the right manner.
To use the OKR management software for your enterprise, you need to be aware of the OKR framework. Learning from a team of experts will enable you to set the right goals and leverage the best OKR practices for the success of your organization.
The need for coaching becomes paramount if you are implementing OKR tracking software in your business for the first time. The key to a successful OKR strategy execution is understanding the framework and the OKR software.
In the absence of a thorough understanding, an organization continues to use the OKR tools as an extension of their routine activities, which brings no productivity boost. Hence, it is essential to find software that also offers coaching by a team of experts for its successful execution in the entity.
Integration
Toggling between different software can be a cumbersome task. It can hinder employee productivity and can also make the OKR tool ineffective. Hence, to maximize the potential of your OKR tracking software, you need to ensure that it offers integration with other applications.
Take a look at the existing tools used by the various departments and make a list of the software that the product sales or marketing team would like to use in the future. Choose an OKR software that offers integration with these applications.
This will ensure that the team members can link their efforts to the business strategy and results. Also, the OKR tracking software should provide seamless integration with performance management tools within the organization.
The price of OKR management software is an essential consideration. The pricing should be transparent, with no additional or hidden charges. However, it should never be considered the sole determinant when choosing a software solution.
Apart from the price, analyse whether the tool offers value for its investment. This requires considering factors like the size of the company, the functionality offered, integration with other tools, coaching by experts, etc.
For small businesses, pricing can be a critical factor, as the organization is still in its early stages and may suffer from financial restrictions. A suitable solution in such a case is to consider the desired functions and features to set a budget accordingly.
This will allow you to make a comparison between different software that offers the functionalities and fits your budget. Also, it is advisable to try out a free trial version of the software before you make the ultimate commitment. This will help you understand how well the OKR tracking software fits your organizational needs.
Data protection
Irrespective of its size and business objectives, data is the most valuable asset for any organization. Hence, it needs to be protected from data leakage and confidentiality breach.
Once you roll out OKR software, it becomes an ultimate part of your organization. The process of goal setting involves sharing a lot of critical organizational information and data. Hence, it is important to ensure that this information remains confidential and well protected.
Before you choose the best OKR software for your business, you need to ensure that it complies with the major data protection and GDPR guidelines.
Conclusion
The OKR management platform enables an organization to achieve unprecedented results through clear goal-setting and performance evaluation. It allows each team to contribute to organizational success by focusing their efforts on the business objectives and key results.
The OKR tools make the strategy execution process more convenient by providing a platform for continuous evaluation and monitoring. It helps each member to track their progress to the organizational goals and boosts employee morale and engagement. Also, it creates a sense of accountability on the part of employees as they can see their contribution to the organisational objectives.
OKR tools enable goal-setting, as well as continuous monitoring to ensure that any discrepancies are addressed at the earliest. It also provides a means for consistent communication with subordinates, as well as peers. Hence, OKR software bridges the gap between strategy execution and performance evaluation and helps in achieving organizational results.
However, the best OKR management platform for each organisation depends on the specific requirements, size, functionality, budget, and software integration needs of the entity. Hence, for a successful OKR execution, an organisation needs to find the balance between available financial resources and desired functions.
Employees who feel respected, valued, and appreciated at work are more likely to be happy, committed, and interested in their roles. To keep staff engaged, make sure they receive both positive and 
Set goals and set up a plan to achieve those goals!
