Author: Abhishek

OKR Goal Setting For Successful Businesses

Using OKRs without realizing their purpose or objective, makes them feel complex or unusable. However, it is possible for organizations to use OKRs, just like Google, and achieve success if you understand every aspect of it.

Most businesses have digitized their goal setting processes by using OKR software. Here are a few things you should take care of before implementing OKR software in your organization.

Identify Your High-Level Goals

This is the first thing that an organization needs to identify. Organizational goals tie into the mission and vision of the organization.

Use your organization’s values to establish what you would like the high-level goals to be. Remember that all the department goals, as well as individual employee goals, will be linked to these goals and your metrics too will depend on these goals.

To give you an idea of what high-level goals are, here is an example.

“Become the market leader in the medical software field in the APAC region.”

This is a lofty and high-level goal, and by itself, it seems very impossible. However, it is necessary for you to figure out what your other goals will be. Do not fall into the trap of setting too many high-level goals. Instead, focus on setting 3 or 4 (or a maximum of 5) quality high-level goals. Keep refining them until you think they encapsulate what you want to achieve for the year.

Also Read: Employee Engagement Software To Help Enhance Productivity

Have Flexible and Challenging Goals

Flexibility and fluidity are important for goals because it gives employees the leeway to accomplish a goal in different ways. It also allows you to account for outliers or abnormalities that you would not have considered beforehand.

Often at times, when setting goals, we get carried away and set a number of goals that seem very easy to accomplish at the outset.

Goals should challenge you, that is for certain. However, they should not derail your work or even consume most of your energy, so much so that it is not possible to focus anywhere else.

Goals that consume an inordinate amount of time and energy and do not contribute to the main goal in an impactful way are wasteful goals.

Align Employee Goals To Organizational Goals

It is important to align employee goals with organizational goals. All employees’ goals should connect back to the overarching main goals of the organization. This ensures that everyone is on the same page, and more importantly, is working towards the same objective.

Goal alignment ensures clarity of purpose for employees because they can now see how their work ties into the overall scheme of things. It also ensures that employees are invested in the work they are doing since they are working with the knowledge that their work has a larger purpose and makes significant contributions.

Also Read: Using OKRs In Startups To Measure Success

Set Key Results

By breaking down your high-level goals, you can figure out how you can achieve them. Using the example from earlier on, let us break down the goal to its objectives and key results.

High-level goal: “Become the market leader in the medical software field in the APAC region.”

This is your objective. In order to achieve this objective, you need key results that can help you measure success.

Key Result 1: Gain 200 clients

Key Result 2: Increase sales team by 20 members

Key Result 3: Gain profit of $250k or more

As you can see, these three key results seem disparate, but they all tie into the higher-level organization goal. Achieving these key results will help you achieve your main objective.

When setting key results, clarity of purpose is really important. These key results are what you will measure to estimate if you have achieved your goal or not. If your key results are vague (or your main goal is vague as well), then the goal-setting process will become muddled as well. Your key result will not be a key result if it doesn’t have a number.

Also Read: Remote Team: Goal Setting And OKRs

Measure Progress

It is vital to track goal progress not just to see how far along you have come, but mainly, to take stock of the situation. Tracking goals and reviewing them tells you where you stand and what you need to do next.

Maybe you have been working really hard on accomplishing one goal and are close to completing it. Tracking that goal tells you that you can now afford to devote less time to it. Or conversely, you are tracking a goal and notice you have not been able to accomplish much. By taking stock of the situation, you understand that accomplishing the goal will require more resources and an adjustment to the end result.

By tracking goals regularly, you can make quick changes if necessary, rather than slogging away at the same goal with nothing to show for it.

 

Working with a coach is a proven best practice to help implement your OKR strategy and drive business outcomes.

The OKR Launch and Coaching Program is a customized consulting service program designed by Engagedly to help organizations successfully implement and widely adopt the OKR approach.

Click To Know More

Why do you need a Real Time Performance Management Software

Covid-19 has changed the way we work today. We all know that! As everything turns virtual, it’s become necessary to have a performance management process in place. If cultivated right, it motivates and aligns employees to the company goals. For those many companies who are still using traditional paper- based processes to track and record performance management, it’s highly difficult to extract or collate data. Now that the world has moved to remote working, why not change with situation and embrace more efficient business processes?

Earlier, annual performance reviews were the indisputable norm, and it used to be dreaded by both the managers and the employees. Today, though, performance management has evolved tremendously, making it more flexible and inclusive. Traditional performance processes work fine when organisations are small or have a very simple review process. But once organisations get bigger, and job roles get more complex, there’s a need for software to enhance the process, or rather, to ease the process.

We would like to elaborate on how real-time performance management software can benefit your organisation. Here are the reasons:

Also read: Know What Features To Look For In A 360 Feedback Software

Easy to use:

Depending on the choice of software, a performance management software can be extremely easy to use. All the things required for a review cycle are in one place. Most of the processes are automated, and once the review information has been submitted – start dates, review templates etc, there’s not much else an HR manager has to do, except oversee the entire process.

Even better, HR managers don’t have to frequently remind employees to complete their reviews. Most software has built-in reminders that will urge employees to complete the review process. The software takes the burden off HR’s shoulders and instead allows them to focus on the outcome of performance reviews.

Integrated features:

If you think that a performance management software focus solely on the review processes alone, you are mistaken. They offer other features as well, such as the ability to share feedback, goals and objectives, an LMS, etc. All these features are often integrated so that when the review process is going on, users can view an employee’s complete profile, such as the feedback they have received, the goals they could complete, to what extent they could complete their goals, or even what new skills they have learned.

Performance management software offers a macro view of an employee’s performance and helps others make informed decisions during the review process.

Well-defined goals:

Imagine a situation, wherein a remote employee is expected to put in his or her 100% effort but is not sure what’s the end result of this. Do you think she or he will be able to put in the right kind of effort? Performance management software enables the company to have clear-cut goals, and make them visible to every employee. Every worker gets to see how their effort can help the company achieve higher-level goals.

When they see how they can make an impact at the individual level, it makes them want to strive harder. Managers can easily keep a track of their team performances remotely and can provide feedback accordingly.

Real-time information:

The best part about real time performance management software is, you can access data anytime, and it helps to make quick and efficient decisions. They provide old as well as new data in one place, for you to compare and understand patterns and identify any gaps or bottlenecks. It becomes easy to track the performance level.

Also read: How Important is Feedback in Today’s World?

Insights on performance:

Performance management software can provide a very insightful look at an employee’s performance. This is not just related to ratings and feedback they have received over the past years. Rather, many performance management software also offers performance analytics that track employee performance in graphical chart format, calculate leadership potential, etc. This way, you can also track how well an employee is performing.

These employee data can help others make informed review decisions when reviewing performance. And they can also help managers make compensation decisions or even promotion decisions.

Efficiency in control

When everything is in one place, a lot can become easier. Conducting the review process through performance management software offers HR managers greater control over the entire process. They can control when the cycle starts and when it ends, how many employees should participate in the cycle, etc. HR managers can also restrict review visibility, call back reviews etc, thereby also maintaining a fair and just review process.

As a manager, you have a ton of other responsibilities, other than just tracking your employees’ performance. So if you wish to be more efficient and handle things with ease, a performance management software is your go-to option.

Engagedly is offering a suite of products part of its Remote Work Toolkit free to any organisation, until Sept 30th, 2020. 

The Coronavirus has affected the way we work today and for months to come. Unprecedented events require unprecedented measures. We at Engagedly believe it is our responsibility as socially conscious corporate citizens to help equip organisations with additional tools and resources during this time of crisis.

Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you with seamless Performance Evaluation? Then request for a live demo.

Request A Demo

Planning To Set OKRs For Your Sales Team?

Have you ever wondered what separates a high performing sales organization from an average or low performing one? The answer to this question is easy; employees in a high performing organization have well-defined goals. But is having well-defined goals enough? No, having goals alone does not lead to success. Organizations must have strategies in place to manage them. One such popular approach is ‘Objective and Key Results’ or popularly known as the OKRs. Before we learn more about OKRs for your sales team, let us take a look at ‘What Are OKRs?’ and ‘Tips To Set OKRs’. Continue reading “Planning To Set OKRs For Your Sales Team?”

How Engagedly Can Help You Enhance Employee Engagement

We are all aware of the way the world has changed in the past 6 months. Work from home has become the norm, and keeping remote employees engaged and motivated is a challenge all organizations face today. Before we leap into the core topic, it’s important for you to understand the employee’s perspective.

75% of the world’s population of employees used to commute to their offices everyday, live a routine of movement and activity. Only about 7% of U.S. workers had the option to regularly work from home (source). However, with the outbreak of Covid-19, that scene has drastically changed. Now employees spend almost everyday at home, working remotely and hardly stepping out in the process. Movement and activity has reduced tremendously, along with face-to-face interactions with colleagues and leaders. From enjoying very active, healthy, and interactive schedule, to a shift in being homebound most of the time; a certain amount of physical, intellectual and emotional inertia is bound to set in. This can slow down organizational growth and in the long run, economical growth. That’s why employee engagement is of utmost importance today.

Also Read: Continuous Performance Management: A Necessity During COVID-19

We often come across interesting articles which convey that engaged employees can help you increase your organizational productivity. But larger organizations, more often than not, are still focusing on their deadlines and on getting the work done. They are forgetting that it is also important for employees to be enthusiastic about what they are doing. One engaged employee can contribute a lot more to organizational productivity than ten disengaged employees.

It is not a change that you can bring about overnight. It is a culture that should be fostered gradually by encouraging employees to participate and communicate more. What if, an application is exclusively dedicated to promoting engagement for your employees? Engagedly is a performance management software that drives a culture of engagement, even if your employees are working remotely.

Here are 5 reasons why you need Engagedly to drive employee engagement.

Continuous feedback

Impact and validity of feedback is very time-bound. If they are not shared immediately, they fail to direct employees in the right direction. Engagedly’s feedback feature normalizes the idea of giving and receiving feedback anytime throughout the year. Employees can request feedback whenever they want to. Engagedly also gives you an option to select the areas on which the feedback should be given.

Also read: 5 Best Tips To Reduce Employee Turnover

This allows all the employees in an organization to improve themselves constantly. This process of continuous feedback keeps employees driven throughout the year and not just before performance reviews; hence promoting employee engagement.

User can respond to Feedback Request

Social forum for ease of communication

Every employee is smart and exceptional in their own way. Having a platform to express their thoughts and opinions is a great motivator. Engagedly’s social feature allows employees to share posts, share ideas, request for help and share knowledge. Engagedly allows you to create interest groups and share documents and other material with colleagues. Encouraging employees to express themselves and interact socially makes your virtual workplace a communication-friendly space and helps employees remain engaged.

Objectives and Goals

With very less chances of personal interactions these days, we have to streamline the process of clear goal setting. Setting clear and distinct goals is very important to complete any task. Employees can create goals for themselves and their direct reports using the Engagedly goals module. As a manager or an HR, it is important to set clear goals for your employees so that everyone works towards a collective goal.

Engagedly also has an option to align individual goals with the organizational goals so that employees know how the success of their individual goals can contribute to the accomplishment of organizational goals. In Engagedly, goals can also be reviewed by managers from time to time to check if their employees are on the right track.

Also read: Customize 360 Feedback Survey Questions According to Departments

Learning and development

Its needless to say that we’ve got to keep learning constantly. Otherwise we’ll not be able remain on the top of our game. No matter how old you are, what you do, keeping yourself up to date with the current industry trends is very important.

Video File Unit

Engagedly’s Learning feature helps you create new courses, and for each course an employee completes, they are awarded points by the course creator. When you assign courses to employees for their development, it motivates them because they know you are genuinely interested in developing them and improving their skills. When employees develop their professional skills, it boosts their self-confidence which in turn promotes an engagement culture.

Also read: These Features Can Make A Big Difference In A Goal Setting Software

Recognition and praise

This is an extremely important module, especially for today’s work culture. This can be considered another type of feedback. Receiving praise and recognition for their work is every employee’s dream. Engagedly’s public praise feature allows you to praise any employee publicly for the extra effort that they put in towards achieving a goal.

Praise An Employee

When employees go above and beyond to accomplish their goals, it is important to recognize their efforts and praise them. This keeps them motivated and engaged.

Engagedly is offering a suite of products part of its Remote Work Toolkit free to any organisation, until Sept 30th, 2020. 

The Coronavirus has affected the way we work today and for months to come. Unprecedented events require unprecedented measures. We at Engagedly believe it is our responsibility as socially conscious corporate citizens to help equip organisations with additional tools and resources during this time of crisis.

Want to know more about our software? Request for a FREE demo!

Request A Demo

Wondering How to Set OKRs For the Engineering Team?

Why do we need goals? Because measuring performance is a very important aspect of any organization and goals help us monitor and track employee performance. So why not shift to something that’s highly effective? Objectives and key results (OKRs) is one of the most popular approaches for setting goals and achieving them.

If you wish to keep your team on track and align the work with the organization’s overall objectives, OKRs are a really great way to do so. It is recommended that you set OKRs at your team level and then move to individual OKRs. If you are looking for examples to get started with OKRs for your engineering team, here are a few examples that can help you get started!

Critical thinking is the basic essence of OKRs. These are examples that you can use as base to start framing OKRs for your team. 

Also read: Wondering How to Conduct a Complete 360 Performance Review?

1. Objective: Improve software’s performance

Key Results: 

  1. Create a checklist of standard procedure to follow
  2. Reduce number of critical bugs by 10%
  3. Reduce the average response time on the app to less than 500 ms
  4. 30% reduction in runtime warnings

2. Objective: Improve quality in every release

Key Results:

  1. Contribute to at least 1000 code reviews by the end of every sprint
  2. Increase sprint capacity from 85 to 100 SP
  3. Reduce bugs by 20% a week before release

3. Objective: Improve data security for users

Key Results:

  1. Upgrade processes and reduce data migration time by 80%
  2. Reduce occurrences of data breach to 100%
  3. Reduce breakdowns in the peak hours by 90%
  4. Increase security by 50% using new protocol for addressing product security issues

4. Objective: Update testing procedures

Key Results:

  1. Increase unit test coverage to 75% of code
  2. Revisit all open issues from 6 month old code and find up to 50 bugs
  3. Less than 3 bugs reported by end users per release

Also read: How To Set Effective Employee Goals?

Engagedly is offering a suite of products part of its Remote Work Toolkit free to any organisation, until Sept 30th, 2020. 

The Coronavirus has affected the way we work today and for months to come. Unprecedented events require unprecedented measures. We at Engagedly believe it is our responsibility as socially conscious corporate citizens to help equip organisations with additional tools and resources during this time of crisis.

Get in touch with us to know more about the free remote working tool-kit. 

How To Set Effective Employee Goals?

Did you ever wonder why your employees are not able to achieve their targets or why they are disengaged at their work? With everyone starting to work from home due to COVID-19, this situation has become even more common. There is a very simple answer to this: your employees don’t have clear goals. When employee goals are not set correctly, not only the employees fail, the organization gets affected too.  Continue reading “How To Set Effective Employee Goals?”

Tips For Setting OKRs During On-boarding

Imagine that it is your first day at your new office and you are bombarded with tons of project details and deadlines to be met. Sounds disastrous, doesn’t it? Employees need to understand the culture of work in their new workplaces before they get thrown into never-ending cycles of deadlines.

We aren’t telling you to excuse them from their actual job. But it is important to understand that employees need time to adjust to the new culture and goals at their workplace. This is where OKRs play a major role. At Engagedly, we use OKRs to set goals and objectives for employees so that they can understand how they are contributing to the bigger picture.

Also Read: 5 Things To Look For In An OKR Software

OKRs are one of the most popular and effective ways of setting goals and tracking them.

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 objective. OKRs work on all levels, be it corporate, departmental or individual goals. Using OKRs promotes collaboration and helps you drive employee engagement in your organization.

Here are a few tips to set OKRs for new employees during their on-boarding:

Be Clear And Specific

It is impossible not to make mistakes when setting goals. After all, goals are just the blueprint for what you would like your employees to achieve. But as with many things, over a period of time, it becomes easier to set goals when you and your employee know what the employee is capable of and whether they have the skills to achieve the goals that have been set.

It also makes it easier to avoid goal-setting mistakes if you follow a process methodology for setting goals. One of the most commonly know goal-setting processes is that of SMART goal-setting. The concept of SMART goals seems to have first originated from George T. Doran in 1981. S.M.A.R.T is an acronym for:

  • Specific–Have a specific purpose. If your goal isn’t specific, it’s going to be doomed from the start.
  • Measurable–What is the point of setting a goal if you cannot measure it? When you can measure a goal, you will also be able to tell if the goal was met successfully or not.
  • Achievable–There needs to be a sweet spot for your goals. They cannot be too easy, but nor can they be too difficult.
  • Relevant–Goal-setting in itself is not enough–you must make sure that these goals are relevant to the people who will utilize them.
  • Time-Bound–There needs to be a time period during which the goal can be carried out and the objective met. More importantly, when goals are time-bound, they also tend to be motivating.

The SMART method of goal-setting can help avoid major goal-setting mistakes. And of course, with time, it becomes easier and easier to use.

Align The Goals To Organizational Goals

Goal alignment is one of the most important aspect of goal setting because it allows users to not only align their goals with organization goals but it also allows them to see the big picture. For example, if one of the organization’s main goals is breaking into an as yet untapped market, the ability to align goals shows an employee how they are contributing to this specific goal.

There are software that allow you to see how the progress on your individual goals contribute to organizational/ department goals.

Also Read: Employee Performance Reviews : A Guide For New Managers

Trust And Encourage

As a manager, it is important for you to trust your employees’ capability to accomplish the goals set. Express your faith in them and encourage them to do better by regularly monitoring these goals. Be a positive influence on them and drive engagement in your team.

Feedback After Monitoring

One of the vital parts of employee goal setting is tracking their progress and actively help them with their goals. You can also choose to use a software that allows you to track employee progress on goals effectively by sending out notification to goal assigners each time the someone checks in on the goal and giving the goal assigners the ability to comment on each goal check-in.

The ability to comment on goals allows both managers and employees to have a discussion about the goal and the progress that is being made. Commenting is an easy way to foster communication without having to formalize it.

How can you sidestep poor goal-setting practices? Engagedly can help! Request a demo from us to find out!

Request A Demo

Get In Touch With Us




Sticking To Your New Year Resolutions 2020

Are you having trouble staying motivated and sticking to your resolutions, just after a month into the new year? Well, you aren’t alone. You may set out with the best of intentions, but with unexpected emergencies, new initiatives, and competing priorities for your time and attention, it can be challenging to stay on track towards your long-term goals.

Fortunately, it’s never too late to course correct. Here are three things that you can do to reinvigorate yourself to work on your goals.

Continue reading “Sticking To Your New Year Resolutions 2020”

OKR Software For A Successful Business

Using OKRs without realizing their purpose or objective makes them feel complex or unusable. However, it is possible for organizations to use OKRs, just like Google and also achieve some measure of success if you break down the process of goal setting and understand every aspect of it.

Continue reading “OKR Software For A Successful Business”

Benefits Of Having An OKR Software At Your Workplace

You are running behind a deadline and your manager wants the project outcome as soon as possible. You are going to have to stay for longer hours at work and complete the project. There’s a huge pressure and you can hardly focus on the project.

How could you have handled this situation better? This is one of the most common challenges faced in today’s corporate.

Continue reading “Benefits Of Having An OKR Software At Your Workplace”

Upgrade From Paper-Based Performance Reviews To Engagedly

Moving from traditional paper-based performance reviews to a performance management software can feel like a stressful experience, mainly because you are moving away from something that you know about to something that is new to you.

Continue reading “Upgrade From Paper-Based Performance Reviews To Engagedly”

Engagedly Ranked #2 On Top 10 Velocity Brands By Starr Conspiracy

On the back of their explosive growth of employee engagement solutions and performance management methodology, Engagedly has been ranked #2 on the list of top 10 Velocity Brands by The Starr Conspiracy. 

Continue reading “Engagedly Ranked #2 On Top 10 Velocity Brands By Starr Conspiracy”

A Glimpse At Engagedly’s Top 10 Blog Posts – 2019

Throughout the year, the Engagedly blog posts timely insights around employee engagement, performance management, and leadership. In case you missed it, below you can revisit ten of our top blogs from this year.  

Continue reading “A Glimpse At Engagedly’s Top 10 Blog Posts – 2019”

Why Employee Recognition Programs Fail At Employee Engagement?

Employee retention is very important for every organization and recognition is the key tool to retain employees.

But most employers, even if they know the importance of employee recognition programs at workplace, cannot get employee recognition get done right.

Continue reading “Why Employee Recognition Programs Fail At Employee Engagement?”

Defining Objectives and Key Results [2024]

Have you aligned your employee goals with your organizational goals yet? If not, 2024 is the right time to get started with the practice. Learn how to establish this practice at your workplace this new year!

Continue reading “Defining Objectives and Key Results [2024]”

8 New Year Resolutions Every Employee Should Have For 2018!

The New Year’s Eve is already around the corner and every year we all make a long list of resolutions to improve ourselves in every aspect of our lives.

In our previous article, we spoke about what resolutions you can have this new year as a manager. Here are a few more new year’s workplace resolutions that you can have as an employee!

Continue reading “8 New Year Resolutions Every Employee Should Have For 2018!”