Learn how to align the internal and external elements of your business and organization to effectively achieve strategic alignment. Best practices, tips, and templates.
Finance leaders and strategists are at the helm of managing the cash flow, revenue streams, and expenses of the organization. With such responsibilities at their shoulders, it is important for them manage their goals and activities effectively to achieve organizational objectives.
Enter, Finance OKRs, a methodology to help finance leaders operationalize and streamline their tasks to focus on key areas and harbinger results.
Finance OKRs have become an important part of performance management in today’s changing business environment. Many thoughtful leaders are adopting them to accomplish their organizations’ most important financial goals. The Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) methodology is one of the most simple and effective ways for goal setting and monitoring.
In this article, we will discuss Finance OKRs and provide pragmatic examples that you can use in your organization.
Writing OKRs for the finance department can be a daunting task, especially when you are doing it for the first time. You must be aware of the critical areas that require your attention, as well as what you must track and monitor. Well-written OKRs can help increase the productivity of the team by aligning team members’ objectives with the organization’s goals. And it requires several improvement cycles to come up with the winning OKRs.
You can refer to the below guide to understand the process of writing effective and successful business OKRs and recreate them for your finance team.
Create a 3 step verification process including maker, checker, and verifier
Reduce payroll errors to vendors and consultants by 30%
Reduce error resolution time from 48 hours to 36 hours
Final Thoughts On Finance OKRs
Goal setting is critically important to reaching organizational objectives. With the help of methodologies like OKRs, organizations can create and analyze the progress of their most important goals. The finance team OKRs discussed in this article will help your team gain greater visibility into their goals, making them more accountable for their performance.
As per a report by Hubspot, growing companies are 21% more likely to give importance to customer success than their stagnant counterparts.
Customers are often referred to as the lifeline of every organization as they determine their failures or success. Organizations take a conscious effort to retain their existing customers and attract new ones. So it becomes crucial for all to have an efficient customer success team in place. They play an important role in all the stages of the customer life cycle and act as a direct connection between customers and your company.
Moreover, they help in creating and nurturing a strong relationship between the organization and its customers. In this article, we will guide you on how to set effective OKRs for your customer success team so that they provide amazing customer support continuously. But before we learn more about OKRs for a customer success team, let’s first understand what OKRs are and Why you should use them.
OKRs or Objective and Key Results is a goal-setting framework that has been adopted by successful organizations such as Google, Amazon, Disney, LinkedIn, and more. The concept of OKRs was first introduced in the ’70s at Intel by Andy Grove. Later, it was popularized by John Doerr when he introduced it at Google in 1999. It became a central element to Google’s culture as a management methodology, which will help focus company efforts on the same important issue throughout the organization.
OKRs consists of two components, namely:
– Objectives : a clearly defined goal to be achieved
– Key Results : measurable steps to achieve the objectives
Each objective ideally should have 3-5 associated key results. An ideal OKR should answer two basic questions: ‘What do you want to achieve?’ and ‘How will you achieve it?’.
The benefits associated with OKRs have made it a popular goal-setting tool among all organizations. Here are some of them:
Focussed : OKRs are limited in number and set for a quarter or any specific time interval. It helps the team and the team members to focus and prioritize their tasks, depending on what is important for the month and the quarter.
Aligned : OKRs make it easy to align every employee’s goal to the organizational goal and vision.
Stretchable : OKRs allows organizations to push themselves a step ahead and set stretch goals for themselves. As John Doerr says, “Larry Page of Google is the high priest of 10x-ing everything, stretching further. He’ll say, ‘I’d rather have the objective be to go to Mars, and if we fall short, we’ll get to the moon. This is how you make moonshots.’”
Accountability : Everyone is accountable for their own goals and knows how success will be measured and who is responsible
Customer Success OKR Examples
Customers success OKRs are helpful at every stage of the customer success journey. Be it production, support, team performance, and customer experience, having well-defined OKRs for customer success leads to clarity and better output. Along with proper OKRs, make sure to invest in customer experience programs which can increase the interaction of your reps with the customers and help to elevate the customer satisfaction.
Check out the customer success OKR examples below to you get started with effective and measurable goal setting in your team.
Customer Experience OKR Examples
Objective 1: Improve Customer Satisfaction Index in Q4 by 30%
Key Results:
– Conduct 50 customer satisfaction surveys every month
– Conduct monthly interviews with 10 recently churned customers
– Achieve a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 10.0
Team Performance OKR Examples
Objective 2: Maximize Performance and Efficiency of the Support Team
Key Results:
– Ensure that the team attends at least three training sessions every month
– Organize business communication programs for new joiners
– Conduct weekly team huddle meetings to discuss issues faced by team members
Objective 3: Increasing Customer Product Adoption Through Exemplary Customer Service
Key Results:
– Resolve customer onboarding issues within 2 hours
– Provide product updates while resolving issues
– Inform every customer regarding upcoming services and updates that are relevant to them
Objective 4: Reduce The Turnaround Time and Provide Resolution within SLA (Service Level Agreement)
Key Results:
– Critical issues response time should be one hour and resolved within a day
– Each member of the customer support team resolves eight customer issues every day
– Standardize or automate solutions for five similar issues every quarter
– All customer complaints receive a response within 48 hours
Production OKR Examples
Objective 5: Help Customers get Maximum value from the product
Key Results:
– Smooth onboarding and training of all new customers
– Communicate issues and bugs on time to all existing customers
– Schedule downtime and maintenance activities on weekends
Conclusion
OKRs are a time-tested tool that is being used by numerous Fortune 500 organizations to keep track of their most important organizational goals. We hope the OKRs for customer success discussed in this article will help you get started with goal setting in your organization.
Employees’ health and wellbeing initiatives have always been a crucial offering of most organizations, but of recent have even gained more traction. The pandemic has presented us with a cruel reminder of why having an employee health and wellbeing strategy is essential for any organization. The report of increased stress levels, loneliness, anxiety, and sick days has highlighted more than ever the benefits of having a happy and fit workforce.
Since employees are the backbone of every organization, it is necessary to pay attention to their mental, physical and financial wellbeing. This article will explore the meaning of employee health and wellbeing strategy. We will also highlight steps you can take to develop an employee wellbeing strategy or, if one exists, improve it.
What is Employee Health and Wellbeing Strategy?
Before describing the employee wellbeing strategy, let’s first define what employee wellbeing is. Employee wellbeing refers to the physical, physiological, and financial welfare of employees of an organization. Therefore, an organizational wellbeing strategy is a plan, system, or actions taken to achieve the health and wellbeing of employees.
The goal is to have a system or culture that helps employees thrive to the best of their ability. A study by SFM shows that 77% of companies have an employee wellbeing program. Another survey by Buffet National Wellness reveals that only 36% of organizations evaluate the effectiveness of employee wellbeing programs. A successful strategy ties the wellbeing program to other organizational strategic objectives-allowing management to measure its effectiveness.
What Areas Should Employee Health and Wellbeing Strategy Address?
When most people hear about employee wellbeing programs, they think of the psychological health aspect alone. But it also comprises the financial and physical. It is the holistic view of all three combined. And while you may lean towards one more than the others, it’s best to have elements of all when preparing an organizational wellbeing strategy.
Physical Wellbeing
Physical wellbeing is all about encouraging your employees to take their physical health seriously. A study published in ACOEM and led by Nicolaas P. Pronk shows that physically fit employees are more likely to engage more in the workplace. They are also more productive. Physical wellbeing aims to help employees stay fit through exercising and eating healthy. It is trying to help employees build healthy physical habits.
They are various ways organizations promote these habits, and some are:
Offering a discount on a gym membership
Free healthy snacks
Healthy Cooking Classes
Massage Therapist
Fitness resources and workout videos, etc.
These are some examples of physical employee wellbeing activities in an organization. Some employers also provide health information like taking walks every thirty minutes, sitting positions to help with posture and back pains, or even specialized tables and chairs to help you practice these healthy work habits.
One aspect that seems not to pop up as often is the importance of rest and sleep. A study by AASM(American Academy of Sleep Medicine) shows workers who report sleeping 5-6 hours experienced 19% productivity loss, and those who slept under 5 hours were 29% less productive. Adequate rest is as essential as exercise and nutrition when thinking about the wellbeing of your employees.
Mental wellbeing is the one that has attracted the most attention in recent times because of the pandemic. It covers the state of the employee’s mind. Issues like a sense of meaning in what they do in the workplace, personal accomplishments, and working relationships factor into the employee’s mental wellbeing.
Some ways organizations have helped tackle this is by offering.
Flexible Working days
Offering mandatory mental health training for managers
Offeringcourses on mental health
Reviewing and managing the workload of employees
Providing the tools necessary to deliver on their assignments
A study by the World Health Organisation shows that the global economy loses up to 1 trillion dollars because of depression and anxiety. The figure shows just how important the mental health of employees is.
An essential aspect of mental wellbeing is its social aspect. How employees interact with their coworkers and bosses in the workplace is crucial. As well as their social support system outside the workplace, like friends and family members. A positive relationship can help them bring about a decent level of stability.
Financial Wellbeing
Financial wellbeing is crucial because one primary reason people work is to earn money. It covers the present upkeep of the employees, retirement plans, job security, and debt management.
One thing we saw during the pandemic was layoffs, something that threatened the financial wellbeing of many people. Another was cuts or removal of certain perks.
So what are some ways in which employers have tried to support their employees?
Complimentary perks like; free movie tickets or coffee.
Discounts on meals in certain restaurants or holiday destinations.
Cashback schemes.
Vouchers at certain grocery stores.
Insurance and pension packages
Payment schemes for smartphones and laptops
Now that we have gone through the three primary aspects of health and wellbeing. Let’s look at why companies need to take them seriously.
Why is Employee Health and Wellbeing Strategy Important to Companies?
Every organization wants assurance about their investments or at least proof that the investment is worthwhile. Most companies that have not taken the wellbeing strategy in the workplace seriously argue that it isn’t necessary. This assumption couldn’t be more inaccurate. A well-executed employee wellbeing strategy has its advantages, some of which we will highlight in this section.
Improves Productivity
A well-executed wellbeing strategy can lead to improved productivity. A 2017 GSK study that surveyed workers in China, India and the Philippians revealed 60% of them said they experienced head pain relating to their jobs, leading to loss of productivity. Health and wellness programs improve employee engagement, which in turn improves employee productivity.
A company with an ineffective employee health and wellness program is a company that will react to health-related problems. The disadvantage of reacting rather than being proactive to situations is that the company pays for them. And we mean literally, it will cost you more to treat a problem than to prevent it.
According to the Indiana State Department of Health, employers on average can save $3.48 on lower health care and $5.82 on absenteeism costs for every $1 spent on employee wellbeing.
Helps to Reduce Stress Levels
Stress is a problem every organization seeks to minimize. A CDC study revealed that 40% of workers are extremely stressed and 25% of them experience burnout often. Stress levels can be regulated and maintained with the proper wellness plan in place.
Attracts Talents
According to a 2019 survey by safety and health magazine, 87 percent of workers between 18-34 consider employee health and wellbeing when choosing a Job. This is proof that talents today are watching out for companies that take good care of their employees. Another study by APA showed employees are also more likely to recommend a company as a good place to work if they support wellbeing initiatives. These studies prove that an excellent program will attract the best talents.
Improves Employee Retention
Fatigue and burnout are two deep concerns for organizations. A study by the American Psychological Association shows that employees are 2.6 times more likely to quit their jobs due to fatigue. The same report also revealed that people are 23% more likely to visit an emergency room and 69% more likely to call in sick.
All the above points are viable reasons you should start an employee health and wellbeing program and if one already exists, work on it to get better.
Key Points to Consider for a Successful Employee Health and Wellbeing Strategy
When it comes to implementing the right organizational wellbeing strategy, it isn’t a one-fit-all approach. Each organization has their own peculiar need, and therefore it requires a lot of customization from the HR team. This section will highlight some tips to remember when setting up an employee wellbeing initiative.
Know Your Employees
The first thing to remember is you cannot set up an employee wellbeing program when you do not know their pain point. It’s easy to be swept away by what other companies are introducing, but remember that each organization has its own tailored needs. The first thing you need to do is take a kind of census. It can be a quick survey highlighting the pressing needs of the employees. The essential thing to note is to involve them in the development process.
Link Wellbeing Strategy to Company Objectives
One way to make sure your health and wellbeing strategy goes well is to tie the goals to business objectives. Doing this ensures that you are clear on the goals of the employee wellbeing program. An example is setting a goal of reducing absenteeism by 5% within the next two years.
Setting an obvious goal ensures that the company can keep track. Another goal that can complement this is to improve revenue by 5% in the same period. Setting these goals allows you to measure the effectiveness of the health and wellbeing initiative.
For any strategy to succeed, it must come from top management. As the HR team involves employees, it’s also important to involve senior management. A study by APA shows that 73% of employees supported by their top management said their wellbeing initiative program was effective. Only 11% of employees not backed by senior management agreed the health and wellbeing initiative was effective.
Communicate The Initiative Frequently
One vital aspect of implementing any strategy is communicating effectively. Part of your strategy will be an engaging way to launch the program. How would you pitch the idea to the employees?
Ideally, there shouldn’t be a problem since they were involved, but there is nothing wrong with reminding them of the issues the wellbeing program solves. It is also best to have weekly, bi-weekly or monthly reminders on the wellness programs employees have access to so they make use of them. It’s also essential to introduce new employees to the various perks to stay informed.
Take Regular Feedback
No strategy is perfect, so you need feedback from those using the program. Employee feedback is key in improving and adapting the health and wellbeing strategy for the organisation. It also keeps employees engaged with the program. Companies can carry out feedback quarterly, bi-annually, or annually to get a feel of its effect.
Continue Improving the Process
Collecting feedback is only one of the two-step processes. Implementing and putting the feedback into effect is the other side of the process.
A bonus tip here is when starting, begin with a few initiatives. Monitor and improve them, and when ingrained into the company system, add another wellbeing activity to it. For example, if your company starts a subsidised gym membership, don’t start with a mental health first training session at the same time.
It’s best to have other wellbeing activities that complement the subsidized gym membership, like nutrition classes. This way, you can measure their effectiveness since they aim to achieve the same goal – employees in better physical shape.
In conclusion, creating a successful employee health and wellbeing strategy isn’t a walk in the pack. It involves research on the needs of the organization and the employees, and trial and error. What will make the process a success is it involves everyone, from the employees to top management.
Learn how Engagedly can help you with employee health and wellbeing by requesting us for a demo.
The real test of leadership does not occur when everything is sailing smoothly. Rather, leadership is oftentimes tested during a crisis. The way a leader behaves and acts during a crisis will establish their credentials as a good leader or a poor one. In this article, we will discuss the importance of leadership in times of crisis and how crisis leadership can provide a way to lead effectively.
People Analytics can be a fortune-maker for businesses! – Max Blumberg
Many leading and growing companies are adopting advanced methods of analyzing workforce data to enhance their employee engagement and efficiency. Companies can now understand how to engage, retain and ensure the productivity of their employees. People Analytics has become an indispensable strategy that allows companies to make better management and business decisions.
Here are six reasons your organization should consider investing in people analytics.
Improve Employee Engagement and Reduce Attrition
Employee turnover can be extremely costly. The cost of filling the position involves time and money spent on the recruitment process, training the new employee, onboarding, etc. One of the best ways to fight employee turnover is by increasing employee engagement.
Gallup data shows that highly engaged businesses achieve 59% less turnover. People Analytics help organizations in creating, collecting, implementing, and analyzing the data, and thereby improving retention and employee engagement.
People analytics help in planning the goals way in advance based on the data availability, using artificial intelligence(AI) and natural language processing (NLP). We can gain insights, improve results, and save time. Besides, AI and NLP increase hiring and recruiting efficiency, i.e. quality, speed, hiring experience; automate low-level tasks, predict imminent employee departures, inform HR and create business strategies.
Hiring The Right Talent And Retention
Strategic Workforce Planning and People Analytics can predict if an employee is looking for a job change before they even advertise themselves as available.
People Analytics & Talent Development can help the HRs in succession planning through performance reviews. It involves choosing scientific and relevantemployee assessments to collect appropriate data and measure process effectiveness.
Ideally, the performance review process provides data points to leaders and managers. This, when fed into an L&OD program, it helps them identify their employees’ strengths andweaknesses. As a result, it will help them hone their strengths and work on their weaknesses. This will help them prepare for the next step in the organization.
With the right data analytics tools and techniques, and a deep understanding of employee experience, organizations can set up their benchmark to create a global career development program.
With a people analytics platform, business leaders can access up-to-date organizational data and also historical information surrounding growth, roadmap, structural changes. It provides a 360 view of how any change affects the organization. Business Analytics backed by people analytics (people-related graphs, maps, scenario plans) helps cultivate actionable insights that drive change.
Customer Behavior and Insights
With the help of predictive people analytics, companies are now gaining insights that enable them to attract and retain both external and internal customers. HR professionals are now using advanced technologies and tools to align their decision to trends in the industry and processes. People analytics enables data-driven employee management, identifying and analyzing the relationship between employee engagement and retention. This evolution is creating an employee experience, which enables the organization to fuel its potential.
People analytics provide deep insights on how to improve the workforce, employee retention, learning and development, compensation, performance, etc. HR professionals use people analytics to inform and influence business decisions, and align them to organizational goals.
It also helps the organizations derive benefits throughout the employee lifecycle.
– From the HR team at Engagedly
Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you with People Analytics? Request a demo from our experts.
To be able to drive and sustain prolific motivation in employees is a classy act of exemplary business leadership. Organizations dwell and prosper when leaders identify opportunities and rise to the occasion. In the ultimate sense, the virtues of employee motivation, employee engagement, and retention within your organization correlate to your efficacy as a leader. Having said that, your success in business leadership is paramount to the advancement of your organization.
What do you think makes some leaders extraordinary? What are the traits that make leaders stand out from the crowd? One thing is true for sure a lot of business leaders have not been as effective as they would have wanted to be in terms of driving employee motivation. Had every business leader been successful, employee engagement levels would not be this dismal. To substantiate, as per Gallup’s 2021 survey, only 20 percent of employees are actively engaged in work.
Clearly, the difference between organizations with high engagement and those with low levels of it is the difference in the quality of leadership. Charismatic leaders come with a wide spectrum of strong traits that others look up to. When such people are at the helm of things, everyone around them grows, and in the ultimate sense, organizations accomplish their strategic goals. John Maxwell once rightly quoted, “leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing the other.”
This blog highlights the most quintessential personality traits that business leaders need to incorporate into their personalities for catapulting positive changes in the workplace. With these traits, they can cultivate overwhelming levels of motivation, enthusiasm, and engagement in employees. In simpler terms, the traits mentioned in the subsequent section will have a massive role to play in the pursuit of business success. So, let us get started without further ado.
1. Clarity of vision and purpose
Being a leader, you are the captain of the ship. If you are unclear about things and the direction in which you should steer the ship, how do you expect your team to portray high motivation? You should be a handsome leader driven by clarity of vision and purpose at all times. Your vision as a leader will be crucial to your motivation. Further, your motivation will be setting the standard for your employees.
To drive your organization to success, you have to be a decisive leader with the traits of critical thinking. When you work with a clear vision in your mind, employees are impressed and feel greater motivation. On the other hand, if you are going to make regrettable decisions as a leader, the morale of the entire workforce will begin to dip.
You also need to recognize the fact that with the rising competitiveness in the business world, there is also an urgency around decision-making. To give your business a competitive advantage, you ought to make quality decisions in real-time. This will also influence the motivation and learning of your employees.
Having said that, it is critical to be clear about your plans, objectives, and key result areas. When you show such effective traits, things flow smoothly in the workplace, and morals scale new heights. As per McKinsey, not more than 20 percent of employees are of the view that their organizations are excellent at decision-making. For sure, business leaders need to exhibit greater credibility and clarity in their decision-making process.
If you look at the most successful leaders across the world, there is one thing common among all of them. From Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos, all of them go beyond their limits to lead their teams by example. On similar lines, you have to lead from the front when it comes to keeping your employees zealous and motivated. You have to model the fundamentals of hard work, persistence, and determination for them. Besides, you have to lead by example to show your employees how they can overcome even the most befitting challenges with motivation.
When they see you staying motivated even in the middle of adversities and exhibiting great self-belief, they will have a lot to learn. Optimism is contagious after all and you have to show your employees how one can remain calm and optimistic in the face of challenges. Expecting your employees to be determined at all times when your commitment does not set the benchmark may be unfair.
Furthermore, as a leader, you ought to display fine qualities of resilience and agility. You have to set high standards for motivation and performance for everyone. Your employees must know that they have to meet these standards, irrespective of the situation. The gist of the matter is that your employees will always look up to you and you ought to keep evolving new tactics to inspire them. The gist of the matter is that you have to be the prodigal leader they should be able to idolize.
3. Proficiency in communication
In every domain, it is imperative for leaders to be great communicators. When you have the spark to communicate goals, purpose, and instructions in an effective manner, employees have a clear sense of direction. Further, when responsibilities and key performance indicators are communicated effectively, it sparks greater motivation among employees.
Needless to say, employees’ motivation will be the highest when they are sure of what is expected of them. This is where the communication skills of leaders and managers are vital. As per SalesForce, 86 percent of employees are of the view that projects fail in the workplace because of ineffective communication. In fact, many organizations lack a structured and strategy for workplace communication.
To add, as per Expert Market, 97 percent of employees opine that workplace communication impacts their everyday performance and motivation. Having said that, communication being the key is no overstatement. There have to be effective communication strategies in place that will be subject to your ability as a communicator.
Moving further, a leader’s communication skills are also pivotal to feedback sharing. As a leader, you have to be streak smart in the way you share feedback with your employees. The feedback sharing has to be constructive, regular, and concise. At the same time, your communication skills should be such that even negative feedback shouldn’t be intimidating to your employees.
To augment, even the frequency of feedback sharing is imperative from the purview of communication. As per HubSpot, 65 percent of employees assert that they seek more frequent feedback from their leaders. Besides, 98 percent of employees begin to disengage when they receive no feedback. Given that, you now know the importance of feedback in the workplace and how critical your communication skills are for the same.
The ones who assert that the corporate world is no place for emotions have got it all wrong. Being a compassionate leader comes with promising returns on investment that you ought to acknowledge. But what does compassion in the workplace imply in a positive sense?
Being a compassionate leader means that you ought to have empathy and emotional intelligence to understand your employees’ emotions. In fact, besides understanding their feelings, it is also important to respect what they feel and offer them support. Such compassion will find great appreciation among your employees and they will be able to manage their emotional vulnerabilities better.
Needless to say, the better your employees deal with their negative emotions, the greater will be their motivation and productivity. What compassionate leaders are great at is inspiring a sense of emotional security in people around them and steering their emotions in a positive direction. This is what EQ is all about, and there is every reason why business leaders need to work on developing EQ skills.
Probing further, let us underline the importance of empathy in the workplace with some credible statistics. As per the State of Workplace Empathy Report, 90 percent of employees assert that workplace empathy is quintessential. Employees want their employers and leaders to be able to understand their emotional states and support them in a worthwhile manner. As a leader, you can only deliver on this expectation when you have bright traits of empathy and compassion.
To add, being a compassionate leader also implies that you ought to express gratitude to your employees. Business leaders ought to express thankfulness towards their employees for the effort, consistency, and commitment they invest. To substantiate, as per workplace gratitude statistics, 88 percent of employees assert that they will work with greater motivation for a grateful business leader. Having said that, remember to be grateful to your valued employees!
In fact, ever since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it affected everyone’s mental health, the scenario has changed. The need for compassion in the workplace is higher than ever before. Otherwise, when employees do not find emotional support from their leaders, their motivation and performance will begin to dip. In a workplace that lacks compassion, employees will be prone to high burnout rates. This may further impact the rates of employee engagement and retention.
Moreover, you also need to consider the fact in remote working environments, employees are vulnerable to emotional disconnect. The feeling of isolation in remote workers can be demotivating. To have their motivation aligned with company goals, you need to go out of your way to offer compassionate support to your remote employees.
5. The ability to delegate
Are you comfortable delegating authority and responsibilities to your subordinates? Is delegation even a strategy that you look forward to applying in the workplace in a worthwhile way? One incredible trait of successful business leaders is that they do not keep all the authority centralized in their hands. They are happy to share both power and responsibilities with their employees with the aim of leveraging the merits of delegation in business. Do you know what these fascinating merits of delegation in business are?
When you develop the ability to delegate, you will be able to foster optimized workplace relationships. Your employees will be able to derive great value from the fact that you trust them with more authority and responsibilities than they are entitled to in the usual sense. Besides, the acts of delegating will give hands-on exposure and training to your employees on new dimensions of professionalism.
Here, it is also imperative to acknowledge that superiors’ trust and learning opportunities are among the most basic employee expectations for motivation. To augment, as cited by the LinkedIn Learning Report, 94 percent of employees are of the view that they will be motivated to stay at a company for longer if their leaders invest in their learning and development. Given that, while training modules may have their own benefits, delegating tasks facilitates learning experiences, offering higher motivation.
Moving forward, let us also analyze the impact of trust you show in your employees when you undertake delegation. As per Harvard Business Review, employees exhibit 76 percent higher engagement and 106 percent greater energy when their superiors trust them. Moreover, in high trust working environments, employees prove to be 50 percent more productive.
Can you now realize the incredible charm of delegation as a business strategy? At times, delegation is the simplest answer to keeping your employees motivated and productive to the core. Of course, this business strategy proves to be successful when you are meticulous in your delegating decisions.
Hence, you have to be more comfortable with the idea of delegation to get the most out of your team members. In fact, delegating some surplus responsibilities to them will also give you some more time to focus on vital things or to get more rest in order to prevent burnout. Even you deserve some time off from the grim hustle and bustle!
6. Selflessness in appreciation
Sharing credit is not a quality or ability that everyone possesses. However, the ability to appreciate or share credit with others is a trait you should definitely work on if you do not have it yet. This is for the simple reason that you cannot expect your employees to be highly motivated or engaged in the absence of recognition.
Having said that, you ought to be a selfless leader when it comes to appreciating and recognizing your employees. Although you have to lead from the front in most instances, you need to put your team members first when it comes to celebrating success. Your selfishness as a leader will be sacrosanct in steering brimming motivation among your employees.
In fact, when it comes to appreciation, every ounce of it counts! We all love being appreciated for the good things we do. Moreover, this sense of appreciation does, by default, instill a new zest of motivation among us. In a similar way, appreciation and recognition work wonders to help employees realize replenished levels of motivation and engagement.
To substantiate, as per HR Technologist, lack of appreciation is the primary reason why 44 percent of employees tend to quit. Needless to say, it is not the motivated employees who tender their resignations. The more selfless and warmhearted you can be in sharing success and appreciating your people, the greater will be your levels of motivation. Besides, you also ought to be innovative in the ways you extend recognition to your employees.
7. Integrity
It is quintessential for leaders to uphold their integrity at all times, especially in the midst of unprecedented situations. Leaders have to be honest with themselves as well as others around them. Moreover, leaders should maintain a moral high ground at all times and endorse the right way of doing things rather than the easier way of doing them. In testing waters, integrity is the first thing that people tend to compromise. However, as a business leader, you have to embrace it and model it for others under all kinds of circumstances.
The analogy behind integrity being crucial for employee motivation is simple. Employees feel motivated and the urge to take additional responsibilities when they amply respect their leaders. Moreover, employees commit greater diligence when they see their organization upholding strong belief in some salient core values. Integrity for sure is one of the most fundamental principles among these values.
The bottom line is that you need to model for your employees how work ethics contribute to success. You have to make them believe that nothing is insurmountable unless they hold on to their integrity. This trait of yours will have an incredible impact on the personality of your employees.
Want to know how Engagedly can help your leaders drive engagement? Request for a live demo.
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.
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 is due to it.
As a result, it’s no secret that everyone wants to emulate Google’s goal setting method and perhaps their meteoric success as well.
But when you use OKRs without realizing their purpose or objective, it 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.
Understand And Define Your High-Level Goals
This is the first thing that an organization needs to identify. High-level goals tie into the mission and vision of the organization. Use your organization’s values to establish what you would like the organization-level goals to be. Remember, everybody else’s 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.”
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.
This is the next step you need to follow after setting your high-level goals. By breaking them down, you can figure out how you place to 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.”
This is your objective. In order to achieve this objective, you need key results that can help you measure success.
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.
Pro Tip: If your key result does not have a number, it’s not a key result!
The success of a goal being achieved hinges on how easily it can be measured. If it cannot be measured, there’s no way to know if you achieved the goal or not.
Set Flexible Goals
When goals become rigid, they can create a binding situation with no room to move. When creating goals, do so with the mindset that the end result could change. 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. After all, it is always possible for circumstances to take an unexpected turn.
There’s a sweet spot between wildly ambitious and too easy, and it is up to you to find it. Oftentimes, 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 which consume an inordinate amount of time and energy and do not contribute to the main goal in an impactful way are wasteful goals. They are causing you to spend time, energy and manpower and still not netting you the results you need.
Track The Progress Of Your Goals
This is one of the most important aspects of goal setting: tracking goals. 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.
And perhaps, the biggest difference with tracking goals is the way Google and Intel approached this. Goals weren’t personal secrets (though, of course, every employee can have personal goals if they want to), rather, they were visible to everyone in the organization. Think about it this way. In the end, success for an organization is not defined by a single person’s work. Rather, it is the cumulative effort of many people working together to achieve something. When one employee knows what the other is working on, it can help them collaborate. Because ultimately, they both share the same end goal. Everyone in an organization deserves to know how their work helps the organization succeed.
Goal Alignment And Cascading
Goals should trickle down through the organization. And 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. Cascading goals also ensure that another important aspect of goals is covered: goal alignment.
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.
Celebrate Small Wins
It is really important to celebrate important milestones on the path to accomplishing goals. Do not wait to hit 100% on a goal’s progress and then celebrate. It might be too late to celebrate by then or you might not get to celebrate at all. This also invalidates all the effort that is put towards accomplishing a goal. Set quarterly milestones (or monthly, depending on the cadence at your organization) and when you reach those significant milestones, be sure to celebrate all the work that has gone towards the goal. This way, employees will still be enthusiastic about working towards the goal, rather than wondering if it is ever going to end at all.
Once a year passes, review the goals you have set, what you have accomplished, what you couldn’t accomplish, etc. These evaluations can help you figure out what you need to keep doing, what you should stop and where you need to course correct, if necessary.
And when setting new goals for the next year, use the past to guide the future. Just because you weren’t able to accomplish something last year, it does not mean you should focus on your goals for next year. Think carefully about the goals you will focus on. Because the entire organization will be focusing on them, not just a single person.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, internal communications via in-person meetings, team-building exercises, and other non-virtual means were common. These days, 52% of global employees work remotely at least once a week, forcing companies to rely on online mediums for internal communication.
Despite having access to multiple communication apps, 67% of UK employees feel disconnected from their company culture and colleagues while working remotely, 49% of these employees say that this disconnect is affecting their work performance.
Prevent disconnect and keep employees aligned with your organisational goals through effective internal communication. Before explaining how to do that, let’s look at the benefits of employees aligning with organisational goals.
What Are the Benefits of Employees Aligning with the Organisation’s Goals?
Organisational goals are the objectives your company aims to achieve. You must clearly define these goals and share them with your employees. When employees know and understand the organisational goals, they can work towards them, leading to benefits like:
Research indicates that disengaged employees cost the UK economy around £340 billion yearly. That’s because disengaged employees are less productive, less trainable, and more prone to absenteeism.
Having clearly defined organisational goals and helping employees align with those goals gives your workers something to focus on and work towards. The more focused your employees are, the more engaged and productive they will be.
When employees share the same goals as their company, there is less friction within the organisation. That’s because everyone is working towards a common goal to make the company successful. Reduced workplace friction also prevents disputes and speeds up decision making, leading to improved company efficiency.
Bigger Picture Mindset
When employees focus more on personal goals, they take decisions that benefit them but not necessarily the company. On the other hand, the more aligned your employees are with your company’s goals, the more likely they are to make decisions that positively impact the entire organisation.
How to Establish Organisational Goals
Organisational goals are the short and long-term outcomes that your company wants to achieve. A company is more likely to achieve its goals if employee actions and behaviours support those goals. However, employees cannot align with organisational goals if they do not know or understand them.
If you want employees to understand and embrace your organisational goals, make the goals:
Clear and Relatable: State your company goals in easy to understand terms. If your company goals are easy to comprehend, employees will have an easier time adopting them.
Agreed to By All Stakeholders: People are more accepting and supportive of things they create. That’s why you need to develop your organisational goals with the help of your employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders. If every stakeholder agrees with your company goals, they are more likely to take actions and decisions that bring those goals to fruition.
Realistic and Achievable: You can have big dreams and goals for your company, but those dreams must be realistic, achievable, and measurable. Otherwise, you won’t be able to tell if your company is making any progress. Also, if you have unrealistic goals, your employees will struggle with aligning their duties with those goals.
Follow these steps to create organisational goals that have the above features:
Brainstorm company goals with your stakeholders
Select and prioritise organisational goals with your stakeholders
Share your goals with the stakeholders and provide a plan of action for reaching each goal
Provide a deadline, budget, and other relevant requirements for each action plan
Take action and continually measure your progress
Be flexible so that you can adapt your goals and strategy to fit your industry as it evolves
The Importance of Internal Communications in a Remote/Hybrid Workplace
During remote work, employees can easily lose sight of organisational goals and become less productive. Your company can combat this issue through frequent, engaging, and coherent internal communication.
Frequent internal communication keeps remote workers in tune with the company’s short and long-term objectives. It accomplishes this by providing employees with updates about what the company has accomplished and the next steps for achieving other objectives.
Engaging and coherent internal communication ensures that remote employees pay attention to information shared by the company and understand it. When internal communication has these features, it creates a balanced employee experience that benefits all your workers.
When every worker has the same quality employee experience, employee engagement improves across the board. Compared to low employee engagement workplaces, companies with high levels of employee engagement are22% more profitable and 21% more productive (Gallup). Establish engaging internal communications with all of your employees, regardless of their role, location, or rank.
Non-Traditional Mediums of Internal Communication
Emails and other traditional forms of internal communication still work, but they don’t get the best results, especially in remote or hybrid work environments. Here are some non-traditional internal communication mediums that are great for carrying your in-office and remote employees along:
Podcasts
While most traditional internal communication methods have low employee engagement (below 20%), internal podcast engagement is over 60%. The high engagement rate makes internal podcasts an excellent choice for asynchronous communication–communication that doesn’t require immediate attention.
Organisation leaders can create podcasts to keep remote employees updated about company goals and ensure that employees stay aligned with the company’s vision. Since podcasts don’t have to be in real time, employees can listen to them at their convenience, as many times as they want.
Podcasts are suitable for large companies and growing startups, especially if the company has remote employees spread across various time zones. Besides sharing company updates, you can use podcasts to onboard new employees and introduce them to your organisational culture and goals.
Live-Streaming
For synchronous or real-time communications, you can live-stream messages from company leaders. Live-streaming is ideal for organisation-wide internal communications, especially since it can reach every employee at once.
Optimise the engagement of a live-streamed internal communication by making it interactive. If remote employees can ask questions and raise concerns during a live stream, they will feel more connected with their colleagues and the company culture. Having their voice heard will also increase remote employee’s work satisfaction and make them feel included.
Pulse Surveys
Employee feedback is essential for learning about your company’s shortcomings and how to improve the employee experience. Through pulse surveys, you can get frequent, timely, and accurate feedback about the quality of your company’s employee experience.
Also, when workers regularly provide feedback, they become engaged employees because they believe that their input can make a difference in the workplace. Lastly, you can use pulse surveys to see if employees understand the organisational goals and steer them in the right direction if they are straying from the set goals.
Leverage Internal Communications to Align Employees with Your Organisational Goals
Position your company for long-term success by making sure your employees share the same goals as your company. Through transparent and frequent internal communications, help your employees understand the organisational goals and guide them towards making those goals a reality.
Want to know how Engagedly can make your internal communication seamless? Request for a live demo.
While many companies know the importance of a good employee onboarding strategy, many don’t consider the offboarding process. Departing employees may seem like they have nothing more to offer, but their input can provide valuable insights that can help companies stop their best talent from leaving in the future. Here are three reasons an offboarding strategy is critical for retention and solutions to improve it.
Why Offboarding Is Important for Employee Retention?
Many Job Departures Are Preventable
There are a number of reasons an employee decides to hand in their resignation, ranging from stagnant career growth, disconnection among coworkers, to issues with the company’s culture.
In many cases, businesses could have tried harder to retain their best talent. The Work Institute’s 2020 Retention Report indicates that employers could have prevented three out of four turnovers.
As the graph below shows, companies directly influenced numerous areas that caused employees to quit, such as career development and management behavior.
Offboarding employees effectively helps companies reduce preventable staff turnover because they come to understand an employee’s decision to leave. This stage of the working relationship also gives HR departments a chance to inquire if the company could have done anything to avoid the employee leaving and use the input going forward.
Strong company culture is essential for boosting employee retention rates. According to research by Glassdoor, 77% of participants in the Mission & Culture Survey said that company culture would influence their decision to apply (or not apply) for a job.
Well-defined company cultures motivate employees to stick around for several reasons, including:
A sense of community in the workplace
The opportunity to be part of a greater vision
Making an impact by engaging in meaningful work
Discussing engagement with employees during the offboarding process allows HR teams to identify weaknesses in their company culture. When asked in a low-pressure, empathetic environment, departing staff are likely to share their opinions. HR teams can use this feedback to make the necessary improvements.
Understand What You’re Doing Well
While employees often leave for negative reasons, that doesn’t mean that companies should only focus on what they’re doing poorly. Improving employee retention is an ongoing process—and even if HR teams aren’t yet where they want to be, chances are that they’re doing at least a few things well.
Sometimes, employees will leave a business because their time there came to a natural end. They’ll likely have some fond memories from their time with the company, such as the opportunity to be part of an innovative and inclusive workplace.
Asking for positive feedback during offboarding is also essential for retention because it helps HR teams to focus and optimize their efforts.
How to Improve Your Offboarding Strategy for Better Employee Retention?
Use surveys for a better picture of what works and what doesn’t
All offboarding processes should include an exit interview, where the departing employee can talk to both their manager and a member of HR. While these sessions are often productive, it’s important to remember that employees might not be 100% honest when talking face to face. Under pressure, they might also forget to say some things they want to share before leaving.
To glean more information, exit interviews should include surveys that allow employees to share their thoughts without feeling the pressure of people around them. HR teams can get answers to specific questions that employees might not be open to provide in the exit interview.
Communication is essential between businesses and employees. Naturally, employees will need to begin winding down their workload and handing over projects as their last day approaches. Shutting them out of the company the moment they’ve handed in their resignation is a mistake.
During the offboarding process, maintaining the same level of communication as before they handed in their notice is vital. Doing so will make team members more likely to share information and help keep transparency between both parties.
Maintaining communication during the offboarding phase also shows the employee that they are appreciated — which could open the door to future collaboration.
When planning an offboarding strategy, companies must examine their objectives and long-term vision. This helps formulate relevant questions and talking points, and how they treat departing employees will reflect how well defined their company culture is.
Once HR teams have identified the corporate values and priorities, they should be front-of-mind during conversations with departing employees. This is an opportunity to learn what that person perceived as a negative experience and why, and what the company can improve upon or do differently in the future to retain top talent.
Here are six questions to ask during an exit interview. Note: some are to do with personal choices, some address aspects of the job, and others relate to the company as a whole.
What factors led you to seek another job?
Was there anything we could have done to convince you to stay?
Did you feel as though you had the tools and support necessary to do your work?
Did you have any opportunities for career development?
What would you change to make this company a better place to work?
Do you see any challenges our company could face in the future?
Get Your Offboarding Strategy Right and Boost Your Company Culture
While many companies have historically ignored the offboarding part of an employee’s journey, more have grown aware of how much it can improve their employee retention strategy. Often, team members have insights that managers and HR teams often miss—making them essential resources for improvement.
Above all, HR executives must define and focus on their company culture. Departing employees are in a key position to help organizations understand how well they are meeting their targets, and revealing what needs to change to attract and retain talent.
To find out how Engagedly can help your team reach its objectives, request a demo today.
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Author:
Dean Mathews is the founder and CEO of OnTheClock, an employee time tracking app that helps over 15,000 companies all around the world track time.
Dean has over 20 years of experience designing and developing business apps. He views software development as a form of art. If the artist creates a masterpiece, many people’s lives are touched and changed for the better.
When he is not perfecting time tracking, Dean enjoys expanding his faith, spending time with family and friends, and finding ways to make the world just a little better.
A surge of companies adopted OKRs during lockdown to make sure remote employees are aligned with company goals. Even if companies used them before the pandemic, many did not use OKRs to their highest potential. It is critical that your OKR system is impactful to every member of your organization. Google adopted an OKR strategy when they started in 1999, and used it to grow from 40 employees to 60,000 today. They still use OKRs today, and they are not the only ones. If you have been using OKRs in your company and feel it is not giving you the desired results, make sure to follow these steps to reap maximum benefits.
What are OKRs?
OKR stands for “Objectives and Key Results”. Objectives are what goals your organization wants to achieve. Everything an employee does should be working towards achieving this objective. Key results are measurements and benchmarks that are in line with achieving the objective. Key results keep employees action-oriented and break down exactly how the organization will work towards the objectives. Set up 3-5 key resultsset for each objective.
It is important to set different key results so that every employee and department knows what to work towards. Financial metrics are often seen as the most important, but are not an actionable key result for every employee. There are many more important metrics to measure for business success. The Society for Human Resource Management reported that out of 600 employees surveyed, only 30 percent of respondents were satisfied with how their work contributed to the overall success of the company. Leaders need to make sure no workers are excluded when setting the OKR strategy. Having key results and objectives to improve customer service, team satisfaction, brand strength, and internal development will have many long term benefits. Good leaders set qualitative goals too.
Each objective should have no more than 5 key results. If you are setting over 10 key results per objective, you need to have more specific objectives. Otherwise, it means your measurements for key results are too small. If managers are using key results to micromanage their team, it will lower employee engagement. Often the employees that know best for what key results need prioritizing are the team members doing the task, so make sure they are being heard when setting these benchmarks. When managers don’t micromanage, their employees have a greater sense of accomplishment and can work towards their fullest potential.
Using Engagedly’s performance management software you can implement OKRs that can be set for any metric and easily shared across the entire organization. Easy visibility of the objectives and how each employee is progressing on key results is critical to maximize efficiency. Provides easy visibility to employees and managers about implementation of OKRs. Employee engagement increases when they can see how their work contributes to achieving larger company goals.
STEP BACK AND REALIGN
If your OKR system has been failing recently, make sure you step back and see if your objectives and key results are outdated. Setting OKRs is a cycle, and needs to be performed regularly. Since the key results are in line with different objectives, each objective should be accomplished and replaced when all the measurable key results are reached. If this doesn’t happen, check if your key results are comprehensive enough. Make sure to avoid short-sighted key results and objectives. Always keep the big picture in mind.
When trying to think of more key results, always put the needs of the customer first. Having an OKR system that is aimed to satisfy the customers will build brand strength and loyalty. OKRs should not reflect the needs of company managers, but the needs of the customers. Always conduct research to see if the behavior or needs of your customers are changing and adjust your objectives and key results accordingly.
USE STRETCH GOALS
If your teams are achieving every goal, you’re doing it wrong. It is important to include stretch goals to push your employees farther. Increase the key results when reevaluating your OKR to see if you are currently underperforming. Make sure managers communicate with their team that it is ok, and expected, not to reach every goal. OKR systems need to be adjusted for unforeseen circumstances and opportunities. The more past data and past OKRs you study before setting new goals, the better those goals can accurately reflect what your employees can achieve. Stretch goals encourage your employees to take risks and think creatively about new strategies to try and achieve them. Techrepublic reports 75% of corporate employees who use a formal goal framework feel empowered to take risks at work.Companies like Google, LinkedIn, Target, and Airbnb have gotten their employees to think outside the box by all using OKRs.
Want to know how Engagedly can implement OKRs into your company? Request for a live Demo!
For holistically product-based companies, product managers and their product management team is the backbone of the organization. From Google to Microsoft to Amazon, every successful organization has talented product managers to provide the perfect solutions to their customer’s problems. They work with cross-functional teams and help everyone to be on the same page with what customers want. They are a part of a myriad of activities which include:
Understanding customer requirements and translating them for the development team
Build and design product roadmaps
Enhance existing feature of the product
Research on competitors
While it is not as easy as marketing or the sales team to set OKRs for those in product management, having OKRs help them stay focused and measure their success. In this article, we will share some sample OKRs for your product management team that will help you get started. But before we take a look at the OKRs let us take a look at its history and what are okrs.
“OKRs have helped lead us to 10x growth, many times over.” – Larry Page, Co-founder of Google.
The concept of OKRs was first introduced by the former Intel CEO, Andy Grove, in the 1970s. But it was relatively unknown until it was introduced in Google in 1999 by John Doerr. Doerr was introduced to OKRs while working at Intel. To Google, it is a part of their culture, and they consider it a management methodology that helps them focus on the same issues throughout the organization. Organizations such as Amazon, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Netflix, Microsoft, Disney, Zynga, etc., credit OKRs for their success.
What Are OKRs?
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) comprise of:
An Objective: It is a clearly defined goal to be achieved
3-5 Key Results: Measurable steps to track the progress of the objectives
Each set of Objectives and their Key Results should answer two primary questions: ‘What is that we are planning to achieve?’ and ‘How to achieve it?’.
Almost every organization globally uses the OKR methodology to set their goals because of its multitudinal benefits. Here are some of them:
Short term and agile
Easy to align
Improves Transparency and Accountability
Time-Saving
Tracks progress and help prioritize tasks
Improves Team Collaboration
How To Write Good Objectives?
Plain Language – Use a language that everyone understands, avoid using specific jargon and acronyms. The intention here is not to make things sound fancy. The right intention here is to convey the goals with clarity
Start With A Verb – Begin with a verb to describe the action and the desired direction. It helps in understanding a clear target to achieve and gives direction to the employee
Challenge the Status Quo – Objectives should be set in such a way that it challenges your current way of working otherwise it would be ineffective to move your business forward
What’s Holding You Back? – Understand what problems are holding you back from moving forward and executing your strategy
Clarifying Questions – Use the Questioning method to move from abstracts to specifics of your OKRs. This will reduce confusion and help everyone understand the true objectives
Use Simple Rules – Use simple rules while drafting your OKRs. Have your own set of key criteria for objectives which are straightforward and simple to follow
Limited and Time Bound – Set no more than three objectives per quarter so that they remain impactful. Having too many objectives takes away focus from the priorities.
Keep Them Simple And Clear – Make them simple and easy, so that they can be easily communicated understood by others
Assign Owner – Assign an owner who takes the responsibility of creating and achieving the key results and is responsible for updates on the progress
Use Positive Language – Use positive language while creating your key results as it will enhance motivation and increase commitment
Limit the Key Results – Set a minimum of three and maximum of five key results for every objective. Setting few will not be challenging, and setting too many will be difficult to achieve
HR or Human Resources is the backbone and the most critical team of any organization. From selecting and recruiting the right employees, implementing policies, building company culture, deciding compensation & benefits, performance management, etc., everything comes under an HR’s job function.Some of the job functions might vary from organization to organization, but they are almost similar across industries.
We cannot undermine the impact of OKRs on their work, considering the role HR plays in building an organization. When they have well-defined OKRs, it makes their job simple. It becomes easy for them to stay focused on the various activities they are involved in and achieve the goals.
In the 70’s Andy Grove introduced OKRs at Intel while working there. It and was later made popular by John Doerr while working at Google. It became a management methodology to help ensure that the company focuses efforts on the same important issues throughout the organization.
OKRs or Objective and Key Results consist of an objective– a clearly defined goal (the what). And 3-5 key results – measurable steps (the how) to achieve the objective. OKRs are a great way to align individual goals with team and organization goals.
Moreover, they help increase productivity, track regular progress towards goals, and increase employee accountability. Let us take a look at some tips on how to set objectives and key results.
Before plunging into the discussion of why your organization requires an OKR software, let’s take a look at a short story. Steve is a product manager at a startup. Recently, from the time his team started working from home, he has realized that his team is often falling behind schedule and crossing the deadline of projects. Not only this, many have reportedly lost interest in their work.
Steve and his team are not the only ones out there; there must have been many teams like his or organizations who must have reported the same. It has become quite common for people to lose focus and get disengaged while working from home.
Having an OKR software in place helps your employees to stay focussed and keep them engaged even though working from home. Here are five benefits of using an OKR software at your organization.
Easy To Track Progress
One of the vital parts of employee goal setting is tracking their progress and actively helping them with their goals. OKR software allows you to track employee progress on goals effectively by sending out notification to goal assignors each time the someone checks in on the goal and giving the goal assignors 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.
Assigning goals is the basic functionality to look for in any goal setting software. This functionality allows managers to assign a goal to their direct reports without directly involving themselves into the goal. This functionality also allows managers to keep track of the progress that their direct reports make.
Assignment makes it easy for managers to assign goals to their direct reports without having to set up a formal meeting to do so.
Helps Prioritize Tasks
We all have those days when we have too much on our plates and do not know where to start. Defining Objectives and Key Results helps you understand which tasks hold more importance and which ones can be pushed behind. Using an OKR software to do this can make the whole process easier and interesting. They help your employees understand their goals better and give them a sense of direction. It is easier to accomplish goals when they are specific and easy to understand.
This is one of the very important aspects of using an OKR software at the workplace. Most employees usually have one question: ‘What difference does my contribution make to the organization’. With an OKR software, you can align individual goals with company goals and employees can easily understand how their contribution matters to the organization.
They can also check their progress and see how their work has contributed in organizational success.
OKR Software Promotes Team Collaboration
Company and team OKRs are usually visible to everyone when you use an OKR software. This allows the employees to gain an understanding of what their coworkers are working on and how they can contribute to accomplishing company goals as a team. This visibility of team OKRs to each other allows team members to support each other and complete their individual goals too.
If your organization hasn’t started using an OKR software, this is the right time to do so.
Are you looking for an OKR software for your organization? Then request for a live demo
There is a surge of start-ups in this era, some of whom start generating large sums of profits within a few years of foundation. Are you wondering how these companies manage to hit success so early?
Well, it’s not a very well hidden secret. The answer lies in the management framework these companies follow. OKR is definitely an important aspect, which stands for Objectives and Key Results. The Objectives are the end goal that you want to reach, and the Key Results are measurable ways by which you can get there.
Some of the top companies to use OKR include Google, Twitter, Intel, Sears, LinkedIn, Oracle and Zynga. OKRs essentially help bring teams and the entire company together.
Why Use OKRs?
Gives A Sense Of Direction:
Imagine the outcome when a collective of dozens or hundreds of employees, all moving as one towards a common objective. It’s surely to derive fantastic results.
Improved Focus:
OKRs allow you to revisit objectives on a frequent basis and measure where you stand in comparison. This enhances focus and personal growth.
Increases Collaboration:
Every employee has certain set skills and if you have to make things happen in your workplace, you need to work with different teams that can move different aspects and finally get you to the finishing line.
Most companies have different layers of OKRs. There are entire company objectives and key results followed by the different departments such as Marketing, Product, Engineering, IT and Data, HR, Customer Service, Sales, Ops, etc. Breaking these down, each individual has their individual OKRs.
If your OKRs have not been fetching the right results, you might want to look into the following pointers.
Have Well Thought Objectives
When your team is achieving the OKRs too quickly, it might mean you are setting goals that are too easy. Objectives need to be ambitious, yet not impossible. If you achieve 70-80% in a given time period, it’s a positive progress. If you don’t, you need to re-evaluate.
Weekly Check-Ins
Most often teams set OKRs only to forget about them after some time. To tackle that situation, have weekly meetings to discuss team OKRs and the progress. Otherwise you might lose sight of the finishing line and go completely off-track.
Too many OKRs can completely mislead the employees and leave them utterly confused. Plan a maximum of 3 Objectives per timeframe and about 3-5 key results per objective.
Number Your Key Results
Key results make objectives measurable. While objectives are the bigger goals, Key Results measure how far you have achieved those goals. So it’s important to specify in numbers, what is your target and how you will get there.
It might be easy to keep the key results in sight and keep working, don’t forget to keep the bigger picture in mind. Make sure to mention the objectives often, so that employees know where they are heading and if there are any diversions, they’ll identify and correct themselves.
OKRs definitely help in creating a sturdy process wherein thinking out of box is necessary in order to solve company problems. It’s easy as long as you know where you are headed and what are the measurable steps required to get there.
Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you with implementing OKRs? Then request for a live demo
It’s your first day at work and you are filled with enthusiasm to contribute to the company’s vision and prove yourself. But you have no idea how things work at your new office or where to start.
Wouldn’t it be more helpful, if your work goals and key results were communicated to you?
Onboarding is a fairly overwhelming affair and most new hires face a few common challenges like lack of clarity in their job role, change management, learning about the company, product, marketplace etc.
But as an HR manager, you can use OKRs to help your new hires.
What Are OKRs?
OKRs stand for ‘Objectives And Key Results’. OKRs are a popular approach for goal-setting which allows employees to execute individual and organizational goals.
OKRs are a popular approach for goal-setting which allows employees to execute individual and organizational goals. 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.
Here are six reasons why you need objectives and key results for new hires at your workplace.
Aligns Individual Goals With Company Values
This is one of the very important aspects of using OKRs in the workplace. When you hire someone new, they usually have one question: ‘What difference does my contribution make to the organization’. With OKRs, you can align individual goals with company goals, and employees get a fair idea of how their contribution matters to the organization. It helps them to understand where they fit into the bigger picture.
Promotes Teamwork and Collaboration
Company and team OKRs are usually visible to everyone. This allows the new hires to gain an understanding of what their coworkers are working on and how they can contribute to accomplishing company goals as a team. This visibility of team OKRs to each other allows team members to support each other and complete their individual goals too.
We all have those days when we have too much on our plates and do not know where to start. Defining Objectives and Key Results helps you understand which tasks hold more importance and which ones can be pushed behind. They help your new hires understand their goals better and give them a sense of direction. It is easier to accomplish goals when they are specific and easy to understand.
Gives Clarity Of Work
OKRs are simple and transparent. They give you a clear understanding of why you need to accomplish a goal and how you can do it. They reduce the overall time spent on setting and accomplishing a goal. Objectives help new hires understand what is expected of them and key results help them understand how they can achieve the objective.
OKRs have a shorter goal cycle when compared to traditional goal-setting methods. Using OKRs, employees can set goals for a year, half-yearly, quarterly, or even monthly. As OKRs are set for a shorter cycle, it allows organizations and employees to adjust and update existing OKRs whenever required.
Helps Monitor Progress
As a new hire, it is really stressful to manage your tasks, learn about your work at a new office and keep track of your performance. There is a possibility that your manager and you might not even be on the same page when it comes to evaluating your own performance. OKRs allow you to keep track of your progress. With OKRs, managers also can keep track of the progress of their direct reports and communicate with them directly.
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.
In 1999, John Doerr made a presentation about OKRs at a fledgling startup.
If you know your tech history well, you probably know where this is going. The startup in question was Google, and OKRs stands for Objectives and Key Results. Google’s use of OKR’s is legendary. OKRs are widely credited with helping Google really take off. In short, here is what Google did to harness all of the potential that OKRs promised.
How OKRs helped Google?
Firstly, they made sure that everybody’s OKRs were public. The OKRs in question had to be ambitious and slightly out of reach. If the OKR did not make you sweat, then it probably wasn’t ambitious. These OKRs were then made to be measurable. They utilized a scale of 0 to 1.0 – where getting a score of 0.6 to 0.7 was acceptable and good even. And finally, bad grades weren’t punished. Instead, they were simply used to refine the next set of OKRs. The implementation of Objectives and Key Results changed the way things worked. Goals were more open, easily understood and measurable. This use of OKRs set off a precedent and as a result, they are used even today at Google. Oh and additionally, today Google is a multinational tech giant.
While OKRs were not the sole reason for Google’s success, there must be some value to them if Google continues to utilize them even today, despite having an employee base that numbers in the thousands.
So what exactly are the benefits of OKRs? But before we begin, it is important to clarify one thing.
OKRs are not to be confused with employee performance evaluations. And nor should employee performance evaluations be considered similar to OKRs. They are two completely different things. OKRs involve goals and results, while employee performance evaluations measure how well an employee had performed within a period of time.
Now, back to OKRs and why they are so great.
Streamlines Goals And Ideas
In the absence of discipline, ideas look good on paper but remain frustratingly improbable. You might have a brilliant idea about streamlining a certain process. But if that idea does not help you accomplish your personal goals or align with company goals, then it is not relevant to your work. It could certainly be your pet hobby project, but it has no place at work. Establishing an objective and laying out the key results that you want to achieve ensures that your ideas, thoughts, and processes have a determined focus on them.
Here is a scenario: Employee A sets a list of objectives that need to be met. And so does Employee B. At some point of time, their objectives overlap and they realize that in order to achieve these objectives, they will have to collaborate. While initially, they might collaborate out of necessity, over time as they get comfortable, they will begin collaborating and communicating in earnest, all because they like working with each other.
Setting OKRs at every level, not just personal, but also at the company and team levels means that at some point or the other, all employees will begin communicating. And over time, this communication becomes genuine and organic and positively impacts performance. An additional benefit is that with some practice and skill, good performance can turn ordinary teams into high-performance teams.
OKRs involve everybody and are not private. It is not right to expect employees to align themselves to organization goals when they have no clue as to what the organization’s goals are! And how can we expect employees to figure out they need to collaborate with another colleague if they do not know what the colleague’s goals are?
Knowing about an organization’s goals, objectives and key results and how an employee fits into the grand scheme of things gives them a clearer idea about the big picture, and how they themselves fit into the big picture. Think of it as a schematic where everyone knows where they are headed and what they need to do. Once they know what role they play in an organization, employees find it much easier to meet goals and objectives.
Prioritize Tasks and Improves Productivity
This point is an offshoot of the above one. When there’s an objective with measurable key results to be met, employees are able to streamline their efforts and focus on achieving results that matter to the objective. They learn to prioritize some tasks over the others and in essence separate the wheat from the chaff. Prioritizing becomes an important skill as well. Employees need to be able to gauge if what they are currently doing impacts their OKRs positively or detrimentally. If they find that their time is being spent on other laborious tasks, then they can figure out alternate solutions as well This ensures that employees spend their time and efforts productively.
If you ask me, this is one of the most important aspects of OKRs. More often than not, success tends to be measured by the end result. This isn’t to say that this method of determining success is wrong. However, it is one-dimensional and it does not take into account a lot of other factors such as the methods implemented in order to be successful. Or the skill sets, dedication and hard work involved. OKRs, on the other hand, redefine the meaning of success and the measurability of goals. They set visible targets and help convert work into something countable that even displays the amount of effort the employee expended on 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.
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!
OKRs have become an important part of performance management in most organizations; many HR managers are adopting them for employee goal setting. Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) methodology is one of the most simple and effective ways for goal setting and monitoring at workplaces.
A Brief History of OKRs
Objectives and Key Results or OKRs is a goal-setting framework that is used widely by organizations all over the world. These organizations include the likes of LinkedIn, Google, Amazon, Disney, and many more. They were first introduced by Andy Grove at Intel in the ‘70s, and later, it was made popular by John Doerr when he introduced it at Google in 1999. To date, it is a central element of Google’s culture and serves as a management methodology, which helps focus company efforts on the same issues throughout the organization.
OKRs consists of two components, namely:
– Objectives: a clearly defined goal to be achieved
– Key Results: measurable steps to achieve the objectives
Here’s a simple guide for you to get started with OKRs in 2024!
Introduce OKRs To Your Team
It is important to introduce your team to the OKR methodology and give them an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the whole process. While there are a number of OKR guides out there, why not go to the one that is synonymous with the term OKRs. Google has an OKR guide that will take users through history and set up and even teach them how to write actionable OKRs.
Before moving onto the next step make sure that your teams understand why OKRs play an important role in the growth of a company and how the alignment of goals works internally.
The next step is to create business goals based on your company’s annual strategy. This step requires a lot of brainstorming and collaborating with different departments. Understand the company’s vision and mission to establish these OKRs.
Remember that your OKRs should answer these two questions:
Objectives – What Do You Want To Achieve?
Key Results – How To Know If You Are Getting Closer To Achieving It?
Example:
Objective: Increase market reach by 35% by Q4
Key Results: 2nd largest distributor network in Q2 growing at 15% per month Voted most popular product across 5 leading publications
Objective:Leverage product feature that is ranked most popular in the market<
Key Results: The heat map of the website shows 60% of visitors focus on a primary feature of the product and remaining on secondary features. Feedback received from customers indicates the product’s primary feature provides 2x more value.
Collaborate With Team
Once all your teams are sufficiently familiar with the approach, encourage them to draft their own OKRs. Collaborate with them and help them create their OKRs, this can sometimes lead to conversations that help you understand your teams and their plans better. It allows employees to understand what is expected of them by management.
All goals need to be aligned with an organization’s goals. That is the true purpose of achievable goals and objectives. Once your employees have set their individual OKRs, align their goals with company OKRs or business goals of your company.
Review Your Team’s OKRs
Now that all your teams understand the purpose of OKR methodology for goal setting and have set their individual OKRs and successfully aligned them with company OKRs, all you need to do is review these OKRs before they start working on them. Review the OKRs of all your teams and make sure that their OKRs are aligned with the company properly.
The next step is to monitor these OKRs. You have to keep track of the progress your employees make on these OKRs in the coming days. Monitor how regularly your teams are checking-in on their OKRs and keep track of their progress regularly and modify the OKRs if needed.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?”
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.
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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.
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?”
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The benefits associated with OKRs have made it a popular goal-setting tool among all organizations. Here are some of them:
