Every sector, including HR, is rapidly adopting AI in 2024. As of early 2024, about 38% of HR leaders are actively piloting or have already implemented generative AI technologies within their operations, showing a significant increase from 19% in mid-2023. This is in line with another survey where 61% of CHROs planned to invest in AI in 2024.
Did you know that companies with high employee engagement are 21% more profitable? In fact, most managers agree that retaining good talent is more difficult than hiring them.
As most of the workforce has adopted remote work after the Coronavirus pandemic hit us, many of us are still struggling to keep our remote employees engaged.
As per statistics, an average employee has started to put at least 3 extra hours in their work since the outbreak of the pandemic.
This sudden shift to remote work has led to 75% of the employees feeling more isolated, 57% of them anxious, and 53% of them emotionally exhausted. (HBR)
Remote work requires a reimagining of employee engagement and this is the issue we are trying to address in this guide.
Employee engagement just like many other issues in an organization adapting to remote work, is one that needs the attention of an HR professional but the extra attention of the managers.
Managers are the key stakeholders in maintaining a high level of employee engagement in the team.
To keep employee engagement high, managers need to take care of factors like building rapport, boosting their morale, recognition, constructive feedback, and more.
Let us discuss each of these and more in detail. But first let us understand what is employee engagement.
What is Remote Employee Engagement?
In simple words, remote employee engagement is the process of keeping employees connected and motivated as they work from home.
Employee engagement refers to the emotional commitment the employee has towards the company and its goals.
Engaged employees care for the company; they’re not simply working for a paycheck or a promotion.
The first step towards understanding employee engagement is to understand what motivates people, what drives their actions and how it translates into productivity.
And managers and leaders are the key drivers in ensuring a high level of employee engagement in the organization.
However, the task takes a different course in the context of remote work, as you cannot see your employees in person now and must use the right tools to keep them engaged.
Let us deep dive into various aspects of employee engagement in remote work.
Human connection is of supreme importance, especially in remote work, when the team does not share the same working space.
Building strong relationships in the team helps in having more effective meetings and discussions. And the easiest tool in helping you do so is icebreakers.
Find icebreaker games to build great connect with your remote teams HERE!
While engaging employees seem like an added task on top of your responsibilities, it is crucial for productivity and efficiency. Let’s have a look at why remote employee engagement is important.
Importance of remote employee engagement
1. Engaged remote employees are more productive
When employees are more engaged, they are more invested in their tasks and show exemplary ownership. This is the reason why engaged employees are always more productive than their counterparts.
2. Engaged employees deliver better service
The ultimate goal of an organization is to deliver excellence. When employee engagement is high, employees go an extra mile in performing their task and lead to better customer satisfaction.
3. Engaged employees are loyal
A disengaged employee always looks for other alternatives. The key to high retention rate is a robust employee engagement culture.
What are the challenges of remote employee engagement?
Every decision made at your company can tip that scale towards either engagement or disengagement, leaving employees either satisfied or completely dissatisfied with the work culture.
If you think that the latest changes due to remote working might have impacted them, it is time to look out for the signs for disengaged employees and make the necessary changes to keep them self-motivated and reestablish the emotional connection.
Whether you are an HR manager or the CEO of the company, you should watch out for these signs of disengaged employees to keep your company culture intact even while working remotely.
1. Absenteeism
If requesting for leaves is coupled with them consistently ignoring pressing deadlines and targets when requesting days off, they are clearly disengaged.
if you have been consistently calling or messaging them to get an answer, or catch them doing everything but their work, you may be looking at a disengaged employee.
Solution: Have frequent one on one meetings to get to the core of the issue and try to understand why they have become disinterested and disengaged.
2. Withdrawal from team-building activities
Another sign to look out for is the level of engagement they have while the HR department or you set up a team-building activity.
Look for team members who are less interested in participating in these activities, who often make an excuse, or are less proactive if involved.
Solution: Stress upon the importance of these activities. Revamp their structure – make them short and crisp while providing attractive perks and recognition to those participate.
3. Lack of communication
Communication forms the backbone of any organization, more so if the teams are now working remotely.
Missing out on important information, staying quiet or less involved during work calls, not eager to share ideas/problems during one on one calls, are a few signs of disengaged employees.
Solution: An important aspect to consider here is that employees are less likely to communicate if they do not trust their direct supervisors or senior management.
If they feel that their words are falling on deaf ears, they would eventually communicate less.
Thus, it becomes important to build trust with your remote employees.
4. Lacking the zeal to shine
An engaged employee sees an opportunity and seizes it. They innovate, volunteer and improve processes.
On the contrary, disengaged employees do not defend their ideas, care much about how their work is going, or are less willing to lead a project and be accountable.
Solution: Recognize your employees’ ideas and enthusiasm, make them feel heard, acknowledge their efforts, and provide the right tools and resources for remote working. Absence of a positive work atmosphere can also be a cause for disengaged employees.
5. Decline in the quality of work
As humans, it is inevitable to not make a mistake, however, making avoidable mistakes can be a sign of disengagement.
Disengaged employees do not aim for maximum quality or meeting expectations.
Solutions: Instead of viewing subpar performances as one of the many red flags, make certain that it is not a result of inefficient processes, insufficient resources or unrealistic targets.
6. Showing signs of burnout or exhaustion
Has an employee recently complained about how they are tired or exhausted all the time?
Or does any of your employees now have the added work pressure since they have to manage children, families, etc. due to remote working and the lockdown?
Having too much on the plate, often without getting any time to settle in with a new routine, can often result in physical fatigue.
Solutions: If you find an employee falling ill more than usual, or who is always tired, talk to them about the same to understand how you can help them while they get some breathing space to rest or adjust to the new work from home routine.
How to engage remote employees effectively?
1. Understanding employees’ perspective for effective employee engagement
Working remotely under these uncertain circumstances means adapting to a new environment and battling a new set of distractions, along with experiencing an unprecedented fusion of work and private life.
Childcare, managing home, probable illnesses, etc. are just a few of the things that employees are dealing with.
To understand what employees are thinking at this point and to make employee engagement better, it is advisable to communicate about their problems either through one on one meetings or conduct engagement surveys that can help identify issues and help managers resolve them.
Empathy can be a leader’s most important tool in times like these.
2. Over-communicate with employees
“Over-communication in remote work is just communication,” Laurel Farrer, CEO, and founder of Distribute Consulting believes.
Since employees are now working remotely, it is difficult to get the non-verbal cues that managers were used to when working in the office.
Moreover, it is easy to feel disconnected from peers when confined to home, particularly if employees are used to working closely in an office.
Hence, ‘over-communication’ is important to ensure that you and your team members are on the same page to avoid any room for confusion.
3. Have frequent meetings to engage employee
A study by Gallup revealed that although remote workers tend to have higher morale and lower stress levels than those working in an office, they often miss out on critical social interactions and collaborative opportunities that are vital to the well-being of the business.
Managers, therefore, must use a well-thought-out system of remote meetings to help keep operations running smoothly and ensure every team member is on the same page to keep remote workforce feeling they are a part of the big corporate family.
A few types of meetings that can help are:
– Daily Standup meetings
– Weekly one on one meetings
– All hands meeting
– Mentorship meeting
PRO TIP: Icebreaker questions during any kind of meeting specially held with remote employees can be a great way to build a better connection with the team.
4. Promoting “individualization” in employees
A crucial element in engaging remote employees is identifying and accepting the individuality of every employee working in a company.
While a few remote workers feel isolated by working alone, many others feel liberated.
A few like the 24/7 access to work, however, many others need to have a real boundary between office and home.
Every remote employee’s methodology differs from the other making it necessary that managers coach the “individual” even when promoting engagement between employees.
5. Define clear expectations to encourage accountability
Engaging remote employees also involves encouraging them to be accountable for their work.
Since you and your employees are not available in the office all day, it is essential that you explain in detail the work that their team members are accountable for, as well as the work style they are expected to follow.
This also includes any interruptions that managers might notice impacting the productivity of the team.
You need to be explicit about what the remote employee must produce including the parameters, deadlines, and metrics of tasks, alongside the manager’s personal expectations.
Must-haves for employee engagement survey software for your remote team
Typically, a tool must be
Easy to configure, easy to use so that the time spent on understanding the usage, to create the survey and to make it available to all the employees is less. Hence not adding to the existing workload. It should be automated.
An employee survey software needs to collate relevant information and showcase without additional frills.
It should provide detailed analytics so that the data can be represented to stakeholders and to make better-informed decisions on the results.
While the primary goal of the survey could be retention, motivation or even better support, all in all, each of the survey questions should help to understand the pulse of the employees.
A tool should have anonymous reporting and communication to know deeper employee issues.
A key deciding factor is affordability. The employee engagement survey software should be under the organizational budget. Most surveys tend to fall under a per-user or organization structure.
While an employee survey software helps in understanding the pulse, if not implemented correctly, it could lead to ineffective usage with no apparent results.
Hence an HR leader should make it a point to run the survey effectively.
An HR should communicate the need for the survey and indicate how and when it will be conducted.
An HR needs to set clear expectations around the survey with both the stakeholders – management and the employees. With the right expectations, there is no misalignment on the goals.
A follow-up with the survey takers is necessary so that everyone valid responds.
Once the survey is complete, the HR should provide actionable insights and communicate the same to the survey takers.
The task of the survey does not end with insights. The insights should then convert into feasible action.
Fundamentally, an employee software survey tool should help understand the employee needs, especially for remote work which is a tough task as the employee is not in sight.
“I don’t think we need more regulation and more oversight. … What we need are tools that measure the quality of care. A bad survey may be the consequence of how a single employee dealt with a single resident.”
Carl Young, Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist
How to measure remote employee engagement
1. Pulse surveys and single-click polls
Short and quick surveys are a great way to maintain a consistent pulse on the vibe in your company.
To keep this process simple, you must use methods like pulse survey with a set of easy questions about how people are feeling at work and what (if anything) they would change.
These must include if employees are pleased with their tasks, working conditions, pay, benefits, supervisor and so on; if the employee is motivated by the goals and missions set by the organization; and if the employee envision a future at the company
2. One on one meeting
Nothing compares to using one-on-one meetings with employees to have a detailed discussion on various topics.
However, the advantage of one on one meetings is fruitful only if it is a private, safe conversation to get detail about each issue that’s brought up.
3. Stay and exit interviews
Using structured interviews for employees is another great way to collect feedback and find out what kept/makes them engaged and what holds them back from feeling at home.
While exit interviews are common in most organizations, one great idea that should be done more often are stay interviews to ask employees and know what makes them want to stay.
The goal with both formats is to find out what you could have done better to improve engagement.
4. Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
This is a small yet effective way to truly gauge loyalty.
While it is one thing to be happy at work, your employees must be willing to recommend the organization as a good place to work.
Or willing to recommend the products/services they sell.
A simple questionnaire can help you find the eNPS score of each employee and act accordingly.
5. Turn to employee recognition activity
The frequency at which employees give and receive recognition sheds light on your engagement levels.
After all, recognition has the greatest impact on employee engagement and productivity and measuring the amount of recognition given is a revealing way to measure employee engagement.
6. Track productivity metrics
While this may seem like an overused and a general tool for something so specific such as measuring employee engagement in remote teams, however, this metric counts the most.
Since productivity measurement is dependent on KPIs, you can look at individual, team or even company-wide figures.
This metric also helps in identifying what stopped employees from giving their best and helping them with the tools they need to succeed in their careers, which in turn drives the outcomes that you are seeking in the marketplace.
How to build rapport with a remote team for employee engagement?
As a manager you must ensure your team has a good rapport with your remote team.
Your job isn’t just to steer projects to a successful end while staying within budgets and timelines.
Your employees are not your workhorses. They’re so much more than ‘just employees.’
You’re also responsible for these crucial roles:
Coaching your direct reports through their career development goals
Understanding their motivations and ambitions and helping them grow
Helping them maintain a balance between their personal and professional lives
The foundation of a productive manager-direct report relationship is trust and empathy.
You can’t build trust if all you share with your team members is a transactional relationship.
The focus of every business right now is employee wellbeing while driving business out of this crisis.
People’s physical and mental health bear the brunt in times of high stress and uncertainty around work making it all the more important to have structures and programs in place for employees to lean on, no matter their location.
Open and honest communication is a great way to encourage employees at all levels to share problems. This can also be done by fostering a community that interacts, learns from, and supports its members.
Managers who go out of their way to make employee wellbeing non-negotiable have engaged workforces who get the required headspace to look after customers – which means a productive remote workforce, doing more work, better.
A study by Gallup found that employees who strongly agree that their leader makes them feel enthusiastic about the future are 69 times more likely to be engaged in their work.
Small changes like temporarily gathering employees for a quick weekly meeting to share the latest info shows that companies are prioritizing them.
Summing up
How managers and employees connect and conduct themselves during this tough period will make a lot of difference when things start going back to the “new normal”.
Staying focused on growth, innovation, and customer obsessiveness is critical to building a sense of togetherness and forms an essential part of engaging remote employees.
When people return to the office, leaders and managers will have the time to reflect on what they learned from “the world’s largest work-from-home experiment” and make better decisions about flexibility.
However, managers who do not pay heed to practice good remote management now will most likely conclude that it just does not work.
FAQs
What is remote employee engagement?
Remote employee engagement is the process of keeping remote employees connected, motivated, and committed to their work and the organization. It involves building trust, communication, and involvement through virtual tools and activities to ensure remote employees feel valued and aligned with company goals.
How to increase engagement with remote workers?
To boost remote worker engagement, regularly check in through one-on-one meetings, recognize achievements, promote team collaboration, and ensure clear communication of goals. Virtual team-building activities, flexible schedules, and access to the right tools also help foster engagement.
What are the 5 C’s of employee engagement?
The 5 C’s include: 1) Clarity – clear goals and roles, 2) Connection – building strong relationships, 3) Communication – open and transparent dialogue, 4) Commitment – fostering dedication to company values, and 5) Celebration – recognizing and rewarding contributions.
How do you engage employees virtually fun?
Engage employees with virtual activities like online games, virtual happy hours, trivia contests, or talent showcases. These fun, informal events foster bonding and team spirit, helping remote employees feel more connected and engaged.
What are the three types of employee engagement?
Employee engagement manifests in three key dimensions. Cognitive engagement reflects how employees think about and understand their work, showing up in their focus, problem-solving abilities, and mental commitment to excellence. Emotional engagement captures their feelings and connections, evident in their passion for work, relationships with colleagues, and loyalty to the organization. Physical engagement involves their tangible actions and energy levels, demonstrated through active participation, consistent effort, and visible enthusiasm in completing tasks.
How to encourage remote employees?
Encourage remote employees by offering flexible work hours, recognizing accomplishments, providing growth opportunities, and regularly communicating company updates. Personal check-ins and support for work-life balance also help maintain motivation and morale.
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How to Roll Out OKRs for First Time: 7 Steps Startegy
How to Roll out OKRs for the first time is a question common among organizations just introducing OKRs.
Imagine a scenario-
You are rolling out OKR for the first time.
One thing goes wrong and… Boom!
Your employees are already hating the process- even before it took a pace.
You certainly wouldn’t want that to happen in your organization. OKRs can surcharge and accelerate your organizational growth. But the key is to get this done right.
That’s why a well-planned rollout is significant for the success of an OKR system.
Introduce the new goal-setting approach strategically but not in a mechanical process. Every organization is unique and can face unique challenges while implementing OKRs.
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How to roll out OKRs: Here are 7 Best Practices for a successful OKR rollout
1 Communicate the OKR Methodology to all the teams
Get everyone in the organization on board with OKRs. Present the concept clearly and precisely. Educate everyone on the OKR language.
While some people will embrace the changes with open arms, there are also going to be some skeptics into the bargain. You must let them express their concerns and provide answers to their “why, how, and what?” questions.
Explain to them the benefits of implementing the OKR framework. Highlight how it’s going to impact the business and the individual success of the employees.
Organize workshops, training, discussions, introductory presentations, and seminars to help your employees’ design quality OKRs. Transparently explain to them the strategic execution, alignment, expectations, and tools they will be required to use for the purpose.
To help everyone speak the same language, document your company OKR framework
2 Inspire with success stories
List the names of reputed companies like Google, Netflix, Intel, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. which have successfully implemented OKRs. Narrate their success stories to help them visualize how OKRs can cater to their individual success.
For example, OKRs helped LinkedIn become a 20 Billion Company. Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, describes OKRs as, “something you want to accomplish over a specific period of time that leans toward a stretch goal rather than a stated plan.
It’s something where you want to create greater urgency, greater mindshare.”
You can either go for an organization-wide rollout Consider running an OKR Pilot first, depending on what fits you best.
If you have a culture that’s open to change and a flexible structure of functioning, an organization-wide rollout will work best for you. But it’s always best to take small steps. Start from one part and gradually move to others.
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Crafting and implementing OKRs across the entire organization can seem overwhelming especially if you are a large organization. Instead, choose a particular part of the organization and run a pilot project.
“If you concentrate on small, manageable steps you can cross unimaginable distances.”
It’s also important to decide “how often?” will OKRs be reviewed. Will it be done quarterly or annually?
4 Go for the Top-down approach
A top-down approach to OKRs was the first pattern attempted. The top management has a significant role in setting the overall direction of the company. Starting from the top provides clarity for the rest of the organization.
“People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.”
For example, you can start with the senior leadership team. Make them an example to roll out OKRs to the departmental heads. From there you can move on to team leaders, and to the rest of your teams.
5 Get aligned
You can’t just sit with a blank sheet in front and magically start crafting the perfect OKRs. You need to understand the context. Make the company mission and vision your starting point and tailor your OKRs accordingly.
Buy-ins are critical for OKR success. The success of OKRs depends on the collective effort of each team member. You can imagine it as a group dance performance where everyone needs to perform their parts well to make it a masterpiece.
Thus you need to align the efforts of the workforce, executive leaders, and company heads both horizontally and vertically. This will help you foster transparency, smooth cross-functional communication, and reduce overlap among departments.
6 Track and monitor progress
Tracking OKRs are important to evaluate and measure the progress and understand which teams are falling short.
You can identify any issues and make course corrections as required by Monitoring progress.
Leverage technology to track OKRs. It will make the process transparent.
Using OKR software will also automate the calculations and save your time as you are no longer required to manually update the progress of each team member.
Bonus tip: Remember to celebrate whenever you Hit the nail on the head through OKR win meetings and shoutouts to keep
7 Do frequent check-ins
To stay on top of OKR progress, you need to do regular check-ins. Employees might feel overwhelmed with concerns and doubts, especially in the initial days.
Regular check-ins will give your employees direction. And provide them the required assistance and guidance. Frequent Check-in meetings will also identify the overlappings, increase accountability and ensure execution.
Define your preferred frequency of Check-in meetings. You can do it weekly or monthly as per your organization’s needs. Although weekly check-ins are most recommended to keep track of the progress and evaluate continuously.
Have OKR Champions
Consider having OKR champion who starts implementing the OKR framework with a strong war cry. Build a team of champions who will work as ambassadors to head the change. And make the OKR framework run smoothing across the organization.
They work as mentors and internal OKR experts. And can help you adopt and execute OKRs at all levels of the organization. These OKR enthusiasts will make sure that every concern is addressed, every ‘whys and wherefores’ are explained.
Too many objectives and key results: Less is more. Don’t set more than 5-7 Objectives and 3-5 key results.
Fill it, Forget it: Don’t set OKRs just to forget in a few days.
Mixing KPIs with OKRs: KPIs aren’t a substitution for OKRs. They have separate roles and outcomes.
Rigidity: Rigid adherence to rules can lead to disengagement. Instead, move forward with a flexible and intuitive OKR approach
Link OKRs with Recognition: Don’t make the mistake of making OKRs a base for your reward and recognition program. It can negatively affect performance. And compromises the business output.
The start is never perfect
You might struggle when you are just starting. But after a few OKR cycles, you are sure to hit your stride.
To end, OKR’s success depends on consistency. So, remember to continuously reflect, learn, and refine the process.
Hope we were able to answer all your queries in our blog How to roll out OKRs for the first time? If you have questions feel free to comment below.
Pooja Pooja
Types of OKRs: Aspirational OKRs vs Committed OKRs
Every organization wants to grow, but how do you set goals that are both achievable and visionary? The answer lies in the types of OKRs: committed and aspirational.
Whether it’s near-term performance or long-term innovation for your business, you’ll know just how to leverage the power of committed and aspirational OKRs effectively to unlock new levels of success for your business.
Committed OKRs are about clear, attainable targets that teams can confidently deliver within a set timeframe. This type of OKR delivers accountability and is important for day-to-day business success.
Aspirational OKRs, on the other hand; push teams to be bigger and challenge themselves. The moonshots: ambitious OKRs are meant to stretch an organization from its comfort zone, kindling innovation and long-term growth.
In the rest of this blog, we will take the difference between these two types of OKR apart and see how to balance them in such a way that they enable performance as well as inspiration.
What are Aspirational OKRs and Other Types of OKRs?
A committed OKR is a stretch goal that the team has to achieve or complete before the cycle is over. A committed goal pushes the team to reach, but still achievable attainment. All metrics of the Key Results must be completed fully and on time. Consider a situation like this:
Daniel’s organization and his teams have agreed to execute certain OKRs and have mapped a precise action plan on how they are going to do so.
These are called Committed OKRs.
An aspirational OKR sets the bar for success further out, and by design will exceed a team’s ability to execute in a given quarter. When they set such a high bar as to be seemingly impossible they are called 10x goals, or “moonshots.” While most aspirational OKRs are never fully achieved, they exist to push a team to think bigger than a committed OKR. Consider the following case:
Martha’s organization is more visionary. They have stretched goals. And her teams are not likely to fully achieve these ambitious goals.
These are called Aspirational OKRs.
Understanding the distinction between aspirational and committed goals is crucial for effective goal-setting and team motivation within the OKR framework. Aspirational goals encourage ambitious thinking and long-term vision, while committed goals focus on immediate, measurable outcomes.
Learning OKR focuses on the acquisition of knowledge, new skills, or insights rather than a direct achievement of business outputs. Extremely helpful when entering new areas or uncertainties and requires experimenting, learning, and developing new skills, Learning OKRs distinguish between usual output measuring of success and measuring acquisition of knowledge, that will later add value for future objectives. For example:
Jerry wants to gain a deep understanding of machine learning to drive full product development. He wants to finish three advanced courses and test his skills by building a model in sandbox.
These are called Learning OKRs.
Aspirational OKRs and Committed OKRs: Key differences
When you aim for the stars, you may come up short, but still reach the moon.
– Larry Page
Read on to find out the key difference between Committed OKRs and Aspirational OKRs.
Objective
Aspirational OKRs are meant to push the boundaries and encourage employees to achieve visionary objectives. Committed OKRs, on the other hand, focus on committed objectives that offer a more realistic vision of goals with fully achievable results.
Aim
Committed OKRs help companies achieve their goals through individual and team achievements. Aspirational OKRs are often beyond the current capacities of the organization but help in pushing boundaries.
Timeframe
Aspirational OKRs are usually created to focus on long-term strategic vision while Committed OKRs offer short-term operational priorities to guarantee progress in the short term.
Committed OKRs are supposed to have a 100% success rate as each key result comprises fully achievable targets. Aspirational OKRs are usually found to have a success rate of 60-70%.
Committed and Aspirational OKR examples
The difference between committed and aspirational OKRs is subtle. Committed objectives are meant to be fully achievable, requiring teams to concentrate on straightforward priorities without taking unnecessary risks, ultimately serving as motivational tools to foster small wins and consistent progress.
A standard example in the sales team scenario might be like:
Committed OKR
O: Expand to the US market
KR1: Close first 6 start-ups
KR2: Get a meeting-to-close rate of 6%
KR3: Reach average deal size of $200
Aspirational OKR
O: Capture the entire US market in one quarter
KR1: Get onboard 95% of big customers in the US market to grow over competitors
KR2: Get a meeting-to-close rate of 30%
KR3: Reach average deal size of $2000
In the managerial team, these OKRs can manifest like such:
Committed OKR
O: Improve customer satisfaction with the existing solutions
KR1: Increase customer satisfaction score (CSAT) from 85% to 90% by the end of the quarter.
KR2: Reduce average response time from 15 minutes to 10 minutes within the next three months.
KR3: Train 100% of the support team on the new customer service tools within six weeks.
Aspirational OKR
O: Become the market leader in AI-powered customer service solutions.
KR1: Achieve a 30% market share in the AI customer service industry by the end of next year.
KR2: Launch three groundbreaking AI features that no competitor currently offers within 18 months.
KR3: Secure a partnership with at least two top-tier companies by the end of next year.
In a tech context, OKRs like these can come up:
Committed OKR
O: Improve the performance of the app and reliability
KR1: Reduce app crash rate from 2.5% to under 1% within the next quarter.
KR2: Decrease page load times by 30% in six months.
KR3: Fix 100% of the top ten reported bugs within the next two sprints.
Aspirational OKR
O: Revolutionize the user experience of our mobile app.
KR1: Increase daily active users (DAU) by 100% within 12 months.
KR2: Develop and launch a fully AI-driven recommendation system that personalizes the user experience by the end of the year.
KR3: Achieve a 4.8+ rating across app stores by introducing five innovative features within the next 18 months.
How to decide between Committed OKRs and Aspirational OKRs?
Committed OKRs will work best if your organization is newly introduced to the framework or is still in the rolling-out phase.
With each goal achieved, your team’s motivation and engagement will rise higher. In addition, teams easily get into the habit of running Committed OKRs and make it part of their work culture.
But if you have already used the framework in the past, aspirational OKRs can do wonders for you.
Creating a result-driven work culture takes time. It demands discipline, continuous effort, and a mindset shift of employees and management. So you should start simple and focus on learning the methodology first. And set up the necessary processes to make it work.
Setting aspirational OKRs in the very beginning would make your teams feel overwhelmed and over-pressurized. Extremely ambitious Key Results soon become too much to handle. Learning a new methodology takes time. Once your teams are used to the framework and it becomes a part of their work-life, you can consider aspirational OKRs.
With the later process, you can have objectives and a combination of committed and aspirational key results. While some key results will be easier to achieve, others will aim higher. Understanding the distinction between aspirational and committed goals is crucial for better goal-setting and team motivation.
Choosing the Right Type of OKRs
Choosing the right type of OKRs depends on the organization’s goals, culture, and priorities. Committed OKRs are suitable for organizations that need to achieve specific, measurable outcomes within a set timeframe. They are ideal for teams that require a clear direction and a sense of accountability. Aspirational OKRs, on the other hand, are suitable for organizations that want to drive innovation, creativity, and excellence. They are ideal for teams that want to push the boundaries and strive for something bigger.
When choosing between Committed and Aspirational OKRs, consider the following factors:
What are the organization’s goals and priorities?
What type of culture do we want to foster?
What kind of outcomes do we want to achieve?
What level of risk are we willing to take?
By considering these factors, organizations can choose the right type of OKRs that align with their goals, culture, and priorities. Whether you opt for committed or aspirational OKRs, the key is to ensure that they are aligned with your company aims and internal communication processes, fostering a balanced approach to achieving both immediate and long-term objectives.
How to balance Committed and Aspirational OKRs?
There is no one-size-fits-all answer, but where OKRs are aligned with company strategy, teams are well educated, open communication exists, and performance is reviewed regularly, it will help keep the balance between aspirational and committed OKRs intact.
However, the first step in finding equilibrium between the two forms of OKRs is that there has to be a knowledge of the difference. It needs to be apparent from the outset that everyone involved makes it clear the distinction between the two OKRs.
Teams and employees may have suitable insights that will assist in determining what is realistically achievable (committed) and what is a stretch but possible (aspirational). This can help determine what the balance ratio for the OKRs is going to be.
A very critical element to succeed with OKRs is reviewing and tracking the progress. With weekly check-ins, teams can go through their OKRs regularly and update the same performance data. It becomes easy to track how they have progressed on the outcome of the OKR in the OKR review process.
The grading of OKRs is very clear on the distinction between committed and aspirational goals. Committed OKRs are things to be accomplished within the cycle, and grading is binary: pass or fail. That is, an OKR is said to be successful if 100% of it is accomplished; otherwise, it is regarded as a failure. Aspirational OKRs, on the other hand, are graded along a more nuanced scale.
Common mistakes to avoid while setting up Aspirational OKRs
Here are 6 common mistakes organizations commit while setting up aspirational OKRs-
1️⃣Ignoring organizational structure and needs
A common mistake most organizations commit while writing aspirational OKRs is to write something like, “What can be done more if we have extra resources and luck favors us ?” Instead, you can pretend to be a genie and strive to understand “What our customer needs at present moment?”
2️⃣Unrealistic aspirational OKRs
Aspirational OKRs don’t imply setting unrealistic goals. It should be achievable, with the understanding that your teams won’t have any clue about how to achieve these OKRs. Aspirational OKRs demand overuse of resources. They are fluid and flexible. But still helps your teams focus on well-defined goals.
3️⃣Writing a low-value objective (LVO)
Moving forward with a “Who cares?” attitude is a common pitfall among organizations. Low-value objectives go unnoticed even after the successful completion of the key results.
4️⃣OKRs should be framed to gain tangible benefit
OKRs are a tool for organizations to work for big goals in the long run by breaking them into small chunks that can be achieved within a shorter cycle.
5️⃣A committed OKR must deliver a 1.0
It makes the framework stiff and doesn’t leave scope for improvement.
6️⃣Too many OKRs
How many aspirational OKRs you should set for one cycle will depend on your company’s resources. But never aim for too many Objectives and key results. As it can easily divert your focus altogether.
Best Practices for Implementing OKRs
Implementing OKRs requires a structured approach to ensure success. Here are some best practices to consider:
Align OKRs with company goals: Ensure that OKRs align with the organization’s overall goals and priorities.
Make OKRs specific and measurable: Ensure that OKRs are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).
Set ambitious yet achievable goals: Set goals that are challenging yet achievable, and provide a clear direction for the team.
Establish clear key results: Establish clear key results that indicate progress towards achieving the objective.
Track progress regularly: Track progress regularly and provide feedback to teams and individuals.
Foster a culture of transparency and accountability: Foster a culture of transparency and accountability, where teams and individuals are held accountable for their progress.
Provide training and support: Provide training and support to teams and individuals to ensure they understand the OKR framework and how to use it effectively.
Review and adjust OKRs regularly: Review and adjust OKRs regularly to ensure they remain relevant and aligned with the organization’s goals.
By following these best practices, organizations can implement OKRs effectively and achieve their goals. Regularly reviewing and adjusting OKRs ensures that they stay aligned with the evolving needs of the organization, helping teams to maintain focus and drive continuous improvement.
Conclusion
Now that you know the difference between committed and aspirational OKRs and how they can impact your organization’s success, it’s the decision time. Choose the one that will best suit your purpose.
And don’t forget it’s a trial and error method. Have regular OKR check-ins and reviews. Collect feedback during and after each cycle. And use your learnings to avoid further mistakes in the next OKR cycle.
Pooja Pooja
Quarterly OKRs: 5 Tips for Successful Wrap-Up
Imagine a scene! the quarter is about to end and it’s time to review and wrap up quarterly OKRs.
The clock’s ticking. Everyone is in a rush. And you are busy evaluating which goals are yet to be achieved. And what has already been done. It’s also time to think about your priorities for the next quarter.
There are so many checklists and questions going in your head.
Have my teams found ways of closing out quarterly OKRs? Will my teams beat the clock and tick all the boxes? Have they reflected on their OKR progress? How will I deal with this end-of-quarter OKRs rush?
Feeling overwhelmed!!
Here is a step by step guide to help you prepare best to wrap up your quarterly OKRs–
Before you start to review and wrap up quarterly OKRs- remember that wrapping up quarterly OKRs is teamwork. And to see the best results every team irrespective of their department have to come together.
Track your team’s OKR progress and gather the key results scores. You can score your OKRs on a scale of 1 to 10 on the basis of how far the objectives have been achieved.
This will help you evaluate your progress in a truly data-driven manner.
If the scores are low this might suggest that your OKRs were unrealistic. On the other hand, if the score is too high it may suggest that your OKRs were not ambitious enough.
Whatever learning you made from this process. It will help you to form the basis for designing your next set of quarterly OKRs.
Make sure everyone is up to date
It is important to ensure that your teams have clarity about their OKR status. At the same time, they have visibility into what other teams have been doing. It can be achieved through regular check-ins with your teams. Check this ebook on OKR handbook.
This step will help you check if your teams are aligned or not. When everyone in your team is on the same page taking decisions based on priorities becomes easy. As you have the data in hand to rely on instead of guessing.
Organize OKR check-ins
The importance of check-ins for OKR success cannot be emphasized enough. OKR check-ins provide you an opportunity to have 1 on 1 discussion in all OKR matters.
With OKR check-ins you can discuss with your leaders and team members about – what went well, what didn’t work for them, what needs to be dealt with immediately, what problems they are facing etc. at an individual as well as team level.
OKR check-ins will help you understand what’s holding teams back. You will further get the chance to push priorities that might have shifted midway.
Dig into opportunities
Organize Quarterly OKRs review meetings to dig into opportunities. During these meetings, go through each key result with your teams. Find out what went well and what needs to be done better.
Let the OKR leaders from each team present their learnings and achievements before everyone. Here teams can give a small presentation highlighting the most important lessons with context.
So that other teams can benefit from their learnings and experiences. And use them in designing their OKRs for the next quarter.
If you are a large-scale company working with multiple departments. The OKR review meetings can be held at the departmental level.
Plan the future
Now that you have gathered the data and matrix you need through OKR check-ins and OKR review meetings. It’s high time to plan for the next quarter.
OKRs have the power to build the future of your organization. But OKR failures can cost you a fortune.
Hence it’s important to find out the core reasons behind your OKR success or failure for the present quarter. And use it as context while designing OKRs for the next quarter.
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Do you need to plan new OKRs every quarter?
“Should OKRs change every quarter?” is a question often left unanswered.
Even after an OKR is achieved, you can roll it forward for the next quarter if necessary.
For example, if your OKR was to increase customer satisfaction by 20% in the present quarter. This could be relevant even for the next few quarters.
In case, of missed OKRs, you need to take a call. And decide whether you want to carry it forward or set new OKRs based on the data gathered.
When should you review and wrap up Quarterly OKRs
You should preferably wrap up the quarterly OKRs at least a week prior to the beginning of the next quarter.
But the preparation and discussions for the next quarter should be initiated almost a month before the new quarter begins. This is because designing OKRs takes dedication, time, and effort.
Bonus Tips:
Maintain Transparency from day one. Keep data transparent so that everyone knows how it’s going.
Create a culture of critical feedback. Be honest when it comes to feedback. At the same time be open to getting feedback from your teams as well.
Celebrate wins– even the smallest ones. Recognize your teams for their achievements more often.
Over-communicate. Communication is the key when it comes to wrapping up quarterly OKRs.
Take a moment
Wrapping up end-of-quarter OKRs will allow you to pause and take a moment to think. It provides you time to reflect on your wins, failures, and setbacks. It’s a stitch in time to make sure that your OKR framework is a success.
Follow the steps given to close out quarterly OKRs and make the most out of the process.
