While most people managers are able to create a business case for setting OKRs as well as for the adoption of an OKR software by leveraging industry benchmarks and best practices, there is a need to explicitly decode the return on investment of using an OKR tool as well.

Unless they are able to clearly illustrate how the return achieved using a goal management software is greater than the investment, it becomes difficult to sustain the adoption and get long-term leadership buy-in. 

Continue reading to strengthen your business case on the same.

What’s the ROI of Goal Management using OKRs?

Let’s quickly understand how the OKR framework is integral for an organization, especially high growth companies. Most fast growing organizations have competing priorities they need to focus on with limited resources at hand. 

Therefore, simply setting goals by adopting a top-down approach without supporting parameters can lead to confusion and incompetence. OKRs help drive away this ambiguity by linking measurable key results for each objective and facilitating a collaborative approach to achieving goals.  

Here are the top three benefits of implementing OKRs in an effective manner:

1. Better focus and more clarity

OKRs enable employees and leadership to have a very clear focus on what needs to be accomplished and what work is out of scope. The idea is to have complete clarity on — 

• what each goal or objective means, 
• its purpose for the overall success of the organization, and
• what achieving it will look like. 

The last part is extremely important as it helps create a sharp focus and set priorities straight. 

‍93% of employees don’t really understand what their organization is trying to accomplish in order to align with their own work.

This illustrates that there is a big absence of clarity and focus amongst employees when it comes to what needs to be accomplished, which stands in the way of creating a high performance culture. Therefore, OKRs can help reduce such uncertainty and ambiguity, making it easy for the workforce to concentrate on what matters. 

2. Strategic alignment

Taking cue from the first point, the second benefit or purpose of implementing OKRs foris a need for clarity of expectations and overall team and organizational alignment. In case of fast growing organizations, there is an overlapping of roles and responsibilities and a lack of clarity on expectations from each employee. This leads to lower than average outcomes, productivity and revenue growth and data backs the same. 

97% of employees and executives believe lack of alignment within a team impacts the outcome of a task or project. Whereas, companies that regularly exceeded revenue goals were 2.3X more likely to report high levels of alignment.

By ensuring organization-wide goal visibility, OKRs help teams to decode what is expected out of each team member and their respective contribution towards achievement of the shared goals. Thus, increasing alignment and collaboration. 

3. Greater engagement

Finally, setting and implementing OKRs is often a collaborative process. Employees get involved in and participate during the entire OKR process and feel engaged in the same. This greater involvement and participation leads to deeper levels of engagement and ownership of key results which drive impact. 

OKRs also enable employees to also gauge their performance and measure their progress in an effective manner. This motivates them to get more involved in achieving the common weekly, quarterly and annual goals. This higher level of engagement directly impacts key organizational parameters such as retention, productivity, profitability, etc. 

How does an OKR software make a difference? 

The business case for OKRs is very clear. However, for companies that are scaling up, with limited bandwidth and competing priorities, often setting OKRs itself gets left behind due to other business priorities.

If an organization focuses on a manual approach to the OKR system, there are several steps which require a lot of time and effort including setting and writing, implementing, tracking, grading, evaluating and modifying OKRs.

Fortunately, today there are OKR tools in the market, which can help automate all of these aspects to help simplify the OKR journey. The right goal management software can help you maximize the realization of the return on investment for your OKRs. Following are the top five ways in which an OKR software makes a measurable difference on the bottomline — 

1. It allows you to document goals

First, an OKR tool can help organizations document or record the OKRs in a way that is visible and accessible to all. There is supporting evidence to show that what gets documented has a higher chance of being achieved, as what is out of sight is often out of mind. 

Individuals are 42% more likely to achieve goals when they are physically recorded.

Therefore, the OKR tool can enable organizations to clearly define the business and team OKRs in a written manner which can be reflected on, seen again and again to create instant recall for employees. 

2. It drives accountability and alignment

OKR tools are great for creating alignment and accountability. On the alignment front, the OKR software can help achieve high levels of strategic alignment on what is the responsibility of each team member across organizations towards the key business goal achievement. 

Highly aligned companies grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable than their misaligned counterparts.

The dashboard of a good OKR software can help you constantly gauge the level of goal achievement, ensure that team members are aligned on different phases as well as keep a track of when their responsibility is due. It creates high levels of transparency. 

Moreover, greater alignment leads to high levels of accountability. Generally, since there is a lack of alignment on responsibilities, there is an accompanying lack of ownership and accountability, and most employees shirk away from taking accountability. 

84% of the workforce describes itself as “trying but failing” or “avoiding” accountability, even when employees know what to fix.

A goal management software like SuperBeings allows you to integrate OKRs with regular meetings and check-ins to keep track of progress. Thus, driving a culture of accountability.

3. It enables real-time OKR progress and goal tracking

It is very common for companies to set OKRs and then evaluate them only at the end of the quarter/year. There is a lack of mid-term tracking which makes it difficult to gauge whether the progress is aligned with the key results or not. 

40% of people that write down goals don’t check whether they’ve achieved them. Moreover, only 5.9% of companies communicate goals daily. 

An OKR software can help you address this concern by facilitating day-to-day OKR progress tracking. A daily dashboard and history of 1:1 and team check-ins on OKRs, can help organizations track developments over time. 

It can also help identify and resolve any performance issues that stand in the way of goal achievement preemptively. At the same time, even if organizations are tracking and monitoring OKR progress, doing so with a manual process is inefficient. An OKR tool can automate most of these processes to enable HR and people managers to spend more time on driving results. 

4. An effective software offers OKR training for success

Another major concern that organizations face when it comes to OKRs is being prepared and ready for the same. Many line managers and others struggle with writing effective OKRs. Many organizations believe setting OKRs once is enough. However, that is far from the truth. 

Research says, companies that set performance goals quarterly can generate 31% more returns than those reassessing annually.

Using an OKR software can help eliminate all these challenges. 

• First, the right tool will offer OKR coaching and onboarding support to train managers to write OKRs which are effective and result oriented.
• Second, it can help reflect on OKRs at regular intervals to realign on them and adjust according to changing market conditions. 
• Third, the OKR tool can help managers have meaningful 1:1 conversations with team members to link OKR with performance and facilitate high levels of goal achievement. This is a direct return on investment which can create value across the organizational verticals.  

5. It facilitates greater collaboration

Finally, an OKR software can promote high levels of collaboration for goal achievement. For many organizations, the inability to collaborate leads to low levels of results, diminishing the ROI for OKRs.

86% of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures.

Using a good OKR software makes collaboration seamless by aligning cross-functional projects and tracking cumulative progress. Invariably, an increase in degree of collaboration is a direct ROI of an OKR tool which can create far reaching impact.

How to calculate the ROI of an OKR software?

In this final section of the article, we will talk about the key parameters that can help you gauge the ROI of an OKR software. While the above mentioned are primary impact areas, most of them have a qualitative aspect to them. 

Gauging the ROI requires backing of data points from employee experience and business results, which the following parameters can help explain.

1. Level of transparency

Organizations should start by gauging whether or not transparency and alignment on goals has increased. This can be measured using employee pulse surveys to understand their opinion on how well they have visibility of goals and clarity on what they need to work towards. Therefore, the first ROI parameter for an OKR software is to identify the increase in level of transparency to ensure everyone is working in the same direction and there are no gaps or overlap in efforts. 

2. Degree and time period of goal achievement

The main purpose of an OKR tool is to facilitate the effective and efficient achievement of the goals set by an organization. Thus, the next parameter to measure ROI should revolve around the degree and time period of goal achievement. 

You can start by comparing the degree of goal achievement by leveraging OKR grading to see if there is a significant improvement in percentage terms as compared to pre-OKR tool period. Second, it is important to gauge whether or not the goals/key results have been achieved in a shorter period of time or not. Since the OKR platform facilitates better alignment, collaboration, tracking, etc., it can help organizations achieve or realize the goals faster. 

3. Reduced administrative overheads

Third, there are several administrative overheads that accompany the setting and implementation of goals/OKRs. These include tracking, grading, etc. for managers and providing inputs on the part of employees. The ROI of an OKR software can be gauged by mapping whether or not these overheads come down. 

• For the managers, ROI can be calculated in terms of time saved which can be invested in other value add tasks. 
• For employees, the ROI comes in the form of reduced time and effort spent in juggling between platforms to work on goals and projects. The right tool will provide organizations with integrations across top productivity tools like Slack, Jira, etc. which reduce administrative overheads for all organizational stakeholders. 

4. Increased revenue

The next parameter for ROI calculation is to measure the change or increase in revenue after the adoption of an OKR software. Since an OKR tool seeks to enable organizations to achieve their goals faster, cost effectively and to a greater extent, there should be an increase in the revenue realized. 

According to Larry Page, co-founder, Google claims that “OKRs have helped lead us to 10X growth, many times over.” 

5. Better employee experience

Finally, gauging the value of employee parameters like retention/turnover, productivity, engagement, etc, can cumulatively be leveraged to capture the ROI of an OKR tool. There are several ways to gauge these workforce parameters, along with factors like eNPS, etc. which have a direct business impact. Calculating them can help measure the ROI of the OKR tool for an organization. 

Final Thoughts

It is evident that adoption of an intelligent OKR software is not only good to have, but integral for organizational success. Using the right tool has a direct business impact which can be measured in numbers using the ROI parameters mentioned in this article. 

There are both qualitative and quantitative aspects to measuring the ROI and a balanced approach to both can empower organizations to align individual performance with business goals.

If you are considering implementing the right OKR software in your business, try out SuperBeings free 21 day trial. Book today. (No credit card or commitment required)

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Master OKRs in 10 days: Free OKR email course

References

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhall/2019/10/06/why-accountability-is-vital-to-your-company/?sh=4297f3cb6580

https://www.salesforce.com/in/work/?sfdc-redirect=219

https://www.minsilo.com/resources/strategic-alignment/why-is-alignment-important

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/13/self-made-millionaire-how-to-increase-your-odds-of-success-by-42-percent-marie-forleo.html#:~:text=The%20results%20were%20clear%3A%20Participants,down%20on%20a%20daily%20basis

https://lsaglobal.com/insights/proprietary-methodology/lsa-3x-organizational-alignment-model/#:~:text=Based%20upon%20research%20of%20410,Effectively%20leading%208.71%2Dto%2D1

http://www.cedma-europe.org/newsletter%20articles/Clomedia/Want%20Results%20-%20Fix%20Accountability%20(Feb%2015).pdf

https://www.asuresoftware.com/

https://fierceinc.com/employees-cite-lack-of-collaboration-for-workplace-failures/#:~:text=Key%20survey%20finds%20include%3A,will%20impact%20bottom%20line%20results.

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Since performance is directly linked to organizational success, getting holistic feedback to performance is crucial. 360 degree feedback is an interesting and highly effective means to achieve the same. 

What is 360 feedback?

Essentially, 360 feedback involves gathering feedback about a particular employee from different stakeholders in the organization. You can leverage four major segments of stakeholders to get 360 feedback from —

• managers, 
• direct reports, 
• peers, and 
• the employees themselves

However, at times, 360 feedback might look like too much work. Fortunately, if you create a strategic plan and collaborate with the right platform, the job is half done. 

In this article, we will share why and how of 360 feedback to help answer all questions that might surface for you as well as suggest 20 questions for your next 360 degree review.

Why conduct 360 degree feedback?

Let’s quickly start with why you need to conduct 360 feedback as a part of your performance review.

1. Prevent rater bias

First, when there is only one reviewer, there are chances of rater bias creeping in. Here some preformed biases might fog the judgment of the reviewer, leading to an error in performance rating. When multiple stakeholders provide feedback, the rater bias can be eliminated, or at least minimized. 

2. Create holistic development plans

Second, different stakeholders in 360 feedback will focus on different performance aspects of an employee. This will help you and the employee to create a holistic development plan that incorporates diverse areas of growth, which go beyond the technical competencies. 

3. Facilitate better workplace relationships

Finally, when different stakeholders have to provide feedback to one another, they make a conscious effort to know each other and the work the other one does better. This leads to better workplace relationships, greater collaboration and an acknowledgement of mutual value creation. 

How is 360 feedback different from other types of feedback methods?

Before we move onto the process and best practices for 360 feedback, let’s quickly understand how it is different from other feedback methods. 

• First, conventionally feedback adopts a top-down monologue from the manager to the employee. 360 feedback paves way for a dialogue, where the employees themselves also have a voice on their performance. 
• Second, the number of participants is significantly higher. Conventionally, the feedback process is limited to the manager. However, in 360 feedback, other managers as well as peers are involved in the process. 
• Third, traditional feedback is vulnerable to being fixated with one vertical of employee performance. 360 feedback prevents this by bringing in diverse voices where the employee has played different roles to gauge their overall contribution to the organization. 

Thus, 360 feedback is more participatory, engaging and expansive in scope when compared with other types of feedback methods. 

When should you conduct 360 feedback?

Most organizations believe that conducting feedback once a year is enough and the same gets applied to 360 feedback as well. However, as we have advocated earlier, continuous performance management is integral for fast growing organizations. 

Consequently, you should conduct 360 feedback on a regular basis. Since many stakeholders are involved, you can schedule 360 feedback for once every quarter or depending on the frequency that works well for you strategically and operationally. 

In addition to your set cadence, you may need to foster a culture of 360 feedback to promote culture change and create an empowering ecosystem. 360 feedback can play an important role in appreciating and reinforcing good performance as well as act as a corrective measure for areas of improvement. 

Here are a few examples or instances where you might use 360 feedback.

Conducting 360 feedback to reinforce good performance

1. For a job well done or target achievement

• "Congratulations on achieving your target. The entire team is proud of the way you managed to come through at the last minute, it is indeed an inspiration for others." 

2. For exceptional problem solving during crisis with an innovative solution

• "Your inputs on the discussion earlier this week were exceptional. They were truly out of the box and everyone believes that such innovative thoughts can guide the way for us to touch many new milestones." 

3. To celebrate improvement in performance or some other developmental area

• "You have made considerable progress in your public speaking skills and it was quite visible for everyone. Not only did you speak with confidence but your articulation and the points you captured were truly insightful"

Conducting 360 feedback as a corrective measure

1. To reiterate the importance of accountability

• "It is great to see you put in a lot of effort, however, if you are not accountable for your work, you will not be able to make it to the top. You need to take greater ownership of your work to instill the confidence in others that you are a reliable asset for the organization." 

2. To illustrate the lack of collaboration

• "While it is good to see you perform well in silos, there are several tasks that need you to collaborate with others. It would be great if you could collaborate effectively with other members in your team to ensure that the strengths of each can be utilized to the maximum extent."

7 steps to run 360 feedback effectively

Now that you understand why and when to run 360 feedback, let’s focus on how you can run them in a way that you are able to reap maximum results. 

1. Identify objective

Be clear on what the 360 feedback seeks to achieve for each employee. The context and focus cannot be the same for employees at different stages of their lifecycle. 

While those in their early days need to be reviewed on their experience and culture fit, focus for those with a longer tenure needs to be on new responsibilities, performance, etc. 

2. Create a cadence and timelines

Set a calendar with a predefined frequency for conducting the 360 feedback to ensure that everyone is free and available when the time comes. It will also help you plan and prepare for the entire process in advance. Also, have clarity on how long you want to run the feedback cycle, a week or 10 days is ideal. 

3. Identify participants

For each 360 feedback cycle, you need to figure out who all will you take the feedback survey to. Most common participants are:

• Self
• Manager(s)
• Direct report(s)
• Peers

However, you need to identify within your organization, which peers will you reach out to for which employee, ensuring that they have had a working relationship.

4. Prepare feedback template

Create a 360 feedback template with questions for each segment of stakeholders. It is important to understand that questions for managers and peers cannot be the same. Each stakeholder group will review the employee from a distinct lens, and, hence, the questions should be reflective of that. 

5. Roll out feedback

On the day of your cadence, send out the 360 feedback survey to all the identified participants and explicitly inform them of a few points to keep in mind, including:

• Keep the responses crisp and honest, not diplomatic
• Be critical, but empathetic
• Have a solution oriented response, if you are highlighting a problem, try to pair it with a proposed solution
• Provide feedback informally as well to ensure that nothing comes as a surprise

6. Analyze responses

Once you receive the response, you need to analyze them to gauge the commonalities between different comments from different stakeholders. You also need to compare the self evaluation with the evaluation of others to understand if the employees have a realistic picture of their performance or not. 

7. Share feedback

Based on the analysis, create a consolidated feedback to share with the employee in question. This sharing could either be via the managers or the HR team, depending on your organizational structure. Focus on this 360 feedback meeting should be on sharing key insights and creating a development plan to facilitate improvement. 

Top 20 questions for 360 feedback 

As mentioned above, a key component of the 360 feedback process is creating a question template. Following are a list of questions that you can use for different stakeholders.

Self reflection

• What are the three things you are proud of accomplishing in the last year/quarter?
• How do you think your strengths helped the team in achieving its objectives?
• Did you face any challenges during the course of this performance which prevented you from giving in your 100%? How do you plan to tackle these challenges?
• What are your key development goals for the next year/quarter?
• Where do you think you need additional support from the organization?

Managers

• Are you satisfied with the overall performance of <xx> during the last year/quarter?
• How do you think <xx> can improve his/her performance to accelerate the career trajectory?
• What are some of the developmental goals you would like to give to <xx>?
• What are the top characteristics of <xx> that make him/her an asset to the organization?
• What are your expectations from <xx> for the next performance period?

Direct Reports

• How would you rate the performance of <xx> over the last year/quarter?
• What do you think are the top 2-3 ways in which <xx> contributed to the overall success of the organization/ or your team?
• What are the key strengths and weaknesses of <xx> and how are they impacting his/her performance?
• Do you think <xx> is ready for a promotion or appraisal? If yes, what are the key accomplishments of <xx> If no, what are the areas he/she can work on?
• What is the one critical role that <xx> plays in your team?

Peers

• How easy or difficult is it to work with <xx>?
• What do you think has been the impact of <xx> on your performance in the last year/quarter?
• What are the top 2-3 things that you would want to learn from <xx>? What are the top 2-3 things you would want to share knowledge on with <xx>?
• Would you agree that <xx> has contributed to the overall success of the organization? If yes, how?
• What are the three areas which you would work differently on than <xx> during the last year/quarter?

If you are convinced that 360 degree feedback is a great tool to improve your workforce performance, you can take this one step further by collaborating with a 360 feedback tool to automate the feedback process of  setting the cadence, brainstorming survey questions, analyzing responses and maintaining all feedback history. To see how SuperBeings can help you on this, book a free demo here. 

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Employee feedback handbook for managers

When it comes to employee surveys or performance reviews, the support for a rating scale is often conflicted. While some organizations believe that a rating scale is quite effective to get a macro view of employee and organizational parameters, others feel that it offers a myopic view. 

However, we cannot neglect the overall importance of using a rating scale to measure critical employee parameters and identify areas to focus on. 

Through the course of this article, we will help you understand —

• why a rating scale is important, 
• the different types you can leverage and 
• the steps to pick the right one for your specific needs

Why do you need a rating scale?

To improve anything, you first need to measure it. Performance rating scales help you do just that. It gives you a clear picture of employee performance and engagement, the gaps in it and helps you with relevant ideas to improve upon. Here’s how —

1. Uniform standard and transparency

A rating scale can help you capture employee pulse on different factors in a uniform and transparent manner. 

Since there are a limited number of options, there is a standard trend that comes out from a rating scale. 

Specifically focusing on employee performance, a rating scale can help you measure the performance of all your team members on a uniform scale, ensuring a standard and transparent approach to appraisals and review. 

2. Quantitative assessment 

Second, employee rating scales are exceptional tools for quantitative assessment on different organizational parameters. This can be a great way to capture data points and statistics on factors like engagement, alignment, motivation, performance improvement, etc. 

Such data points can enable you to compare trends over time and identify whether or not the organization is going in the right direction. 

3. Easy to administer

Finally, a rating scale is easy to administer. 

The rate of completion is quite high when it comes to a rating scale. 

At the same time, calibration of results is faster and easier for you. While it is important to derive qualitative responses as well, a rating scale can provide an effective starting point for interventions. 

Collecting, analyzing and taking action on employee survey comments are great way to bridge the gap between quantitative and qualitative responses from an employee rating scale. 

Read how to use employee survey comments for better employee experience to learn more about this.

Different types of rating scales

Now that you have an understanding of how a rating scale can help your organization, let’s quickly explore the different types of rating scales that you can leverage. 

While the basic foundation of all employee rating scales is common where the respondents have to select between a few options, the nature of the option varies significantly. 

The number of options for each rating scale can range from 2 to 7 depending on the variance that you wish to add and the clarity you are able to create between the difference for each option. 

1. Numeric vs Descriptive 

The first type of rating scale can be distinguished on the basis whether the options are numeric or descriptive in nature.

When to use numeric rating scale

A numeric rating scale involves questions whose answer options are the form of numbers which signify the pulse of those providing the rating.

Here lowest and highest scores refer to being least likely and highly recommendable respectively.

Here’s another example: 

This is one of the top examples for using a numeric rating scale, where you don’t need much information from your employees, but just want to get a quick snapshot. However, a numeric rating scale can be ambiguous at times, and each point on the rating scale could have different connotations for different individuals. 

When to use descriptive rating scale

A descriptive rating scale, on the other hand, is one in which the responses are more verbose in nature and are able to capture employee pulse in a more effective manner. There are several types of descriptive rating scales that you can leverage. 

One of them is the Behavioral Anchored Rating Scale (BARS). The idea is to identify one behavioral aspect that you wish to get insights on and attach a few anchors to it. Then rating takes place on each anchor which ultimately adds up to the behavioral rating. Below is a quick example for performance rating on teamwork for an employee

Rate Mr. X on the following anchors of team work (scale of 1-5)

1. How easy is it to collaborate with him?
2. How regularly does Mr. X engage with the team?
3. How often does he genuinely listen to feedback by others?

2. Likert vs Semantic 

When to use Likert rating scale

In the Likert rating scale, the options are generally descriptive in nature and they seek to measure the response to a particular statement.

Instead of a direct question, you can add a statement for your employees to share their view on, from a list of options. 

Q2. ‘I believe it is easy to collaborate with other team members’

• Strongly Disagree
• Disagree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Agree
• Strongly Agree 

It is best to have an equal number of positive and negative responses, with a neutral response, if required. 

When to use semantic rating scale

A semantic rating scale has similar characteristics. However, while the Likert scale has a description for each option, the semantic scale provides two extreme options like success and failure with no names in between. Your employees can rate the statement based on the degree of extremity.

For example,

Q1. I believe Mr. Y pays attention to detail in his work

3. Nominal vs Binary 

When to use nominal rating scale

In the nominal rating scale, there are a few options under the questions, which don’t have any relation to one another. This can be a multi checkbox sort of scale

When to use binary rating scale

In the binary rating scale, there are only two option, Yes or No that the employee has to choose from

How to choose the right rating scale for your needs 

Once you understand the difference between the various employee rating scales, you need to identify which one is the best for you. Chances are that you will need to experiment with a combination of a few based on different requirements. 

Step I: What is the need?

Start by exploring what is the need. This suggests you need to be very clear on what you seek to achieve from the rating — better performance, more engagement or something else (specify). Here are a few use cases and the best rating scale for each

a) Deep understanding on a specific parameter

Use the BARS rating scale from the descriptive type and you will be able to gauge pulse on different anchors for a particular parameter. 

b) Measuring attitude and agreement to a particular statement

Consider the Likert scale and encourage your employees to react to a statement or belief/ attitude to the degree they agree to it. 

c) Gauging eNPS

Use the numeric rating scale to gauge how likely your employees are to recommend others to work in your organization. 

On the same lines, you can identify the use case and align your needs to select the right rating scale. 

Step II: Is the rating scale valid?

Next, based on the need, once you identify a rating scale, try to understand if the options you have captured are able to measure what you seek to gauge or not. For instance —

• If you want to understand the top values your employees align with, you cannot use a binary scale or the Likert scale, rather a nominal scale will be the right option. 
• However, if you want to understand whether or not your team aligns with a particular value, the Likert scale is ideal. 

Step III: Does the scale cover the variance?

You need to first gauge the intent variety of responses you are likely to receive and choose the rating scale accordingly. For instance, for some parameters, only three options are enough to capture a variety of perspectives. On the other hand, some might need as many as seven options with incremental differences between each. Thus, identify the right scale based on the expected variance. 

How to create a qualitative rating scale

Most of the employee rating scales that you see can help you capture a quantitative assessment of the organizational parameter. However, you can also facilitate qualitative assessment with a rating scale by ensuring the following:

1. Leverage descriptive rating scales

Start by leveraging descriptive employee rating scales instead of numeric ones. These scales, in diverse forms allow you to capture deeper insights about employee pulse as compared to a numeric rating.

2. Ask the right questions

Ensure that your questions are not only data oriented like Do you agree, or how likely are you, etc. Questions on the top organizational values or best ways of recognition require mutually exclusive options that give you deeper qualitative understanding. 

3. Be mindful of the wording

Use the words that your team members most align with, which are commonly used in the organization. For instance, if you use health initiatives as an umbrella term, putting words like wellness might lead to a poor rating. 

4. Have a clear description

Each option in the rating scale should have a clear description. For instance, you need to be clear on what strongly agree means or what a rating of 1 signifies, to ensure everyone is on the same page. 

By now, you know that having the right rating scale for a specific purpose is the key to understanding and managing your employees. SuperBeings offers you different kinds of scales to choose from and guides you to pick the best one for your specific business need. You can book a quick demo with one of our experts to see how to leverage this.

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Complete guide to continuous performance management (Free Download)

When you think about creating a succession pipeline for your organization, focusing only on attracting and retaining talent may not be enough. You need to give equal attention to developing your talent as well. 

However, simply investing in employee training that is good for a specific role is not an effective strategy for the modern workforce. You need to adopt a personalized approach where you evaluate the performance of each employee and customize development opportunities for better individual and organizational growth. 

That’s where employee performance reviews come in — to enable line managers and HR leaders to holistically evaluate employee performance and set them up for success. 

This article seeks to help you understand what are performance reviews, gauge their importance and shed light on some of the best practices to conduct effective employee reviews.

What is an employee performance review?

Performance reviews are essentially a set of conversations between employees and their managers to reflect on the following —

• the employee’s performance and performance arc, 
• the employee’s impact and contribution to the organization, 
• the employee’s unique strengths as well as areas of development. 

On a macro level, performance review for each employee adds to the level of effectiveness of the overall organizational performance. This suggests that an upward trend in performance reviews over the years indicates better organizational performance leading to better business outcomes. 

Recently, the nature of performance reviews is changing to adapt to a more frequent, conversational, action oriented and value driven approach. 

According to a report by Gartner, 95% of managers report they are “unhappy” with traditional performance reviews and would prefer implementing a more continuous performance management system.

Importance of performance reviews for fast growing organizations

You might have come across a negative attitude towards performance reviews in the past few years, many calling them out as simply a tick in the box, without amounting to anything concrete. 

However, you need to understand that if done the right way, employee performance reviews have the potential to transform the fabric of your organization by augmenting employee engagement and satisfaction levels and simultaneously creating a high performance culture. 

There are several ways an effective performance review system can help you facilitate change and impact such as:

• A timely performance review enables employees to reflect on their performance, identify developmental opportunities and seek continuous feedback and support in case of challenges
• It facilitates greater collaboration and more effective delegation of work based on employee strengths to drive team success
• Performance reviews also empower managers and leaders to provide the right support and anticipate challenges to growth and mitigate them before it's too late

If you look closely, you can reap benefits from performance reviews at different levels to unlock the potential of your workforce, teams and the organization. 

10 best practices for effective performance reviews

Here is a quick summary of the top 10 practices to conduct effective performance reviews that you can take inspiration from:

1. Encourage dialogue

For a long time, performance reviews have been a one-way street where managers share what they feel about the employee’s performance. However, if you want your performance reviews to actually make an impact, you need to ensure continuous dialogue between them. 

Encourage your managers to ask questions and motivate the employee to share their side of the story as well. This will help you gauge the reason and get a deeper understanding of what led to the performance, whether good or bad. 

Such 1:1 conversations can help create an environment of trust and confidence for employees to open up to you and other managers and share any concerns. You must ensure that the dialogue transcends an exclusive focus on what went well and what did not to include aspirations, roadblocks, support needed, and an overall feedback about the culture and experience. 

Not sure how to conduct such 1:1 performance conversations? Read our top 50 1:1 meetings questions to use in your next performance review. Or check out SuperBeings guided templates for specific performance conversations

2. Maintain a regular cadence

If you believe that having a performance review once a year is enough, you need to pause and reflect on your approach. If you want your employees to thrive in a fast changing environment, you need to touch base with them more often. 

Fortnightly or a monthly cadence for 1:1 conversations, coupled with weekly or daily focus on capturing employee pulse is the need in the new normal. 

Research shows that 51% of employees believe that annual reviews are inaccurate, and 53% say it does not motivate them. 

Scheduling regular and timely performance reviews will enable you to share any changes in expectations with your employees. Furthermore, you can make them aware about any performance challenges that may be visible to you as they surface before waiting for an entire year, when not much can be done. 

Here, encouraging your managers to focus on coaching your team members or ensuring some value add with every conversation is important. Regular performance reviews will help you have a constant visibility over what’s happening and not be surprised with completely new information at the end of the year. 

3. Focus on employee development

While performance reviews should focus on how the employee’s performance has been, they need to equally be oriented towards the future. You should spend only a small fraction of the allocated review time reflecting on what happened or why it happened, and spend more time on the need and scope of future developments. Focus on what the next goals are, what kind of support your team members need, etc. 

The idea is that you cannot do much about the performance of the past, other than learn from it. However, a future outlook can help you enable your employees to put those lessons to use and ensure success at all levels. 

Read this article to learn how to turn your performance conversations into employee development opportunities

4. Leverage employee data

It is extremely important to be equipped with comprehensive data on your employee when performance review conversations are underway. These generally include employee feedback, general trends in performance like absenteeism, productivity, inputs from other team members and managers, etc. 

Here having 360 degree feedback is important. According to Forbes, More than 85% of all Fortune 500 companies use the 360-degree feedback process and most fast growing organizations are following the same. 

Having the right data will enable you to have constructive conversations rather than ambiguous dialogue exchanges. It is ideal to have data from almost everyday captured for each employee and leverage key insights and trends to drive the conversation.

If you feel you are stretched too thin to capture and analyze such large volumes of data, you can always collaborate with a platform like SuperBeings which can help you capture regular data with their pulse surveys and performance snapshots and provide you with AI driven action recommendations. Book a free demo today to see how you can leverage it. 

5. Be clear on what performance entails

To effectively conduct a performance review, you need to have a very clear understanding of what you are looking for when evaluating employee performance. This suggests that you need to have clarity on what entails as effective performance. 

• Does it mean achieving the goals set out, or going beyond them? 
• How do you plan to evaluate the achievement of the goals?
• What level of achievement corresponds to good performance?

These are some of the crucial questions that you can start with to determine the performance criteria for your employees. To make your performance reviews effective, you must share the criteria with your employees in advance, so they are not caught in conversation with no understanding. If your performance review is goal oriented, setting OKRs will be effective. 

6. Have a clear agenda

Going into performance reviews without planning out how to drive the conversation will limit the impact you are able to achieve. You should plan how you will start the conversation and how it will fall into place subsequently. 

Starting your review meetings directly with performance feedback can create anxiety for the employee. Having an agenda will help you ensure that you have a smooth conversation and nothing important is missed out. 

Generally, you need to start with some ice breakers or hygiene questions. (Check this out to find some great ice breaker conversation prompts) You can then follow them up with two-way feedback, conversation on the next steps and finally create a plan of action. Irrespective of your priorities, an agenda will help you have an effective review conversation in the stipulated time. 

7. Be mindful of where and when

WHERE — The location and the timing of the performance reviews must also be mindfully decided. Since you want to have a constructive conversation, selecting a place where there is too much noise can hurt your case. There are several factors you must consider like do you need complete privacy, what kind of a space, closed or open will you prefer, what kind of resources (stationery, furniture) would you need, etc.

WHEN — You also need to be cognizant of when the conversation takes place. Would you want it to happen during office hours or after? If you are doing it during office hours, you need to make sure that you block time in advance and not try to squeeze a few minutes between meetings. Determine how long the conversation needs to be, etc. The environment plays a major role in ensuring that the conversation goes as planned and there are no disturbances. 

8. Ensure effective communication

Great performance reviews are all about effective communication. There are several aspects to this practice. 

• First, you need to be prepared with a comprehensive list of questions that you can have handy when the conversation tilts towards the future outlook. 
• Second, it is important to use thoughtful and considerate sentences and phrases. Having a negative tone can really demotivate your workforce and might even dissuade them from sharing their side of the story. Ensure that you use positive and constructive language and the conversation comes out as encouraging and problem solving, and not nitpicking and blaming. 
• Third, it is important to be an active listener. Stemming from promoting a dialogue, you need to actually listen to what your team members have to say and modify your thoughts and conversation accordingly. Don’t listen just for the sake of it, be actively involved in what they have to say, ask questions and summarize to ensure you haven’t missed or misunderstood anything. 

9. Agree on next steps

Performance reviews are most effective when they conclude with an agreement on the next steps. Once you reflect on the performance, it is important to decide on a plan of action to facilitate performance improvement. While your employee might need to focus on a few things, you also need to be clear on what support they need and how you will provide it. 

10. Follow up and monitor progress

Agreement in performance reviews must be followed up with tracking and monitoring progress on the next steps. Performance reviews can only be effective if the next steps are actually achieved and there is a change or impact that was intended. Make sure you track the progress of your employee, which will serve as crucial data for your next conversation, which in a regular mode will be just down the line. 

Use a performance review software

If you feel following a continuous and comprehensive approach for performance reviews is overwhelming, you should collaborate with tools like SuperBeings. 

Not only will you be able to capture employee pulse, understand employee sentiments and cultural heatmaps, your entire fleet of managers will also be equipped for performance snapshots, progress data and employee strength profiles. 

SuperBeings also connects performance data with 1:1 meeting suggestions thus helping you to guide your performance review conversations better. 

To get a better idea of how SuperBeings can help you with performance reviews, book a free 21 day trial today.

Related Articles

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Managing employee performance: The complete guide

In recent years, there has been a steady rise in the focus on gauging and increasing the ROI of performance management tools as organizations come to realize how having an efficient performance management system impacts the bottom line and facilitates a pleasant employee experience.

In this article, we will talk about how reinventing the wheel with the adoption of performance management tools can help organizations achieve unparalleled success by combating the challenges in traditional performance management. 

Furthermore, we will highlight how organizations can secure leadership buy-in by creating a business case with return on investment for the right software. 

Performance management matters: Here’s why

Before we start discussing the challenges in traditional performance management and how performance management tools can help you navigate the same, let us quickly understand why performance management matters. Here’s what the numbers say — 

94% of individuals would stay at a job longer if it helped them grow; performance management plays an intrinsic role in employee development

‍79% of employees who quit their jobs cite a lack of appreciation as a key reason for leaving; performance management can facilitate timely recognition 

Organizations that were in the top quartile of employee engagement see 21% higher profitability; performance management can greatly augment engagement levels

75% of workers have experienced burnout; performance management can help preempt burnout by constant tracking to eliminate the same

Challenges in traditional performance management system 

While the business case for performance management is very strong and makes business sense, many fast growing organizations have been able to reap only limited benefits.

Only 8% of companies believe their performance management process is highly effective in driving business value

58% businesses say it’s not an effective use of time

91% of people believe company’s performance management process could be better

There are several challenges in the traditional performance management systems that limit the success and impact for organizations, rendering them unable to achieve a high return on investment on their performance management tools. Let's have a quick look at some of the major drawbacks of current performance management process:

1. Reliance on manual methods

70% of companies require a PA or HR representative to collect feedback via email, Word or Excel

The first major challenge of traditional performance management is reliance on spreadsheets and manual methods. Invariably, the process is replete with inefficiencies, which can simply be eliminated with the adoption of the right tools. 

2. Time intensive

Managers spend 210 hours a year on performance management, and employees spend 40 hours a year 

Second, traditional performance management can be highly time consuming. This involves time spent on gathering feedback, collating different data points, creating reviews, having conversations, and much more. 

Consequently, managers struggle to complete their reviews on time. 

As many as 50% of employee evaluations were overdue by 30 days or more

While phases like 1:1 conversations require manager involvement, many other parts can be automated to make them less time intensive. 

Performance management tools like SuperBeings even make it easier to hold 1:1 conversations easily with guided templates, automated scheduling and AI recommended talking points. Click here to see how it is done

3. Lack of accuracy and motivation

51% of employees believe that annual reviews are inaccurate

53% say it does not motivate them 

Two-thirds of performance management systems fail to recognize high performers

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Third, being a manual approach, most performance management tools follow an annual cadence or frequency. They generally focus on annual reviews and appraisals and rarely have any mid-point check-ins.

SUPER TIP — Check out free SuperBeings Playbooks on how to conduct weekly, monthly, quarterly performance check-ins. 

Moreover, the lack of accuracy in employee evaluation leads to low levels of motivation and engagement for the employees resulting in negative trends of high turnover, absenteeism, lower productivity rates, etc.  

98% of businesses believe performance management is important. Only 64% say they have an effective approach to it

This clearly indicates that the traditional performance management process that relies on only human interventions and an annual approach is broken and requires fixing. 

Now let’s explore how. 

Reinventing performance management with performance management tools

Fixing the traditional performance management approach, requires aligning performance management with the dynamic market realities and changing employee expectations. 

Organizations today need to focus on consistent performance tracking and management with continuous feedback and communication, backed with integration across teams and a focus on regularly gauging employee pulse. 

While it is true that a lean human resource structure of a fast growing organization may not be able to realize all these, adoption of the right performance management software can help take the leap. Even research shows that such transformation is already on the cards.

‍81% of HR leaders are making changes to performance management

70% organizations are either updating or have currently reviewed their performance management systems 

One of the major changes that most high growth organizations are advocating is the adoption of a performance management software.

The right performance management software enables fast growing organizations to go beyond performance tracking to focus on each aspect of the employee lifecycle to create a high performance culture. An efficient performance management tool help organizations to:

• ‍Know their teams better with personalized assessments and gauge individual strengths to manage performance of each team member more effectively.
• Facilitate continuous performance management and engagement by conducting powerful and goal driven 1:1 conversations based on individual performance insights.
• ‍Track performance trends over time and access a detailed history of performance at any time to eliminate any form of biases and compare performance over time

Check how SuperBeings can help you supercharge your team’s performance with its all-in-one performance management tool. Book a free demo today 

Impact and ROI of performance management tools 

Now that the importance of performance management software has been established and there is a clear understanding how the same can help fast growing organizations, let’s explore the impact it can create with its diverse use cases. 

1. Better understanding of employee strengths

41% of team members who are aware of their strengths show lower absenteeism

The right performance management software can help organizations understand each team member and identify their strengths. These strengths can then become the basis for work delegation to ensure that the tasks allocated to employees are aligned with their strengths, interests and workstyles. They are able to create greater value because the work allocated to them motivates them. 

2. Effective output measurement

Measuring output or outcomes also becomes more efficient with performance management tools. With high levels of progress and evaluation transparency, performance snapshots, it can help measure the output for each team member as well as the organization as a whole. This makes it easy for managers to gauge whether the targets have been met or not, as well as, to acknowledge and appreciate those who made it possible. 

3. Streamlined goal management

Goal setting is extremely important for creating a high performance culture. The right performance management software can facilitate end-to-end goal management for your fast growing organization. 

Not only will it enable you to set goals in an actionable manner based on employee personality assessment and organizational needs, but you can also track progress daily, integrate goal progress with 1:1 check-ins to preempt risks to goal achievement and address them in real time. Furthermore, it can facilitate accountability for goal achievement as well. 

‍14% of individuals have goals and are 10 times more successful than those without goals. The 3% with written goals are 3 times more successful than the 14% with unwritten goals.

Performance management tools also help document the goals to facilitate goal visualization and transparency. 

4. Effective 1:1 meetings

Performance management software enables organizations to conduct 1:1 meetings more effectively. While most managers believe that 1:1 meetings are critical for performance improvement, they generally struggle with making the conversations meaningful. The right performance management tools can help managers gauge employee pulse and get employee performance related data points along with guided AI driven templates to augment effectiveness.  

‍70% of managers leverage 1:1 meetings to understand and eliminate roadblocks in performance

Effective 1:1 meetings can facilitate a high performance culture. According to a study, employees who do have regular 1:1 meetings with their managers are 3 times more likely to be engaged. Thus, this creates a clear case for return on investment for performance management tools. 

5. Greater engagement

As performance management tools also enable organizations to adopt a continuous approach to performance management, employees are able to share their perspectives more often, participation is higher and engagement becomes more pronounced. On the flip side, only 8% of organizations say annual appraisals add val­ue. 

‍Highly engaged business units achieve 59% less turnover

This greater engagement with performance management software leads to effective business impact, with a realization of return on investment. 

Employees who feel their voices are heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work.

6. Frequent feedback

Companies that implement regular employee feedback have turnover rates that are 14.9% lower than for employees who receive no feedback

‍Continuous performance management also empowers organizations to provide frequent feedback, and in real time. Under annual performance management, organizations tend to provide feedback only once a year, which doesn’t create a pronounced impact. Continuous feedback on the other hand enables organizations to preempt risks in real time and address the same before they turn into performance issues or challenges. 

‍Companies that do regular strengths-based feedback have ~15% lower staff turnover and the ROI from increasing feedback is at least 8x

Furthermore, there is significant data to support how continuous feedback leads to a return on investment for performance management software — 63% of Gen Z employees  say they want to hear timely, constructive performance feedback throughout the year. 

7. Real time recognition

80% of Gen Y say they prefer on-the-spot recognition over formal reviews 

Another impact that translates into ROI for performance management tools focuses on the ability to offer real time recognition. Conventionally, organizations wait till the end of year to review employee performance and celebrate a job well done. However, instant recognition and appreciation is seen to have a more pronounced impact. 

Performance management tools help organizations to acknowledge good performance in real time, leading to reduced attrition and a better employee experience. For instance, 36% of employees leave organizations due to lack of recognition. 

8. Performance tracking over time

Traditionally, performance management is seen to be a one time affair and there is seldom any tracking over time to gauge trends. However, performance management tools help organizations track employee performance over time, generate insights and trends and work towards bridging the gaps. 

It can enable organizations to maintain a comprehensive record of employee performance, at one centralized location, without adding burden to people managers. Thus, a clear ROI of performance management tools comes from the ability to get a holistic picture of performance improvement over years, than a simple siloed one. (Keep reading to see how you can save minimum Rs. 60,000 per year, per employee by implementing the right performance management tools) 

9. Focus on 360 degree review

More than 85% of all the Fortune 500 companies use the 360 degree feedback process

Finally, the traditional performance management approach due to its reliance on manual methods focused only on performance reviews and management from the direct report or manager. 

Leveraging technology and automation, performance management software enables organizations to focus on 360 performance management. This is especially crucial for fast growing organizations. 360 degree performance review can help organizations gauge the performance and impact of the employee beyond the allocated tasks towards overall organizational success. 

How to calculate ROI for performance management software

The impact or the ROI in qualitative terms that performance management tools can help organizations achieve is very evident. However, putting a business hat on, it is important for organizations to also understand how to calculate the ROI in more quantitative terms. 

Based on interactions with many fast growing organizations, we have identified the top metrics that organizations can employ to calculate the ROI of performance management software. 

1. Time saved for employees and managers

Organizations can start by calculating the time saved for both employees and managers. With the power of automation, managers don’t have to repeatedly spend time gauging employee performance as well as getting feedback on performance. 

Similarly, for employees, the time spent in self reflection and opinion on the organizations can be significantly reduced with daily pulse surveys which take less time and have a higher rate of completion. 

Therefore, ROI can be calculated by taking into account the time saved in administrative tasks for employees and managers towards performance management by leveraging automation. You can also take this calculation in monetary terms.

ROI of PMS = Time saved in hours X Hourly cost to company for the manager/employee

‍For instance, if you save 5 hours a month, that is a total of 60 hours a year, and if the hourly compensation for your manager is INR 1000 an hour, you end up saving:

‍60X1000= INR 60,000 per year for each manager

2. Reduced rate and cost of turnover

Secondly, performance management tools also facilitate real time feedback, recognition as well as engagement. All these factors have a direct impact on employee retention. Therefore, the next metric to calculate ROI of performance management software is to gauge how it has contributed to reducing the rate of voluntary turnover. Invariably, the reduced rate of turnover will have a direct impact on the cost.

Thus, ROI of performance management tools can also be calculated on the basis of cost savings that might have been incurred due to high turnover. 

You can translate this in monetary terms too. Research shows that the average cost of attrition for each employee can range from 50%-250% of his/her annual salary.  The cost of attrition depends on the leadership position, experience and institutional knowledge.

Salary of employee= INR 10,00,000

% cost for attrition= 200%

Total cost of attrition= 10,00,000 X 200% = INR  20,00,000  

3. Saved bandwidth for HR and people management teams

When it comes to performance management, the human resources and people management teams are often too stretched because of managing all the spreadsheets, responses and follow ups. 

However, with the adoption of a performance management software, automation can help these teams to take care of many repetitive tasks and open their bandwidth to focus on augmenting employee experience.

Therefore, another ROI area to consider is around how much time the performance management software is able to free up for people managers to enable them to focus on adding value to employee lifecycle.  

4. Reduced absenteeism and greater engagement

Next, if you want to calculate the ROI for performance management tools, measure the level of absenteeism and engagement since the adoption. You will see reduced absenteeism as employees will be more engaged and motivated towards their work. Invariably, there will be a reduction in days off, leading to a greater business impact.

‍To calculate the ROI here, compare the level or rate of absenteeism before and after adoption of the performance management software. Further, calculate how this reduced absenteeism leads to better productivity and output across the organization. 

Final Thoughts

Overall, if you take a macro view, there are several avenues which can help you gauge the return on investment of using a performance management software. It can help you to not only track performance effectively, but augment levels of engagement, motivation, productivity as well as reduce absenteeism and voluntary turnover. Putting numbers to all of these will help you measure it against the cost of the performance management software to understand the benefits and ROI greatly outweigh the costs. 

Like what you read? Book a free demo with SuperBeings today and see these in action!

Suggested Reading

8 point checklist to find the best performance management software

Complete guide to continuous performance management

References

https://learning.linkedin.com/

https://www.octanner.com/insights/white-papers.html

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236366/right-culture-not-employee-satisfaction.aspx

https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/flexjobs-mha-mental-health-workplace-pandemic/

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/human-capital-trends/2014/hc-trends-2014-performance-management.html

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-relations/pages/performance-reviews-are-dead.aspx

https://www.shrm.org/

https://www.workhuman.com/

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-11-19-gartner-says-81--of-hr-leaders-are-changing-their-org

https://www.wtwco.com/en-US

https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ar/Documents/human-capital/arg_hc_global-human-capital-trends-2014_09062014%20(1).pdf

https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/147383/secret-higher-performance.aspx#:~:text=In%20one%20study%20of%2065%2C672,for%20job%20type%20and%20tenure)

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/failure-drives-innovation-according-to-ey-survey-on-gen-z-300714436.html

https://www.eliinc.com/wp-content/uploads/eli-millenials-workplace-infographic.pdf

https://www.achievers.com/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackzenger/2016/03/10/how-effective-are-your-360-degree-feedback-assessments/?sh=76e41497a690

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There are two reasons why many managers overlook employee engagement survey comments — one, the numbers aren’t big and two, most comments are negative in nature. However, this should not act as a deterrent, rather it should be a motivator to focus more on engagement survey comments to get a more comprehensive picture of employee experience. 

In this article, we will help you understand —

• why employee pulse survey comments are important, 
• how you can review them to facilitate success with a few examples
• some tips on how to encourage your employees to write actionable comments

Importance of employee engagement survey comments

To understand how to use the employee engagement survey comments well, you and your leadership must be convinced about the importance of the same. Here are the top three reasons why employee pulse survey comments matter:

1) Better understanding of employee sentiment

Normally, you might simply put a question with a few options based on a rating scale for your employees to gauge their pulse. While this approach will help you get a quantitative understanding for many questions, for others it may lead to a lot of ambiguity, especially if the answer is not in favor of a pleasant experience.

Here, providing a section for employee engagement survey comments can give you a better context and a background to the survey responses. Quantitative analysis can help you understand what the employees are feeling as well as why they are feeling so. Employee pulse survey comments can help bridge this gap. 

2) Immediate action

Second, one of the main objectives of gauging employee pulse is to understand the problems and address them by taking action. The quantitative part of an employee engagement survey can effectively help in determining where to start from.

For instance, if employees rate the wellness lower on the scale, you may want to focus your energy on augmenting the wellness initiatives and commitment for your organization. However, wellness itself is a very broad segment and you cannot achieve everything at one. Employee pulse survey comments can help you get a particular starting point to take immediate action. 

2) Avenue for open communication

Finally, no matter how comprehensive your survey is, chances are that you might end up overlooking a few parameters or factors that are relevant to a few employees. The inability to offer their perspectives on factors that matter to them may lead to a poor survey experience. 

On the flip side, employee pulse survey comments provide an avenue for open communication where your team members can communicate what they feel, leading to greater inclusion of diverse employee voices, where each employee feels heard. 

How to review employee engagement survey comments?

Once you have conducted an engagement or pulse survey and have access to employee engagement survey comments, you need to review them to generate insights. Following are a few practices that organizations with high employee engagement scores leverage to review their employee pulse survey comments effectively: 

Step I - Don’t start with comments directly

While you may be enticed to start reading the comments directly, to ensure an effective review. Don’t start with them. You must understand that the employee engagement survey comments seek to help you get a better context of the trend being observed by the quantitative responses. However, if you directly start with them, you might have a biased understanding of the trend. 

Step II - Take a comprehensive view

Second, to make your review productive, ensure that you take a comprehensive view of all the comments and don’t get fixated with a few comments (or only the positive / negative ones). While each comment matters, creating an organizational trend on just a couple of them is the best practice. It is wise to collect all comments at one place and review them together to get the big picture. 

SuperBeings helps HRs and managers have a comments dashboard which is separate from the survey results and lists all comments in one place. It gives managers the option to filter comments further by time, employee sentiment, area of focus and teams.

Want to see how it looks for your team? Get in touch with our experts and book a free trial

Step III - Don’t be defensive

This is the most crucial part of analyzing employee engagement survey comments. You must be realistic and prepared to receive a few negative comments, especially if the survey is anonymous. Don’t take those comments personally or as an attack on your work. Treat them as constructive feedback. Furthermore, if the comment is negative, don’t try to identify the author of the same. Take each comment as a data point to fine tune your action plans.

Best practices to utilize the insights from survey comments

Once you have reviewed the employee pulse survey comments, it is easy to generate insights from them that will become the foundation for you to take action and create impact. Based on our experience with fast growing organizations, here are a best practices to utilize insights from your employee engagement survey comments:

1) Use comments to create action items

As mentioned above, don’t start your review process with comments. Decide the top focus areas based on survey results. Once your focus areas are decided, insights from the employee engagement survey comments should come in. 

Use these comments to create the immediate action items for the focus areas. These can either be the exact actions you are planning to implement or illustrative actions to show your commitment to the focus area. Either way, employee engagement survey comments will play an important role in creating an effective and employee-centric action plan.

SUPER TIP — Before you proceed to analyze engagement survey comments, decode the overall employee survey results with this quick guide

2) Leverage comments while communicating results

Second, when you are communicating the results, use the insights from employee engagement survey comments to substantiate your findings. This way your results will be better received by the team members because they will feel their voice is being heard and heeded to. Also, when comments back your data driven results, it creates a story and humanizes them for a greater level of connection. 

3) Increase participation by quick acknowledgement

Analyzing survey responses and implementing actions may take some time for the organization. Meanwhile, in the absence of immediate acknowledgement, employees sometimes feel that their responses are lost and of no use. This mindset reduces employee participation rates in surveys the next time. 

SuperBeings successfully eliminates the dilemma by giving managers the option to quickly acknowledge every comment rightly after it is received. 

Acknowledging with a simple response such as — 

• “Thank you for your feedback. Let me see what we can do about it” or
• “Thank you for mentioning this. Let’s connect 1:1 to solve this”

— can do wonders for participation.

Try this out, here

Examples of employee engagement survey comments

If you have been focusing on only quantitative surveys till now, you might have a hard time visualizing what employee engagement survey comments look like. We have captured below a few examples to give you a fair idea:

Positive/ Appreciative survey comment example

• I believe collaborating with the team is seamless, everyone takes equal ownership which makes achieving our goal easy.
• The focus on mental wellness, especially in times of uncertainty, has been something I am thankful for with paid time off, collaboration with wellness platforms, etc.
• There are multiple learning and development opportunities available, including partnership with e-learning platforms, mentorship and coaching. 

Negative/ Constructive survey comment example

• I think there needs to be more focus on alignment and expectation setting to ensure that everyone is on the same page towards collective success. 
• We need to rethink our office design to ensure greater openness and natural light along with better ventilation.
• It would be nice to receive more recognition/appreciation for the effort put even when there’s a delay in seeing results.

Top 4 tips to write employee engagement survey comments

If you look closely, there are some common elements to each of the examples shared above which help make an employee engagement survey comment effective for action. But as a manager, it is important to remember that when you introduce the comments section in your survey, communicate to your team members why it is important. 

Furthermore, if you share a few tips on how they can form their employee engagement survey comments, it will help you during the review and action phase. Here are a few tips you can take reference from:

1. Focus on a specific subject

First, since your employee engagement survey comments section will be aligned with specific questions, you should encourage your employees to focus their comments on that particular subject. This will ensure that all relevant comments for a particular question can be clubbed together, instead of playing a game to match the comment. 

2. Define why it matters

Second, the comments which actually have an impact and are able to make it to the action plan are those which highlight why they matter or the potential impact. For instance, if the comment is talking about greater focus on wellness, encourage your employees to create a case of the potential impact of wellness on the organization. Seeing a potential impact will make the comment a direct business case. 

3. Offer a solution

Third, motivate your employees to offer a solution to the challenge or issue as well instead of commenting out of emotion. This can become the foundation for taking action. The idea is to encourage them to share how they would solve or address the particular matter at hand. 

4. Keep it short

Finally, you must communicate the importance of keeping the employee engagement survey comments short and crisp. While they should contain all that is important, very long comments can sometimes lose effectiveness and go off track. 

Receive many such actionable tips and AI recommendations to make the most out of your survey comments with SuperBeings. Book a free demo

Suggested Reading

Custom employee engagement survey 101 

How to use employee engagement survey results

How to find the best employee engagement survey tool

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Unfortunately, even with the rising popularity of the OKR framework in recent years, many managers struggle to conduct a successful OKR progress review. The confusion stems from the lack of specificity around what should be included in weekly, monthly and quarterly OKR reviews. As a result they end up being another unsuccessful performance meeting.

In this article, we will cover —

• the best practices for periodic OKR progress review meetings, 
• what you should include, 
• how often you should have these meetings, and
• a template of questions you can explore with your team members.

Merits and process of OKR progress review

An OKR progress review is essential to gauge and track performance against each objective and key result and eventually, identify enablers and blockers to accelerate progress. You cannot simply set OKRs and then forget about them. 

Especially, in a fast growing organization, where processes are being set and things are dynamic, you need to conduct OKR progress reviews to ensure everything is on track. Your OKR progress review must be in the form of regular check-ins. Based on the frequency, each type of check-in will have a specific objective, agenda and next steps. 

One of the most effective ways has been to schedule your OKR progress review in three cycles. 

• First schedule weekly check-ins to maintain continuity and encourage real time updates. 
• Second, you must have quarterly check-ins to get a more expansive view on performance progress and other aspects.
• Finally, set annual check-ins to facilitate OKR grading and setting new OKRs. 

Through the course of this article, we will cover diverse aspects of each of these forms of OKR check-in that you can leverage to ensure OKR success for your organization.

Want to know more about OKRs? Enroll in our free 10 day OKR email course today!

OKR progress review phase 1: Weekly OKR check-in

Let’s start with the most frequent form of check-in in the OKR cycle, the weekly OKR check-in. You might think that “we will hardly accomplish anything in a week, so what’s the point?” Well, as a part of the OKR progress review, weekly check-ins are integral to ensure continuous alignment and transparency within the team and set collective priorities and reflect on the performance on a regular basis. 

The objective of a weekly check-in is to keep everyone focused and on track. These review meetings are generally short and specific in nature. 

Weekly OKR check-in: Before the meeting

Before you go into the meeting, you must reflect on the week before and ensure that you:

• Set a regular cadence beforehand and inform everyone in the team
• Have a clear agenda that you seek to address
• Are clear on the progress made along different objectives
• Answer questions around satisfaction with the progress, priorities for next week, key challenges etc.
• Set a robust OKR framework that you will use in the meeting and ensure that the same is communicated to everyone. 

You can divide your OKR progress review framework into three parts. 

1. Collect the facts

In the first one, focus on getting the facts together. This refers to having a clear view of what you were able to achieve, was it upto the mark, etc. 

2. Reflect and learn

In the second segment, you should focus on reflection to understand your learnings from the week before. Here throwing light on what went well, what requires more effort is important. 

3. Plan and execute

In the final part, you need to point your attention towards creating an action plan for the coming week. This should not only focus on what needs to be done, but also who will be doing it and how it will get measured.

Weekly OKR check-in: During the meeting

Once all the preparation is in place, you need to ensure that you run the meeting in a way that is effective and fruitful. Here are a few tips to achieve the same:

• Limit the duration of your meeting to 15-20 minutes and moderate it well to ensure that the conversation doesn’t get derailed. Make a conscious effort to stick to the framework. Any side conversations can be continued between smaller groups.
• Drive collective participation along each segment of your framework. Invite quick reflections on the performance of the week before and priorities for the next one. Leverage diverse views and perspectives to make your OKRs achievement impactful. Try to drive consensus on the OKRs for the next week. 
• Ensure that you end the meeting with some key takeaways and a robust plan for the next week. Also, keep an eye out for those who might not be actively participating in the OKR progress review and engage them to ensure collective action.

Weekly OKR check-in: After the meeting

To end the meeting with an action plan and to not follow it up with execution is all but a waste of time. To avoid landing in such a situation, you must follow up every meeting with:

• A communication on the next steps with a clear responsibility for each team member
• Clear visibility into the daily OKR progress by using the right platform

An OKR progress review meeting held on a weekly basis which follows this process will enable you to take action and achieve your OKRs in a very strategic manner. In addition to reflection and planning, you can also use the weekly OKR check-ins to celebrate some small or big achievements for your team and act as a source of motivation. 

SUPER TIP — Never miss a chance to motivate your employees. Try these quick tips in your next OKR progress review meeting.

OKR progress review phase 2: Quarterly OKR check-in

While your weekly check-ins as a part of your OKR progress review are limited to intra-team participation and will yield the best results when members within the team are involved, quarterly OKR check-ins work best in a company-wide manner. 

Quarterly reviews can help you get a comprehensive view on OKR progress across the organization and the level of achievement for each team and department. 

Quarterly OKR check-in: Before the meeting

Even before you conduct the meeting, you need to undertake certain activities to ensure that your quarterly OKR progress review is a success. You must:

• Set a date for the meeting well in advance which suits teams across the organization. Ensure that the date doesn’t fall in between a very busy period or on an official day off, because rescheduling can create a lot of friction. 
• Have an agenda which clearly mentions when OKRs for each team will be discussed, along with other aspects of common discussion.
• Encourage every team to have an OKR presentation ready in a similar format to have a strategic conversation on reflections and next steps in a time effective manner.

While there are several templates or structures you can encourage your teams to use, having a simple one like below can be very effective:

1. Recap of the progress

Quickly offer data points and insights into what has been achieved and the team’s view on their achievements. This should focus on sharing the percentage progress for each OKR as well as whether the team is satisfied with the achievement or other aspects of the performance. 

2. Reflect on the efforts and initiatives

Each OKR is accompanied by initiatives that the team or the organization will take to achieve the OKR. The next part of the presentation should focus on the team sharing the key initiatives they undertook and what worked well and what did not. 

3. Discuss the learnings and next steps

Finally, the teams must present what they learnt from the OKR cycle in the previous quarter and how they seek to apply those learnings in the quarter to come. Here the OKR retrospective is important to gauge what the team should start/stop/continue doing and all the best ways to add effectiveness to the whole OKR process. This could include focus on better OKR writing or implementation, more frequent reviews, etc. 

SUPER TIP — While preparing the presentations, encourage your teams to give context and use terminology which members from other teams can understand to drive discussion and not just a monologue.

Quarterly OKR check-in: During the meeting

When the date of the OKR progress meeting comes at the end of the quarter, there are a few ways that you can conduct the meeting to make it impactful and results-driven:

• Follow the agenda and give each team enough time to share their presentation on the level of OKR achievement.
• Leave enough time at the end of the presentations to invite comments, suggestions, feedback and opinions across teams.   
• One of the best practices is to drive constructive feedback to help teams figure out alternative initiatives to facilitate better OKR achievement. Furthermore, as someone conducting the meeting, you should create a safe space where all team members are able to share their opinions irrespective of their level.
• Encourage different teams to ask the right questions about the process, enablers, blockers, achievements, etc. to gauge deeper insights. The right questions can spark a lot of critical thought and help you move towards better OKR achievement. 

15 questions to ask during quarterly OKR progress review meeting 

Quarterly OKR check-in: After the meeting

After conducting a robust and discussion driven meeting, your next focus must be on collating all the notes for post meeting action. As a best practice, you must —

• Gather all key takeaways in one document and share it with the entire organization
• Leverage OKR solutions like SuperBeings to communicate the next steps and OKRs for the next quarter as well as to keep all your meeting notes in one place
• Closely track everyday OKR progress in an integrated dashboard, supported by automated reporting 

Once the meeting is over, your teams will focus on creating or refining their OKRs for the next quarter. You should focus on preparing for your next OKR progress review meeting to make it more impactful than the previous one. 

OKR progress review phase 3: Annual OKR check-in

In the final segment of the OKR progress review, we will talk about the annual check-in or the one which happens once every year to help you reflect on the year-long performance of your organization towards OKRs and plan for the next year. 

Annual OKR check-ins are important for the OKRs that you seek to achieve over the year. While there will be some OKRs that have a short term focus and those will likely be achieved in a quarter or two. However, the final status of annual OKRs can only be sought after the end of the year. 

The process of preparation for the annual progress review meeting is similar to the quarterly review. Here are a few best practices you must keep in mind:

• Track the progress for each OKR for every quarter and understand the progress/stalling for each quarter
• Gauge what went well for each quarter, not just from an OKR perspective but other factors like market conditions impacting the same
• Leverage OKR grading template to measure the level of OKR success 
• Reflect comprehensively on the performance and plan OKRs for the next year. 

More often than not, your OKRs will be set for every quarter and you can use your annual OKR progress review meeting as a culmination point to gauge everything achieved during the year. The idea is to understand and illustrate how the achievement of diverse OKRs throughout the year has resulted in getting closer towards the vision or the overall goals of your organization. 

Final Thoughts

If you see OKR progress review as unnecessary, you need to think again. Since OKR success is driven by execution, regular check-ins are integral to ensure that everything is on track and you are able to monitor progress. 

OKR progress review can also enable you to motivate your employee and address any challenges that they may have in achieving the OKRs. Having a partner like SuperBeings can help accelerate this process. With SuperBeings, you can:

• Motivate and engage your employees by creating goal transparency within and across teams
• Keep everyone on track with real-time insights into day-to-day OKR progress
• Resolve performance issues preemptively
• Get guided templates for managers to conduct successful weekly, quarterly, annual OKR check-ins
• Keep an eye on key OKR status as well as compare progress over time
• Automate OKR progress reports, check-ins and leverage AI recommendations

Like what you read? Now see this in action. Book a free demo today

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How can employee engagement impact business results?

This has been one of the most pressing questions for people managers in the last two decades, leading organizations to experiment with new employee engagement initiatives.

As a result, the use of an employee engagement software has also seen an upward trend, considering the many advantages it brings along. 

However, many organizations struggle to navigate the best way to calculate and illustrate the return on investment or ROI of using an employee engagement software. 

Through the course of this article, we seek to establish a case for employee engagement and the relevance of an employee engagement software to streamline all efforts. We will also share the best practices to gauge and measure the ROI of an employee engagement software to create a sustained business case. 

Why should you focus on employee engagement?

Before moving on to discussing the impact and ROI of an employee engagement software, let’s first take a quick look on why employee engagement matters. 

Despite several benefits and advantages of employee engagement, research shows that only 36% of employees are engaged in the workplace. There are many reasons why it is so. For instance,

• A lack of concentrated efforts towards augmenting engagement levels
• Most of the initiatives are ad-hoc and don’t have a long term focus to change the engagement score. 
• Most organizations adopt a conventional approach to engagement which relies only on manual interventions and efforts, making engagement efforts ineffective or inefficient at times.

For a long time, the usage of employee engagement software has been limited. Fortunately, as more and more people managers understand the effectiveness of such a specific software, the adoption rate is increasing. 

It is quite evident that unless employees feel engaged, motivated and driven at work, encouraging them to give their 100% becomes extremely difficult. Focusing on employee engagement not only leads to a pleasant employee experience, but also results in business impact across a variety of factors.

In the following section, we will discuss how an employee engagement software can help organizations create an impact and augment its ROI.

How does an employee engagement software create impact?

The right employee engagement platform can help organizations concentrate all their engagement efforts in one direction and focus on driving results. It aims to enable organizations to get a hold of employee sentiments, benefit from actionable insights, provide templates for meaningful interactions and much more to move the engagement needle.

Here are a few ways in which an employee engagement tool can facilitate high levels of engagement —

1. Gauge employee pulse to align purpose for employees

Employees who find a passion and purpose at work are more than 3 times as likely to stay with their organizations than those who don't.  

An employee engagement software can enable organizations measure employee pulse on a regular basis. Gauging employee sentiment annually or bi-anuallly seldom gives a complete picture. 

This results in a disconnect between employees and the organization, where employees find it difficult to find a purpose at work. 

A constant interaction powered by the right engagement software can help address this challenge to enable greater levels of engagement and subsequently retention. Furthermore, it helps managers know each team member on an individual level and facilitate personalized growth and development, conversations and much more. 

2. Clarity of expectations

65% of employees with clearly defined responsibilities are more engaged.

Second, the tool can help gauge whether or not employees have a clarity on what is expected out of them. When there is a clarity of expectations on the tasks and delegation of responsibilities, employees have a fair idea of what they have to do and are able to work in a structured and meaningful manner. This clarity has a direct impact on engagement.

3. Better recognition

71% of highly engaged organizations recognize their employees for jobs well done.

Third, an effective employee engagement software can enable organizations to recognize employee efforts in real time. Often, what is out of sight is out of mind and most employees, especially, among the millennials and Gen Z prefer on the spot recognition and appreciation. 

Using an employee engagement software is an easy and quick way to gauge daily employee pulse and reflect on the performance to celebrate efforts and results in real time, which leads to greater sense of belongingness and motivation.

SUPER TIP — Here’s everything you need to know to build a culture of recognition

4. Improved 1:1 conversations

43% of highly engaged employees receive feedback at least once a week.

Fourth, high levels of engagement are not only founded on better recognition but also on 1:1 conversations between managers and their team members. 

However, following a manual approach, feedback is often sporadic and managers seldom have insights and guidance on conducting meaningful 1:1 conversations. Moreover, with manual approach often there is no history of 1:1 conversations for retrospective trend analysis.

An employee engagement software can take care of all these factors to facilitate engagement. By gauging pulse on a regular basis, it can provide managers with the right insights to offer continuous feedback. 

Employee engagement software also helps managers with AI recommended guided 1:1 conversation templates to navigate conversations in a way that can inspire confidence, augment engagement and preempt risks of attrition. 

Check out how SuperBeings can take your 1:1 conversations to the next level. Get a 21 day free trial today!

What is the ROI of using an employee engagement tool?

Based on the ways mentioned above, an employee engagement tool can create measurable impact across different business impact areas. 

1. Improves quality of work

Chances of errors by disengaged workers increase by 60%. 

An employee engagement software which helps organizations motivate their employees and recognize them on a regular basis has a direct impact on the quality of work.  When employees have a poor sense of motivation or are disengaged, they are less likely to give in their 100% and their work is vulnerable to error or poor quality. 

A tool that facilitates real time appreciation and feedback can mitigate this disengagement challenge and improve the quality of work and output.  

SUPER TIP — Not sure how to select an employee engagement tool? Use this 12 point checklist to find the best solution for you

2. Facilitates a strong company culture

77% of employees say that a strongly engaged culture makes them do their best work.

If you look closely, employee engagement has a direct impact on organizational culture. When employees are highly engaged they foster a positive work culture that facilitates high levels of performance and motivation. 

On the flip side, the culture of an organization has a direct impact on engagement levels as well.

Either way, an employee engagement software can help you create an ecosystem of open communication, recognition, real time feedback which leads to an empowering culture and high level of engagement which are interlinked and interdependent.

High levels of engagement fueling a high performance culture also has an impact on the organization’s bottom line. 

Companies with a thriving corporate culture achieve over 4x higher revenue growth.

SUPER TIP — Download our free PDF guide on building a high performing work culture and get all your culture questions answered

3. Creates a strong employer brand

Employee referrals are 4x more likely to be hired and referral employees are more profitable for their employers by 25%.

An employee engagement software can help organizations gauge how likely their employees are to recommend their place of work to their peers and those in their network. 

Keeping employees engaged enabled organizations to have a high eNPS which increases the referrals for any organization. Invariably, this leads to better quality and number of referrals which often results in greater impact on the bottom line. 

4. Leads to customer satisfaction

Companies with high employee engagement had 89% greater customer satisfaction and 50% higher customer loyalty.

Finally, an employee engagement software can help managers know about their team members in real time and preempt any risks which might have an impact on customer experience and satisfaction. Be it low levels of motivation or the risk of sudden turnover, an employee engagement tool can enable the organization to gauge all such challenges before they surface to ensure they are addressed proactively with the right conversations. 

Preemptive risk management and AI driven guided conversations can facilitate engagement led customer satisfaction. 

Which parameters can help measure the ROI of an employee engagement software?

While we have comprehensively discussed the impact that an employee engagement tool can entail for an organization, it is important to look at the metrics which can help organizations calculate the ROI of using the tool as well.

As any important business decision, investment in an employee engagement software must be backed with data driven returns to facilitate long term commitment. 

Here are a few ways you can calculate the ROI of their employee engagement tool to create a business case:

1. Attrition

Only 37% of engaged employees are looking for new job opportunities, while 73% of disengaged employees and 56% of unengaged employees are seeking new jobs. 

One of the key benefits of using an employee engagement software is to create a feeling of belongingness for employees towards their workplace. This eventually leads to greater retention and reduced voluntary turnover. 

To calculate the ROI of an employee engagement software, you can start by measuring the decrease in attrition after the adoption of the tool. It is also worthwhile to calculate the total cost of hiring and onboarding new employees to replace the old ones. 

You can translate this in monetary terms too. Research shows that the average cost of attrition for each employee can range from 50%-250% of his/her annual salary.  The cost of attrition depends on the leadership position, experience and institutional knowledge.

2. Productivity

Highly engaged workforce have 21% higher profitability. They also have 17% higher productivity than companies with a disengaged workforce.

There is enough evidence to support that when employees are highly engaged, they are more productive, leading to greater profitability and outcomes. Therefore, the next parameter to measure the ROI of an employee engagement software would be to gauge levels of productivity. 

Depending on the business vertical, measuring productivity can have different metrics. For instance, marketing can be measured on the basis of leads generated or traffic attracted, while sales can be measured based on leads converted. To get an accurate sense of the ROI of an employee engagement tool, it is important to ensure that organizations choose the right productivity metrics. 

3. eNPS

One of the final metrics that deserves recognition for calculating the ROI of an employee engagement tool is the eNPS or the employee net promoter score. eNPS refers to the likelihood of an employee referral to those in their network to work for their organization.

It goes without saying that only when employees feel engaged, happy and satisfied at work will they refer the place to others. 

Therefore, conducting an employee pulse survey to gauge the eNPS can be a great ROI indicator. An upward trend in the same illustrates the positive ROI of the employee engagement software.

4. Absenteeism

Businesses with engaged employees experience 41% less absenteeism. Thriving employees have 53% fewer missed days due to health issues.

The next metric to calculate the ROI of an engagement software should focus on absenteeism or missed days. There are several reasons why employees take time off, while some of them are legitimate, others may signal disengagement at different levels. 

Disengagement can also lead to employee burnout which adds to time off due to health issues. However, the right employee engagement tool can help organizations preempt indicators of absenteeism in advance and address them proactively. Thus, ROI can be calculated on the basis of a decrease in absenteeism and greater active participation at work. 

Conclusion

As we come to an end of this discussion, it is evident that organizations can leverage employee engagement software not only to attract and retain the top talent in their industry, but to also directly impact their bottom line in a positive manner. 

An effective and comprehensive employee engagement tool can help organizations know their team strengths, gain actionable insights on employee engagement drivers, and guide managers through meaningful 1:1 conversations. 

To correctly measure different aspects of employee engagement, enable managers to grow and augment participation across the engagement lifecycle — book a free demo with SuperBeings today.

Suggested Reading

How to choose the right employee engagement tool

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References

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236927/employee-engagement-drives-growth.aspx

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/opinion/sunday/why-you-hate-work.html

https://www.mercer.us/our-thinking/career/global-talent-hr-trends.html

https://www.benefitnews.com/

https://www.insidermedia.com/blogs/north-west/business-matters-disengaged-employees-60-more-likely-to-make-mistakes-compared-with-their-engaged-colleagues

https://cultureiq.com/blog/company-culture-employee-engagement-statistics/

https://www.kornferry.com/insights/this-week-in-leadership/measures-for-success

https://learning.linkedin.com/content/dam/me/learning/en-us/pdfs/lil-workbook-calculating-cost-of-employee-attrition-and-disengagement.pdf 

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236351/star-employees-slipping-away.aspx#:~:text=While%2037%25%20of%20engaged%20employees,their%20jobs%2C%20managers%20and%20companies.

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236366/right-culture-not-employee-satisfaction.aspx

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/313067/employees-aren-thriving-business-struggling.aspx

For any growing organization, it is important to ensure that all team members are moving towards collective goals with a strategic approach. However, unless your team members have very clear objectives to work towards and key steps to progress on the same, they will find themselves caught up juggling between multiple priorities.

That’s where leveraging the OKR approach comes in. To ensure goal alignment and performance consistency, you need to adopt a robust OKR process.

To facilitate the same, we have come up with this step by step guide and help you create an OKR process that guarantees results.  

OKR Framework: Meaning and Components

To define the right OKR process for your team, you need to have an effective OKR framework to help you align your efforts towards setting OKRs and achieving results. There are several components that make an OKR framework effective — 

I) Goals and Objectives

In your OKR framework, you need to have a clear sight of the goals and objectives that form the foundation of the OKRs. The goals and objectives can be categorized based on their duration and applicability. 

• First, there are the company-wide goals which directly align with the mission and vision. These are generally for a long-term and all encompassing, i.e. take into account every aspect of the organization. 
• Second, there are mid-term goals which are key milestones that you seek to achieve, as identified from the company-wide goals, usually defined for a year or so.
• Finally, there are short-term goals which are defined for a quarter generally, and are critical for setting the OKRs.

II) Planning and Setting

The second component of the standard OKR framework talks about planning and setting the OKRs for success. This generally involves writing down the OKRs, identifying those responsible for driving them and ensuring effective implementation. 

SUPER TIP — Check out our free templates for setting, implementing and tracking OKRs

III) Review and Reflection

Finally, the third component of the OKR framework talks about review and reflection. This involves connecting regularly to check the status of the OKRs, reviewing achievement at the end of the OKR cycle and reflecting on the next steps.

SUPER TIP — Use highly actionable SuperBeings playbooks to effectively conduct weekly, quarterly and annual OKR check-ins

OKR Process Cycle: Setting and Implementing OKRs 

Now that you have a fair understanding of the OKR process framework and the key components, let’s quickly move to discussing the OKR process cycle. Based on our experience with fast growing organizations, we have created this step by step process to help you set OKRs in the most effective manner with actionable insights — 

1. Writing Effective OKRs

A robust OKR process starts with writing OKRs in an effective manner. If your OKRs are not clearly articulated and written in a way that illustrates your top goals and priorities, your success will be rather limited. Here are a few ways write OKRs effectively — 

Identify long term company wide goals that you seek to achieve or which form an integral part of your vision.

• Divide the larger goals into team specific goals and encourage each to write their own OKRs which align well with the goals allocated to them. The objective is to encourage collective brainstorming and planning.
• Ensure that your OKRs are ambitious, but at the same time achievable. Make them measurable, especially the key results. Many organizations create key results which aren’t quantifiable and face a challenge when it comes to measuring the achievement.
• Validate your OKRs effectively. Adopt a bottom-up approach to gauge if you achieve all your key results, would you have achieved your objective. If not, you need to relook at your OKRs. 

SUPER TIP — Enroll in our free 10 day OKR email course to master the fundamentals of OKRs and get free resources with it

2. Communicating OKRs across the Organization

The second important step in the OKR process is communicating the set OKRs across the organization. Simply creating the OKRs and expecting team members to align their performance with them will not bear any fruit. You need to explicitly communicate/ roll out your OKRs to ensure everyone is on the same page. Effective OKR communication needs to take into account:

Sharing with everyone in the team the identified OKRs along with a list of initiatives and plans to achieve the same.

• Communicating the success stories of OKRs across different organizations to garner buy-in. You will get many such stories here.
• Clearly stating the responsibility and role of each team member to achieve the OKRs.
• Creating organization wide visibility of OKRs by using platforms like SuperBeings to facilitate transparency and collaboration.

If you are able to communicate or roll out your OKRs in an effective manner, your efforts towards achieving the same will increase considerably. Book a free 21 day trial with SuperBeings to set and cascade OKRs effectively

3. Implementing OKRs to drive alignment

As a part of the OKR process, once you have communicated the OKRs and they have been rolled out, it is important to have an effective implementation plan. Implementing OKRs within the OKR process is about ensuring key results have been translated into relevant projects, everyone is aligned and working towards the OKRs. 

Here are a few things to remember while implementing OKRs in your company —

• It is a good idea to start OKR implementation with the onboarding process itself. Have an OKR training module to ensure that everyone is on the same page right from the beginning.
• Have an OKR master or custodian. This person will be responsible for ensuring the OKRs are being implemented effectively and help address any challenges or blockers that come along the way.
• Make it easy to access OKRs. Often employees have to toggle between tools to view the OKRs which results in a situation where what is out of sight is also out of mind. Here, leveraging a platform like SuperBeings to give your employees real time visibility of OKRs in their preferred project management tool can facilitate implementation. The idea is to incorporate OKRs in the flow of work, rather than making it another box in the task list.

These three tips can be a great starting point for you to implement OKRs effectively. We also have an expert curated OKR implementation template that you can leverage to accelerate your OKR process. 

4. Robust Check-ins for OKR Tracking

If you believe that setting and implementing OKRs is all you need to do as a part of your OKR process, you need to pause and think again. Since the OKR process is dynamic, you need to ensure regular check-ins aimed at ensuring OKR tracking. The following best practices can help you with effective OKR tracking — 

• Set a regular cadence to track the progress of your OKRs. Try to make it as frequent as possible without overwhelming the team. Weekly OKR check-ins is a great idea for small teams.
• Focus on different aspects of OKR tracking including the status of achievement, blockers and enablers as well as next steps.
• Keep a broad view on the OKR status and compare progress over time using SuperBeings’ intelligent OKR tracker. It can also help you track daily OKR progress.
• Leverage automated OKR progress reports, check-ins and AI recommendations to take action and not spend time in gathering data. 

OKR tracking based on the foundation of regular check-ins can help you keep your team members aligned to their initiatives and the overall goals and address challenges in real time to avoid any major risk at the end of the OKR cycle. Leverage our OKR tracking template to facilitate your OKR process. 

5. Grading OKRs for Success

The final step in the OKR process that comes at the end of the OKR cycle is grading your OKRs to gauge how successful you have been in achieving them. Grading OKRs is all about measuring the achieving of your objectives based on key results using a scale or spectrum.

The more you feel you have been able to achieve, the closer you will be to the positive end of the scale. Based on OKR grading, you can —

• Ace your regular review cycles with clear data points about OKR performance and uphold accountability.
• Facilitate retrospective OKR analysis to collectively agree on what you need to start/stop/continue doing to achieve your long term goals.
• Decide which OKRs need to be continued for the next OKR cycle and recreate new ones for organizational success. 

As the final part of the OKR process, OKR grading can help you gauge your level of success and help you gear up for the next cycle.  Use this template for quick grading

Improving Employee Performance with a Robust OKR Process

If you follow a robust OKR process, you can improve employee performance with specific, aligned and measurable goals. A continuous approach to OKR review which involves reviewing daily progress and comparing it over time can enable you to encourage better performance across the organization in a variety of ways:

• Identify blockers to OKR achievement in real time, which can hamper performance across teams.
• Review what is working and what is not, before the OKR process cycle ends to realign initiatives.
• Ensure that everyone is on the same page about their expectations and are able to perform and deliver accordingly.

However, this can only be possible when you and your team members have real time visibility into the OKRs as well as their progress.

To achieve the same, you can collaborate with SuperBeings to leverage its unique OKR capabilities. Book a demo today!

Suggested Reading

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