7
min read
Read this article to find out the pros, cons and key features of the 11 best OKR software in the market today along with tips on buying what you need
7
min read
With the growing importance of goal setting and achievement across industries, the implementation of the OKR framework is on the rise. Consequently, most organizations are adopting OKR software to facilitate the process of setting and achieving company goals through Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).
In this article, we seek to help growing organizations make an informed choice when it comes to buying the right OKR software. We will not only discuss the features to look out for, but also give you a comparative analysis of the best OKR software available in the market to decide which is best for your needs.
An OKR software is bound to have multiple features depending on its target users and level of advancement. However, for growing organizations, there are a few features that are a must have and should not be missed, including:
Read: How to choose the right OKR software for a more detailed understanding of how to understand your OKR needs and find a suitable solution
There are several benefits of using an OKR software. Right from helping teams get on the same page, to facilitating greater accountability. Here is a quick snapshot of the possible advantage that OKR software enables:
One of the top benefits of OKR software is that it automates follow ups and nudges with the power of RPA to ensure that everyone regularly updates their progress on each OKR. This helps in grading OKR achievement as well as enables managers to gauge whether or not performance is on track.
Second, OKR software creates goal transparency for all. This way, everyone is able to visualize the goals in the same way and keep track of each other’s performance as well.
An OKR software driven by AI also has the potential to help managers with real time insights. With an integrated dashboard, managers can monitor OKR performance and address any risks or challenges preemptively.
Finally, another benefit of OKR software is that it also has the potential to help managers with OKR coaching which includes setting, monitoring and grading OKRs in the most effective manner. Furthermore, it can help managers align OKRs with 1:1 conversations with their team members via guided templates to ensure productive meetings.
Read: How to calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) of using an OKR software to understand and measure real tangible benefits of OKR tools
Without much ado, let’s quickly explore the top 11 OKR software available in the market today.
Promotes breaking down company objectives into day-to-day projects to drive results
The pricing for SuperBeings starts at $3.00 per user per month, being one of the lowest in the market with the features and capabilities offered. SuperBeings offers a 21 day free trial
Human capital management software focused on OKR based performance management and employee engagement ideal for team with 5+ members
The Team Edition which is ideal for 5-250 employees is priced at $8.00 per user per month when billed annually. For organizations with 250+ employees, pricing is available on request. There is no free trial available. However, you can watch a pre-recorded product video.
Read: ROI of using an OKR software: Why should you invest in OKR tools
People Enablement platform for goals & OKRs management, performance reviews along with employee engagement and 360 feedback support
Leapsome offers modular pricing for its different products which starts at $6.00 per user per month. Demo is available on request.
OKR software integrated with task, performance management, and employee engagement ideal for organizations of any size, free for upto 5 team members
Profit.co is free for upto 5 members. The growth plan is priced at $7.00 per user per month, billed annually and the pricing for the enterprise plan is available on request. There is a 30 days free trial available for the growth plan
Employee engagement and performance management solution focused on goal tracking, reviews and development ideal for teams with 25+ employees
Culture Amp offers three pricing plans dependent on the team size. Self starter for 25-200 employees, standard for 201-999 employees and enterprise for 1000+ employees. The pricing is available on request. Culture Amp doesn’t offer a free trial. However there is a pre-recorded 3 minute product demo
Performance management platform with 1-on-1 tools, performance reviews and OKRs capabilities ideal for any team size
15Five’s pricing starts at $8.00 per user per month and increases to $14.00 per user per month depending on the features and capabilities required. 15Five offers a free trial that users can sign up for
OKR software to measure goals and track performance for organizations with 12+ team members
Ally offers two plans, Growth and Enterprise. The Growth plan is priced at $7.00 per user per month, billed annually for a minimum of 12 users. The pricing for Enterprise plan is available. Free trial is available for 14 days.
OKR software for enterprises and non-profits ideal for small, growing and enterprise teams
Gtmhub pricing starts at $7.00 per user per month for the start plan and increases as the capabilities and functionalities increase. Free trial is available for basic plans.
Performance management software with goal management system and regular check-ins ideal for medium sized organizations with annual OKR budget of $5000+
The starting annual agreement for Engagedly is $5,000. Demo is available on request
People success platform with a focus on tracking OKR/goals, gathering real-time feedback, 1-on-1 meetings ideal for teams with annual OKR budget of $4000+
Lattice is priced at $8.00 per user per month subject to a minimum annual agreement of $4000. You can request a product demo by signing up
OKR tool coaching capabilities ideal for small and medium sized organizations
Weekdone is free for upto 3 users. The pricing for 4-10 users starts at $90 per month, billed annually and increases as the number of team members increase. There is a free trial available for 14 days for 4 or more users
Out of the 11 OKR software mentioned above and others, we have curated a list of top OKR software for scaling startups.
These OKR tools focus on specific needs of fast growing organizations including — limited budgets, growing and dynamic teams, limited bandwidth, changing expectations and the need for handholding and OKR coaching from time to time.
The below section also mentions the specific reasons that make the selected OKR software ideal for startups.
OKR and status tracking software ideal for fast growing organizations with free services option
Koan offers a free tier for single teams that need basic functionalities. Pro tier with advanced functionalities, integrations, etc. is priced at $6.00 per user per month, billed annually. 30-day free trial is available for Pro version
OKR Software to align and track goals and priorities strategically and automatically with a provision for OKR coaching
The pricing starts at $7.00 per user per month for OKR+ Peformance suite. A demo and a 14-day free trial is available.
Before we conclude, this final section will help you understand that as a growing organization, what are the top 4 things you should consider while making a choice for the best OKR software. Invariably, you will have to assess the features and align them with your needs. In addition you must:
Ensure that the OKR software is well within your budget. You can start with the basic plan for the OKR software mentioned above and then upgrade as per your need. Mostly, your budget should be around $6.00-$8.00 per user per month.
However, there are a few OKR software that do offer free services upto a certain number of users and SuperBeings which is priced at $3.00 per user per month with varied advanced features. These can be effective choices to help you scale up your OKR commitment effectively. Book a free SuperBeings trial
As a growing organization, you may not have a complete clarity of what exactly you need and commitment to an OKR software without testing it for a few weeks can be challenging.
Therefore, do check with the OKR tools if they offer a free trial. Most of the tools ideal for growing organizations offer free trials for 14-30 days and can help you make an informed choice.
Next, you need to ensure that whichever OKR software you choose, it can support your team size and growth plans. Additionally, some OKR tools have different plans for different numbers of team members. Be cautious while choosing the plan ideal for you.
If you choose a bigger plan than what you need, you will not only end up spending more, but your team members may also struggle with functionalities that might not be relevant to your use case.
Finally, you need to check whether or not the OKR software is offering integrations. It is important to have integrations with your preferred productivity or communication tool to prevent unnecessary context switching to update OKR status, respond to surveys, etc. Most OKR tools like SuperBeings offer comprehensive integrations with Slack, MS Teams, Jira, Asana etc. You need to pick the software that provides the right integration for your team needs.
The OKR framework has proven to help many fast growing organizations in setting strategic goals and achieving them effectively. Adoption of the right OKR software can help you augment the effectiveness of your OKR process with seamless tracking, coaching, insights and much more.
If interested, book a free demo with SuperBeings today. 21-day free trial. No credit card required
How to calculate the ROI of an OKR software
How to find the right OKR software
The ultimate guide to OKRs (downloadable PDF)
If you are trying to design a continuous and comprehensive performance management system, you would know the importance of conducting a 360 degree feedback. However, to make this exercise most effective, you need to go beyond simply involving everyone in the process to getting the process right — most importantly asking the right feedback questions to each stakeholder. This article will focus on how to write 360 feedback questions that create maximum organizational impact.
Let us quickly start by understanding what you must include in your 360 feedback questions to make it more effective.
Read: How and when to conduct 360 degree feedback
Without wasting any time, let’s dive into the 10 tips that can help you in writing excellent and effective 360 feedback questions.
Keep the language easy to understand and avoid using technical jargon. Make sure everyone is able to gauge the same meaning of the question and the focus is not lost in translation.
Keep adding the questions list for your next 360 degree feedback to your records throughout the year.
Since 360 feedback should focus on all aspects of an employee, if you add questions at different times, they will be more relevant
Ensure that the questions don’t have an inherent bias or don’t push or influence the respondent to answer in a specific manner. Make sure that the questions can have varied options as answers and not a singular focus because that’s what you want as a result. Furthermore, the questions should not create a bias in the mind of the reader of any kind.
Focus on one specific attribute or competency for each question. Don’t try to include everything in a single question to keep the number of 360 feedback questions low. You will end up receiving responses for only a part of the question and it will confuse the respondent too. For instance, if you want to talk about collaboration, do not couple it with factors like leadership skills or problem solving.
Before you start framing the questions, identify the key competencies that are most important for your organization as well as the role. Competencies could include communication, innovation, strategic thinking, etc.
Make sure that as a whole, all the questions cover all aspects you want to gauge the employee on from an organizational and functional role perspective. However, don’t overstuff too many competencies, keep them relevant to the employee in question. For instance, a person in sales may not need a question on technology knowledge as a part of 360 feedback questions.
In addition to being specific, be clear on what you wish to gauge or understand with every question you ask. For instance, a question on whether or not the employee pays heed to the opinion of others can help understand the level of active listening and a spirit of inclusion.
You need to have a fair balance between open ended and close ended questions.
A very long or complicated process is likely to reduce participation and defeat the purpose. Therefore, keep the count of 360 feedback questions to a maximum of 30-40 and make it very easy to participate and complete the same. Preferably, disseminate it through your existing communication/ collaboration tools.
Finally, make sure that the questions are framed in a way that is simple to evaluate. Too complex evaluations might take too much time and delay the action and execution, leading to reduced faith and impact on 360 degree feedback.
To ensure that your questions are relevant and specific, you can start with writing 360 feedback questions for different situations and contexts. Put simply, in this section, we will focus on what you should be asking and when. It will also help you in picking the right questions for the right employees, instead of bombarding everyone with the same questions.
These questions will help you understand what your team members think about the overall management at your organization and the effectiveness of specific team leadership.
These questions can help you understand the level of communication efficiency in your organization to ensure there is no gap between intention and execution.
Use these questions to identify and nurture employees that show leadership potential to build an effective succession pipeline.
These questions can help you understand how committed your employees are towards the organization, which will impact their level of engagement and quality of work.
You can leverage these questions when you wish to understand which employees are quick to think on their feet and will be able to address problems/ challenges that might come their way.
These questions can help you gauge the level of alignment between what your organization stands for and the core values/ beliefs of your employees.
Read: Strategic goal alignment: How to align team and organizational goals
Focus on these questions when you want to understand how well your employees are able to connect with their peers and other stakeholders.
These final set of questions can help you gauge how efficiently the employees are able to get work done. This points to the presence of the right skills to utilize resources in the best way possible.
To keep the entire survey with 360 degree feedback questions interesting and engaging, you can experiment with different question formats and templates. While some of your questions can have simple Yes/No answers, some can have multiple choices along with room for providing open ended answers as well. Here is an easy to follow template you can leverage.
Key competency: Strategic decision making
Top line: The employee/ subject name is able to
Attributes:
Spectrum
Open ended questions
Once you roll out the survey with your 360 feedback questions and receive the answers, you need to analyze the responses to come up with a final report and plan of action. However, any response analysis is subject to biases and other factors which might put the validity and reliability of the report into question. Fortunately, you can leverage these following practices to eliminate such instances:
Before concluding this article, we would like to discuss the top 8 questions that most managers have when it comes to 360 degree feedback, highlighting concerns they may be having.
Highlight how the performance and feedback on the performance of others is likely to have an impact on their performance too. Make them believe they can be an integral part of the growth journey for their team members.
Make the feedback anonymous to prevent sugar coating. At the same time, do not rely upon a single review as the ultimate feedback for any employee. Analyze at least 2-3 feedback responses for each employee to get the real picture.
3. How to make the process time effective?
Leverage technology platforms to roll out the surveys and collect responses. Furthermore, you can rely on the NLP sentiment analysis to gauge insights from open ended questions in addition to trend generation based on quantitative questions.
Check out how SuperBeings can help you conduct seamless 360 degree feedback. Book a free demo today
Highlight the positive impact of participation as a whole. Make it an interesting part of the employee lifecycle. Provide employees designated time within their work schedule to provide feedback. Do not make it an added burden. Additionally, keep the process simple with not a lot of questions at once.
Depending on the nature of the organization you can decide on the level of anonymity. Facilitate anonymity will help you fetch greater and more authentic responses. However, sometimes, you might struggle with context in this case. Therefore, you should adopt an approach of flexible/ partial anonymity.
Create a business case for 360 degree feedback. Illustrate how it can lead to a better employee experience, strategic learning and development, greater employee retention and other aspects which can lead to better performance and productivity.
Ensure that your questions are neutral and don’t lead to a specific sentiment or response. For instance, if you want to gauge punctuality for an employee, don’t use statements like do you think the employee is always late to work, rather focus on how would you rate the punctuality and sense of time for the employee?
Try to conduct 360 feedback on a regular basis and not wait for the end of the year to ask all the questions. Maintain a cadence to gauge responses.
As we end this discussion, it is clear that if you want to write 360 feedback questions in an effective way — you need to adopt an all encompassing approach, taking into account the different aspects of employee attributes, performance, personality and behavior.
It is, therefore, ideal to leverage platforms like SuperBeings to help you roll out, gather and analyze the responses using NLP and automation for best results. You can leverage our best practices to not only get the questions right but to also enable your managers to facilitate employee development at the end of the process.
If interested, feel free to book a demo today. No initial commitment required.
How and when to conduct 360 degree feedback
In the recent years, there has been a lot of attention that is being given to employee feedback, performance reviews and evaluation as a part of the whole performance management system.
While a major focus has been to prepare managers to give feedback in a constructive and effective manner, paying attention to employee self evaluation is equally important. Knowing what self appraisal comments to use can play a major role in helping employees to effectively reflect and evaluate their performance and convey it effectively to the rest of the team.
The purposes of employee evaluation and performance review in general have been talked about time and again. However, self appraisal takes the process of evaluation at a very personal and individual level, leading to a more pronounced understanding of an employee’s performance. Some of the top benefits of employee self assessment include:
Read: Employee self assessment: How to write a great one
In the section above, we have talked about the purpose or the need of self evaluation mostly from the perspective of the employee. However, self appraisal, when done correctly, has equally compelling benefits for the team as well as managers. A quick snapshot is captured below:
With self appraisal, employees become active participants in their review and appraisal process, rather than simply being passive recipients. Consequently, they feel valued, motivated and the level of engagement increases. Furthermore, with greater engagement, levels of commitment, retention and productivity go up.
When employees take a step back to reflect on their performance with self appraisal, they become more receptive to diverse ideas. Put simply, in the absence of self reflection, they will have a hard time gauging where they need to improve. Consequently, they will be defensive when a manager or the team gives them feedback on the same. However, self evaluation will help them accept the gaps and be open to learning and growing.
When employees reflect on their performance and identify the development areas, they will don a problem solving hat on to accelerate their professional journey. Through the course of time, this problem solving attribute will become a part of their skill set which will benefit the team and the manager greatly.
As a result of greater alignment due to self reflection on the strengths and areas of development, teams will see a greater sense of accountability to bridge the gaps identified. Under conventional circumstances, performance improvement might be seen as just a tick in the box by employees. However, after self appraisal, employees truly acknowledge and accept the need to bridge those gaps and take greater ownership and accountability.
Now that you have an understanding of why self appraisal matters, let’s quickly look at how to make it most effective. If you are experimenting with self evaluation for the first time, it can be an overwhelming activity for your employees. It is human nature to feel uneasy when you’re expected to evaluate your own performance. However, if you provide your employees with some comments they can use for self evaluation as a starting point, you can make the journey easier for them.
Put simply, self appraisal comments are common statements that can be customized by your employees during the self evaluation process, especially, if they find themselves at a loss of words to describe their performance
These phrases are available for both strengths and areas of development to help employees paint a realistic picture of their performance. Here are the top 100 self appraisal phrases that you can use for different performance parameters.
Use these self phrases to reflect on your clarity of communication, willingness to listen to others, etc.
These self evaluation phrases reflect how reliable or dependable you are for your team members, especially under special circumstances.
Using these self appraisal phrases can help indicate how invested or engaged you are in taking ownership of work without being asked to at times.
Similar Read: 150+ performance review phrases for managers
The following self appraisal comments are important to help review your performance on the basis of how punctual and attentive you are.
Use these self evaluation phrases when you want to highlight your strengths/ areas of improvement of working with the team, your collaboration skills, etc.
Creativity self appraisal comments can help you in reflecting on how effectively you are able to come up with novel and innovative solutions to challenges and new ideas to augment the impact and value created.
The following phrase can create a picture of your quality of work and how much attention you pay while undertaking a particular task during your self reflection process.
You can use these self appraisal comments to illustrate how well you understand what is expected out of you and how well you are able to deliver on the same.
Customer satisfaction self evaluation performance phrases help gauge how effectively you are able to address customer requests or complaints that leads to a higher Net Promoter Score, brand credibility, etc.
Finally, these self-appraisal comments can help you highlight your growth plans towards your professional development and impact on the organization.
With a broad understanding of the more than 100+ self appraisal comments that you can use as a part of your self evaluation process, let’s move to this concluding section. Here, we will focus on sharing a few templates that employees can use to articulate their performance in an effective manner.
The self evaluation phrases mentioned above can be added at the right places in these templates to give a holistic picture of one’s performance. A few things to focus on include:
In the last <performance period>, I have successfully <activity/ initiative undertaken> which led to <tangible impact (metrics)> for the organization.
My focus was on <a detailed view of everything that was done> which resulted in <accomplishments>.
Overall, I believe that I have been able to create an impact by achieving <top 3 achievements> and seek to amplify the same in the future.
I believe that the last <performance period> has been full of learning and development for me.
While I was able to <quick snapshot of achievements>, I acknowledge that I need to pay attention to <areas of improvement>.
I believe that this focus will help me <intended outcome for improvement>.
Towards this, I will ensure that I consistently work towards <improvement plan (courses, behavioral changes)> to achieve <SMART goal>.
That said, self appraisal is an extremely crucial step of performance review. As a manager you must encourage your team members to provide honest reflection on their performance without being afraid of any negative consequences. Apart from providing the self appraisal comments mentioned above, you can also use assessment tools to make self appraisal a common practice within the organization.
Custom Pulse Surveys by SuperBeings can help you with understanding their needs and help you support them better. If interested, book a free demo today.
Employee Self Assessment: How to write a great one
150+ performance review phrases for managers
How to use custom pulse surveys to enhance employee experience
Holistic performance reviews are integral for any organization that seeks to create a high performance culture. However, the nature of performance appraisals has undergone significant transformation with a focus on 360 feedback and review.
One of the key pillars for the same is employee self assessment and self appraisal. Through the course of this article, we will share with you why self assessment is important and how you, as a manager, can help your employees get it right to facilitate maximum impact.
As the name suggests, employee self assessment or self reflection is the practice or process where employees reflect on and assess their performance over a period of time to identify accomplishments, development areas and other performance aspects
The aim of self assessment is to get the employees’ view of their performance and add the information and data to manager and peer feedback. This can enable organizations to get a holistic understanding of the employee performance and gauge the overall contribution, some of which might be invisible from a macro view. Here are a few reasons why employee self assessment as a tool for performance review makes sense for growing organization:
With the rise of continuous performance management and regular review and appraisal, your self assessment process should follow a similar approach.
Instead of pushing employees to assess and reflect on their performance at the end of the year, you should encourage them to conduct regular self assessment
On one hand, regular and continuous performance linked self appraisal by employees will ensure that no part of their performance goes unnoticed. On the other hand, it will constantly give them a chance to reflect on their performance and improve on the development areas on the go, instead of waiting for the year end. Invariably, they will embark on the path of development and improvement at an accelerated pace.
Here, if you leverage employee pulse surveys which are short and frequent in nature, you can ensure consistent and continuous self reflection from employees. With as frequent as one question a day, you can encourage your employees to build a culture of performance-oriented self assessment.
With self assessment and reflection being a fairly new practice to performance management, many organizations and employees struggle with getting it right.
While some believe that employees might see it as a chance to explain their bad performance, others believe that it might end up biasing the manager’s perspective.
However, when done right, employee self assessment can be an extremely powerful tool to facilitate a high performance culture. Here are a few tips to get your employees conduct performance self assessment the right way:
Encourage your employees to be open and honest. Employees must not see self assessment as a place for self aggrandizing in the hope of a better rating, rather an honest assessment of one’s performance.
For self evaluation to be effective, your employees need to reflect on their performance without the worry of being penalized for identifying areas of development and improvement
It is important to not see self assessment as the sole foundation for promotions and appraisals, but rather as a journey towards growth.
Next, persuade your employees to reflect on their OKR performance. The idea is not only to assess what has been achieved with OKR grading. It should also include reflections from OKRs about the possible enablers and blockers to further refine them for the next performance period. The employee must be guided to reflect on what helped achieve the OKRs and what other support is required as well as what he or she would personally like to work towards.
Download: Free OKR grading template
Third, when self assessing for performance review, employees must incorporate feedback from their conversations with managers and peers. If your organization has a culture of regular 1:1s, this will be very easy for your workforce. The idea here is to motivate your employees to reflect on what feedback they have been able to gauge and whether or not according to them their performance is a reflection of the same. 360 degree feedback can also be a helpful tool for employees to understand all aspects of their performance.
Factors like what did the manager praise about their performance or what did a coworker thank them for are very important for self assessment.
Read: Top 50 1:1 meeting questions for great managers
Finally, as a part of performance review self assessment, employees need to reflect on the challenges and opportunities, both internal and external. Internally, they need to assess their attributes, skill sets and aspirations and align them with the expectations to gauge their level of performance. Similarly, external factors like resources, team support and their impact on performance needs to be documented.
When you share these above mentioned tips with your team members, they are bound to ask questions about the best practices for writing or filling up self assessment surveys in the most effective way. We have you covered for that as well. Here are a few quick tips to help your employees write effective self assessment:
Read: How to go from performance management to employee development
If you look at these best practices closely, you will realize that the key to writing effective self assessment also lies in the questions that you ask.
Simply asking an open ended question like reflecting on your performance will seldom yield any substantial responses, mainly because your team members will struggle with starting their answers
Therefore, we have compiled a list of questions and potential answer prompts/ templates to help you make self assessment a part of your performance review process effectively.
Also read: 150+ useful performance review phrases to start using today
Ensuring impact with self assessment is not only dependent on your team members. There are several ways in which managers of an organization can help build a culture of effective self evaluation.
Create an open culture where employee self reflection does not become the sole tool to penalize or promote employees, see it as an extended glimpse of performance
As we come to an end, it is clear that employee self assessments are an integral part of performance reviews and if conducted in the right manner have the potential to drive a high performing culture. However, we understand that administering and facilitating participation for self assessment can be daunting, especially for a growing organization.
Fortunately, custom pulse surveys by SuperBeings with automated sending and reminders, along with NLP based sentiment analysis can take care of the same for you. If interested, book a free demo today to learn more.
How to use custom pulse surveys to enhance employee experience