7
min read
Learn to calculate the ROI of performance management tools to ensure leadership buy-in with this detailed guide before you purchase one.
7
min read
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.
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
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:
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.
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
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
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.
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:
Check how SuperBeings can help you supercharge your team’s performance with its all-in-one performance management tool. Book a free demo today
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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!
8 point checklist to find the best performance management software
Complete guide to continuous performance management
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://www.eliinc.com/wp-content/uploads/eli-millenials-workplace-infographic.pdf
The right compensation management practices and policies can make or break your employee experience. Of course, there is merit in linking compensation and performance to drive organizational success, it can lead to several questions and implementation problems as well.
Read on to get all your compensation management related questions answered.
Let’s start with the very basic question of why fair compensation is important and the merits it brings along. It is no surprise that if you are paid more and are compensated according to your efforts, you are likely to give in your 100% and stay with an organization longer. However, there are other factors that support fair compensation:
Thus, fair compensation as a part of compensation linked performance management has the potential to facilitate better employee outcomes such as engagement, experience and performance.
To make compensation fair and inclusive in all aspects, it needs to have a clear foundation. Most organizations have relied on performance reviews as a way of reflecting on performance as a means of compensation decisions. However, there are several competing views both for and against tying compensation to performance reviews.
Clearly, there are both sides to the story.
The most favorable outcome will be to keep performance as one of the parameters for compensation, but not the sole foundation.
Additionally, as one of the best practices, performance reviews can be conducted on a regular basis, where some are only developmental in nature and others can be tied to compensation management.
As discussed, focusing only on performance reviews for compensation management needs a relook. Working with growing organizations, we have curated a list of the top five performance and compensation management practices you can leverage:
Ensure that your compensation structure aligns with the market trends so your employees don’t feel underpaid and leave.
Provide complete transparency and clarity to your employees on what constitutes high levels of performance and what it will take to earn a raise or appraisal.
Have specific, well defined and measurable criteria for the compensation strategy to ensure that there is complete transparency.
Salary in hand or the pay check your employees receive is accompanied by a range of benefits that are a part of the compensation structure and cost to the company, but are often overlooked by employees. Make sure they are widely communicated.
Ensure that there is a base pay range for every role and profile with variable additions based on candidate competencies.
The idea of fair compensation and linking compensation and performance management, leads to a very interesting concept of distributive justice. On a broad level, distributive justice essentially focuses on ensuring that the compensation received by employees is fair and equitable and is based on objective and rational grounds which are uniform for all. Here are a few ways to ensure distributive justice:
Measure potential and market value of the employee in addition to experience and expertise to ensure distributive justice for high potential employees
Another interesting component of compensation and performance management that you must acquaint yourself with is pay transparency. Essentially pay transparency refers to how openly or freely employees within an organization can discuss their compensation with others.
This is not only limited to the check they take home but other perks and benefits they are entitled to. Invariably, many platforms today also enable individuals to anonymously share their salaries online and get insights from others doing the same. However, there are diverse views on when it comes to pay transparency for an organization.
Those who advocate for pay transparency believe that it can enable large scale impact for the organization across performance management.
However, there is a flip side to pay transparency too with some common pitfalls that need to be addressed proactively.
In the last section of this article, we will focus on how managers play an integral role in compensation and performance management and the best practices to guide managers to have effective compensation conversations with their team members.
Almost 58% organizations do not train managers on pay communications
This startling statistic clearly highlights how despite the apparent importance of compensation management, the focus on ensuring a seamless process is rather limited. However, organizations today can play a leading role in enabling their managers to have better pay communication and conversations by following these tips:
It is quite evident that compensation and performance management are intrinsically interlinked and if leveraged well, compensation has great potential to not only drive performance, but also facilitate engagement, retention and much more.
However, to ensure the same, you need to have a very structured, transparent and fair compensation strategy and policy. Furthermore, you must, don’t forget to invest in training your managers to bridge any gaps and constantly gauge and address employee pulse — to ensure fair compensation for all.
10 tips for managers to effectively conduct performance reviews
How often should you conduct performance reviews?
How to use competency framework as a talent management strategy
Talent development is critical for growing organizations which see the workforce as their biggest asset. Focus on developing their talent stack not only leads to a pleasant employee experience, it also augments the overall performance and productivity for an organization.
While you may come across many ways to facilitate talent development, leveraging the competency framework can help you move the needle very quickly.
Let's see how.
Before moving directly to how you can implement the competency framework, let’s quickly understand the 5 stages of talent development.
The first stage involves planning for your talent needs based on your organizational priorities and creating the position profile based on the skills, attitudes and other competencies.
Based on the position profile, you need to start attracting talent for the position. You can do so by spreading the word in the right networks, through job portal platforms, etc. The objective is to ensure that you are reaching out to the right network. You can also explore the right candidate for the position internally to considerably save hiring and training costs.
Once you have identified the right person, the next stage of talent development is extending the offer to the person after a thorough background check as well as a competency and expectation match. It also requires creating personalized onboarding plans for the first 30-60-90 days of the candidate’s journey within the organization. Read our guide to employee onboarding to learn more about onboarding do’s and don’ts.
The main focus of talent development starts with providing the right development and learning opportunities to your workforce. This can involve upskilling for both technical and soft skills, leadership building or any development intervention based on the need of the role and position.
Read: How to create employee development plan based on performance history
Finally, talent development involves undertaking initiatives to retain your talent. While learning opportunities are important, facilitating engagement, wellness, motivation, etc. all contribute to employee retention.
If you are wondering how the competency framework aligns with talent development, you need to start by decoding what the framework actually stands for.
Put simply, a competency framework is a set of behaviors, skills, abilities and attributes that an organization considers imperative for creating a high performance culture.
The competency framework can be implemented at all stages of the talent development or the employee lifecycle within an organization. The idea is to ensure that certain core competencies are kept at the heart of the decision making that in any way impact the workforce.
Competency framework based talent development is very important for employee retention. Talent development practices when undertaken effectively have the potential to encourage team members to stay with the organization for long and at the same time become ambassadors to help attract high quality peers.
Here are the top reasons why competency framework based talent development matters:
Now that we have covered the basics of talent development and competency framework, let’s understand how leveraging the latter to advance the former can create a far reaching impact for organizations.
The first step is to create a competency framework which involves identifying the key competencies which will be instrumental in guiding all decisions around talent development. Depending on the nature of your organization, there can be categories within the competency framework that you seek to focus on. Your competency framework should focus on behaviors, skills and attributes which are critical for performance and overall success. The following steps can help you create a competency framework for talent development:
The responsibility of creating the competency framework is collective. It starts with involving the executive leadership to ensure alignment with the vision, people managers to ensure they are ideal for the culture you are trying to build and functional managers to ensure inclusion of right competencies for each role and position. Furthermore, involving those on the ground can be fruitful as they have the best idea of what competencies are critical and others which are good to have.
Once the competency framework for talent development is ready, the next step is to align it with your recruitment process to ensure precise and effective hiring. There are a few steps along the way:
The onus of implementing the competency framework during selection lies primarily with the HR team and recruiters who assess the candidates with different tests and assessments. Team managers and leaders also play a role in assessing functional competencies and fit.
Irrespective of whether an employee is onboarded before or after you have implemented the competency framework for recruitment, you need to ensure competency based performance management and development opportunities.
From a talent development perspective, the focus of the competency framework should equally be on developing employees for their next or subsequent role based on the specific competencies for the same.
The onus of aligning performance and development with the competency framework lies with team managers as they are best able to determine the performance gaps. Furthermore, employees with their managers can identify competency gaps for better performance and focus on the right learning and development interventions to bridge the same.
Finally, the competency framework must also impact the subsequent rungs of talent development where an employee moves up the ladder from one position to the next. Based on the organizational matrix and competencies for each level, you need to identify key attributes that differentiate one level from another and ensure the same is communicated to your employees.
You should:
In a nutshell, it is quite evident that the competency framework can inform and advance every stage of talent development for fast growing organizations. If you implement such a framework across the employee lifecycle, you will significantly reduce your chances of a wrong hire and will be able to nurture a workforce that aligns on the vision, goals and overall organizational culture.
A clear competency based talent development approach can help you achieve high levels of performance which is observable and measurable.
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.
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:
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 —
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.
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.
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.
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 —
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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)
Master OKRs in 10 days: Free OKR email course
https://www.salesforce.com/in/work/?sfdc-redirect=219
https://www.minsilo.com/resources/strategic-alignment/why-is-alignment-important
https://www.asuresoftware.com/