OKRs, SMART Objectives, KPIs. Which Should You Use?

There are plenty of ways to keep personal and company goals aligned. When Elizma Ela arrived in her role as Head of Human Capital at Boxfusion, OKRs were already in place. But there was a gap in the flow between company ambition, and team and individual goals. Elizma spoke to our founder, Roly Walters, about connecting vision and mission to performance and objectives.

You can watch the full episode here:? https://www.appraisd.com/podcast/objectives-and-okr-podcast

Which framework works best?

Every organisation is different but at Boxfusion, a combination of OKRs and KPIs is proving to work well. When Elizma arrived in her role, OKRs that were guided by the business strategy had already been put in place by the CEO and senior team. However, managers were unsure of how to frame them and phrase them at the personal objective level, and so KPIs were brought in as an additional performance measure that breaks the OKRs down.

Set the cadence

Having two sets of performance metrics could turn out to be confusing! And so, at Boxfusion Elizam has set a clear process and cadence. OKRs are set annually at an offsite by the CEO, leadership team and management team. These are cascaded into team and individual KPIs which are set annually but reviewed quarterly. In the tech sector things can change quickly and KPIs will likely need to be adjusted to make course corrections now whilst still staying focused on the longer-term OKRs.

Full transparency

Something to be mindful of, is that in order for objectives to cascade into every employee’s daily flow of work, there needs to be full transparency of the business strategy and goals. At Boxfusion, the leadership and management team have two weeks after their offsite (where they set company and departmental OKRs) to articulate the business strategy and OKRs to their teams and roll out KPIs at an individual level.

The greater goal

Previously, OKRs provided a sense of purpose, and clarity on areas where the company wants to move the needle. But, adding KPIs has allowed these to feed through into the core responsibilities of every employee. As a result, people now feel more accountable and responsible for their objectives as they have full visibility of how their success and company’s success are linked.??

Watch the full episode with Elizma Els

Enjoyed the highlights? Watch the full episode here: https://www.appraisd.com/podcast/objectives-and-okr-podcast And, to learn more about Appraisd, talk to us ??