That's how it goes! Employee motivation through OKR dashboards

Clear goals and transparency: The key to focused and motivated work

A decisive factor is the interplay of awareness and responsibility for one's own goals. However, what sounds banal at first is ignored in many companies: Most employees, from workers to IT managers, are exposed — not least thanks to modern means of communication — a constant flood of tasks that are difficult to overview and sensibly prioritize.
For focused and therefore motivating work, employees often lack two crucial pieces of information:

• What is my goal with my current task?
• What progress is achieved as a result?

One way to address this problem is to create constant transparency on precisely these issues. Generally accessible dashboards, on which so-called OKRs are defined, help: Objectives and Key Results.

What does OKR actually stand for?

The abbreviation OKR stands for “Objectives and Key Results.”
The so-called “objective” is a qualitative goal that an entire company or department defines for itself. This could be, for example, an increase in performance in a specific area of activity. The significance of the goal must be clear to everyone involved, but it should not be directly measurable. In contrast, the “key results”, i.e. the key results, are concrete and measurable. Three key results are assigned to each goal. They clearly define the criteria for achieving the set goal and can be based on anything that can be measured: for example growth, turnover, participation or performance.

Agile management through the OKR method

The term OKR stands for an agile management method that has been driving many of the American big players for years and is now attracting more and more attention in Germany as well. Many advocates even go as far as to see it as a cornerstone for the continued success of Google, Intel, and many others.
The core idea of the approach is to make better use of the potential that employees have in their attitude towards their work: If they are well informed about the current goals and how to achieve them, every work step is given greater importance. This is also due to the fact that jointly agreed goals have a focus that is necessary in view of the constant flood of tasks. This focus away from non-goals and irrelevant tasks relieves pressure from employees and also significantly reduces distracting stressors.

Example and implementation of an OKR dashboard

Our template shows you how a good OKR dashboard works schematically. It first outlines the goals, i.e. the objectives, then lists the associated key results and documents the current progress per key result, which is aggregated into an overall progress. The objectives must be defined for a fixed time frame so that they are recorded as a clear goal — as can be seen in the example, the deadlines can also vary among themselves. The associated key results should be chosen ambitiously, i.e. not too easy to achieve. However, they should be within reach so as not to demotivate employees. The theory is that key results should be achieved at an appropriate level of around 60-80 percent at the end of the period in order to achieve maximum motivation.

OKRs — the opposite of a to-do list

However, there are also common mistakes that can cause OKRs to fail: For example, you should avoid setting too many or too finely divided OKRs. This quickly leads to old problems, i.e. many and unimportant tasks, reappearing and losing the necessary focus. In addition, it is not advisable to include specific instructions for action in the defined key results. As a result, the method loses its character to help the team gain more personal responsibility and motivation, and the OKRs quickly become an old-fashioned to-do list again.
Also refrain from linking wages to OKRs. Especially when making ongoing adjustments, this means that the actual goal — namely to develop meaning, progress and success in one's own work — is lost. Instead, OKRs should be defined in such a way that employees have a strong commitment to achieve performance improvements. This may then be the reason for a salary increase in the medium or long term.

Focus, motivation and efficiency through OKRs

However, once a team has set an OKR, they should not let the formulated goals disappear into a drawer and only check whether they were successful after the defined time frame. The defined key results should be reflected in regular feedback meetings: The team members then jointly analyze where they stand in relation to their goals, what actual progress or lack of progress can be attributed to and what they may need to adjust. By involving all employees in strategic tasks, a signal of appreciation and trust is also sent to the workforce, which acts as a further motivating factor. This combination of fixed goals and self-organized work steps makes OKRs agile.

Motivation through a modern communication culture

The last decisive aspect of successful OKRs is the clear communication of goals to the entire workforce — ideally digitally directly in the warehouse or in production — and the public presentation of progress. This includes making all relevant progress information available on the OKR dashboard at all times and in real time.
This brings public awareness of the company's progress and gives employees a sense of the effectiveness of their own work and the overall progress of the team. This provides everyone with a basis for discussion both informally about the company's goals and to meaningfully contribute to the corresponding feedback meetings. The associated communication culture increases the potential of the entire workforce and enables every industry, company size and department to achieve more with the available resources in all value-added processes.

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