How Can You Enhance the Productivity of Your Remote Teams?

Enhance the Productivity of Your Remote Teams

In the wake of the global pandemic, the world of organizations experienced a significant shift from office-bound to a remote working setup. This transformation is not a fad; it is here to stay. It is due to the benefits of remote working, ranging from employees being happier to saving money (and the environment) by not commuting.

But that’s only one side of the story. The flip side is when distributed teams and businesses experience remote-working issues such as misalignment and a lack of insight into progress. OKR (Objective and Key Result)—a scalable goal alignment and tracking system—is one of the most excellent methods to ensure that teams and organizations benefit from productive remote working.

Enhance the Productivity of Your Remote Teams

Common problems experienced by remote teams

But first, let’s look at some common issues when businesses implement remote working.

Limited visibility of progress

Remote work may make measuring progress—individual, team, or project progress—complex since individuals are not physically present in the office. When faced with roadblocks, remote employees may feel alone and fail to seek out. On the other hand, employers confront the challenging challenge of checking in without micromanaging.

Misaligned Team

Teams and companies may become disjointed during the transition to remote work, and it’s no longer as simple as stepping into a colleague’s cubicle to collaborate on a project. Misalignment, if not addressed, can lead to more significant issues such as missed deadlines and poor cross-team communication.

Low levels of motivation

Without the regular office activities that foster socialization and healthy collaboration, remote employees might suffer from isolation and loneliness. They may worry about how their everyday duties will contribute to the larger aims of the organization.

It is helpful to create and measure goals so that everyone in the organization is motivated to work together in the correct direction with continual progress, even remotely.

OKR Makes Remote Working More Productive

One sound goal-setting system is OKR management framework —a scalable goal-tracking system. OKR consists of six key components, which are as follows:

Objective

The objectives that might encourage teams to produce their best and correct job. Each team should have a maximum of five goals.

Key Result

Quantitative measures are used to determine whether or not objectives are reached. Each target should have a maximum of five critical results.

Initiative

The everyday chores, activities, or initiatives can help produce the preliminary result. It is preferable to utilize the team’s day-to-day responsibilities as initiatives.

Period or Cadence

How frequently OKR must be rated and appraised before making new ones. Companies might have an annual time frame for corporate objectives and a quarterly term for team goals. A bespoke time is also available and advised for teams starting with OKRs.

Grade or Score

A scale of 0.0 to 1.0 assesses how an OKR was satisfied over its term, the score of 1.0 indicates that an objective has been fully realized. The optimal OKR grade is between 0.6 and 0.8.

Owner

The one is responsible for completing a task. An employee in the company should own the whole framework for successful deployment and maintenance.

When used appropriately, OKRs may make remote working more productive:

OKR aligns everyone on the same page

OKR management framework encourages bi-directional goal alignment, in which management develops strategic objectives and teams develop tactical goals to help the organization flourish. It ensures that everyone is prioritizing excellent work even while working remotely.

Goal accountability and measurable results motivate staff to perform.

Being responsible for critical goals that help profitable growth adds relevance to a team’s regular work and increases job satisfaction. Seeing concrete outcomes and knowing how everyday actions contribute to them drives employees to do their best job even when out of sight (or workplace).

OKR gives complete progress transparency 

In addition to OKR cadence, there are OKR check-ins—regular checks of target status. Even when working remotely, the OKR framework enables team members and supervisors to quickly understand how they contribute to corporate goals and how work is developing. During the frequent OKR check-ins, they may also detect and alleviate any possible roadblocks.

OKR tool allows companies and teams to adapt to changes fast

Companies must be able to adapt to changes quickly to obtain an advantage in this increasingly competitive market. It might be challenging to accommodate when teams are working remotely. Because OKR has a flexible duration and regular review, it is simpler for businesses to monitor project progress and swiftly adjust if the goals and key outcomes are not achieved.

5 Steps to Implement OKR in Remote Workplace

Here are the steps to implement OKR in a remote workplace setup:

Step 1: Determine the need for an OKR software.

Determine the most prevalent remote working issues you’re encountering and how the OKR management may help you overcome them. For example, if teams are misaligned on a significant project, it’s an excellent idea to realign them around a strategic aim by employing OKR.

Step 2: Obtain agreement on OKRs from distant teams.

Remember that you must overcome not only the limits of remote working (for example, team members with varying availability hours) but also any potential resistance to this new structure. So, explain how this new method will support effective remote working and gain team buy-in.

Step 3: Create an OKR deployment strategy.

Implementing new technology and having it fail might add complexity for teams already dealing with remote working challenges. So, develop a robust OKR rollout strategy that specifies how each team may participate. A straightforward method is to have teams set tactical goals to assist the company’s larger goals. Consider having a pilot team test the OKR system initially in large organizations with complex decision-making processes.

Step 4: Select the appropriate OKR tool

Choose an OKR software than can easily integrate with the team’s existing work platform. It’s a good idea to install an OKR tool that can rapidly link the team’s challenges to the overall goals. Employers can then transparently track task and objective progress inside a single platform.

Step 5: Determine the effectiveness of the OKR system.

It is not enough to implement the OKR software. Collect and analyze feedback to evaluate if it is increasing the productivity of remote teams. If the common remote working issues improve, the OKR framework will be a success!

The effectiveness of remote working is dependent on how well everyone in the organization works together to achieve reasonable goals with consistent development.

The OKR management framework, a scalable goal alignment, and a tracking system are among the most effective ways to ensure that teams and organizations benefit from productive remote working.

For more information regarding OKR tool and its implementation, reach out to us today! 

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Gaurav Sabharwal

CEO of JOP

Gaurav is the CEO of JOP (Joy of Performing), an OKR and high-performance enabling platform. With almost two decades of experience in building businesses, he knows what it takes to enable high performance within a team and engage them in the business. He supports organizations globally by becoming their growth partner and helping them build high-performing teams by tackling issues like lack of focus, unclear goals, unaligned teams, lack of funding, no continuous improvement framework, etc. He is a Certified OKR Coach and loves to share helpful resources and address common organizational challenges to help drive team performance. Read More

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