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Many managers have known to possess some MUST HAVE qualities that make them stand apart from the mediocre. Find 7 Virtues of a good manager that make them highly effective: https://upraise.io/blog/7-virtues-highly-effective-managers/

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Implementing OKRs allows organizations to innovate better and plan their processes efficiently, but making it another tool that employees need to use can nullify the effectiveness. Here are a few ideas to make the implementation process easier for managers and employees alike. 

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5 key ways of how expressing gratitude can help at work

While gratitude may not be commonly used at work, it shouldn’t be ignored. For better relationships, enhanced productivity, and a good mood, gratitude has a major part in work success.

Gratitude can lead to better connections on and off work. You may find it simple to restrict appreciation to the talented work of people, but there is an unsaid necessity for other types of support too. Showing appreciation to workers for recognizing their ability positively affects the team’s working skills, productivity, and working patterns.

Here are some ways to showcase the importance of appreciation at workplace:

1.Enhances professional relationships

Gratitude often affects your links with others. You may feel appreciated by a tiny gesture from your co-worker for lending a hand or saying something kind. Gratitude helps you to recognize the success of your team effort and collaboration. It means that people appreciate something more than their skills and abilities and positively affect those around them. Showcasing gratitude within your team makes everyone feel important. It helps to sustain a long-term relationship.

2. Enhances organizational culture

Addressing your workers’ efforts with gratitude makes them feel important and recognized as a major team staff. Validated gratitude showcases the compassion of a leader towards their worker. It leads to a kindness ripple effect which can bring a big change in a company’s landscape, Jira onboarding plugin can help too.

Lack of gratitude can lead to a feeling of resentment and several skipped opportunities. Gratitude overpowers bad responses and paves the way for an effective workplace.

3. Enhances emotional intelligence

Gratitude helps to develop positivity amongst colleagues and allows to create empathy and develop positive intent within the team. It raises awareness and helps acknowledge good in the co-workers.

As you know, emotions prompt behavior. Hence, expressing gratitude can raise empathy within a workplace and generate more efficient leaders. Consider the strength of a mind that has been filled with positivity.

4. Boosts employee performance

Gratitude helps workers enhance their productivity and decision-making skills. It also wipes out negative thinking and problems. Displaying your colleagues that you appreciate them boosts their performance.

The positive effect of showing gratitude is that it makes you open to feedback and improvement. You develop a mindset for new opportunities.

Shifting your thinking from challenge to opportunity is the major importance of showing appreciation. It works as the quickest way to boost workers’ performance in the workplace, using jira add-ons for hr teams can make the work easier too. 

5. Improves physical and emotional health

The importance of showing gratitude in the workplace is majorly linked to mental and physical health. Gratitude enhances your dopamine level and makes you feel good, bringing you more energy, positivity, and fewer sick days. Studies reveal that it helps with sleeping too.

Gratitude lowers negativity and takes your attention to a positive and healthy road. It helps you shift from toxic thoughts and anxious feelings.

Conclusion

Gratitude is a powerful and infectious feeling. It makes the giver and receiver both feel good. And if practiced commonly, it will transform your workplace into a healthy, positive, and happy environment.

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Top 5 Future of Work Trends Post-COVID-19

With the pandemic resetting the work patterns, HR professionals should develop ways for better employee management, performance, and strategies. The expert needs to assess the effect that HR trends will have on their company’s working and goals and lookout for ways to take immediate action. Here are some work trends after Covid-19

1. A rise in distant working

According to a Gartner poll, 48% of workers will possibly work distantly, at least for some part, after the pandemic versus 30% before Covid-19. With companies shifting to remote working processes, employees should be prepared to collaborate digitally and work on employee experience planning. The focus should be on goal setting and employee assessment for a distant context.

2. More data collection

Gartner’s assessment reveals that 16% of companies use technology to assess their employees, like digital clocking in and out, checking employee emails, and internal interactions. While some businesses assess productivity, others track employee engagement in HR to know employee experience.

Although companies also used employee monitoring equipment before the pandemic, the employee trends will rise with new remote worker monitoring tools.

3. A rise in contingent worker

The pandemic has led to economic uncertainty, and many employees lost their jobs and were part of non-standard work structures. Primarily companies reduced their contractor budgets, but things have changed.

Now organizations will expand their contingent worker usage for better workforce management and launch new job models they followed during the pandemic and use jira okr software, like talent sharing or half pay for half work.

Most companies are replacing their full-time workers with contingent workers to save money. HR will have to assess the performance management systems for these workers and share their eligibility when offering benefits like full-time workers.

4. Differencing between critical abilities and roles

Before the pandemic, critical roles and the abilities a company needed to meet its strategic objective were seen as critical abilities. Today, employers know a new segment of critical roles- roles needed to succeed in important workflows.

To build the workforce for this, you will need to focus on skills required to drive the company’s competitive advantage and workflows that meet that advantage. Boost your employees to develop abilities that open better prospects for their career growth instead of preparing for a particular role. Provide career development assistance to employees in critical roles who don’t have critical skills

5. De-humanizing employees

Some companies are aware of the pandemic’s humanitarian issues and ranked their workers’ well-being more than their work; others have pushed workers to high-risk conditions, treating them as workers only and not humans.

It is important to consider the approach you are ready to take and be thoughtful of the impact it will have on your employees. Address the differences if distant and on-site workers are being treated differently. Develop a culture of inclusiveness and make everyone feel like a part of the organization.

Companies should support employee engagement in HR, using okr in jira can make the work easier to resolve issues related to career pathing and offer better development support and engagement in the company. It will make the workers dedicatedly work for you.

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Personal OKRs can add value to the employee when they’re derived from company OKRs. This way, managers can track the progress of the projects and individual employee growth. Writing good personal OKRs isn’t difficult, but special attention is required to avoid the process turning into a to-do list. The steps mentioned below can help in creating effective personal OKRs:

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Performance appraisal is, in a way, an essential process that goes along well with performance management. They do have some similarities & differences. Read this article, to understand the difference between performance management and performance appraisal!

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Feedback meetings are one of the most awkward meetings managers & team members go through. Follow this checklist to make these meetings effective.

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Performance appraisal is, in a way, an essential process that goes along well with performance management. They do have some similarities & differences. Read this article, to understand the difference between performance management and performance appraisal!

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How do you implement OKRs in Jira?

OKR is a measurable objective tracking scheme that lines up company, workers, and personal objectives to yield results. It works as a guide for everyone to proceed in the right direction and attain continuous progress. It is a performance management framework to handle your agile team performance.

Components of OKR

OKR has two major components- Key Results and Objectives

Objectives

They are qualitative details of what you desire. Objectives are statements to inspire or challenge your agile teams to give their best.

How to set the best objectives?

Every team should have at least five objectives.

The objectives should be motivating and qualitative.

When beginning with the OKR process, go with top-notch objectives. They are hard but accomplishable.

Once the OKR practice matures, go for moonshot objectives beyond what’s possible.

Key Results

They are gauging metrics to assess if you have acquired your objectives.

They are measurable.

Every objective should generate five key results.

Reasons why OKR is recommended for agile teams in Jira

Surely, there are other ways to gauge progress such as SMART, KPI and more; OKR is the best way to track goals in Jira if these things happen often:

Failures to rank projects as teams have different priorities, and there isn’t any optimized business objective setting.

Harassing risk and blockers come around even when doing surveying and sprint planning.

No transparency to observe progress even with specs like Jira Roadmap. These features help to observe the project’s progress and not objectives.

There’s confusion about who’s in-charge of what!

Improper cross-team working

Staff lacks the idea about how Jira issues contribute to the goals of the company.

Staff is not motivated, and it shows when Jira metrics are checked.

Implementing OKR in Jira

Here is the step-by-step guide to implement OKR in Jira for your agile teams. Two things are implemented here: the OKR structure in your company and the right OKR plugin in Jira.

1st step: Evaluate the OKR need

Find out if OKR is required in your company or team. If issues are visible, then OKR is perhaps important.

2nd step: Acquire the OKR approval

Because the OKR process includes everyone in the company, it is essential to get their collective buy-in. Explain to them the benefits of OKR and how it is implemented.

3rd step: Make an OKR release plan

The rollout plan means when a pilot team tests the OKR system for the first time. Make sure you include major OKR objects such as grading factors, review time, alignment preference, and more.

4th step: Select the right Jira OKR app

With a suitable app, implementing OKR in Jira is simple. A reliable jira OKR management app includes these specs:

Allows clear OKR alignment all through the company.

Transparently charts workers’ Jira issues with OKR for better objective tracking.

Permits clear status results without any external tool requirement such as spreadsheets.

Segregates OKRs from employee reparation.

A Jira OKR plugin is more preferred than a single OKR platform because it helps you treat workers’ daily work or Jira issues as the ingenuities for every OKR. So, you can easily track your work and objective growth in one place.

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Okr Board For Jira Features, And Alternatives

Objectives and Key Results is a structure aided to state the objectives of a company and the key results to further measure those goals. The major aim of OKR is to ensure that the team members and workers are lined up and work towards a clear set goal.

What with OKR for Jira?

OKR plugin Jira helps you set all processes related to the framework and work in one location. It also allows automatic update status of the key results and keeps upcoming initiatives at one location. OKR plugin Jira makes work with the framework better, more effective, and transparent.

Jira OKR software is an agile method to set objectives as they aid empowerment and elasticity in objective setting across employees and organizational departments. OKR offers these benefits:

Aligns teams and workers in Jira

Helps team with delivery focusing on grades

Saves time by avoiding switching between the tools.

Jira OKR Software

OKR board for Jira offers a lot of features. Some of them are given below:

Align your company: Align your company to work as one unit. Make the team concentrate on what’s important.

Desiccate year to quarterly OKRs: Organize yearly planned OKRs and divide them into three-month or one-month strategic OKRs.

Reporting and Analytics: Observe the team’s performance with reports

Set Jira issues as key action with live status alerts

Personalized weights: Give weight to objectives to make a deeper impact on your work.

Workplace for private OKRs: Make reserved workplace and invite specific people to track OKRs.

Public API: Design personalized dashboards and reports on the public API of OKR software.

OKR Saas tools: The OKR SaaS tool help to engage teams to help them get the full benefits. As companies use OKR across teams, it is suggested to use OKR software to track goals, enhance visibility and aid the OKR process.

Some of the alternatives for OKR Board for Jira are given below:

Staff Circle

Popular as a performance managing and culture platform for the distant workforce, Staff Circle offers one-to-one check-in, performance observation, OKRs, live feedback, smart objectives, 360 appraisal, and recognition connected to values and abilities.

Engagedly Inc

It is a quick-speed growth supplier and a brilliant management solution supplier. Designed on the best practices with years of research, Engagedly is a platform to manage performance to generate successful outcomes for companies across the world. It is unified platform unifying business planning execution, availability of talent, and employee engagement into a single software solution.

Crewmojo

It is an efficient performance management podium that aids to generate performance employee-owned. It motivates the team to share feedback, accomplish objectives and be value-driven The supervisors are decked to offer one-on-one status updates and host essential conversations about goals, development, and more. It makes people feel important, boosts engagement, and enhances the performance of the team with every passing day.

Ally

It enhances business performance through OKRs. It allows startups, developing companies and MNCs to accomplish alignment, clarity and agility. It also creates and updates OKRs from tools the team has used before. It creates alignment across the company and monitors progress.

Lattice

It is a collaborative suite designed to observe and enhance employee performance live. The suite can be personalized to any level, giving mangers the power to track performance and provide appraisals to team members. It offers feedbacks, goal setting, and check-in services to optimize and reduce time spent on reviews.

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The ultimate guide to OKRs and agile transformation

In any company, big or small, a clear strategy and diligent accountability are important to ensure all teams are aligned and working to meet their daily goals. If a company is working in a scaled agile surrounding, where teams have to decide, strategic content should be transparent to develop a trustworthy and reliable environment where teams can work their best to get desired business results.

OKRs, also called Objectives and Key Results are a primary tool for companies to make strategies and teams responsible for business results. OKR involves two parts:

The objective includes the things you want to do.

Key results define how to determine if you have accomplished the objective.

Tips for setting up OKRs in your business

Every company implements OKRs differently. According to Google, you shouldn't set low goals and hit them. Choose stretch goals for OKRs, and key results should be measured on a scale of 0 to 1, and you should try to reach around 70%.

OKR is a focusing tool, and too many objectives can cause a diverted focus. Similarly, all objectives should include two or more key results.

How do OKRs aid an Agile Transformation?

For undergoing an OKR agile transformation, your company should adopt agile thinking. It is a challenging job needing more interaction from everyone to concentrate on consistent improvement and effectively elaborating project actions rather than drafting informative strategies upfront. Having an agile approach involves several challenges such as orientation with the organization's objectives, forming agile teams who are adaptive, and accomplishing synchronization between planning and implementation. Here's how OKRs help a successful agile transformation.

Transparent and adaptive goals

Agile thinking is simple and aims to set up a sustainable working place. When functioning on a strategic level, the method to do work offers action-oriented and well-formed organizational objectives.

On one side, organizational agility stems from developing complete clarity in the strategic objectives so there can be more transparency and easy accessibility to all. On the other side, the consistent collaboration between internal teams and clients when setting up your company's vision allows the facility to work on the changes hassle-free and untroubled. The OKRs for agile teams make the team react better to problems and come up with instant solutions.

Better focus and work prioritization

The agile approach prevents upfront planning to offer more time to value-adding action. Using OKRs structure strategically means that goals and key results are consistently being accessed, allowing better time sync with the changing trends of the market and shifting priorities of the company. 

Mixing the two methodologies while setting your objectives develops a transparent understanding of the present priority and offers a better focus on creating real customer value.

Consistent feedback 

Agile means welcoming changes to the progress of the project. Being open to changes makes you adaptable and helps you meet recent demands. 

Because market situations and clients' requirements can change at any time, creating an environment ready to make a shift of priorities is essential. 

Setting OKR feedback loops and assessing your strategic OKRs will develop a new agility layer in your company and enhance management. The OKR agile meaning for companies offers a framework for consistent assessment of your business objectives and success.

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How will adopting to OKRs help your organization?

The goals marked during the first quarter, are they still relevant? If your answer is no, you need a robust objective setting approach to direct your company to make better goals.

Your objective setting process has to be agile to shift priorities as per the business requirements and work environment and help organizations concentrate on their employees' work to achieve the business goals.

With social distancing being the new normal, risk of getting disengaged becomes common in teams. To combat this situation, the organization should opt for an efficient performance management system to assess employee performance and a sturdy objective-setting system to engage employees and show them their contribution to business goals.

Such efficient method is Objectives and Key Results

OKRs adoption has helped companies grow 10 times over time. OKR hasn't just worked for Google, but Twitter, Intel, and LinkedIn. 

Importance of OKRs:

With focused employee performance, the business develops better. OKR process helps organizations in different ways.

Focus on what's important

With OKRs, you can choose what's important for the growth and development of your company. As you acknowledge the objective, it can be drafted into workable pieces. It means you can accomplish all your goals if you work with efficient planning. You can also accomplish stretch goals by using OKRs.

Progress can be measured

OKRs offer you transparency and direction to your target by offering you insights into achieving the goals. The key results used to achieve the goals help management know about the employees' progress. With regular check-ins, the managers can guide the employees if they are on track or have deviated from it and help them achieve the key results better.

Accountability increases employee experience

Responsibility teaches a person the right lessons and helps them learn more. OKRs make employees feel responsible for their jobs and objectives. It makes them feel the trust the company has laid in them. With responsibilities, they offer their best to achieve their goals. This enhances their experience in the company.

Alignment is simpler

Employees can sync their goals with other growth objectives of the company. After the management has set the goals and interacted with different departments for it, every employee can set their own objectives that sync with the company's objectives. If both the employee and company's goals are not aligned, progress will not be good.

Feedback helps employees work better

Employees can work better with OKR feedback. With the consistent evaluation of employee performance, the managers regularly provide feedback about their work quality, effort and performance. It helps the employee know about their performance and make changes for betterment accordingly.

Better transparency

OKRs offer a transparent work culture, where workers know the goals of their colleagues. This helps in preventing goal duplication. Also, OKRs boost collaboration between teams and help the members to choose their priorities. 

It promotes healthy competition, and employees find themselves connected, even after working from their homes. Transparency enhances the members' productivity and positively affects the company's performance.

So, OKR adoption is important to enhance your organization's performance and workers' productivity.