Managing a remote work team is difficult. It’s harder to check in and make sure employees are doing okay, both in their jobs and personally.
Many people struggle working outside of an office environment, and most will also find it challenging to speak up and say so. OKR (Objective and Key Results) offer a brilliant opportunity to open up a line of communication with your team. OKRs also help you make sure everyone knows what they need to do and why they need to do it.
Here are some ways you can use OKRs when managing your remote team.
Why Is Now The Right Time To Implement OKRs For Your Team?
When the Coronavirus pandemic hit in March 2020, the way we work entirely changed. Many roles moved from being office-based to being completely remote. While it was anticipated this would be a short-term adaptation at the time, it now looks like things have changed for good.
There are many advantages for both businesses and employees working remotely, such as flexibility, cost, and time. In fact, many people don’t ever want things to go back to how they were before. This is supported by the fact that almost three-quarters of the workforce will be working remotely by 2025.
With employees settled in their remote working positions, now is the best time to
implement OKRs for your team because they can help you make sure your team is happy and performing well.
What Are The Benefits Of Implementing OKRs For Your Remote Team?
While remote working has many benefits, there are also challenges. Working away from the office can make it challenging to track and monitor the progress of both teams and individuals.
The downfall of not being physically present in the office may mean that some employees don’t feel like they can resolve problems they are faced with. As a result, they get behind in their work.
On the other side of this, employers also need to find a happy medium between regularly checking in with their team and micromanaging.
OKRs can help with both of these things and more.
Some of the benefits of using OKRs in a remote team are:
- Alignment. OKRs help ensure everyone prioritizes work correctly even when working remotely. When employees work in different locations, you risk goal overlap because employees do not know what their colleagues are working on. Alignment makes sure everyone is aware of their own goals and those of their colleagues, even when they don’t see them every day.
- Transparency. One of the essential benefits of OKRs is the transparency of goals throughout the company. The OKR framework allows each person to see how their work contributes to broader company goals and what progress is being made by everyone in meeting the objective.
- Adaptability. OKR is a process whereby everything is under regular review, and this helps you adapt and apply any necessary changes quickly where the OKR is not being met.
- Accountability. When your team feels like work has a purpose and contributes to company growth, it gives a lot of meaning to their daily work, improves job satisfaction, and ultimately makes them more productive.
- Communication. When working remotely, communication can be difficult. OKRs encourage and facilitate open communication throughout the organization. Regular check-ins throughout the process make sure employees don’t waste time feeling stuck and unsupported.
How Does Implementing OKRs Make Remote Team Management Seamless?
Part of the OKR process is that managers better understand what and how their team is doing. Remote working makes it much more challenging to manage a group as you don’t know what they’re doing day-to-day.
With OKRs, you need to regularly check in with your team to make sure you’re on track with meeting the Key Results.
During these meetings, you can ask questions like:
- what have you been doing this week?
- How have you found things?
- Have you encountered any challenges? If so, how did you overcome them?
- What do you plan on working on next?
All of this helps both you and your team ensure that everyone is working on the right things. The benefit of adaptability means that you can quickly change things if something isn’t working.
These regular meetings help you make sure the team is meeting their goals while also offering a pastoral benefit.
You get a better overview of how everyone is doing, how they are finding their workload, and recognize any common themes across the team that might require escalation, such as feeling overloaded with work.
Implementing OKRs brings focus and alignment to the team by making sure everyone is aware of what their goals and tasks are and how they help the organization in meeting the overarching objective.
It also helps facilitate communication and transparency by involving everyone throughout the OKR process.
OKR Examples For Your Remote Team
Objective 1: To create an inclusive and strong remote working culture.
Key Results:
- Weekly check-ins between manager and team member to maintain an open line of communication
- Bi-weekly team meetings to ensure the team feels connected
- Employees have a monthly 1-2-1
Objective 2: To make sure all meetings are run remote-first
Key Results:
- Host meetings at a time that suits employees working across different time zones
- Decide on a single piece of software for use in hosting remote meetings
- Record all meetings and share the minutes for anyone who cannot attend.
Wrapping Things Up
Take away some of the difficulties of managing a remote team using OKRs.
They help you meet organizational objectives, but they also bring the team closer together and help you get a better understanding of how everyone is doing
