Road to glory with the help of OKRs

2022 Focus and results

Objective Key Results enable organizations to set ambitious yet achievable objectives.

We love data and the stories they tell us. Let’s discuss the OKR’s we aimed for during last year, and how all of them helped us in accomplishing our goals ?

In the upcoming paragraphs, you will find:

➡️ The “objective”: some of the objectives we are trying to achieve in our company;

➡️ The key results (labeled ✅ if we achieved it, and ? if we did not);

➡️ What we accomplished and learned through them.

Objective 1: Grow our business

Key Results:
✅ Increase revenue in 50% compared to last year;
? Increase website traffic by 25% per quarter;
✅ Increase billable hours of teams by 5%;
? Land 2 new clients.

We achieved this objective, but not by achieving all our key results. We expanded our planable hours and got more business from our current clients, instead of signing new ones. This was not entirely intentional and we did not knew this was possible. Consequently, our revenue increased by 50%!

Objective 2: Sustainable employee growth

Key Results:
✅ Add 3 employees per quarter;
✅ Get 2-4 suitable applicants per month;
? Increase the annual employee retention rate to +80%;

To achieve this objective, we focused on our recruitment process and on streamlining it. Making our website the central hub through which every applicant went, created some cool videos and content to tell our story. We streamlined our internal processes and communication channels, so it was easier and much quicker to follow-up on new applicants.

Besides our internal work, we scouted and selected some suitable partners that could help us in the search for qualified personnel. As a result of these efforts, we were able to achieve a growth in employees of 44%. Not quite the growth we had imagined (we had no idea of what was realistic), but nevertheless a growth we are proud of.

Objective 3: Culture and wellbeing

Key Results:
✅ Conduct an employee wellbeing survey and achieve a score of 7 or higher;
✅ Gather sprint and wellbeing grades every sprint (2 weeks);
✅ Increase the number of employee engagement and participation by +25%;
✅ Launch an employee wellbeing program with personal coaching;
✅ Organize a workation for all employees and teams;

Our most important objective: a great culture and employees that enjoy their wellbeing in life and at work.
Culture and wellbeing is an ongoing, never ending objective. Last year, we focused on creating a positive work environment that fosters employee engagement and growth.

We introduced an employee wellbeing program, personal coaching and organised several meaningful team building activities (during working hours and outside). These activities improve teams skills, stimulate a growth mindset, enhance team dynamics and company engagement.

We also started actively surveying the employees wellbeing score and personal wellbeing grades. As a result of these efforts, we were able to: achieve an employee wellbeing score of 7.3/10; increase the number of participants in activities and events by 30%; and saw a drop of the overall short term absenteeism ratio of 23% (in comparison with last year)!

Last but not least, we had a very successful workation in Portugal last year, definitely something that we will be doing again in 2023 ?️

In conclusion…

By setting ambitious yet achievable objectives and establishing measurable key results, we were able to track our progress and make data-driven decisions to improve our performance and achieve our business goals.

We will continue to use this framework to set and achieve our future goals. Our next step is to empower our teams to reach their own objectives through setting OKRs. ?