Every business department or process has its own importance and significance. However, one department which helps in laying the foundation of all the other departments is the Human Resources (HR) department. Often known as the backbone of every organization, the HR department is responsible for a myriad of functions like implementing various policies and frameworks, recruiting the right talent, performance management, boosting employee engagement, efficient compensation, and benefits framework, law compliance, and training, and more! In order to excel in their various tasks, it is highly recommended that HR departments implement OKRs.
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What is OKR?
OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results, and it is one of the most popular goal management strategy ideals for companies of all types and sizes. The aim of OKRs is to help organizations create a connection between the company, teams, and goals and achieve measurable results. With well-defined OKRs in place, companies can focus on goals, align the teams to achieve those goals, and boost employee engagement as well.
The objective in OKR represents ‘what’ you want to achieve. These goals are ambitious and motivating in nature, which also helps in inspiring the team. The key results in OKR represent ‘how’ you can fulfill the objective. The key results help in measuring the progress and determining ways and methods that should be implemented to achieve the objective.
So, in simple words, the purpose of OKRs can be defined as completing a set of key results to achieve your desired objective.
How to Write Effective HR OKRs?
The recruiting process in the Human Resources department is a complex one. It comes with its own set of challenges. As a recruiter, you need to ensure that you are finding the exact talent who fits the requirement perfectly in terms of qualifications, skill set, experience, etc. You also need to understand how well the candidate will fit into your work culture, provide guidance as needed, ensure they have a seamless interview experience, and more. One of the best ways to excel in the recruitment process is to implement the right OKRs.
The below formula is one of the easiest ways to create and write OKRs not just for the HR department but for any other department within your organization as well.
We will ________ (objective) ______ as measured by _______ these (key results) ______.
While defining your objectives, you need to ensure that they are crystal clear, actionable, inspiring, and time-bound. Your key results should be measurable and quantifiable in order to determine the progress and the end result. The human resources department in any company involves several key areas like recruitment, onboarding, training and development, employee relations, employee engagement, compensation, benefits, etc. Ideally, companies should implement OKRs for each of these areas in order to succeed as one entire department.
Examples of OKR for Recruitment in your Organization
We have listed down some of the tox examples of OKR for recruitment which can be used as-is or can be modified to better suit your company requirements. As mentioned earlier, recruitment is a challenging process, and with the help of the right OKRs, recruiters can source better candidates and enhance the quality of all their new hires. These recruitment OKRs are beneficial for HR Recruitment Managers and Recruitment Coordinators.
Objective: Grow the team with top-notch candidates
Key Results:
- Boost the employee referral program fees by 15%.
- Hire 20 new employees for various departments by the end of Q1.
- Improve the positive feedback interviews that have been conducted by 25%.
- Obtain a ratio of 5:2 between interviewed and hired applicants.
Objective: Decrease the recruitment process duration
Key Results:
- Decrease the time taken for job description creation and requirement gathering from 3 weeks to 1 week.
- Increase the database for potential candidates by 30%.
- Reduce the allotment cycle of interview dates by 10%.
Objective: Hire A-Candidates as freshers
Key Results:
- Enhance the visibility of the company brand in top colleges by 80%.
- Boost your job offer acceptance rate by 15%.
- Decrease the percentage of contractors in the workforce by 15%.
Objective: Introduce a long-term strategy for candidate sourcing
Key Results:
- Conduct an employee engagement survey and compile the data in three data points for the careers page.
- Identify applicants in the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and invest in five of them.
- Reduce the source time by 25%.
Objective: Establish a strong and robust recruiting machine
Key Results:
- Decrease the average vacancy time from 45 days to 25 days.
- Decrease the cost of hire from $1,500 to $1,000.
- Increase the number of hires based on internal recommendations from 10% to 30%.
Objective: Enhance the onboarding process
Key Results:
- Survey 10 candidates and gather feedback on any onboarding process issues.
- Achieve a score of 90+ in the onboarding process satisfaction rate.
- Boost the new employees’ pass rate from 80% to 90%.
Objective: Decrease the cost-per-hire
Key Results:
- Increase the employee referral program bonus from $1,000 to $2,000.
- Hire 15 engineers from 5 college career fairs.
- Hire 30% of applicants from free posts in various talent communities.
Objective: Boost your recruitment marketing strategy
Key Results:
- Invest $3,000 in Q1 for recruitment marketing.
- Collaborate with the marketing team to boost the views of job postings by 40%.
- Review existing recruitment processes in place and automate three of them.
Objective: Decrease the failed hire rates
Key Results:
- Prepare a comprehensive recruitment plan and decrease the average hiring time by 20%.
- Improve the new hires’ onboarding and training NPS by 40%.
- Boost professional and social networking by 15% for better collaboration between new hires and existing employees.
Objective: Boost the company brand
Key Results:
- Improve your online presence by 30% by sharing employee testimonials.
- Maintain complete transparency throughout the recruitment process by sharing timely feedback and tips on what to improve.
- Publish five videos every quarter on social media platforms to provide more information about the company’s vision, mission, and culture.
Objective: Build a diverse pool of candidates
Key Results:
- Provide ample training to recruiters on best practices and requirements related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
- Communicate about the diversity goals and metrics in the quarterly town halls.
- Hire external recruiting consultants to focus solely on DEI.
Objective: Boost the candidate pipeline
Key Results:
- Widen your recruiting geography by 30%.
- Boost the relocation stipend by 40%.
- Run three effective employer branding campaigns in collaboration with the marketing team by the end of Q3.
Benefits: Improve the experience of the applicants
Key Results:
- Reduce the average hiring time by 25%.
- Design the hiring playbook by the end of Q1.
- Improve the review score provided by applicants by 10%.
Benefits of OKRs
Today OKRs have become an integral part of various organizations, including companies like Google, Netflix, Airbnb, Twitter, etc. So, why are the majority of the companies implementing OKRs? Here are the top three benefits of using OKRS.
- Easy to create and use – In the majority of companies, the focus is on developing various goals rather than focusing on achieving them. But with the help of OKRs, you can define not only your objectives but also ways to achieve them and measure their success. It is quite easy to create relevant OKRs and measure them to determine how well you have achieved your objectives.
- Increases focus on goals and boost commitment – When you define and implement OKRs, you are limiting your focus to only those specific objectives and their key results. This enables you to avoid losing your focus and stay committed to achieving a specific set of goals.
- Cascading approach for better goal alignment – Companies usually decide their goals and objectives at the top level and cascade it down to the other levels. One of the major issues in this cascading approach is that often employees fail to align these goals to their goals which in turn decreases the levels of employee engagement. OKRs, on the other hand, is a bi-directional process which means that the objectives and key results are set at each level and together help in making a unified plan.
OKR Process Writing Tips
The world today has become highly competitive, and if you want to stay ahead in this competition, you should have a clear idea of what direction you want to follow, sufficient resources, and key metrics in place to quantify your efforts. Writing effective OKRs enables employees to have a better understanding of what is expected out of them and how their results and performance have an impact on the overall company’s growth.
Here are some key tips that you can follow while writing your OKRs.
- Choosing Objectives – Make sure that you write down 3-5 objectives, opt for quarterly objectives rather than annual ones, and ensure that the objectives are crystal clear for everyone.
- Choosing Key Results – Each objective should have a set of 3-5 key results, which are time-bound and specific; ensure the key results are written by the teams who are subject matter experts and assign a Key Results champion who can conduct monthly check-in meetings.
- Avoid Jargon – One of the primary goals of OKRs is to ensure that it is easy to understand by everyone. Hence, it is best to avoid any company jargon and use basic terminology so that everybody is on the same page.
- Communicate about the OKRs – Organizations should use various communication platforms to communicate about OKRs and their success. Some of the platforms that you can use include town halls, internal newsletters, project management tools, department meetings, etc.
Scoring OKRs
The first and foremost thing to remember while scoring OKRs is that every OKR should be evaluated differently while keeping their difficulty in mind. The ideal practice is to use a scale of 0-1 for evaluating a key result, with 0 being the lowest and 1 being the highest. A score of 0.6-0.7 is considered good, and anything less than 0.4 indicates that a reevaluation of the OKRs is required.
Conclusion
Designing OKRs is one of the best ways to track and measure how well the recruitment department is performing. You can use these top OKR examples to set OKRs for your recruitment department and modify them as per your requirements. You can check out top OKR examples for other departments as well, such as Customer Success, Design, Training, etc.
