Shaping the Future of HR apps for Startups

Picture this:

You are a founder of a startup having a team of 200 knowledge workers. These knowledge workers constitute a network of teams of 8-10 individuals, who are working in different verticals of your startup. 

COVID 19 has shaken up your work structure and your team is stressed and anxious with all the unnecessary increase in the workload, back to back calls and the ever-increasing virtual team meets. Co-ordinating the dispersed and distributed workforce in the virtual world has gotten really challenging.  At the end of the day, every team & individual is working for long hours to meet their target and as per them they do achieve their business goals but in hindsight, the organization’s objectives are not met. As a founder, you are totally baffled.

You recently read Larry Page’s interview on how OKRs (Objective & Key Results) helped Google grow 10X. You decided to research more on the topic and take advice from your fellow founders and investors. After thorough research, you decided to opt for the famous OKRs model to align business goals across the organization.

Fast-forwarding to 5 months you analyze that the situation hasn’t improved much, the expected outcomes haven’t been achieved and team stress hasn’t gone down much. 

You are wondering what possibly has gone wrong. 

Here is your answer, the missing ‘continuous performance management, and team collaboration system’ in your enterprise OKRs software. 

What is a Continuous Performance Management System?

While OKRs are the navigators, Work Management, continuous conversation, collaboration, engagement, & performance reviews are the compass providing directions. Just like a good navigation system yields results with a compass, OKRs need all these critical management tools to be effective and successful. 

Continuous Performance Management journey begins by setting aligned OKRs across the organization. This kicks-off the most critical aspect of the day-to-day’s work management by creating connected tasks for each OKRs both for the self & team. This further lays down the path for continuous team communication & Collaboration linked with the OKRs. Across the organization communication with purpose helps in building team connections and have meaningful engagement by giving 360 feedback, recognition, and sharing best practices in the flow of work. People receive social praise for their small & big successes which helps in continuous motivation. Then comes weekly check-ins updating goal progress, one-on-ones on a focussed agenda, self & team performance reviews and the loop continues.

A well-balanced combination of these management tools is what constitutes a Continuous Performance Management System. 

OKRs start the real action by aligning the goals across the organization and unifying the network of teams and individual contributors. But more often than not, the poor implementation of the system and lack of a unified platform leads to OKRs failure in achieving the expected goals. 

Usage of multiple disjoint and disparate software leads to poor user experience & engagement. It also creates chronic problems in data aggregation. The absence of aggregated and complete data leads to unreliable raters & ratings, Which is why universally people despise using HR apps and the entire performance management process is rated Net Promoter Score -60.

Referring to Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Human Capital Management Technology 2020  existing enterprise OKR solutions, misses out on employee experience, voice of the people & continuous performance management which are expected to be mainstream in the next 2 to 5 years. To fill these gaps HR leaders buy multiple software for the team’s work management, communication and collaboration, connected meeting notes, feedback, recognition & pulse polls.

At the organizational level, this increases the expenses up to 3X, top up with data security, data silos, integration, & orphaned apps issues. At an individual level, it affects user experience, engagement, and productivity. It also unnecessarily increases the workload for them, forcing them to spend more time switching between the apps. This undoubtedly affects their output level and highly impacts their productivity.

Without any doubt, a unified platform connecting all such management tools is the call for the hour. 

More often than usual the HR people have to conduct various workshops to explain how to use the enterprise OKR software. The existing software is not simple and accessible to use. They are complex in nature and hence the user requires training on how to use the software. It basically portrays an unbalanced learning curve and how individuals find it hard to use enterprise OKRs software. This often leads to the user turning away from the software and spending lesser time on it. 

Another major factor that needs to be considered here is enterprise OKRs software should be simple, engaging, accessible, and fun. It needs to have a hook and stickiness of social media apps. Most startups nowadays have a younger workforce consisting of GenZ and millennials who have grown up in social media age. This makes it necessary for enterprise OKRs software to start taking inspiration from social media apps and start putting their efforts into attracting GenZ and millennials.

Considering all these functionality & technology gaps in the current enterprise OKRs software, what is the solution now?

“InstaTal” 

It is one such unified platform provider that bridges all these gaps by blending HR, Workplace & Social apps to create an all-in-one workspace for startups dispersed and distributed teams. Built with the concept of Hook model InstaTal endeavors to transform a boring lifeless enterprise HR app to a super engaging app like TikTok. Enabling each individual to establish & optimize their personal brands in the organization.

InstaTal firmly believes and endorses that the people are indeed superheroes in an organization’s growth. 

‘The Next Normal’ is an empathetic, collaborative, and people-centric organization. Through our unified platform leaders can empower effective collaboration even when the team members are physically apart. 

It is high time to reshape the future of HR apps by delivering what market demands.