5 TIPS for Designing Organization KRAs

To make your task easier, here are 5 tips that can be of help:

1. Identify the factors that help your company to succeed – As mentioned before, an organization might consider its KRAs to be employee engagement, profit, product quality, client satisfaction and so on. That is because these are the factors that generally drive your company’s success and reputation. However, the Key Result Areas might vary from one company to another, though 5 to 7 KRAs are the norm. While identifying any KRA, make sure it is specific, clear and easy to measure.
2. Make sure everyone is on the same page – Organizational KRAs usually determine the KRAs of different departments, teams and individuals. So, make sure everyone is aligned with the KRAs developed at the company level. Multiple discussions are necessary for this. To make this concept clearer, understand that the progress of every company KRA will have to be measured by KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. And every employee and team needs to understand their KPIs to make sure that a particular organizational KRA sees improvement.   
3. Set KPIs that are SMART – This is extremely important to design effective KRAs, as the above point stated how KPIs affect KRAs. So, each department, team and employee should be assigned SMART goals to accomplish. This means, the goal should be specific, easy to measure, possible to attain, realistic and time-bound. This will make it easy for everyone to achieve their goals and contribute to the progress of KRAs finally. Make sure everyone knows why they have been hired and if they don’t do their tasks properly, no one else can do it for them.
4. Everything should be in writing – In order to maintain clarity and transparency, KRAs and KPIs at all levels must be in writing. Simple templates can be used for this purpose and shared among the concerned people. So, while setting company-level KRAs, you should have the KRAs of all departments, teams and individuals in one place, so that tracing the effect of every action is easy. Remember that the templates should mention who reports to whom and belongs to which department.
5. Ensure coordination among departments – If an organization wants to design sensible KRAs and see them improve over time, collaboration among different departments like sales, marketing, IT and HR is essential. In other words, each department needs to understand how it impacts the performance of another. For instance, unless the HR Manager is able to communicate your brand value and mission to marketing executives while recruiting them, the Marketing Manager will not be able to derive maximum productivity or value from such employees. Or, if the IT department doesn’t realize how important it is to keep all software solutions updated and secure, sensitive information might leak from other departments.

To wrap things up, a company or organization needs to create KRAs by setting distinct KPIs at the employee, team and department levels. And to design measurable, clear and growth-inducing KRAs, you should never lose sight of your ultimate goal and vision. Hiring an organizational development consultant can also be a wise move in this regard, so that you get the detailed guidance you need.