FAQs - Goals & OKRs

Creating and managing goals

1. What is the difference between a goal owner and a goal contributor? 

2. Can ‘normal' users create company goals?

3. Who can be assigned goals?

4. Who can be assigned as goal contributors for team goals?

5. What does dynamic progress calculation mean, and how does it work?

6. What are “initiatives” in the OKR logic? 

Approving goals

7. Why does my manager not need to approve a managed goal that I have set up?

8. Can admins approve goals that a manager has not yet approved?

9. What happens if my goal is rejected?

10. What happens if an employee, that is responsible for approving goals, gets deactivated?

Goal Cycles

11. Can multiple Goal Cycles run at the same time?

12. Can a user who is participating in a cycle create goals outside of a cycle while the cycle is in progress?

13. My goals from the goal cycle are not visible, why?

Analytics

14. Is there an overview of all active goals and their status and progress?

Notifications

15. Does Leapsome automatically send out goal reminders?

16. How are employees reminded to define goals/OKRs?

Creating and managing goals

1. What is the difference between a goal owner and a goal contributor?

The Owner role defines which Person or Team is responsible for the Goal. For team goals, the owner would be the team responsible for achieving the goal. For example, the goal 'Increase deal win rate by 5%' might belong to the sales team.

For personal development goals, the person responsible for achieving the goal will be the owner. For example, the goal 'Win 25 new customers in Q4' might belong to a specific account executive. 

The Contributor role helps to highlight people or teams who may not own a goal but still have an impact on the progress or assist in achieving it. This could be by supporting some Key Results or initiatives within the objective. The contributor may be a user or team who works in conjunction with the owner to achieve the objective.

2. Can ‘normal' users create company goals?

No. See our Goals & OKRs - Access level matrix for more details.

3. Who can be assigned to goals?

All users, managers, (super)admins, and teams can be assigned to the goal. However, it also depends on the person who is assigning them.

Normal users can assign the goals only to themselves if the option 'Normal users can create and update goals for their teams' is enabled by admin under 'Settings' > 'Module Settings' > 'Goals' for their teams. 

Team leaders can assign goals only to themselves, their direct reports, and the team(s) they lead. 

Managers can assign goals only to themselves and their direct reports, and if the option “normal users can create and update goals for their teams” is enabled by admin under 'Settings' > 'Module Settings' > 'Goals', for their teams. 

(Super-)Admins have the highest access and are able to create goals for any individual in the company.

See our Goals & OKRs - Access level matrix for more details.

4. Who can be assigned as goal contributors for team goals?

Individuals and teams can be assigned as goal contributors for team goals.

5. What does dynamic progress calculation mean and how does it work?

Dynamic progress calculation means that the progress of a parent goal will be updated automatically when updating the progress of a child goal. This is only possible if no key results are defined on the parent-goal level. With this enabled, the child goals act as key results. For example, you have created a parent goal with two linked child goals. You change one child's goal to 50% progress so the parent's goal progress should be updated to 25%.

6. What are 'initiatives' in the OKR logic? 

In addition to key results (which define how progress is measured), you can also add initiatives, which define what needs to be done to achieve an objective. They are added almost exactly like key results, which means that they can also have owners, descriptions, metrics, or deadlines. However, initiatives don’t influence the overall progress of the goal unless you set up dynamic progress calculation on the key result level. Initiatives can be disabled in the admin settings for goals and OKR’s.

Approving goals

7. Why does my manager not need to approve a managed goal that I have set up?

This could be because you are an admin. Admin's goals don't need to be approved. This can also be due to the approvals set by the admin. If a user is not eligible for approval flow(s) criteria set by admin, their goals are being auto-approved.

8. Can admins approve goals that a manager has not yet approved?

Yes. Admins can go to the Goals module, filter for 'States' > 'Pending approval' to find the goal that needs to be approved. Goals can be approved either via the home dashboard's section 'Approvals' or by clicking on the goal and clicking 'Approve'. 

9. What happens if my goal is rejected?

It is sent back into draft mode so you could make relevant changes and submit the goal for approval again.

10. What happens if an employee, that is responsible for approving goals, gets deactivated?

If such an employee is deactivated, they will be replaced in all approval steps with an active super-admin. If the super-admin is already an approver in the process, the alternative would be the manager of the user. 

Goal Cycles

11. Can multiple Goal Cycles run at the same time? 

Yes. 

12. Can a user who is participating in a cycle create goals outside of a cycle while the cycle is in progress?

No. Except in a few cases detailed here, all non-personal goals will automatically be attached to any active goal cycle. The rationale being, if a company decides to implement goal cycles, there is a clear intent to contain all goals in this lightweight process.

13. My goals from the goal cycle are not visible, why?

If the admin has selected 'Automatically archive goals when the goal cycle ends,' then all goals within the goal cycles will be archived after the deadline of the goal cycle has been reached. To find those goals, filter for 'States: Archived' and all goals that were archived will be visible to you. 

Analytics

14. Is there an overview of all active goals and their status and progress?

Yes, under 'All goals'. To see all public goals and their progress, all filters that have been pre-selected must be deleted.

Notifications

15. Does Leapsome automatically send out goal reminders?

For all users in general, Goal Update digest & reminder notifications can be enabled on the Admin level through 'Settings' > 'Company Settings' > 'Notifications ' > 'Notifications settings', and later, users can set it as they prefer for themselves in their user settings.

16. How are employees reminded to define goals/OKRs?

If working with goal cycles, Employees get reminders to draft their goals and reminders before the end of a goal cycle. These reminders are sent via email and/or Slack. In addition, goal cycles support (HR) managers in maintaining a clear overview of the goal-setting process. Goal cycles are split into a drafting and an active phase. That way, a goal cycle grants the admins an additional overview of those employees who have not yet defined goals/OKRs.