How to accelerate the Equality Plan through OKRs indicators

In today’s business world, leaders know the importance of empowering women in the workplace. In fact, upward mobility has a direct impact on business success. According to a study conducted by McKinsey, companies that increase female participation in their governing bodies achieve tangible benefits in their profitability, innovation, governance, reputation and sustainability.

At CabreraMC, we believe that the use of OKRs indicators Such as goal-setting processes and performance management systems help all professionals feel empowered to advance their careers. In the case of women in the workplace, we also believe that key personal goals and outcomes play an integral role in their development into positions of greater responsibility.

“Companies that empower women to achieve their aspirations are more likely to retain female talent key to success in an uncertain and fast-changing world.”

José Cabrera – CEO CabreraMC

Strategic plan for equal opportunities

At CabreraMC, we firmly believe that including an equality plan in your business strategy is mandatory. to grow as a company. And it will be even more important to establish Equality Plan indicators to measure results.

How to get companies to move forward and generate a positive culture towards equality? Although I don’t have a single answer for that, our experience teaches us how OKRs can provide us with a common strategy to be more aligned with equality goals, help us focus on what’s important to ensure an equitable work environment, and measure results to reduce the equality gap.

If you have concerns about delving into this topic, we invite you to continue reading or if you prefer a conversation do not hesitate to contact our team.

Do you need a program or course on Equality Plan?

If you need a guide for the elaboration of your company’s equality plan so that your team is aligned with the strategy to follow to carry out a strategic equal opportunities plan, you probably need a course on equality plan . In CabreraMC, we have created a
Online program to accelerate the process of equality in the company
.

OKRs as indicators of the company equality plan

OKRs are indicators that help us establish specific objectives for equality, based on the equality gaps detected in the organization, facilitate their measurement and continuous management, and allow us to define, recognize and reinforce the inalienable behaviors that we must exemplify as leaders to achieve a culture of full equality of treatment and opportunities for women and men in our companies.

Actually, the OKR concept is quite simple: if we want to promote Gender Equality (or any other great transformation), we must start by defining some clear and ambitious objectives that communicate from the purpose to the entire organization. The two fundamental terms are Objectives and Key Results. The “O” represents WHAT we want to achieve. To turn these goals into results, we need to define and align the key results that departments and employees need to achieve within a given time period. The “KRs” represent HOW we will achieve the objectives. Hence, the importance of “key results” (KR) having a time frame setting the deadline to achieve the goal. OKRs must be viable (ideally inspirational), transparent, measurable and time-bound, allowing us to measure how we progress quarterly or semi-annually (between 3 and 5 KRs per Objective)

OKRs should reflect the most important priorities of the Equality Plan to help teams focus and avoid distractions. KRs should not be tied to compensation, they should not be used to punish or reward employees, but are an ongoing management tool that helps us have relevant conversations and reflect each quarter, on what worked and what didn’t, and see how they are progressing towards the equality goals set. If progress isn’t on track, it’s time to review the approach or KR (if deemed irrelevant or unrealistic).

The superpowers of OKRs

These are the three powerful reasons that we have found in OKRs as the methodology that will help us accelerate the objectives of the Equality Plan:

1. Set aspirational goals to accelerate personal growth. Unlike KPIs that encourage employees to set goals that are achievable, objectives and key results can be aspirational and challenging. On the one hand, OKRs create a more open contribution framework where women have space to fight for personal and professional growth, to aspire to greater achievements in the companies where they work. On the other hand, companies by implementing a collaborative and transparent goal-setting process, find it as a way to empower women to achieve their aspirations and retain a key female talent for the future of the organization. By pushing people to push old boundaries, they become drivers of the changes needed to achieve equality as soon as possible.
2. Transparency facilitates collaboration. Companies can create a culture of equality and empowerment with OKRs by managing workplace goals and performance collaboratively and openly. Employees at all levels can see each other’s goals and how each department and individual is progressing toward the company’s equality goals. Not only does this align teams, but it levels the playing field and helps ensure women have the same opportunities as their peers. As a result, transparency helps women to know the company’s commitment to promoting equality and makes them trust the companies they work for.
3. Well-managed feedback processes build trust. Continuous feedback is an integral part of advanced performance management and goal setting processes. By sharing feedback, results guidance, valuable conversations about how we are achieving our goals, and recognition, leaders can instill confidence in women that their contribution is recognized and there are opportunities for advancement. In addition, by sharing constructive feedback, companies can create the evidence and narrative that they are committed to the professional growth of their women.

OKRs in practice

To illustrate the process, let’s take a key goal for equality common to all companies, related to increasing the proportion of women among their leadership ranks:

OBJECTIVE: Advance equal opportunities and treatment between men and women by having gender parity in leadership by 2024.

KR # 1: Training 100% of leaders in identifying unconscious biases that allow us to understand the current behaviors that culturally slow down the equality plan in 2021.

KR # 2: Identify the team of ambassadors with whom to design and co-create the behaviors and behaviors desirable for the organization (in Q2), responsible for infecting and being part of the training plan for the set of leaders and future leaders of the organization (in Q4)

KR #3: Increase the proportion of high-potential people to 50% women and define a career development plan by 2021

KR #4: Train 100% of leaders on how to develop talent, motivate, inspire, give feedback and manage career planning conversations in 2021.

KR #5: Quarterly communication plan of the evidence and achievements generated, making visible the recognition of the new behaviors to viralize in the organization and ensuring that they are accessible and known by 100% of the emplead@s.

Designed to fit the needs of any size organization, department or industry, OKRs allow us to set goals across many levels and teams of the company. And they can also be used at the individual level to accelerate personal development and set aspirational goals that contribute significantly to reducing the equality gap.

What we’ve learned

Sometimes, the objectives set in the Company Equality Plan They are meaningful and inspiring, but nevertheless they do not agree on the need to be concrete and action-oriented, since they are thought of in the long term and are not concrete enough for us to act directly on them. However, thanks to OKRs these strategies can be much better defined, both practically and over time, in addition to the fact that it will be possible to know much better the degree of compliance of these strategies towards the achievement of the Objectives, which will result in significantly improving the impact of the work to be done to achieve the equality objectives.

• Focus and Alignment: Aligning everyone’s work with the main objectives of the Equality Plan, as well as creating clarity and focus where all l@s leaders know their clearly defined objectives and focus on the things that matter most.

→ Most companies say they are committed to advancing women in leadership positions. What they may not recognize, however, is that systemic barriers are holding women back. As a result, women continue to be disadvantaged at all stages of their employment and are underrepresented in positions of power.

• Transparency: OKRs bring transparency to the company, everyone can see what others are working to drive collaboration and better performance.

→ To address structural inequality, it is necessary to make changes in culture, therefore designing new behaviors that cannot be renounced and ensuring their viralization to make diversity and equality part of our DNA.

• Improve execution: Clear key results (key performance indicators), monitored and measured, often improve accountability and execution.

→ An adaptive challenge such as equality can only be solved by the people who are part of the problem and the solution: The men and women of our organization. Therefore, starting by becoming aware of the patterns of behavior and / or cognitive biases installed in people that condition the culture of our organization is to start walking the path, but we must ensure that we measure how people train the mechanisms of “hacking” them, and are able to get new ways of listening / communicating / developing creating changes in the behaviors of nuestr@s leaders that will promote a new culture.

→ If we really want to address equality effectively, we must use the same tools we use to address any business problem: evidence/data and metrics. OKRs allow us to have conversations with directiv@s and ejecutiv@s about the inner workings of inequality in the company and the actions necessary to minimize the GAP and talk about “how we are making the equality plan a reality” And through the KRs we can focus on what is important, measure progress and make the necessary adjustments to progress and achieve their diversity and equality objectives.

On a personal level, the benefits are also multiple and will help us retain talent:

• Promoting diversity and equality is an indisputable competence for the leader of the future, as it is proven that people in diverse teams are more productive and more creative.
• They feel how their work connects to equality goals, they have clarity, they know what to focus on, and they feel that the organization and its managers can ayudarl@s and formarl@s better.
• Value contributions and recognize the value provided and progress, helping to empower people for their contribution and impact on the global goal. Tod@s we are part of the solution! The sum of all will help drive the desired culture.

Where to start?

1. Value validated learning when it comes to promoting equality. Make an exercise of what barriers we are finding that slow us down and what things have worked and what has been the key factor of success.
2. Revisit the map of the people who must be involved to make equality a reality in the organization, readjust if necessary, and hold a strategic alignment session, with the aim of working as a team a renewed purpose for Equality.
3. Introduce the OKR Model as a management system by objectives, focused on results and focused on people.
4. Create a culture of continuous improvement and excellence in execution based on OKRs that allows managers to work junt@s, focus effort and make measurable contributions to strategic initiatives.
5. Define and align strategic objectives of the 2021 Equality Plan in an open and collaborative manner, and implement an initial action plan with OKRs for the second half of the year.
6. Apply the CFR (Conversations, Feedback and Recognition) for the continuous improvement of the performance and productivity and impact of our actions.
7. Working hand in hand with the people who will drive the ongoing management process and make sure to review with those responsible how things are being achieved, will be the OKRs Champions of the Equality Plan!
8. With a new game board, the rules understood and the invitation to the entire organization to play… It only remains to make progress in achieving our goals! #Junt@sLlegamosMásLejos!

Share your experiences

Sharing always creates value What experiences have you had with putting your Equality Plan into action? How are you addressing the cultural challenge to change vuestr@s leaders’ behaviors? What barriers are repeated and would you like to be able to eliminate them? What 3 things do you think would help you accelerate your goals?

If you want to know more about how we are helping other companies accelerate their strategic initiatives (Accelerate Strategy with OKRs) or discuss ideas on how to implement equality OKRs in your company, do not hesitate to contact me and I will be happy to explore the best way to accelerate the achievement of the equality goals you have set in your organization.