Objectives dashboard & reports

Objectives reporting allows account administrators and reviewers a closer look at all Objectives that they have visibility into, as well as some higher level data about who owns objectives, how many objectives they own, and how aligned the company's objectives are.

In this article, you will learn...

• How to access Objectives reporting
• What information you can report on using the Objectives dashboard
• Use cases for Objectives reporting
• Frequently Asked Questions for Objectives reporting

Video 🎥: Reporting (5:46 mark)

Access Objectives reporting

Only account admins and reviewers can access the Reporting tab.

1. Click Reporting in 15Five's main, left-hand navigation bar.
   
2. Select Objectives from the dropdown menu.
   
3. You will land on the Objectives dashboard, which provides a snapshot look into objectives data. From here, you can navigate to the other tabs (Status, Ownership, and Alignment) to see different objectives data. The next section of this article walks through what information is available in each of these tabs.
   

Objectives Dashboard

On the Objectives dashboard, you'll find three graphs: Objectives status, Objectives and Key Results ownership, and Objectives alignment. These three graphs contain high-level Objectives data, but there are additional reports available if you want to dig a little deeper. We will get into the details of these reports in the following sections of this article.

See the Objectives status table for a quick look into how all objectives are tracking based on today's date and their latest status. Check out the Objectives and Key Results ownership graphs for a look into the number of people with or without objectives + key results. Review the Objectives alignment graph for insight into the percentage of objectives that are aligned vs not aligned.

Use the filters at the top of the page to alter what objective data appears in the graphs below. Available filters are Owner, Objective type, Start date, End date, and Objective state.

'Objective status' graph

Overview: The "Objectives status" graph on the dashboard give you a look into the current statuses of objectives.

Context: Objective owners are required to set set a status for all objectives they own in each Check-in. Objective owners can also change their objective status manually on the objective page. The "Objective status" graph is a visual representation of the most recently-set status of all objectives.

Each bar of the chart represents a timeframe, and objectives statuses are represented in colors: green for "on track," orange for "behind," red for "at risk," and grey for "no status." Hover over a specific color to see what percentage of objectives had the corresponding status during a given timeframe.

Below the bar graph you'll find the status report: a high-level report that shows you what percentage of objectives currently fall into each possible status. Click View next to a status to see a full report of all objectives that fall into that status. You can also click See status report to open the 'Status' tab.

Ownership

The Objectives and Key Results ownership table shows you what percentage of employees do and do not have objectives and key results assigned to them. 

Alignment

Review the Objectives alignment graph for insight into the percentage of objectives that are aligned vs not aligned.

Objectives status

To get to the Objectives report: Status page, click on See status report under the Objectives status graph. The Objectives report: Status layout looks similar to what you see on the 'All objectives' page, but gives you trend based information into how objectives are performing over time. Check out objectives progress based on status using the 'Objective status' filter: On track, Behind, or At risk. By recognizing trends early on, you can hopefully keep more objectives in the green! Filter by owner, objective type, alignment, etc to nail down the objective(s) you are looking for.

Below are a couple examples of how the status report can be used. Group names are hypothetical. 

• Maybe you want to see how the members of the Sales group are doing with their objectives? Filter by Sales in the 'Objective owners' filter.
• What about checking in on people's self-development or individual objectives? Use the 'Objective type' filter to select Individual and Self-development objectives.
• Last example: Want to see what company-wide objectives are "at risk"? Filter by At risk in the 'Objective status' filter and dive into the objectives that are falling behind for your company.
• One added bonus here is the option to Unarchive directly from the report. 

For more information on managing objectives, see these articles. 

Ownership

Figuring out who owns objectives and who doesn't shouldn't be a hassle. If everyone in the company needs to have at least one objective, this report makes it easy for account administrators and reviewers to check. To get to the Objectives report: Ownership page, click See ownership report under the Objectives and Key Results ownership graph. This ownership page displays additional metrics around who owns objectives and key results, how many they own, and what the status of each of these items are. Private objectives are included in the ownership stats.

At first glance this may look like somewhat flat info. There’s actually quite a bit you can do with it! Let’s drive straight into the ownership report. Stay with me...

• Use the 'View by' option to view objectives by Group, giving you an idea on group workloads. And sort by the Total Objectives column descending. By comparing total objectives to the number of people: does what I see look proportional? Do some groups have an excessive number of objectives or not enough?
• You could also view objective ownership by individual. Look at the average number of objectives and key results per person. Does it align with what you as a company hold as the standard or industry standards? 
• Another idea for People Ops teams: Correlate learnings from your Engagement+ survey results to the data in 15Five. Let’s say in your last Engagement+ survey your company or team scored low on the Personal Development theme, yet when you go back to your ownership report and filter by self-development objectives you notice 86% of people do not have one. You can start to create a story and build learning and development programs around the conclusions from your Engagement+ and Objectives reports.
• Let's check out how many key results members of the Leadership team currently own. Filter by Leadership in the 'Objective owners' filter and view the summary at the bottom of the report. There is a column called "Key results" that will tell you how many key results each person in the Leadership group owns.
• What about looking for people who have too many or too few objectives? From the Ownership report, you can view by individuals and then sort the 'Total objectives' column ascending or descending to get the insights needed.
• Use the filters to check on specific groups and/or individuals to ensure objectives are moving right along. 

Headers for the Ownership report are below: 

• Owner
• Total objectives
• Current objectives
• Past due objectives
• Closed objectives
• Key Results
• Last seen

You can also download a CSV or XLSX report of these fields to further sort and filter. 

For more information on creating objectives, see these articles. 

Alignment 

To get to the Objectives report: Alignment page, click on See alignment report under the Objectives alignment graph. This page looks very similar to your 'All objectives' and 'Objectives status' pages. The difference is, we have auto filtered to only show you only the aligned objectives. Feel free to change the filter to show only unaligned objectives.

As you view your Alignment report, are the objectives that are aligned accurate? Are there objectives that are unaligned that should be aligned? Self-development and some individual objectives may not need to be aligned, but it is recommended that the majority of department and company-wide objectives be aligned.

Just as with the other Objectives reports, you can export aligned or unaligned objectives as a CSV. 

For more information on aligning objectives, see this article. 

NOTE ✏️: Contacting from the Objectives dashboards is not available yet. We hope to allow this functionality in the near future. 

FAQs for Objectives reporting

Q: What do start and end dates even mean??

A: Start date only selected- includes objectives whose start date is on or after the selected start date.

End date only selected- includes objectives whose end date is on or before the selected end date.

Start date and end date selected- includes objectives whose start date is on or before the selected start date and whose end date is on or before the selected end date as long as the end date is not before the selected start date filter.

Q: What is the difference between the 'People' filter and the 'Objective type' filter?

A: The 'People' filter is all about objective owners. If you search for a group in the 'People' filter, 15Five will return all objectives that are owned by members of that group. If you search for a group in the 'Objective type' filter, 15Five will return all objectives that are set as "group" objectives during objective creation. 'People' filter returns objective owner. 'Objective type' filter returns group/department/team/etc objectives.

Q: What do the states mean?

A: Current- objectives whose start date has passed and whose end date has not. 

Open- objectives that are not closed whose dates overlap with the selected time period

Past due- objectives whose end date is in the past

Closed- objectives that have been closed, typically as a result of the end date being in the past

Archived- objectives that have been archived, typically as a result of the objective being irrelevant or where progress stopped before it really got started

Future- objectives whose start date is in the future

Q: What status does 15Five pull into the status graph?

A: The last status provided, whether via Check-in or on the objective's details page.

Q: Why would an objective have "no status"?

A: Objectives with "no status" haven’t been updated with the green, yellow, red indication. Objectives that fall under ‘No status’ may not be top of mind for the objective owner. Or maybe the objective owner has not yet submitted a 15Five Check-in. Regardless of why, this is a risky category. Business we know moves fast, and we can easily lose sight of our objectives if they are not regularly visited. That’s one key benefit of the 15Five Check-in—it puts objectives front and center every time, while giving reporters the opportunity to raise issues blocking them from reaching their objectives. This way employees can receive coaching in real time from their managers which gives everyone a better chance at achieving their objectives.

Q: How do you encourage individuals to use OKRs for their personal development so we can track their growth from a management perspective as well without causing too much headache of updating?
A: I would have a 1-on-1 conversation with the individual. Speak to your investment in their growth and also let them know that tracking their self-development objectives in 15Five is light and easy. It takes less than one minute to update the status. As they are making progress on their self-development objectives (or any objective), they will benefit from the progress principle: Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.

Q: Do you find that all companies typically make self-development objectives public? Sometimes, for example, they might be sensitive subjects needing improvement and potentially not something we want to publicly share.
A: Visibility is going to vary from objective type to objectives type and from company to company. For example, we strongly recommend company-wide and department objectives be public. Individual and/or self-development objectives may have visibility of 15Five permissions or Specific-people. We pretty much have full transparency here at 15Five and all individual objectives + most self-development objectives are public, but we do understand that not everyone has that same approach. For self-development objectives, it is important that at least your manager have visibility into your objective, this is the ‘Specific-people’ visibility option, for accountability’s sake.
One other thing to consider as you think about visibility is alignment. If an objective is aligned to a parent objective, it is encouraged that their visibilities match. Furthermore, if the child objective impacts the progress of the parent objective, the visibility is forced to match.

Q: In regards to best practices for OKRs, how many company-level OKRs should a company have? 
A: According to John Doerr and the team at What Matters: Simplicity is always key. To capture the ambitions of your organization, you should only have a maximum of 5-7 objectives with 3-5 key results. These should all fit on one or two pages. FYI: John Doerr helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve explosive growth by using OKRs.

Q: How many objectives should an individual own?

A: Individuals should own 3-5 objectives with approximately 3 key results per objective. This is the sweet spot for OKRs. Here are some resources: Annual vs Quarterly OKRs, The Art of the OKR, How Google Sets OKRs, 5 Ways to Improve Employee Development at your Company

Q: We would really love to be able to have people share the same key result, but haven’t found a way to do that?
A: We recommend creating another key result that is an exact copy of the other for a couple reasons. 1- Accountability. Knowing who owns a specific key result is essential in its success. 2- Adding another key result owner (or objective owner) would mean overhauling our current Objectives functionality, reporting, and filters. We did submit your idea to our Product Team as a feature request in order to get it documented.
I actually have 3 people helping me with an objective right now and they all have the same key result, one for each of them. It makes it easy for me to know who to go to with questions about progress and it also helps our manager understand where each of us are at.