Progress reporting: the necessary evil for accomplishing goals [2026]

Key takeaway: The number one reason why organizations fail to achieve their goals is 'setting and forgetting'. Our data shows that frequently updating progress helps organizations to achieve up to twice as many goals. A good OKR software can turn reporting on progress into a simple habit that takes employees ~5 minutes per week, and teams ~20 minutes per month.

Reporting: up the chain they love it, down the chain they (often) loathe it.

Why executives love it is simple: they are end responsible for pretty much everything and (good) reporting helps them stay on top of the things that matter.

Why managers and employees loathe it is also easy to understand: the benefit of reporting is unclear, it can take up a lot of time, and they’re not even sure their reports are actually being looked at…

All of these issues are actually easy to tackle. Let’s go!

What is progress reporting?

Progress reporting means regularly updating and/or reviewing progress for your goals, and sharing the current status of your goals' progress with your manager, team, and rest of the organization.

If you're using a dedicated goal management software like Perdoo, many of your goals will probably be integrated — meaning that their progress will be automatically updated. Even so, you should still frequently review their progress to ensure that they stay on track.

Why progress reporting matters

Regularly updating and/or reviewing progress for your goals is more important than people think, for 3 main reasons.

1. Increase your success rate

Research has found that monitoring progress to achieve a goal increases the likelihood that you will attain the goal. That same research also found that your chances of success are even higher when you report your progress publicly. Imagine you want to quit smoking. Telling your friends and celebrating with them after every additional week of abstinence will drastically decrease the probability of relapse.

"Monitoring goal progress is a crucial process that comes into play between setting and attaining a goal, ensuring that the goals are translated into action," says Benjamin Harkin, lead author and Ph.D. of the University of Sheffield. Harkin and his colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of 138 studies comprising in total 19,951 participants.

They found that prompting participants to monitor their progress increased the likelihood that the participants would achieve that goal. And the more frequent the monitoring, the more likely they were to succeed.

2. Boost your happiness

For many years, it was thought that giving employees recognition for their work was the most important contributor to an employee’s joy and motivation. Even though giving recognition is extremely important, Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile found that making progress is even more important. Progressing toward a goal significantly boosts joy and motivation.

238 employees were asked to maintain a journal about their jobs for 4 months. One of the things they were asked to do was evaluate each working day. It turned out that knowing they’d progressed towards a goal—even if it was only a small step—boosted their joy and motivation enormously.

The importance of updating progress for your goals is scientifically proven. And there's no easier way to do that than to update your OKRs and KPIs regularly and share progress with your team.

You can learn more about the progress principle on Amabile’s website and her Ted Talk.

3. Keep co-workers in the loop

Transparency is a key attribute of OKR. Transparency doesn’t end with defining your OKRs and sharing them with your co-workers. Sharing the steps towards an Objective or a Key Result is just as important. When you update OKRs regularly every achievement matters and it’s important to show your co-workers how you are progressing.

When people feel in the loop, you’ll find that this unleashes a constructive, positive energy in the organization. It is motivating to see yourself what other team members are up to. After all, you’re all in the same boat.

Research also found that when people feel out of the loop, they (unconsciously) interpret it as a subtle sign of rejection. As a consequence, they report reductions in trust and like their co-workers less. Very often, they also mention feeling less loyal to the organization and less motivated to perform.

Perdoo integrates with Slack, a communication tool. Once you have set up your Slack integration, Perdoo will automatically send notifications to Slack on all progress updates. Read here how to integrate Perdoo with Slack.

Progress reporting boosts goal attainment

Let's zoom in a little on the first point, Increase your success rate, as this is probably the most important point for businesses.

Progress reporting helps you achieve goals, period.

Studies show that 60% to 90% of companies fail to achieve the goals they’ve set for themselves. Having been in this market for over a decade and having worked with thousands of organizations across the globe, we have unique insights into what drives goal achievement.

Our most valuable insight?

Regardless of size, industry, and geography, updating and reviewing goals’ progress more frequently consistently leads to higher goal attainment. 

The proof

To explore the correlation between updating / reviewing goal progress and achieving goals, we evaluated a randomized sample of 500 companies with over 30.000 employees who had defined over 250.000 goals. Then we split up the companies into two segments: those with a high percentage of goals achieved and those with a low percentage of goals achieved.

We found that employees who updated progress on their goals 2.5 times more often as others, achieved on average 2 times more goals. That’s an incredible return on investment!

Here’s how we found out: we split up the companies into two camps—those with a high percentage of goals achieved and those with a low percentage of goals achieved.  It didn’t matter where you drew the line between high and low: the companies with a high percentage of goals achieved consistently updated progress on those goals 1.5 to 2 times more often.

Why Performance Reviews don't work

Embedding goals in Performance reviews, as so many HR tools try to make you believe, isn’t a viable substitute. Performance reviews always look backward and thus have little to no influence on your current goals’ progress.

How frequent is ‘regularly’?

This depends on the time horizon of your OKRs and KPIs.

Let’s say you are working with quarterly OKRs and that you don’t update progress. You’ve defined your OKRs at the beginning of the quarter, but because you didn’t update progress you have no clue whether or not you are on track to achieving your OKR. By the end of the quarter, you do want to know if you have achieved your OKR so you update progress. Whatever progress you have at that point will be a complete surprise to you, and if it’s not as good as you would’ve hoped, your chances of fixing it are gone.

Most organizations set Company OKRs once per year and Team OKRs once per quarter. If you update annual OKRs once per month, you’ll have 11 opportunities to adjust course if progress is getting off track. In today’s fast-paced environment, you will need these 11 opportunities to have a real chance of success. This is why we recommend updating annual OKRs at least once per month.

If you update quarterly OKRs once every 2 weeks you’ll have 5 opportunities to do something if progress is not where you want it to be. You’ll probably want more frequent feedback to know whether your Initiatives are delivering the desired results, which is why we recommend updating quarterly OKRs once per week.

The same applies to your KPIs. Some of your KPIs will have monthly targets, others quarterly or annual targets. A KPI with a monthly target should be updated at least weekly, a KPI with an annual target at least monthly.

Best practices

Reporting on progress shouldn’t be time-consuming

Of course it depends a little on what you are reporting on. But we’re focusing on strategy execution and goals (e.g., OKRs) here.

For employees, reporting once a week is sufficient. That means it’s sufficient for employees to take 5 to 15 minutes per week to update and review progress for their goals, and to answer a few questions to share how their week has been (also called Reviews). That’s it. Whether you love or hate reporting back to your manager and senior leadership, it wouldn’t be a good sign if you consider this too much to ask.

For teams, reporting once a month is usually sufficient. At team-level the report is more of a review: How did our KPIs perform last month? Are we still on track to achieve all our OKRs? Which victories should we celebrate? And what are the challenges that we see ahead of us? Such a review takes a little more time of course: 15 to 30 minutes.

A good OKR or goal management software makes this a breeze by: (i) letting you customize how often you wish to report on progress, (ii) allowing you to report progress however you prefer (mobile, Slack/Teams, or desktop), and (iii) sending out automated reminders.

Progress reports should be reviewed

Other than boosting goal attainment, progress reporting has another major benefit: it improves employee engagement and motivation. Engagement and motivation can further increase goal attainment, creating a powerful execution loop.

For ambitious and successful employees, reporting on progress provides an opportunity to shine and make sure that their hard work is being noticed by their manager and senior leadership. That only works, of course, if the manager lets the employee know that they’ve seen and reviewed the report. 

It’s something the manager should do anyway, as they are end responsible for their direct reports’ goals.

A good OKR or goal management software makes it easy for managers to do so.

Other best practices

A few more best practices to help you get the most out progress reporting:

• Recognize hard work and celebrate wins.
  Eg, Give Kudos whenever appropriate.
• Stay consistent with your reports.
  Eg, make sure progress is reported at set intervals.
  
• Highlight next steps that need to be taken.
  Eg, Discuss blockers and potential solutions.
  

Software to the rescue

I’ve said it a few times now, because it’s true: A good OKR or goal management software makes progress reporting for managers and employees a piece of cake.

Continue reading to learn how to identify an OKR software that will support you with reporting progress. But first, here's how progress reporting works in Perdoo:

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[fs-toc-omit]8 criteria for finding the right software

There are many tools on the market, so here are 8 important criteria that will help you find the right software:

1. Customizable frequencies for progress reporting at employee- and team-level.
   You want to create progress reports at set intervals and avoid having to create on-the-fly reports, which is chaotic. At employee-level you want to report more frequently than at team-level, because — as explained above — the content of each report is different. Therefore, employees typically report their progress once a week, and teams once a month — but you want to be able to adjust this to the specific needs of your organization.

2. Customizable and automated reminders.
   Employees and teams shouldn’t have to remind themselves to report their progress. That brainspace is better reserved for value-adding tasks such working on goals. Make sure the process is reactive instead of proactive by sending out automated reminders to your team. And of course you want to be able to customize when exactly the reminders should be sent.

3. Option to enrich progress reports with additional information such as Reviews or a Pulse survey.
   Progress reports offer a great opportunity for employees to provide a broader update on the cycle, in addition to giving progress updates on their goals. What were the highlights of the week? Any wins that are worth celebrating? Is the employee struggling with anything that the manager can support him or her with? I call these questions Reviews, as they encourage the employee to reflect on the past week and they help surface important information to his/her manager and senior leadership. 
   
   Also for teams it will be valuable to get a broader update on the cycle, in addition to an update on how their goals performed. This is often called a Monthly Business Review or simply Review.
   

4. Progress reports are stored on the platform.
   Progress reports build up an important history of an employee’s or team’s track record. They can also contain valuable insights and learnings. Obviously, you don’t want this valuable information to go lost. Therefore, your progress reports should be stored on the platform and be easily accessible for future reference.

5. Managers are automatically notified about new progress reports from their direct reports.
   Obviously, you want to avoid managers logging into a software and hitting refresh to see if their direct reports’ latest progress reports are already available for review. Managers should automatically be notified when one of their direct reports has submitted a new progress report.

6. Ability to subscribe to progress reports from teams.
   For similar reasons, team members and senior leadership should automatically be notified when a team’s new progress report is ready.

7. Ability to comment on reports.
   Progress reports are a great, asynchronous way for a manager and his/her direct reports to stay in sync — without the need for a meeting. Personally, I have reduced the frequency of my 1:1s with my direct reports from weekly to bi-weekly, freeing up almost 2 full working days per month!
   
   For this to work well, you need to be able to comment on Progress reports. This allows you to ask questions to which the employee can then reply.
   
   You also need commenting to let a direct report know that you’ve reviewed their latest progress report and to keep them motivated and engaged.

8. Surfacing valuable context for progress.
   Without proper context, seeing how progress evolves often creates more questions than it answers. Therefore, your progress reports should surface all the relevant comments and notes. Ideally, someone else can even respond directly by adding a threaded message.

Perdoo goes a step further by integrating Progress reports with 1:1s. You’re welcome to give Perdoo a try — it’s free for up to 5 people.