How Benefit Systems Unified Teams and Goals with Oboard

“With Oboard, we created one standard for presenting progress across business areas. It gave us visibility and removed the noise. OKRs help us focus on what really matters, especially when resources and time are limited. Now we have one place to manage it all. It simplified the process, made our goals visible across teams, and turned alignment into something we could act on immediately.”

Background

If you’ve ever heard of the MultiSport card or the MultiSport Program, you already know Benefit Systems. They’ve been driving workplace wellbeing across 6 countries for more than two decades. Over 2 million users of Benefit Systems’ sport cards, thousands of partner facilities, and 400+ fitness clubs in six countries. Their mission was, and still is, to help people live better: not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally. It was not merely a lofty goal, but building a life of healthy balance for millions of people through the MultiSport Program. But internally? Departments weren’t always aligned. Strategic goals were clear at the top but blurry at the edges. That’s when they realized something had to change.

Experience with OKRs and OKR Tools

Benefit Systems began exploring OKRs as a structured way to connect strategy with execution. However, a growing need to synchronize work between business and IT teams, especially for complex products like MultiSport, prompted leadership to consider a more agile, transparent methodology. The OKR journey was driven by Marta Nawrocka, who had taken the role of OKR Manager and championed the program across the company. Marta recognized the potential for OKRs to enhance focus, visibility, and cross-functional collaboration across domains.

Challenges: How It Used to Be

Before OKRs, Benefit Systems faced several obstacles:

• Lack of shared direction across business and IT stakeholders
• Fragmented planning and execution, each team operated within silos
• A disjointed view of strategic priorities and how day-to-day work contributed
• Manual tools like Excel made tracking goals cumbersome and inconsistent

These limitations were especially pronounced during large-scale organizational changes, where too many overlapping initiatives made prioritizing or measuring impact difficult.

Another noteworthy thing about their case is that while the company had many smart, capable teams, there was no common language or framework for defining success or working toward unified objectives. This was most apparent with business and IT stakeholders.

Solutions: How Did They Solve the Problems

Like any progressive business with a strong desire for growth and an even stronger leadership, Benefit Systems went to work researching and identifying the best approach to getting started with OKRs. They decided to approach OKR implementation as an evolution, not a revolution. The rollout followed a bottom-up strategy with careful attention to education, tooling, and process design:

Leadership and Ownership

• A dedicated OKR Manager was appointed to lead the charge; someone who understood both the culture and the operational bottlenecks.
• An external OKR consultant was brought in to run tailored training, helpin teams connect the dots between big goals and day-to-day work. This outsideperspective also encouraged teams’ curiosity and made them more open tothe upcoming change.

Training and Communication

• Instead of dropping a new system on people, they built momentum: webinars, OKRs Day, and clear, recurring internal comms made sure everyone knew what OKRs were and how they’d be used.
• The focus is Predictability, not pressure. People needed to trust the process before they could own it.

Piloting the Process

• To avoid disruption, they launched OKRs at the product level first, where business and IT naturally overlap. Nine out of eleven business domains joined from the start, including HR, Sales, Fitness, Service, and more.
• These teams built their own OKRs with support, not directives. It created ownership and early success stories others could learn from.
  They chose a six-month OKR cycle — long enough for real progress, short enough for feedback loops.

Fixing Alignment and Breaking Silos

• With teams building OKRs side-by-side and participating in regular planning ceremonies, the silos started to crack.
• These cross-functional OKR sessions created space for collaboration instead of duplication. Teams began aligning goals before execution, not after.
• In the next cycle, they added organizational-level OKRs that pulled everything together, connecting team goals directly to company strategy.

Better Tools – Less Busywork

The switch from Excel to Oboard for Jira didn’t only clean up formatting, it changed how work was done

At first, moving everything over was manually done and took some time. But onceset up, the diference was immediate. OKR owners could now manage and update their own goals without bottlenecks, and most importantly, without needing a separate tracker or OKR person in every meeting. Progress updates also got some much needed improvements. They either came directly from Jira or were logged
manually in Oboard.

It doesn’t end there. Every stakeholder — C-suite, managers, team leads — was now looking at the same real-time dashboards. Same data, same format, same level of visibility. It took the edge off update meetings because they weren’t debating status but having more outcome-focused discussions.

The UI didn’t just look good. It helped people care about the data. Clean visuals made it easier to spot slow-moving KRs, or areas with overlapping goals. And because check-ins and reporting were baked into the tool, teams didn’t have to invent their own rituals to stay on track. Bottom line? Oboard gave the team at Benefit Systems a shared language, and a place to speak it, consistently.

Results: How Is It Now

Benefit Systems reports several positive outcomes with OKRs. Things feel more connected now. Teams get to see how their individual goals support the company’s bigger picture. That alone has made a diference. It’s easier to spot overlaps, avoid duplicated work, and collaborate early.

Thanks to Oboard OKR software, they’re also getting better at working with data. Progress is tracked more consistently, and shared dashboards keep everyone on the same page.

While it’s still early and they’re not chasing ROI yet, the shift toward alignment and ownership is already happening. And that’s a solid place to build from.

What Now? Future Steps & Lessons Learned

What happens after such a structured and tailored OKR rollout? Benefit Systems isn’t putting a bow on the process and calling it done. Here’s what’s on deck:

• Tweaking the process based on real feedback: The structure’s in place, sure, but they know the rollout isn’t one-size-fits-all. They’re listening to domain leads and adjusting how ceremonies, check-ins, and goal-setting play out across diferent teams.
• Creating space for more collaboration: While understanding each other’s priorities before they collide is an entire process, they’ve already seen early wins by spotting overlaps between business units that used to work in isolation.
• Aligning everyone: Some teams came in late during the first cycle by design. That’s fine. Now, there’s a focus on supporting those teams with extra training and guidance, so everyone enters the next cycle with clarity.

Closing Notes

Benefit Systems didn’t chase perfection in advance, instead, they built momentum. By anchoring OKRs in real team workflows and pairing structure with flexibility, they’ve created a system that’s practical, scalable, and genuinely useful.

With Oboard supporting that system, they’re set up to focus better, collaborate smarter, and stay aligned. The foundation is solid. Now it’s about growing into it.