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In this Guide
- Best Performance Management Software
- Intro and Our Criteria
- Our Reviews of the Top Vendors
- What is Performance Management Software?
- 6 Common Pitfalls While Buying Performance Management Software
- 4 Key Performance Management Platform Features
- Questions To Ask On Performance Management And OKR Tool Demos
- Our Best Pro Tip: Cross-Functional Buying Committees
- Performance Management Software FAQs
- Final Advice
HR teams who use a best-in-class performance management system boast company-wide progress in efficiency and engagement. Our research identified some standouts among our top performance management software platforms: Trakstar, ChartHop, and ClearCompany are great for many teams but you’ll want to know the other performance management tools our data points to.
We know our HR nerd community will love these advanced performance management systems and their colossal impact. No spoilers, but these systems add undeniable, company-wide value. Employees benefit from task clarity, structured 1:1's, and increased awareness of scope from OKRs to big-picture initiatives. Board members better understand daily activities impact the bottom line.
Fellow nerds, we've been writing about this since 2018. Read on and geek out!
Hand picked by our HR Technology experts after product testing, user research, and much debate - enjoy!
Are you thinking about updating your approach to performance management? You are not alone. Business leaders across the country and around the world are zooming in on the relationship between their performance management system and the range of employee engagement. Performance management software , even the best and most effective performance management software, is not a magic elixir that will lift the spell of disengagement. Performance performance management tools are exactly that they say they are: tools. The results of using hammer are quite different if it is in the hand or a toddler or the hand of a carpenter. The same is true for employee performance management software -- you must use the tool with care and skill.
The trends in HR tech and the environments in which they operate take turns leading and following -- sometimes tech is the cart, sometimes it's the horse. When it comes to performance management software, the two are neck and neck, and this gives terrific insight into the impact the tool has on its users. A good performance management software system should facilitate fair, meaningful, and effective performance reviews. If it fails to prove itself fair, meaningful, and effective, the net impact of using the tool is negative and the results can be very bad for business. Read on for some spooky stats around retention and turnover costs, but for now let's shift to solutions. This guide will help you make all the right moves when updating your performance management system. We cover use cases, features, and common pitfalls. We'll share our collective knowledge around how to find the right performance management software for your team, and we recommend some of our favorites. We'll also set you up with some significant questions to ask during product demos. Our goal: you'll find the right hammer and swing it like a carpenter!
Our Criteria: How We Chose The Best Vendors
We take research seriously. To ensure we’re offering our readers the best solutions in a given software category, we are methodical, rigorous, and expansive in our research. We gather actionable insights from HR professionals, vendors, and industry experts. We cut through the noise to bring you a carefully curated list of vendors and other essential information to help you find the right software platform for your business.
Here’s how we chose the best vendors:
Product: We believe in gaining a comprehensive understanding of a product before recommending it, so we start by getting to know the software. We meet with a senior executive (CEO or Head of Product) whenever possible for a demo and Q&A. We also test the product ourselves to ensure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best-in-class offering.
User feedback: We go straight to the source and compile feedback on user experience. Real-world input supports our commitment to diligence in our software evaluation methods and the products we recommend. Keeping up with the everyday experience of HR pros also puts new vendors on our radar and keeps us close to our community so we can better connect the right products to the right people.
Financial metrics: We are certified finance nerds, so we use all the data we can get our hands on to make selections for our guides. We comb through data for concrete statistics like retention rates, growth, profitability, and scalability. We evaluate the bottom line of each product because we know making a software purchase can put your reputation on the line.
Best for a use case: Software is never a one-size-fits-all product. Sometimes the best solution is free or cheap. Other times it’s the one that is best for global companies or the one that’s sized right for early-stage startups. Keeping this in mind, we include solutions across the spectrum so our readers can find the best fit for their unique needs.
Here's more detail if you want to read more about how we research vendors. Our dedicated staff writers rely on hard data, impartial experts, and user feedback to ensure our reviews are helpful, truthful, and hopefully a pleasure to read!
Our Criteria: Here's how we chose who made the cut
We take research seriously. To make sure we’re offering our readers the very best solutions in a given software category, we are methodical, rigorous, and expansive in our research. We consult with HR professionals, vendors, and industry experts. We cut through the noise to bring you a carefully curated list of vendors, along with other essential information, to help you find the right software platform for your business.
Here’s how we chose who makes the cut:
Product: We believe in gaining a comprehensive understanding of a product before we recommend it, so we start by getting to know the software. Whenever possible, we meet with a senior executive (CEO or Head of Product) for a demo and Q&A. We also test the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best-in-class offering.
User feedback: We go straight to the source and compile feedback on user experience. Real-world input supports our commitment to diligence in our software evaluation methods and the products we recommend. Keeping up with the everyday experience of HR pros also puts new vendors on our radar, and it keeps us close to our community so we can better connect the right products to the right people.
Financial metrics: We are certified finance nerds, so we use all the data we can get our hands on to make selections for our guides. We comb through data for concrete statistics like retention rates, growth, profitability, and scalability. We evaluate the bottom line of each product because we know making a software purchase can put your reputation on the line.
Best for a use case: Software is never a one-size-fits-all product. Sometimes the best solution is free or cheap. Other times it’s the one that is best for global companies or the one that’s sized right for early-stage startups. Keeping this in mind, we include solutions across the spectrum so our readers can find the best fit for their unique needs.
Here's more detail if you want to read more about how we research vendors. Our dedicated staff writers rely on hard data, impartial experts, and user feedback to ensure our reviews are helpful, truthful, and hopefully a pleasure to read!
Top Performance Management Software
We track thousands of HRTech solutions. Per our research and expert council, these are the best OKR and performance management systems as of 2023.
Why we love it
:
Trakstar is notable for adding learning management capabilities to its performance management suite. We love that they didn’t stop there and have integrated employee engagement and succession planning features.
- User-friendly for employees and administrators.
- Responsive live support.
- Extensive knowledge base and video tutorials.
- The automated feature helps schedule reviews on a routine basis.
- Provides unlimited storage.
- Does not provide reports that show progress over time.
- No free trial or free version.
- Undisclosed pricing.
- Doesn’t have a mobile app.
- May take a while to complete the setup.
Trakstar
Review:
Trakstar’s performance management solution (Trakstar Perform) allows companies to deploy performance reviews, set goals, and monitor results in real-time. The platform also has learning management, employee engagement, and succession planning capabilities.
Users can customize performance evaluations, import users, design forms, and configure workflows to fit their organization. The 360-degree feedback feature allows managers to control who can access it and request feedback from people inside and outside the team. The 9-box grid is another highlight in Trakstar's succession planning module, which ties in nicely with the performance management one, providing insights into employee performance and potential for advancing within the organization.
Trakstar
Customers:
Charles River, Beta Calco, Task Rabbit, Chemline, Minsterbank.
Charles River, Beta Calco, Task Rabbit, Chemline, Minsterbank.
Trakstar
Pricing:
The pricing of Trakstar’s plans and services isn’t disclosed on their site. You have to demo with the vendor to get a price quote.
The pricing of Trakstar's plans and services isn't disclosed on their site. Contact a Trakstar sales representative for a demo as well as a price quote according to the size and needs of your business.
Best For
Organizations looking to track performance at the individual and team levels via a ratings-based review format.
Why we love it
:
ClearCompany offers a holistic approach to performance management, taking employee recognition and satisfaction evaluation into account. The UI is easy to use, and users have had a lot of positive things to say about ClearCompany’s setup process and customer service.
- Great customizable review cycles.
- Users find the UI quite intuitive and easy to navigate.
- Highly rated for speed and helpful customer support.
- Smooth implementation experience and integration process.
- Offers an API available for use.
- Supports ten languages.
- ClearCompany offers a host of HR solutions that work well with another. You can choose the solution you need or combine them all to have a comprehensive talent management platform in your stack.
- The majority of users find ClearCompany’s interface to be quite intuitive and easy to navigate.
- Many users have highly rated ClearCompany’s support team for speed and quality of response. Several users have also reported a smooth implementation experience.
- Undisclosed pricing
- No free plans or free trials
- The reporting feature, according to some users, is limited in customizations
- The search function doesn’t always bring up the correct results
- No mobile app, but the platform is well-optimized for mobile use
- ClearCompany’s pricing is not readily available on their website. You also can’t create a trial account on your own from the website and have to go through the sales team for more info.
- Some users felt that the reporting feature is limited in customizations.
- According to a few users, the candidate search function doesn’t always bring up the correct candidate(s) and could use some improvement.
- ClearCompany doesn’t currently have a mobile app, but the platform is well optimized for mobile use both for hiring managers and candidates.
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ClearCompany
Review:
ClearCompany’s performance management solution comes with a wealth of features that foster a meaningful and transparent experience for your entire team. Users can choose to organize employee performance reviews annually, bi-annually, or quarterly — the frequency that works best for them. The platform’s customizations and pre-built templates allow managers to create a personalized and actionable review experience in less time.
Employee users like that they can do the reviews on their mobile devices and in the language they want. ClearCompany also incorporates goal-planning tools within its performance management product so employers can measure employee satisfaction with continuous feedback loops, employee surveys, and anonymous polls. As a cherry on top, the performance management software even provides features like shoutouts and celebrations to recognize high performers.
ClearCompany
Customers:
Goodwill, Aveda Institute, and Chick-fil-A are some of 2500+ ClearCompany’s customers.
ClearCompany’s customer list includes known names such as Chick-fil-A, Goodwill, Axiom Bank, Bios, FlixBrewHouse, and Halco.
ClearCompany
Pricing:
- It has two pricing plans for different types of businesses. The modular access plan lets users purchase certain modules individually, while the platform access plan offers all modules within ClearCompany’s suite.
- ClearCompany’s pricing isn't detailed on their site. According to a few users, however, it can start from $7 per employee per month. For the exact quote, you need to contact their team.
ClearCompany customers can choose between Modular Access, i.e. purchase certain modules individually, or they can purchase Platform Access to be able to use all modules and solutions within ClearCompany’s suite.
The pricing of ClearCompany's modules isn't detailed on their site. Their sales team will work out a deal for you based on your company size and the modules you’re interested in.
Best For
Midsize businesses and large companies looking for customizable performance review rollout.
Why we love it
:
We like that ChartHop is constantly evolving. It started as an org chart tool and gradually built features for performance management, employee engagement, DEI, and people planning/analytics.
- Integrates well with several existing HRIS and ATS systems
- Strong customization and reporting capabilities
- Transparent pricing. The Basic plan is free for the first 150 employees.
- The Map feature enables remote teams to see where each employee is located.
- Has open API
- Supports Single Sign-On (SSO).
- Charthop nicely integrates with your existing HR and ATS systems. Having everything under one roof means not having to use ten different applications.
- Charthop’s organization chart is its biggest asset. Their drag-and-drop feature to edit the chart is a hit amongst a majority of the users. Overall, the tool makes navigation throughout the company really easy - you can find the people you need, figure out their responsibilities, and track changes after the latest company re-organization.
- Charthop's goal tracking interface is simple, intuitive, and easy to build. There's not much else you can ask for.
- Charthop's Map feature allows businesses to see where each employee is located. For organizations that work remotely, this promotes a feeling of togetherness, which is crucial for employee engagement.
- Organization chart navigation isn't the best. The chart zooms in and out quite quickly, and the gestures aren't intuitive, making it difficult to use.
- Takes time to implement and get used to
- The search function sometimes throws the wrong results.
- The UI is somewhat dated and clunky.
- Charthop's organization chart navigation isn't the best. The chart zooms in and out quite quickly, and the gestures aren't intuitive, making it difficult to use.
- Charthop can be a little complicated to figure out. Also, the fact that there are so many features is a little intimidating.
- Charthop's search function isn't user-friendly. There's not much information on how to use it effectively, and it sometimes throws the wrong results.
- Charthop's UI is somewhat dated and clunky.
ChartHop
Review:
ChartHop’s performance management solution helps you conduct different types of reviews, gather feedback and check in with your employees as frequently as you want. Users love its feature coverage and customizability; they can build distinct processes, questions, approval flows, and access controls by department, location, manager, role, and more.
Another thing we’ve in our testing is that ChartHop takes data protection seriously, with fine-grained controls, role-based access, auto-on/offboarding, full encryption, biometric access control, mandatory SSO, and more options included in the security settings.
If you have observed ChartHop for a while, you may have also noticed that they have updated the pricing of the Basic plan to be free as long as the number of employees is no more than 150, which has made the platform a lot more accessible to smaller businesses.
ChartHop
Customers:
Sequoia, Plaid, Locus, InVision, BetterCloud
Remy Cointreau, InVision, Sequoia, BetterCloud, and Postman
ChartHop
Pricing:
ChartHop has three plans:
- Basic: Free for your first 150 employees, $2 per employee per month for every employee beyond 150.
- Standard: $8 per employee per month (billed annually) plus $20,000 minimum annual contract plus a one-time implementation fee.
- Premium: $16 per employee per month (billed annually) plus a $28,000 minimum annual contract plus a one-time implementation fee.
- Add-ons start at $2 per employee per month.
Charthop has 4 different pricing plans. When billed annually, here’s what they look like:
- Charthop Build: At $3.50 per employee per month, this plan has all the fundamental features — a live org chart, employee profiles, DE&I reports, and integrations with HRIS, Slack, and Carta.
- Charthop Grow: Priced at $7 per employee per month, the Grow plan offers additional features such as employee engagement surveys, reporting, and custom data. If you don’t currently use a dedicated employee experience software, you can try check out this plan.
- Charthop Scale: This plan is best suited for businesses that want to scale at speed. Equipped with features like a performance management system, ATS integration, and headcount planning, this plan is priced at $10 per employee per month.
- Charthop Enterprise: Large enterprises whose main priority is agility and efficiency can opt for this plan. This pricing is not disclosed upfront. For more information, you can contact Charthop's sales team.
For an additional $2 per employee per month, billed annually, you also get access to their compensation planning tool. If you want to run your comp cycle on the same platform as your HRIS and performance management software, then this feature is beneficial.
Best For
Mid-sized organizations and global teams looking to gather and centralize people data in one place.
Why we love it
:
Leapsome is highly flexible; you can quickly set up your review process from the performance management software’s best-practice templates and frameworks or customize everything — from questions to timelines and anonymity settings.
- The user-centric design makes the platform easy to navigate.
- Integrates personalized learning and compensation management into the performance management system
- The Praise functionality allows users to give credit publicly
- Users found the training videos and articles comprehensive and helpful.
- Great meeting features: reminders, drag-and-drop talking points, tag meeting participants in relevant talking points, and shared and private notes.
- Available in Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Surveys can be translated into 19 languages.
- There’s no setup fee.
- A free trial is available for 14 days.
- Leapsome is quite feature-rich; the platform packs modules for employee onboarding, learning management, engagement, performance management, goals tracking and much more.
- The majority of users find Leapsome’s UI to be friendly and easy to navigate.
- There are lots of third party integrations options to choose from, including Slack, which many users appreciate.
- The platform has transparent pricing, and you only pay for the modules you need.
- Doesn’t have a mobile app
- Some users found it annoying not to be able to use the keyboard but to use the mouse when switching to the next questions or entering scores.
- A few users integrating Leapsome with Google Meets encountered sync issues when changing a meeting or schedule.
- The org chart isn’t very easy to navigate with multiple layers and can’t be filtered by role.
- Sometimes automatic emotion detection can misdetect positive feedback as negative if it contains "negative" words.
- The customer success team is available to customers with an annual contract of US$6,000 or more only.
- There is currently no way to post or upload an image or file into your feedback.
- Since Leapsome can do so many things, you may need some time to get used to it. The implementation process can also take some time.
- There currently isn’t a mobile app that users can download and access Leapsome quickly on-the-go.
- Free 14-day trials are available but you need to book a demo with the sales team first to sign up for one; you can’t do so on your own.
Leapsome
Review:
Leapsome allows companies to measure employee performance across all critical skills and competencies. Through the platform, you can customize and run simple performance reviews, agile project reviews, 360° reviews, and anonymous leadership reviews — all of which are easy to access and complete. The gathered employee data is actionable and linked to learning and development.
Leapsome's platform offers a range of features to support ongoing learning and development, regular feedback and recognition, and structured performance reviews. Employee users appreciate that the performance management software enables them to collaborate with the manager on setting and tracking goals, get regular feedback and recognition from my colleagues, and gain insights into their performance and how it aligns with the company's objectives.
Leapsome
Customers:
Mercedes Benz, Spotify, Trivago, Eventim, Babbel, Plus Dental
Leapsome is used by many well-known companies, including Spotify, +Babbel, Unity, PayFit, Learnerbly, Modus Create, Spryker, DCMN, and more.
Leapsome
Pricing:
- Leapsome’s pricing depends on the number of your employees, the modules you want to use, and the length of your contract.
- Its modular pricing starts from $8 per user per month when billed annually. To get a detailed quote, contact Leapsome’s sales team.
- You can also test out Leapsome free of charge for a full 14 days with no credit card required.
Leapsome’s pricing starts at $8 per user per month. You pay for the module(s) you want to use, which are:
- Perform: It includes features such as Performance Reviews, 360° Reviews, Skill Framework, Automations, Analytics, Feedback & Praise, and 1:1s & Team Meetings.
- Align: It includes features such as Goals & OKRs, Activity Feed, Goal Tree, Goal Analytics, OKR Check-ins, Feedback & Praise, and 1:1s & Team Meetings.
- Engage: It includes features such as Pulse & Engagement, Best Practice Library, Onboarding Surveys, Conversations, Benchmarks, Feedback & Praise, and 1:1s & Team Meetings.
- Learn: It includes features such as Onboarding Paths, Learning Paths, Content Library, Quizzes, Learning Analytics, Feedback & Praise, and 1:1s & Team Meetings.
- Reward: It includes features such as Compensation, Promotion, Proposal Approval, Set Rules, Track Progress, Feedback & Praise, and 1:1s & Team Meetings.
Best For
Leapsome’s multilingualism makes it suitable for teams across different continents. However, with its current pricing and customer service, the performance management software is best for mid-market businesses.
Why we love it
:
Sharply focused on the performance management software niche, PerformYard is best known for being flexible and feature-rich. They also stand out for constantly rolling out new features based on customer feedback.
- Covers nearly all the bases of performance management
- Regularly incorporates new features based on customer feedback
- Supports Single Sign-On
- Highly customizable in terms of content
- High focus on flexibility within performance management, they can handle a myriad of approaches to PM, adapting to your current strategy.
- The PerformYard team constantly listens to their clients, incorporating new features based on their feedback and suggestions.
- Focuses exclusively on the North American market
- Not the most intuitive tool for new users
- Little lengthy in some processes to get where you need to be
- Some of the action-to-do descriptions for performance evaluation lack clarity on what to do and what the next steps are.
- Lacks features to auto-transfer data from HRIS to PerformYard
- As of mid-2022 at least, PerformYard are mainly focused on the North American market, so for businesses in other geographies and with non-English speaking team members, it wouldn’t be the best fit.
PerformYard
Review:
PerformYard’s flexible performance management system helps managers and employees stay on top of areas for improvement and track success. Its unique goal management feature allows each team member to define and track their goals, tying them to business objectives and facilitating collaboration.
Performance reviews and check-ins offer customizable content templates, while continuous feedback helps recognize accomplishments, document performance, and track notes. The platform's customer service receives positive feedback, with dedicated success managers guiding users. However, some users feel uncertain about the next steps after completing their evaluation due to the complexity automation features.
PerformYard
Customers:
Blue Nile, The Catholic University of America, Eggstrategy, College Track, Metro Credit Union, Friedman LLP.
Most of PerformYard’s customers are SMBs from the US that you may or may not have heard of depending on where you live. In some cases, they could be a local business that you know or that even your friends or family work at or do business with. As for well-known names, Amnesty International happen to be happy users.
PerformYard
Pricing:
PerformYard has two plans. When billed annually, they cost as follows:
- Professional: $5-10 per employee per month with access to performance reviews, goal management, continuous feedback, 360s, and peer evaluation tools. It also comes with dedicated customer success management, knowledge base access, and phone or email support.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing and unlocks additional perks to what’s in the Professional plan, including senior-lead customer success management, enhanced on-boarding/training, custom implementation, data integrations, custom single sign-on (SAML), custom service level agreement, additional document storage.
PerformYard’s pricing is done on a per-employee per-seat basis. This price would range between $4-8 USD per employee per month, depending on the total number of seats you need.
Best For
PerformYard is best suited for organizations (both for-profit and nonprofit) between 30 to 2,000 employees in the United States.
Why we love it
:
Officevibe helps companies engage employees and increase their satisfaction - all while nurturing managers and improving how they tackle challenges in the workplace.
- Officevibe is easy to use and has a free plan that a team of up to 10 users can use.
- To ensure that feedback is truely anonymous, without the manager, or anyone with higher access being able guess who submitted what response, a minimum of 5 responses need to be sent in before the survey manager is able to access the anonymous feedback.
- The platform has a feature for peer-to-peer recognition, giving your employees the ability to praise one another for outstanding work.
- Some users have reported that Slack integration sometimes malfunctions.
- Officevibe does not include a complete performance management solution among their offerings. They have an OKR tool that lets you set goals but there isn’t a mechanism in place to track those goals or conduct performance reviews.
- There currently isn’t a mobile app that managers and employees can use on the go.
Officevibe
Review:
Officevibe is a cloud-based platform that focuses on employee engagement and manager growth. It allows managers to measure employee satisfaction through pulse surveys, then provides them with guidance on how they can improve work environment and culture. The platform packs several pre-made templates and questions to ease the survey creation process. It also offers features for OKR tracking, polls creation, reporting, 1:1s planning, scheduling, and more.
Officevibe
Customers:
WeTransfer, Dyson, Bose, PayScale, Trivago
Officevibe is used by over 3200 companies worldwide, including PayScale, Bose, Trivago, Dyson, Nintex, and more.
Officevibe
Pricing:
Pricing: Officevibe has three plans:
- Free: This plan is free of charge for 1 team with up to 10 users.
- Essential: This plan allows for unlimited teams and costs $5 per user per month.
- Pro: Designed for larger teams, this plan costs $7 per user per month.
- Business: Available for companies with over 500 users, this plan has custom pricing. Contact Officevibe’s Sales team to get a quote.
Officevibe has three plans. When billed annually, they cost as follows:
- Free: This plan is free of charge for 1 team with up to 10 users.
- Essential: This plan allows for unlimited teams and costs $3.5 per user per month.
- Pro: Designed for larger teams, this plan costs $5 per user per month.
- Business: Available for companies with over 500 users, this plan has custom pricing. Contact Officevibe’s Sales team to get a quote.
Best For
Officevibe can be used by companies of all sizes.
Why we love it
:
Eloomi’s offering is quite flexible; you can choose from their employee learning, development and appraisal solutions, or combine them all into a holistic platform that’s all about employee growth.
- Admin and employees can navigate the tool fairly easily with little to no training.
- Users can have all three eloomi modules (i.e. Learning, Development, and Appraisals) in a complete solution or buy each individually.
- Surveys are customizable and private — good for getting specific and honest employee feedback.
- The peer-to-peer feedback feature allows employees to get each other's input on performance.
- Helpful and responsive customer service.
- Eloomi is quite comprehensive, with modules for onboarding, training/learning, performance management, employee engagement, and recognition.
- The platform comes with a library of ready-to-use templates to help you create online training faster. It also has a mobile app for your employees to access training materials on the go.
- Their surveys are customizable and private, helping you get specific and honest feedback from employees.
- You can request other members of the organization to provide feedback on certain skills of employees.
- You can make use of Eloomi’s micro-sized online training content to prevent overwhelming onboarding experiences.
- Isn’t the fastest and simplest setup process due to the number of features it offers.
- Glitches may occur as users generate reports with a large volume of data. But users have noted that Eloomi’s customer support team is quick to resolve such issues.
- The pricing isn’t transparent.
- A free trial isn’t available.
- Because of the sheer number of features Eloomi offers, there’s a steeper learning curve for the average user to get the hang of the platform and understand it to its fullest.
- A few users reported experiencing bugs and speed issues when generating reports, especially ones with a large volume of data, but have noted that Eloomi’s customer support team is quick to resolve such issues.
- The platform’s pricing isn’t transparent and free trials aren’t available at this time.
eloomi
Review:
Widely known for their learning management system (LMS), eloomi also offers a solid performance management solution for employee coaching and feedback.The platform’s features include manager-employee check-ins, reports with insights, automated to-dos, 360-degree feedback, and performance appraisals.
The People Dashboard offers an overview of employees' performance, while 1:1 review and coaching conversations can be initiated with a single click using expert-built templates. Eloomi's ease of use and excellent customer support are also strengths worth noting. Though some glitches may be experienced with certain features like reporting, the eloomi support team is always quick to respond with helpful solutions.
eloomi
Customers:
Eloomi’s customer list includes BONUS Vorsorgekasse AG, Breakout Games, Carne Group, ElectricBrands, Nufarm, Domino’s, and more.
Eloomi’s customer list includes BONUS Vorsorgekasse AG, Breakout Games, Carne Group, ElectricBrands, Nufarm, Domino’s, and more.
eloomi
Pricing:
Eloomi offers custom pricing, so the best way to find out how much it costs is to request a demo.
Eloomi offers custom pricing, so the best way to find out how much it costs is to request a demo.
Best For
Mid-sized and large businesses and NGOs with more than 50 employees.
Why we love it
:
Quantum Workplace stands out with its hands-on customer service. Once you buy their software, you don’t just get a one-off implementation service but an ongoing support team that helps you make the most of your investment.
- The user interface is intuitive and easy to use. You can easily find what you’re looking for as the most critical items are pinned at the top.
- You can personalize surveys, make them from existing best practices templates, or build them entirely from scratch.
- You can share and review recognition with your teammates in a social newsfeed format. What’s great is that you can make it as detailed and scheduled or as succinct and impromptu as possible.
- Quantum has an ever-present customer service team. Many users have complimented them on their responsiveness.
- Easy to use, the user interface is intuitive, you can find what you’re looking for and still see the most important items pinned on top.
- The option to personalize surveys, make them from the best practices templates, or build entirely from scratch.
- The ability to share and review recognition with your teammates in a social newsfeed format. What’s great is that you have the option to make it as detailed and scheduled or as succinct and impromptu as you please.
- An ever-present customer service team. Many users have complimented on their responsiveness.
- Many users have reported issues with canceling, rescheduling, and the inability to schedule 1-on-1s on short notice.
- Some users have found the goals feature a little confusing to understand because of its extensivity.
- This is a rather unpreceded one, but we found many users wishing for more vibrant colors for the platform.
- No free plan or free trial.
- Many users have expressed their issues with canceling, rescheduling, and the inability to schedule 1-on-1s on short notice.
- Some users have found the goals feature to be a little confusing to understand because of its extensivity.
- This is a rather unprecedented one, but we found many users wishing for more vibrant colors for the platform.
Quantum Workplace
Review:
Focused on growth, development, and team alignment, Quantum Workplace’s performance management software is a suite of integrated tools that allow businesses to boost employee performance in myriad ways. Employees can set clear goals and see their progress, and managers and employees can schedule 1-on-1 meetings. Anyone in the organization can request or give feedback. Managers can create different coaching strategies based on talent reviews. And employees can get public recognition for their efforts from their managers and peers alike in a fun and interactive way. What makes this performance management software up a notch, however, is its succession planning tool that helps users find suitable successors for their critical jobs.
Quantum Workplace
Customers:
Quantum Workplace is used by over 10,000 companies, including Dentsply Sirona, Panera Bread, Fossil Group, DSW, BKD, and Getty Images.
Quantum Workplace is used by over 10,000 companies, including Dentsply Sirona, Panera Bread, Fossil Group, DSW, BKD, and Getty Images.
Quantum Workplace
Pricing:
Pricing is not disclosed upfront, but you can get it after booking a demo.
Pricing is not disclosed upfront but you can get it after booking a demo.
Best For
Mid-sized and large enterprises (50+ employees) looking for goals, 1-on-1s, real-time recognition, talent reviews and feedback in their performance management software.
Why we love it
:
WorkTango (formerly Kazoo) is best known for its employee rewards and recognition product. Yet, the performance management software is in pretty good shape: it’s feature-rich while maintaining a clean UI plus a simple implementation process.
- Available in English, Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Korean.
- Several training sessions make the implementation process much simple.
- Supports anonymous surveys.
- Straightforward UI that’s easy to navigate.
- Flexibility — users can add modules as they go.
- WorkTango is available in English, Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Korean, although the latter is only available for the performance management module.
- You can add modules as you go and these will be charged on a prorated basis.
- Billing is only done annually; all plans require a minimum agreement for a 24-month subscription.
- The mobile app isn’t as intuitive as the browser version. Users also reported it takes time to get an issue resolved in the apps.
- There isn’t a free trial or free plan.
- Billing is only done annually and all plans require a minimum agreement for a 24-month subscription (see our FAQs for more and their pricing page for full details).
- Several users have complained about the rewards redeeming process being not very intuitive.
WorkTango
Review:
WorkTango combines continuous performance management, employee recognition, rewards, and surveys into one platform to help businesses improve employee experience and, by extension, company culture. Its three-pronged approach allows People teams to seamlessly share data across all three modules — Survey and Insights, Goals and Feedback, and Recognition and Rewards.
Like any other OKR software, WorkTango helps organize, track, and make sure individual goals and business objectives are aligned. What’s special about the platform is its features built around Surveys and Insights. Managers can use pre-built templates to create surveys or make their own with customization. They can also have anonymous conversations with employees. The best part is, based on employee feedback, WorkTango can suggest actions to help leaders spot and tackle worrisome areas more effectively.
WorkTango
Customers:
WorkTango has over 1000 customers from different countries, including Allianz, Hitachi, Kia Motors, and Patagonia.
Allianz, Hitachi, Kia Motors, Meredith, Patagonia
WorkTango
Pricing:
WorkTango has three plans. The pricing of those plans depends on the modules included. For example, you can purchase WorkTango's Recognition or Performance solutions individually or have them combined in a single plan (i.e., the entire platform). When billed annually, the pricing of WorkTango's plans is as follows:
- Growth: Designed for companies with 100 - 250 employees, this plan costs $5 per employee per month for the Recognition module, $9 per employee per month for the Performance module, and $12.50 per employee per month for the full platform (Recognition + Performance).
- Standard: Designed for companies with 250 - 1000 employees, this plan costs $4.25 per employee per month for the Recognition module, $7.50 per employee per month for the Performance module, and $10.50 per employee per month for the entire platform (Recognition + Performance).
- Enterprise: Designed for companies with 1,000 or more employees, this plan has custom pricing. Contact WorkTango's Sales team for a quote.
WorkTango has three plans. The pricing of those plans depends on the modules included. For example, you can either purchase WorkTango's Recognition or Performance solutions individually or have them combined in a single plan (i.e. the full platform). When billed annually, the pricing of WorkTango's plans is as follows:
- Growth: Designed for companies with 100 - 250 employees, this plan costs $5 per employee per month for the Recognition module, $9 per employee per month for the Performance module, $2.50 for surveys, and $12.50 per employee per month for the full platform (Recognition + Performance).
- Standard: Designed for companies with 250 - 1000 employees, this plan costs $4.25 per employee per month for the Recognition module, $7.50 per employee per month for the Performance module, $2.00 for surveys, and $10.50 per employee per month for the full platform (Recognition + Performance).
- Enterprise: Designed for companies with 1,000 or more employees, this plan has custom pricing. Contact WorkTango's Sales team for a quote.
Best For
While the majority of WorkTango’s customers are in tech, FSI, healthcare, and business services, the software can work great for mid-sized to large businesses, US-based or otherwise, across most industries.
Why we love it
:
Synergita helps companies dig deep to understand their employees’ performance and company culture. The platform’s natural language processing (NLP) feature allows you to uncover sentiment, while HiPo Score helps you identify top performers.
- Synergita is affordable and scalable. Users can choose between its modules for employee engagement, performance management, and OKR tracking or combine them as needed.
- The majority of users find the UI user-friendly and relatively easy to navigate.
- NLP feature analyzes the tone of employees’ responses and assigns the team a sentiment score — a valuable data point to improve the employee experience
- Can integrate with HRIS, CRM, ERP, Learning Management Software (LMS), Single Sign-on (SSO) servers
- Has a 7-day free trial, no credit card is required
- Synergita’s platform is affordable and scalable. On top of that, you get to choose between their modules for employee engagement, performance management, and OKR tracking, or combine them as needed.
- The majority of users find Synergita’s UI to be user-friendly and fairly easy to navigate.
- With the help of natural language processing (NLP), the platform can analyze the tone of your employees’ responses and assign team a sentiment score, which is valuable data you can use to improve the experience of your employees.
- Several users noted that the reporting module lacks customizations, and speed/performance issues can be experienced with it, particularly when working with larger reports.
- A few users have also reported that the support team isn’t so responsive
- Doesn’t offer a mobile app.
- Several users noted that the reporting module lacks customizations, and speed/performance issues can be experienced with it, particularly when working with larger reports.
- A few users have also reported that the customer support team is slow to respond and resolve issues.
- The platform currently doesn’t offer a mobile app for on-the-go access.
Synergita
Review:
Synergita is a cloud-based solution for employee engagement, recognition, performance management, goal setting, and tracking. To achieve all of the above, the platform packs a broad set of features, including engagement surveys, AI-powered sentiment analysis, measure culture score, performance reviews, 1:1 meetings, e-communication, peer recognition, HiPo rating, and employee development planning.
Synergita’s affordability and scalability are the top reasons users choose it over other options in the PM software market. As far as user experience goes, while report generation and user adding could be more intuitive, for the most part, both employees and managers like how simple and easy it is to navigate the platform.
Synergita has a page for use cases of the products, yet website visitors need to leave their information in a form to access those documents. However, businesses can always utilize its free trial to see how the software works in action.
Synergita
Customers:
More than 150 customers have used Synergita. Some of them are Lotte, Secova, Global Edge, Indegene, and American Micro.
More than 150 customers have used Synergita. Some of them are Lotte, Secova, Global Edge, Indegene, and American Micro.
Synergita
Pricing:
Synergita has three modules, Engage, Perform, and OKR. When billed annually, those modules are priced as follows:
- Synergita Engage: It costs $2 per employee per month and includes basic talent information, continuous feedback, rewards and recognition, e-communication, culture score, and employee and feedback reports.
- Synergita Perform: This plan costs $4 per employee per month, including features like advanced talent information, SMART goals and achievements tracking, performance reviews/appraisals, custom workflows and feedback templates, and people and performance reports.
- Synergita Perform Plus: For $7 per employee per month, Synergita Perform Plus packs everything in Synergita Perform, along with 360-degree feedback, promotion cycle, career aspirations, appraisal letter distribution, skill repository and mapping, HiPo score, employee headcount trends, employee performance trends.
- Synergita OKR: The plan costs $4 per employee per month and includes basic talent information, personal OKR, company/dept OKR, and OKR reports.
Note: Synergita’s modules can be combined. You can take advantage of the price calculator on their website to determine how much your subscription will cost based on the modules you need.
Synergita has three modules, Engage, Perform, and OKR. When billed annually, those modules are priced as follows:
- Synergita Engage: It costs $2 per employee per month and includes basic talent information, continuous feedback, rewards and recognition, e-communication, culture score, and employee and feedback reports.
- Synergita Perform: This plan costs $4 per employee per month, including features like advanced talent information, SMART goals and achievements tracking, performance reviews/appraisals, custom workflows and feedback templates, and people and performance reports.
- Synergita Perform Plus: For $7 per employee per month, Synergita Perform Plus packs everything in Synergita Perform, along with 360-degree feedback, promotion cycle, career aspirations, appraisal letter distribution, skill repository and mapping, HiPo score, employee headcount trends, employee performance trends.
- Synergita OKR: The plan costs $4 per employee per month and includes basic talent information, personal OKR, company/dept OKR, and OKR reports.
Note: Synergita’s modules can be combined. You can take advantage of the price calculator on their website to determine how much your subscription will cost based on the modules you need.
Best For
Global, US-based, and India-based organizations looking for a simple PM system with flexibility and configurability.
Why we love it
:
While relatively new compared to other products in the Culture Amp suite, Culture Amp’s Performance Management solution has caught the attention of hundreds of businesses with its helpful customer service and science-backed reviews and surveys.
- A simple interface makes the platform easy to navigate.
- The Skills Coach feature delivers daily micro-learning experiences directly through Slack, Microsoft Teams, or email. Users find them practical, on-the-point, and digestible.
- Lots of pre-built surveys, which users find insightful.
- Follows scientific evidence to provide insights and recommendations, which according to several users, are helpful.
- Product updates and new releases are on a monthly basis.
- No setup fee.
- Responsive and knowledgeable customer service.
- People science team
- Tons of engagement surveys
- The People Science Plus plan is not available for very small companies.
- Billed on an annual basis.
- The onboarding process differs based on the service tier you select.
- The mobile app’s functions are pretty limited compared to the web version.
- Integration options are quite limited.
- Undisclosed pricing. No free trial or free plan.
- Their people science plus offering is not available for very small companies
- Enterprise clients might find that they lack some of the integrations and customizations a bigger team needs.
Culture Amp
Review:
Culture Amp’s all-in-one employee experience platform runs the gamut from engagement to performance management to employee development and skills coaching. The Perform module is relatively new compared to Engage. Users appreciate that the vendor is very thorough and detail-oriented in every feature of their products, from templates to workflows to science-backed reviews and surveys.
Several users shared they liked how the short daily training is delivered. There is just enough information and practice activities to make it interesting, not too much to make it confusing.
With over 6,000 customers that include some big names across many industries, it's a tried-and-true solution for any company looking to boost engagement efforts.
Culture Amp
Customers:
Culture Amp has been used by 6,000+ companies, including Canva, SoulCycle, Etsy, Oracle, Bombas, Intercom, and McDonald's.
Canva, SoulCycle, Etsy, Oracle, Bombas, Intercom, McDonald's
Culture Amp
Pricing:
Culture Amp has four different plans.
- Self-service (for 25-200 employees): Includes Group coaching, on-demand resources for training, and 24/5 chat and email support.
- Standard (201-999 employees): Self Service, plus one-on-one coaching and pre-launch review.
- Enterprise (from 1000 employees): Includes all Standard features, manager and executive training, and results call with People Scientist.
- People Science Plus: Enterprise plus advanced guidance and training, linkage, and predictive analytics.
- Culture Amp Perform can be purchased individually or with other modules (Engage, Develop, or both).
- While all of its products are billed on an annual basis and have undisclosed pricing, most companies pay between $3 to $9 per person per month.
Culture Amp has three different plans. Each one features all of the engagement and performance management features that CultureAmp is known for. The plans differ in coaching and education features.
The plans are as follows:
- Self-starter: Designed for 25-200 employees. Includes all Engagement and Performance features. Limited HRIS integrations. Group coaching and education. Coaching and education features include survey design review, project working sessions, and demographic mapping under education.
- Standard: Designed for 200-1000 employees. Includes all the features from Self-starter. All HRIS integrations. Adds one-on-one Coaching features, including feedback strategy review, project planning, and results & report sharing follow up. Group Education features.
- Enterprise: Designed for 1000+ employees. Includes all Standard features. One-on-one Coaching and Education features, including meetings with Success coach, action guidance, management training, and People Scientist insights.
You may also purchase the employee engagement or performance management modules individually. While you must contact a representative for exact pricing, as these will vary depending on the modules subscribed, most companies pay between $3 to $9/per person per month.
Best For
Global companies with more than 50 employees, ideally in the 150 - 5,000 range. Another note is that most of Culture Amp’s customers come from tech and white-collar settings like HR and finance.
We utilize both engagement and performance. We use engagement for quarterly pulse surveys that determine metrics for our managerial bonus program, as well as our annual survey. We are starting to use the action planning tool with our ELT. We use performance for performance review and calibration. We plan to use it for goal-setting this year, too!
- I love the action planning capability that action planning has
- I love that engagement allows you to filter so many different ways and the heatmap functionality is fantastic
- I love the calibration view you can share in performance
- In performance, it’s not as easy as you’d like to exclude individuals from a calibration cycle from a filtering perspective
- In performance, I wish we could filter by division
- In engagement, I wish I could share a link with a leader for their dashboard not just via email
We decided to purchase Culture Amp as an engagement platform. Later, we added on performance. We needed a tool that helped us act on employee survey results and also had performance capabilities. We chose culture amp because it met the pain points we were having, they have a great customer success team & truly are working toward great product enhancements. I’ve personally used the tool since august 2021. Performance since last October.
- Culture amp is different than competitors because of the action planning, it really sets them apart.
- I prefer the performance to BambooHR (what I’ve used in the past) because the views are so much better in calibration
- Consider action planning. What are you going to do with the engagement survey info?
- Consider how your performance cycle will be imported back into your point of record (for us it’s BambooHR and that may be a challenge, TBD!)
More filtering & word clouds in engagement! Too soon in using performance to tell.
A medium to large org (one with more data to measure!).
For small organizations, it is tough, as if they don’t receive much data, you can’t view the results when you slice.
Why we love it
:
Profit.co is more than just an OKR solution. The platform also packs features for performance management, task management, employee engagement, and recognition.
- Provides a broad set of features for an OKR tool
- In-depth customization options
- The OKRs coaching program is highly rated by users for its clear instructions and practical case studies
- Supports multiple languages besides English, including Spanish, Chinese, Dutch, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Bahasa, German, Portuguese, French, and Finnish
- 24/7 phone and chat support
- Offers a free plan as well as free trials.
- The platform has tutorials available that walk you through how to use the system and guide your team onto the platform. There are also examples of different types of goals, objectives and KPIs, so it's easy to see how they work in practice.
- Profit.co offers an intuitive interface that makes it easy for teams to set goals, collaborate and track progress. The tool allows users to set up OKRs for each team member, which can be done fairly fast with the help of step-by-step instructions.
- Users can choose from several pre-defined KPIs that range from sales to customer satisfaction, which helps them visualize their progress over time with just one glance at their dashboard.
- The customer success team is great, but there could have been more online materials for self-service training
- Not all the features in the mobile app are working as well as in the website
- Users find the platform confusing to navigate at times due to its wide feature set
- Connects with several apps, yet according to some users, the Asana integration isn’t easy to set up.
- While Profit.co offers a free plan for up to five users, it has limited features. The only way to unlock more features is by upgrading to another plan.
- One complaint about Profit.co is that there are too many features in one platform. While this might sound like a good thing at first glance, it can actually be frustrating for users who want something simple and straightforward – especially if they’re new to OKRs and performance management.
- As an administrator, you can create and edit tasks and goals. However, there’s no way to edit or upload tasks or goals on a mass scale. For example, if you want to change the title or description for every task, then you’ll have to manually do it one by one.
Profit.co
Review:
Profit.co allows companies to create and track corporate, departmental, team, and individual OKRs. The top management defines the corporate objectives and sets them up on the platform with in-app customization. The various departments can create their OKRs to further the corporate vision, while teams and individuals can set their own objectives to serve those larger goals. Through Profit.co’s real-time reporting dashboard, managers can check the real-time progress of their teams, catch potential problems early on, and make decisions as needed.
We appreciate that the software has transparent pricing, a free version, and a free trial. Plus, Profit.co supports multiple languages, making it friendly to distributed teams.
Profit.co
Customers:
SunTec, Wex, Telmar, Sandvik, CWB Financial Group
Profit.co’s customer list includes names like Deriv, IMC Industrial Group, SunTec Business Solutions, Rehau Inc, Centura Wealth Advisory, and more.
Profit.co
Pricing:
- Launch: This plan is free for up to five users.
- Growth: This plan costs $7 per user per month, billed annually.
- Enterprise: This plan has custom pricing.
Note: Growth and Enterprise have free trials with no credit card required.
Profit.co offers three pricing plans, including:
- Launch (Free for up to 5 users): Great plan for those who are just getting started with their OKR journey and planning to use OKRs with just weekly check-ins.
- Growth ($7 /month, per user billed annually): Great plan for companies that are ready to rollout to multiple teams and planning to use full-fledged performance managed features, OKRs, and tasks. It will also cost $9/month per user when paid monthly.
- Enterprise (Custom plan): Great plan for businesses that are ready to adopt a complete OKR-centric management methodology for their entire business.
All plans come with features like the step-by-step method to create OKRs, in-built OKR templates, key result types, KPI library, and more. You also get access to task management features like taskboards, board stages and checklists, task priorities and due dates, and more. That said, more advanced features are only available with the higher prices plans.
Best For
Startups and small to medium-sized businesses — either office-based or distributed teams can find a lot of value in Profit.co.
Why we love it
:
Betterworks is more common among large teams due to its sheer amount of features. Businesses choose it to get a wider set of data points and tools for employee engagement, performance, and goal management.
- Supports manager-employee conversations on planning and setting up quarterly objectives and key results
- Users highly praise the e-learnings along the OKR setups.
- Has a user-friendly and clear UI.
- The customer support team gives timely responses and is helpful.
- BetterWorks helps you get the performance data you need, whenever you need it. You can calibrate the system to your standards and objectives – annually, quarterly, monthly, or on demand – or choose from a wide selection of filters to get exactly the information you want.
- There are a few features in place that can help you uncover hidden biases and uphold your commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. For example, you can learn if talent decisions – such as promotions – are impacting certain employee populations unfairly.
- The platform is fairly easy to use with built-in analytics that help you understand how well you are doing toward achieving your goals.
- Limited integration capabilities
- Filtering isn’t in the best shape, leading to confusion as users navigate between individual and team goals.
- Its price tag makes it not friendly to budget-minded teams
- No free trials
- It can be difficult to know which goals are active, because the label ‘Active’ is set as the default.
- Betterworks offers considerable integration options with third-party solutions, but its main focus is on sending and receiving employee information between systems.
- Some users may find the Goals and OKR module overwhelming due to the sheer number of features, buttons, and options available. For example, a user complains that there's no need for three separate modules: Goals, Conversation, and Appreciation. The user should be able to click on a Goal and immediately start a conversation with the manager about it.
Betterworks
Review:
Betterworks provides a smooth performance journey to end users with an intuitive UI that’s easy to navigate. The software enables employees and managers to understand where the organization is trying to go and how they impact these goals by providing users with regular check-ins, OKRs, feedback, and recognition.
The web-based performance management platform gives visibility into the objectives of both individuals and the whole team, their progress, and how it all ladders to the set goal. Admin users can create regular reports to keep track of all conversations and measure the impact. We heard a lot of positive feedback from users on the tutorials built-in along the OKR setups and also its customer support.
Betterworks
Customers:
Hulu, Kroger, FedEx, Udemy, Posadas, University of Phoenix.
BetterWorks’ customer list includes Best Western, Posadas, Udemy, University of Phoenix, Intuit, and more.
Betterworks
Pricing:
- SMBs (5 to 1000 people): $7.00 per user per month (billed annually)
- Mid-Market (1000+ employees): custom pricing
- Large enterprises (5000+ employees): custom pricing.
BetterWorks offers custom pricing only, so the best way to find out if the product is right for your company is to request a demo.
Best For
Organizations (midsize or larger) looking for a robust and feature-rich PM software.
Why we love it
:
Lattice helps managers form a well-rounded approach to performance management, packing reviews, OKRs, goal management, and engagement in single, enterprise-ready platform.
- Has a modern design
- Helps you conduct 1-on-1s and reviews smoothly and in an organized manner
- Allows you to keep track of all meetings’ agendas, action items, and shared notes
- It’s quick and easy to see people directory and org structure
- Seamless integration with Slack and Google Workspace
- Lattice allows managers to record their 1:1 meetings with employees in real time. That way, both parties can go back later and revisit what was discussed during the meeting – as well as make sure nothing gets lost in translation!
- The platform has a host of tools supporting employee development and performance-based compensation setting, which isn’t common for the average performance management product.
- Review templates and survey questions are among several things that can be customized to ensure you’re getting relevant data.
- Updating OKRs is not the easiest. The goal view resets as users add or update a goal.
- Doesn’t have the option to do the feedback/suggestion box anonymously yet
- Sometimes it's not always intuitive when it comes to looking back at old reviews or adding someone to a survey.
- The mobile app has very limited functionality.
- Starting at $11 per person per month, Lattice’s pricing is on the expensive side compared to competitors.
- The platform is feature-rich, which is great but also means that it takes some time for the average user to get acclimated with it.
- The available selection of third-party integrations is rather limited, with a few users complaining that their HRIS isn’t covered. That said, Lattice does have an open API that allows users to plug-in other third party tools.
Lattice
Review:
Lattice’s performance management solution provides managers and HR teams with a comprehensive view of their organization. It features highly customizable reviews, with built-in tools to help users automate review cycles. Engagement is also taken into account, with users having the option to give feedback and appreciation privately or publicly (on integration apps like Slack or Teams), and request feedback from people both inside and outside the company.
Furthermore, the Updates feature connects employees and managers on progress and roadblocks. There’s also a mobile app available on both iOS and Google Play stores, but it has limited functionality compared to the web-based version.
Lattice
Customers:
Lattice has over 2,000 customers, including Reddit, Slack, and Asana.
Lattice has a large customer base that includes some noteworthy names such as Reddit, Webflow, Braze, Monzo, Valtech, Demandbase, and more.
Lattice
Pricing:
Lattice pricing is very flexible:
- Performance Management costs $8 per person/month
- OKRs & Goals costs $8 per person/month
- Performance management plus OKRs & Goals costs $11 per person/month
- Performance plus OKRs & Goals plus Engagement costs $15 per person/month
- Performance plus OKRs & Goals plus Grow (targeting employee growth and development) costs $15 per person/month
- Performance plus OKRs & Goals plus Compensation (linking performance and compensation) costs $17 per person/month
- Enterprise plan has custom pricing
Lattice offers four pricing plans, including:
- Performance Management + OKRs & Goals: This plan costs $11 per person/month. It includes 360 degree, manager, and peer performance review. It also includes custom question templates, performance reporting, analytics, dynamic org chart, regular business reviews, and performance management training.
- Engagement: It costs +$4 per person/month and includes employee engagement surveys, automated pulse surveys, eNPS, onboarding and exit surveys, engagement and performance insights, real-time pulse insights, engagement training, and regular business reviews.
- Grow: It costs +$4 per person/month and includes competency matrices, growth plans, individual development plans, career tracks, competency-based review questions, growth areas, career vision tools, and development analytics.
- Compensation: It costs +$6 per person/month and includes compensation review setup, bonus plan payout and one-time bonus, commission, manager, supervisor, and admin review, notes, promotion handling, and cycle progress tracking.
Best For
Growing teams looking for a platform that combines surveys, performance management, feedback, and goals will benefit most from the scalability and feature wealth of Lattice’s offerings.
What is Performance Management Software?
Here are those spooky stats we mentioned in the intro, though we suspect you're not in need of convincing that this is a critical piece of software that support a highly consequential process. When surveyed by Reflektive, employees reported:
- 85% would consider quitting their jobs if they felt their performance review was unfair.
- 18% said they would "bad-mouth their co-workers, boss or company," while another 12% planned on exposing company secrets.
- Employee turnover costs can range from 6 months to 2 years of the position's salary for highly paid executive roles.
Yikes! However, the worse news is that's only some of the damage a poor performance management approach can cause a business. Navigating effective performance management software to keep employees happy and productive, thus, has become a life or death matter to companies of all sizes and areas. But building a compatible tool, for some, has proven to be a difficult task.
To ease your struggles, here are the top effective performance management systems made through our vendor vetting process.
Time to figure out what the best performance management tools in the market can offer: their uniqueness, pricing, pitfalls, and ROI.
Performance management software is the analytics layer on top of the organization that allows HR and the executive team to have a strategic understanding of the people side of the business, along with metrics and information to help individuals understand how they fit in and how they can improve their employee performance. This software can tell you:
- What the organization is working on
- What a team is working on
- What an individual person is working on, and even what methodology they’re using
Use Cases for Performance Management Software
Performance management software is helpful to an organization in several ways:
One-on-ones: Some forms of 1:1s have existed in many businesses, yet in pretty limited ways. So today, performance management systems are implemented to get the most out of these interactions, where managers and employees collaboratively create agendas for 1:1s, review notes from past meetings, use pre-built conversation starters, and tie 1:1s back to goals and feedback.
Objectives and key results (OKRs): Most Performance management software has goal setting feature that allows businesses to list their OKRs and record progress toward them. The progress of an individual or team often rolls up into a larger part of the organization. For example, if five different sales teams progress towards hitting quota, so will the sales function.
Performance Reviews: We have trouble remembering what happened last week, let alone six months ago. Implementing a performance management system means you can now have meaningful performance conversations more regularly rather than awkward annual performance evaluations, resulting in employees ramping up faster and aligning more closely to company goals.
Employee Performance Management: Real-time feedback and advice on what to learn and what to work on can hugely impact your Human Resources team's talent management practice. From onboarding to 360-degree feedback and regular check-ins with managers, modern performance management systems provide managers a whole picture of employee performance and help them better coach their team.
People Analytics: One of the best parts of a performance management system is that you can now deeply understand what’s happening in any part of your organization. Most of these solutions come with analytics that will give you insights into which teams are using the platform and which need more education on the value of 1:1s, OKRs, etc. These analytics can help you know what everyone is working on and how that aligns with your overall business strategy.
6 Common Pitfalls While Buying Performance Management Software
While performance management software is an incredibly powerful toolset to engage team members, there are a few ways that we see companies need to improve when buying, implementing and capturing value from these tools.
Product Suite: Many of the vendors in this category have tangential offerings in the employee engagement category. It’s essential to think about your long-term people strategy when you are contemplating these solutions. While some may have exactly what you need today, others might be good enough and align nicely with your plans. For example, you may have found the perfect point solution for performance management, but it doesn’t have an employee engagement module. If you plan to roll out employee engagement in the next 18 months, it makes sense to bundle these both for ease of use on the user end and back end.
Culture Change: At the enterprise level, you most likely have the change management team helping you buy and onboard a performance management solution. However, most companies can’t afford Deloitte! So having HR explain the new solution's why and how is necessary. Chances are, you already have some sort of performance management solution in place, and the software is meant to streamline it. If you start from ground zero, you will have to communicate several times the value to the organization AND individuals using this solution. A pro tip is to use individuals’ success stories to explain the value.
Compensation Alignment: One pitfall is tying compensation directly to an individual’s OKRs. Performance-based compensation works and is very much the underpinning of capitalism itself. However, OKRs should only be 60-70% attainable. Otherwise, they are not going to optimize individual and team performance. If you tie these goals to comp, you will have a tough time getting people to put together OKRs that they can only meet 60-70% of the time. Make it clear in your communications how meeting OKRs will impact bonuses.
Phased Roll Out: Very few businesses can rapidly go from zero to sixty. If your company is not already doing 1:1’s and OKRs, pick a core module of the solution you’re buying that strongly overlaps your current way of doing business. You already do 1:1’s? This software can be a better way to organize and facilitate these interactions. Start there, and roll out the next module after your team is familiar with the software. Schedule 1-4 months per module to educate, roll out, and get comfortable. A meaningful forced change to people’s behavior will not result in success, but a measured one will.
Another Login: Rule of thumb: Do not require your colleagues to log into another system. It’s just too much. Instead, look for a performance management system that supports integrations with email (e.g., Outlook and Gmail), Slack, Jira, and other places your employees live each day. It cuts down on the effort needed to use these solutions, drastically increasing your chances of high engagement.
Aligning Goals: One last pitfall is around how people set goals. It’s natural for employees to set OKRs that relate to the company goals or managers. However, sometimes this is not the best use of people’s time. For example, a company's objective may be to cut costs, but someone in the marketing department needs to be focused on creative ideas for new campaigns, not scrutinizing which vendors could be cut. Individuals should be encouraged to be thoughtful about what objectives they are setting.
4 Key Performance Management Platform Features
The top performance management systems have key features that make this much more than an annual check-the-box review:
Check-ins: Employees want and deserve more frequent check-ins than annual reviews. 1:1's and a regular review of OKRs means that employees feel engaged, know what to work on, and learn how to take control of their employee performance. The bottom line is that more continuous feedback is a massive win for the organization and individual.
Automation & Workflows: Asking your managers and employees to take on another system? Bad move! Look for a tool that automates feedback collection, facilitates 1:1's with pre-canned questions and scheduling, and has integrations with your other HR software and tools like Slack, Outlook, etc.
Annual Employee Evaluations: The awkward yearly review is dead, but that doesn't mean employee evaluations are out the door. They've simply evolved. Take a hard look at how a new vendor streamlines and improves this part of your talent management strategy.
Development Plans: Misjudging staff performance is dangerous. So when choosing a performance management system, look for one whose modules help develop, track OKRs, and move employees in the right direction. If the system has learned management capabilities with specific educational material for your employees, that’ll be a huge plus.
Questions To Ask On Performance Management And OKR Tool Demos
Here are some of the questions we recommend asking on demos when you get on the phone with a sales rep:
- What is your product roadmap, and what do you think about related HRTech, such as employee engagement, recognition, and rewards?
- How does your solution integrate with my existing HRIS?
- How does this tool integrate with the project management software we might be using?
- What is your change management playbook to help get our employees and managers on board with this new solution?
- How do you suggest rolling out this platform? Which modules go first, why and on what timeline?
- If I’m already doing OKRs and 1:1s, how much time will this save my team?
- Is this solution designed for specific types of organizations (small businesses, enterprise/knowledge workers, retail, remote teams)?
- Can I export the performance management data to cross-reference with other KPIs kept in other systems?
- How does the annual performance review process work?
- What about more systematic review processes and check-ins?
Our Best Pro Tip: Cross-Functional Buying Committees
A while back, we wrote about how forming a cross-functional buying committee can help your team ease the tools and technologies assessment.
A cross-functional buying committee is a group of 5-10 people who care about a given topic, in this case, culture/retention. They brainstorm and then figure out the best way to tackle the issue: to execute some sort of initiative, in this case, buy performance management software. Realistically, there are one to two leaders in the group who do all the work of executing the initiative
But, there are some considerable benefits to having this committee. First off, getting a budget for your initiative is so much easier. You now have leaders from marketing, sales, engineering, etc., when you go to the CFO to get money. They can help you pitch and throw their weight behind the initiative.
You also have the help of every organization during implementation. This is especially useful when rolling out a tool like performance management, where individuals must be bought into the initiative across all different functions. Having the person from your engineering team on the committee tell their team why they need to use a solution can resonate more than someone from outside the organization doing the same.
Performance Management Software FAQs
What do you use performance management software for?
You can use performance management software to schedule and score performance reviews, measure OKRs and goals, schedule check-ins, analyze employee data, and more.
What benefits does performance management software provide?
Performance management software provides benefits such as increased retention, a better understanding of your organization, easy tracking of performance data, and increased employee engagement.
What features does performance management software offer?
Performance management system features include check-ins, automation and workflows, annual employee evaluations, development plans, and integration with other tools, including applicant tracking systems (ATS) and HRIS.
What is the best performance management software?
The best performance management software solutions are:
- Trakstar: Offers preset competencies with coaching tips
- Leapsome: Customizable performance management solution
- eloomi: Growth-minded performance management
- ClearCompany: Customizable review cycles
- Betterworks: Ideal for small and mid-sized companies
- 7Geese: Dedicated team of talent advisors
- Small Improvements: Great for small businesses
- Lattice: Simple, user-friendly interface
- Reflektive: Used by Fortune 500 companies
- Kallidus Perform: Emphasis on personal development
- Quantum Workplace: For a performance-based culture
Final Advice
When asked “What is one common mistake companies make when buying Performance Management software?”, our expert Tracie, has shared it’s “Over complicating the process and spending more money for features which may not be necessary initially.”
There are dozens of options in the market. But we hope our top shortlisted performance management software systems can assist you to narrow down options that align with what your company truly need.
Heads up: This page will change on a regular basis to reflect new learnings that we think are important to buy and implement this type of software. Subscribing to our newsletter will help us keep you posted to the latest insights more efficiently.
Best Performance Management Software
- Trakstar:Offers preset competencies with coaching tipsOffers preset competencies with coaching tips
- ChartHop:Organizational management solutionOrg Chart and People Analytics software with the most integrations
- PerformYard:Widely comprehensive Performance Management featuresWidely comprehensive Performance Management features
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