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!
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!
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!
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.
Trakstar
Review:
Trakstar’s Performance Management solution helps companies create and deploy performance reviews, provide coaching where needed, set goals, and monitor results in real-time. Not only that, but Trakstar also offers solutions for learning management, employee engagement as well as succession planning, making it a one-stop, integrated platform for companies to continuously assess and nurture their teams and leadership.
Trakstar
Customers:
Charles River, Beta Calco, Task Rabbit, Chemline, Minsterbank.
Charles River, Beta Calco, Task Rabbit, Chemline, Minsterbank.
Trakstar
Stats:
Trakstar
Pricing:
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.
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
Companies looking for a comprehensive performance management and employee engagement software.
Why we love it
:
We’ve always liked that ChartHop is constantly evolving. They started as an org chart software vendor and built out from there into performance management, employee engagement, DEI, and people planning/analytics.
ChartHop
Review:
ChartHop’s Performance solution enables you to conduct different types of reviews, gather feedback and check in with your employees as frequently as you want. Their solution is also very customizable; you can build distinct processes, questions, approval flows, and access controls by department, location, manager, role, and more.
ChartHop
Customers:
Sequoia, Plaid, Locus, InVision, BetterCloud
Remy Cointreau, InVision, Sequoia, BetterCloud, and Postman
ChartHop
Stats:
ChartHop
Pricing:
ChartHop is priced at a per user per month fee. Their most basic plan is called ChartHop Build and starts at $3.50 per user per month. After that there are two plans with disclosed pricing, Grow and Scale. These are $7 and $10 user/month respectively. For enterprises, they offer custom pricing.
Charthop has 4 different pricing plans. When billed annually, here’s what they look like:
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
Companies of all sizes can find value in ChartHop’s offering.
Why we love it
:
Though the old adage says “jack of all trades, master of none”, ClearCompany is one of those rare exceptions. They’ve been able to create a platform that tackles various niches of HR software, and performance management is certainly one of them.
ClearCompany
Review:
With ClearCompany’s Performance Management Solution, you’ll increase not only employee satisfaction but also the frequency and effectiveness of performance conversations across your entire organization. ClearCompany’s Performance Management is the only solution that incorporates predictive performance data and automatically understands each employee’s role and goals, allowing you to easily customize review cycles and questions to unique positions and give each employee a personalized and actionable review experience.
With a mobile-friendly experience designed to increase participation, cycle management tools that reduce the administrative burden on HR teams, and goal tracking, ClearCompany is a great choice for performance management software.
ClearCompany
Customers:
Goodwill, Aveda Institute, Chick-fil-A
ClearCompany’s customer list includes known names such as Chick-fil-A, Goodwill, Axiom Bank, Bios, FlixBrewHouse, and Halco.
ClearCompany
Stats:
ClearCompany
Pricing:
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
ClearCompany is best for large companies looking for effective, customizable performance review rollout.
Why we love it
:
The main thing we’ve always loved about Leapsome is their flexibility. You can use their many templates and frameworks as a starting point, and customize everything to fit your existing performance management process.
Leapsome
Review:
Leapsome allows companies to measure employee performance across all key skills and competencies. Through it, 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
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
Stats:
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 $7 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 - 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:
Best For
Leapsome can be used by companies of all sizes across different verticals.
Why we love it
:
PerformYard stands out to us for focusing on the performance management software niche. They go above and beyond to tailor their product to their clients' PM practices, mostly SMBs.
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:
It would take one look and a couple of clicks into PerformYard’s product to realize that these guys have been focused on the Performance Management category for years. With a sleek design and a wide array of features, they are notable for having one of the most flexible systems out there.
According to our research and an interview and demo with them, we know their clients appreciate having a dedicated customer success manager to guide them through the tool. That being said, their approach is always to show you how the platform can adapt to the PM strategy you wish to pursue.
PerformYard
Customers:
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.
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
Stats:
PerformYard
Pricing:
PerformYard has two plans. When billed annually, they cost as follows:
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 typically works best at organizations with between 30 to 2,000 employees. Their system is used in all kinds of industries, but it’s definitely more oriented towards desk-based businesses 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
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
Stats:
Officevibe
Pricing:
Pricing: Officevibe has three plans:
Best For:
Officevibe can be used by companies of all sizes.
Why we love it
:
Something that stood out for us from the get-go with Culture Amp is that their work is backed by a team of data science experts. This expertise translates to customizable survey templates and detailed analytics that help over 6,000 companies keep their employees engaged.
Culture Amp
Review:
Culture Amp is an all-in-one employee experience platform that runs the gamut from engagement to performance management to employee development and skills coaching. 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:
Canva, SoulCycle, Etsy, Oracle, Bombas, Intercom, McDonald's
Culture Amp
Stats:
Culture Amp
Pricing:
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:
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:
Culture Amp works best for global companies with over 50 employees, ideally in the 150 - 5,000 range. They are industry agnostic, but most of their clients do come from tech and white collar settings like HR and finance.
Why we love it
:
Lattice helps managers identify and capitalize on opportunities for success with performance reviews, 1:1s, feedback, praise, and more. Employees can also request feedback to grow in their responsibilities.
Lattice
Review:
Lattice’s performance management moduel helps you identify top as well as weak performers and give everyone in your organization the opportunity to grow. You can create project-based or 360-degree reviews to get feedback on employeers from their peers and supervisors. Supervisor and peer feedback give you a lot of context-rich data so you can focus your time and energy on tracking and analysis. Lattice also helps you foster a culture of continuous feedback and growth by providing a customizable solution that includes 1:1s, feedback, weekly check-ins, praise, updates, and more.
Lattice
Customers:
Lattice has a large customer base that includes some noteworthy names such as Reddit, Webflow, Braze, Monzo, Valtech, Demandbase, and more.
Lattice
Stats:
Lattice
Pricing:
Lattice offers four pricing plans, including:
Best For:
Lattice is most suitable for growing and large businesses and enterprise-level corporations that want to improve performance and track goals. With its ability to streamline communication and goal tracking, Lattice is especially suitable for hybrid and distributed workforces.
Why we love it
:
Profit.co is more than just an OKR solution; their platform also packs features for performance management, task management, employee engagement and recognition.
Profit.co
Review:
Profit.co’s OKR module allows companies to create and track corporate, departmental, team and individual OKRs. The top management defines the corporate objectives, the various departments can create their own OKRs to further the corporate vision, while teams and individuals can set their own objectives in service of those larger goals. Through Profit.co’s real-time reporting dashboard, managers can check the progress of their teams and catch potential problems early on.
Profit.co
Customers:
SunTec, Wex, Telmar, Sandvik, CWB Financial Group
Profit.co
Stats:
Profit.co
Pricing:
Profit.co’s Growth and Enterprise plans can be trialed for free for up to 30 days, no credit card required.
Best For:
Profit.co caters to businesses of all sizes.
Why we love it
:
Used by several Fortune 500 companies, Reflektive's platform offers all the tools you need to analyze then drive employee engagement and performance.
Reflektive
Review:
Reflektive’s software covers the gambit of performance management to employee engagement. This means their product allows you to measure and track OKRs, 1:1’s, real time employee engagement, etc all from one platform. Reflektive has raised over $100 million in funding.
Reflektive
Customers:
Reflektive
Stats:
Reflektive
Pricing:
While Reflektive does offer a free product demo, they do not publicly reveal pricing. You must contact a sales representative.
Best For:
Larger companies will see the best ROI from Reflektive, but that doesn't mean small businesses won't find use cases.
Why we love it
:
Eloomi Performance Management tool helps you set and track employees’ progress toward company goals and career development milestones. With engagement surveys and 1-on-1 reviews, the platform also enables you to identify areas for improvement early on and plan for solutions accordingly.
eloomi
Review:
Eloomi's performance management software helps you keep track of the learning goals for each of your employees and identify what type of talent and skills they bring to their jobs. You can see an overview of your employees’ performance using the “People Dashboard.” You can also start a 1:1 review and coaching conversations with a single click within the dashboard, making use of their expert-built templates for a better evaluation session.
eloomi
Customers:
Eloomi’s customer list includes BONUS Vorsorgekasse AG, Breakout Games, Carne Group, ElectricBrands, Nufarm, Domino’s, and more.
eloomi
Stats:
When Kompan, one of the largest playground manufacturers, trained more than 1000 employees using Eloomi, only 1% of them reached out for help, although the platform was new to around 80% of them.
eloomi
Pricing:
Eloomi offers custom pricing, so the best way to find out how much it costs is to request a demo.
Best For:
Eloomi is for HR leaders and managers of mid-sized and large businesses to make onboarding easier for employees, engage them through frequent feedback, and track the progress of their personal development.
Why we love it
:
What makes Quantum Workplace stand out is their hands-on customer service. Once you buy their software, you don’t just get a one-off implementation service that most vendors provide but instead an ongoing support team that helps you make the most of your investment.
Quantum Workplace
Review:
Focused on growth, development, and team alignment, Quantum Workplace’s performance management software is a suite of integrated tools that allow you to enhance employee performance in a myriad of ways. Employees can set clear goals and see their progress, 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 the talent reviews, and employees can get public recognition for their efforts by their managers and peers alike in fun and interactive ways. What takes this performance management software up a notch, however, is its succession planning tool that helps you find the right successors for your 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
Stats:
Quantum Workplace
Pricing:
Pricing is not disclosed upfront but you can get it after booking a demo.
Best For:
Quantum Workplace is best suited for mid-sized and large enterprises who have greater needs for engagement.
Why we love it
:
One of Kallidus' stand out aspects is how they promote transparency in Performance Management. They provide companies with real-time visibility into individual, team, and organizational objectives; as well as the progress made towards them.
Kallidus Perform
Review:
Kallidus Perform is a cloud-based performance management solution that facilitates continuous alignment to organizational objectives. Through it, employees can set goals, create personal development plans, update progress, and provide feedback to their peers as well as managers. Managers, on the other hand, use Kallidus Perform to request feedback, leave comments on employee progress, conduct evaluations, schedule meetings, and more - all in real-time.
Kallidus Perform
Customers:
Mcdonalds, Acer, Barclays, Pepsico, DHL
Kallidus Perform
Stats:
Kallidus Perform has 4.4 million users in over 50 countries.
Kallidus Perform
Pricing:
Kallidus Perform’s pricing isn’t disclosed upfront. Contact their sales team to get a price quote according to the size and needs of your business.
Best For:
Kallidus Perform is best suited for enterprises.
Why we love it
:
WorkTango combines continuous performance management, employee recognition, rewards, and engagement surveys into one powerful platform to help you improve employee experience and by extension, company culture.
WorkTango
Review:
WorkTango packs features for employee rewards and recognition, engagement, all performance management—all into a single user-friendly platform. Their three-pronged approach allows People teams to use one vendor that seamlessly shares data across all three modules. To put it in stats, Kazoo sees over 80% of users engaging with their platform on a monthly basis. They also have a customer retention rate of over 90%.
WorkTango
Customers:
Allianz, Hitachi, Kia Motors, Patagonia
WorkTango
Stats:
WorkTango
Pricing:
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:
Best For:
Although WorkTango can be used by any company size, from SMBs to Fortune 100 enterprises, their 600+ clients are predominantly mid-sized to small enterprises in knowledge worker industries, such as software & tech, FSI, healthcare, and business services.
Why we love it
:
Loved by companies of all sizes, Small Improvements is a robust, comprehensive, as well as affordable performance management system.
Small Improvements
Review:
Small Improvements is a performance management platform that allows companies to conduct 1:1s, give feedback, and relate employee efforts to goals. It’s worth noting this solution is free for companies with less than 10 employees.
Small Improvements
Customers:
Small Improvements
Stats:
Small Improvements
Pricing:
Small Improvements has two different pricing levels. The Performance Starter Pack is $5 per user per month, billed annually. It has the basic features of performance management, including 360 degree feedback, reviews, company directory, and HRIS integrations. The Feedback and Performance Suite includes all of the starter pack features and adds 1:1 meetings, objectives, praise, and Slack integration for $7 per user per month billed annually.
Engagement and retention add-ons cost $2 per user per month.
Small Improvements provides a 14 day free trial for potential customers. They also offer an 11% discount on the base price if you pay up front for two years.
Best For:
Small Improvements will be best for most organizations, but small companies will appreciate its affordability most.
Why we love it
:
Traitify helps enterprise companies quickly find and prioritize the best-fit candidates while engaging and developing employees.
Traitify
Review:
Traitify helps companies recruit talented candidates using validated talent assessments. Finding and selecting the right people, Traitify aims to reduce time-to-hire, decrease candidate drop-off, increase employee retention, and reduce voluntary and involuntary turnover. By improving these metrics, Traitify aims to increase their clients’ ROI by more than 10-fold.
Traitify
Customers:
Notable clients of Traitify include Hilton, Joann Stores, Lowes Foods, G6 Hospitality (Motel 6), Saint Luke’s Health System, GAT, Virgin Voyages, Public Storage.
Traitify
Stats:
Traitify
Pricing:
Traitify offers a subscription model wherein the annual license fee provides access to all elements of their human insight platform. They also have flexible pricing models to fit different customer business models. These pricing models can be factored per applicant, per hire, or per store location.
Best For:
Traitify is best for companies in need of high-volume hiring, with special attention to hourly workers.
Why we love it
:
Synergita helps company’s 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
Review:
Synergita is a cloud-based solution for employee engagement, recognition, performance management as well as goal setting, and tracking. To achieve all of the above, the platform packs a comprehensive 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
Customers:
Secova, Global Edge, Indegene, American Micro
Synergita
Stats:
Synergita
Pricing:
Synergita has three modules, Engage, Perform, and OKR. When billed annually, those modules are priced as follows:
Note: Synergita’s modules can be combined together. You can take advantage of the price calculator on their website to find out how much your subscription is going to cost based on the modules you need.
Best For:
Synergita can be used by companies big and small, across different industries.
Why we love it
:
Betterworks is all about results; their platform provides companies with insights and the tools to improve engagement, performance and goal management,
Betterworks
Review:
Betterworks is a performance management platform designed to measure what matters most in your organization – your people. This software helps companies with OKRs, as well as conversations, feedback, and recognition. Overall, it allows your employees and mangers to understand where the organization is trying to go, and how they are impacting these goals.
Betterworks
Customers:
Betterworks
Stats:
Betterworks
Pricing:
Betterworks costs $8 per user per month when billed annually. The engagement feature suite cost an extra $2 per user per month.
Best For:
Betterworks is best for larger companies
Why we love it
:
We appreciate that Darwinbox's solution strives to provide a 360° view of their employees work performance. They do this by combining features like performance journals, 1:1 check-ins, continuous feedback, OKRs, performance reviews, and, of course, robust analytics.
Darwinbox
Review:
Darwinbox offers a flexible performance management system that allows you to choose a particular framework such as OKR, MBO, and PP to measure performance, or combine multiple frameworks that work for you, create goals and sub-goals, capture goal achievement, and review accomplishments based on a predefined achievement-rating matrix.
Darwinbox
Customers:
HDFC Bank, Starbucks, WeWork, Domino’s Pizza, Tokopedia, Vedanta, and Swiggy
Darwinbox
Stats:
Darwinbox
Pricing:
Darwinbox does not disclose their pricing upfront on their website. Custom pricing and a free trial are available upon request for a demo of their various products.
Best For:
Darwinbox is best suited for large-scale businesses and enterprises with 500+ employees. In fact, over 50% of their customers are organizations with 1000-5000 employees.
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
Here are some of the questions we recommend asking on demos when you get on the phone with a sales rep:
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.
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:
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.
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