Hand picked by our HR Technology experts after product testing, user research, and much debate - enjoy!
With more teams remote than ever before, now is the time to give your employees new ways to stay engaged and motivated from anywhere. One valuable tool is 360-degree feedback: performance input garnered from direct reports, bosses, colleagues, and customers.
In this article we will delve into the software that supports 360-degree feedback. Our HR tech recommendations are based on weeks of researching online, talking to experts, and receiving demos from vendors in this space. We’ll give you a comprehensive list of the best 360-degree feedback solutions, as well as the benefits and challenges of implementing a new feedback program.
The cornerstone of a 360 program is gathering useful, timely, and constructive employee feedback. This can serve as a critical component of performance management. According to a SHRM, 77 percent of HR executives believe performance reviews don’t accurately reflect employee contributions. That’s because they’re traditionally infrequent and unilateral.
360 feedback, in contrast, involves various perspectives for a more comprehensive view of employees’ performance, strengths, and areas of improvement. Think of them as growth checkins adding contour to the feedback environment. Today’s best 360 solutions help your HR team understand overarching employee trends in order to make informed decisions on training and hiring needs.
A strong 360-degree feedback program is supported by software that automates manual processes. Our goal with this guide is to save you time and support your success in choosing a 360 solution provider. We do the first 5-10 hours of researching software so that you can bring a vendor shortlist to stakeholders.
Feel free to use all of our resources throughout your vendor selection process. We have questions for demos, an ROI analysis, a checklist for securing internal buy-in, and an extensive lineup of HR software categories. Best wishes in your software selection — please be sure to let us know how the process goes for you!
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 SaaS and HR tech solutions. These are the best 360-degree feedback tools based on our extensive research and expert council as of 2023.
Why we love it
:
Empuls helps you create and deploy various types of surveys, covering onboarding, performance, HR effectiveness, and general feedback so you’re able to derive valuable insights into your employees' experiences throughout their journey.
Empuls
Review:
With Empuls' feedback software, you can gain real-time insights into your employees' experience with the workplace and find out what's working and what isn't. Through customizable surveys, you can get feedback on various processes and management styles including onboarding, performance reviews, training, HR effectiveness and manager effectiveness. You can also use surveys to perform check-ins with your remote employees.
All of this feedback is organized neatly in the feedback dashboard, which also allows you to tomonitor different metrics, get actionable insights and generate reports.
Empuls
Customers:
Empuls has over 1000 global customers, including Prodevans, Bahwan Cybertek, Magzter, FCA India Automobiles Private Limited, KPIT, Quixy, and more.
Empuls has over 1000 global customers, including Prodevans, Bahwan Cybertek, Magzter, FCA India Automobiles Private Limited, KPIT, Quixy, and more.
Empuls
Stats:
Empuls
Pricing:
Empuls offers three pricing plans. Here are the prices if you choose to pay annually:
Empuls offers three pricing plans. Here are the prices if you choose to pay annually:
Best For
While Empuls offers several competitive features for every business, it’s most suitable for small to medium-sized businesses who want to build a people-first environment.
Why we love it
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Leapsome is highly flexible. To gain the insights you need, you can create custom questions or use their ready-made templates — backed by scientific research and verified by experts.
Leapsome
Review:
Leapsome highlights transparency. It serves up people management processes to help organizations develop their employees and scale their business. You can roll it out incrementally, so that people feel engaged with your new HR processes. Leapsome analytics are actionable and linked to learning and development.
Leapsome
Customers:
Spotify, Babbel, Trivago, Plus Dental, Mercedes Benz.
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 USD 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 serves companies of all sizes looking to enhance their people management processes, develop their teams and scale their operation.
Why we love it
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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, feedback, 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
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.
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
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Eloomi’s My360+ tool enables you to get a holistic view of your entire organization. While Eloomi's surveys help you gather employee feedback, My360+ gives you a space to provide feedback on an employee's skills, and requests that managers and external clients do the same.
eloomi
Review:
Eloomi’s My360+ gives you a 360-degree view of your organization. You can provide feedback to employees and invite other members to provide their feedback on the same employee's performance and skills. You can also share these reviews with other members to get different perspectives and enhance your analysis of the employee's strengths and weaknesses. All of the information you generate from these helps you conduct effective 1:1 sessions with employees.
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
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.
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.
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
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BambooHR is one of the widest-known software providers in the HR and people management space, with over 20,000 active clients and 1.8 million employee users. Although their feedback tool is available only as an add-on, it’s worth considering for its variety of other features.
BambooHR
Review:
BambooHR's performance management software allows employees to get constructive feedback in real time. As part of performance appraisals, administrators and managers can choose peers to provide anonymous feedback on simple, standard questions, such as: What is your colleague doing well? How can they improve?The entire Performance Management BambooHR module is available as an add-on to one of their HR packages. It includes features like goals, peer feedback, self/manager assessment, and both company and employee performance reports.
BambooHR
Customers:
Among the 20,000+ companies that use BambooHR, you’d find names like Quora, Universal Group, Reddit, Asana, Change.org, University of Maryland, Grammarly, Stance, Postmates, Wistia, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and ZipRecruiter.
BambooHR
Stats:
BambooHR
Pricing:
Pricing is not disclosed upfront, but they do offer a free trial of their all-in-one software and then go out of their way to find a version that will suit you. Before they come up with a personalized quote that will align with your budget, however, they are also likely to extend your free trial upon request or even give you a free demo of the advanced features.
Best For:
BambooHR is a good fit for companies looking for a very customizable HR product, with pricing that reflects their needs. It’s also popular among teams that are partially or even fully remote.
Why we love it
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We’re big fans of 15Five’s dynamic feedback feature, which displays open-ended comments from engagement surveys in the Feedback section. The feature gives employees the option of answering one of two questions at the end of an engagement survey based on their results.
15five
Review:
15Five has two modules that can facilitate the gathering and management of employee feedback. The Engage module comes with customizable surveys that managers can use to hear out what employees feel about specific topics such as burnout, DEI, remote work and more.
The “Focus” module, on the other hand, allows employees to solicit feedback from one another on projects, tasks, or overall performance, which they can then share with their managers. Combining the Engage and Focus modules can help a long way in creating a culture of listening and continuous improvement.
15five
Customers:
15Five’s customer base includes Hubspot, Spotify, American Red Cross, Clearbit, Pendo and more.
15five
Stats:
15five
Pricing:
Best For:
15Five is more suitable for growing companies and enterprises wanting to ensure that they're getting feedback from all corners of the organization.
Why we love it
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With Trakstar Performance Management, you can customize forms, competencies, rating scales and more to gather the right feedback and create a review process that works for your organization.
Trakstar
Review:
Trakstar's 360 feedback software helps HR organizations manage feedback, goals, and reviews. Administrative controls allow your company to pre-determine how to handle 360 reviews, while still allowing managers to respond to nuanced scenarios and team relationships. Implementation is customized. You don't have to set up separate processes for goal setting, mid-year, or end-of-year reviews; employees’ appraisal is one process that stays open all year long.
Trakstar
Customers:
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.
Best For:
Companies looking for a comprehensive performance management and employee recognition software.
Why we love it
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ClearCompany is a one-stop-shop for all sorts of enterprise-grade HR software. You can combine their employee engagement solution with their onboarding, performance management, and workforce planning solutions.
ClearCompany
Review:
ClearCompany offers an automated solution to set up reviews, including custom scoring tables, weighted sections, and free-form responses. Sections of reviews can be shared among multiple forms to further simplify setup and scoring.
ClearCompany
Customers:
Chick-fil-A, Jamestown Community College, AEP Energy, Axiom Bank, Bios, FlixBrewHouse, Goodwill, Halco.
ClearCompany
Stats:
ClearCompany
Pricing:
The pricing of ClearCompany’s plans isn’t listed on their site. Contact their sales team to get a price quote according to the size and needs of your company.
Best For:
ClearCompany serves businesses of all sizes across all industries.
Why we love it
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With Lattice's feedback software, you can provide continuous feedback and get real-time insights on how your team is doing. Since Lattice integrates natively with Slack, Microsoft Teams, email and more, you can share feedback directly on all these platforms.
Lattice
Review:
Lattice’s feedback software allows you to have in-the-moment conversations with your team members and provide them with specific, constructive feedback. You can decide whether the feedback should be public or private. It also offers pre written feedback templates that are ready for you to select and send. The Performance Reviews context panel allows reviewers to see historical feedback, which can help them avoid losing track of their feedback. Lattice also makes sharing feedback a breeze by integrating with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Lattice Mobile, and tons of email providers.
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
:
As in its name, Culture Amp puts culture first, and that shows in its encouragement of growth and development in the review process.
Culture Amp
Review:
Culture Amp offers a full-suite performance solution including 360 feedback plus performance reviews, goal tracking, and continuous development. Their people science team guides new users to encourage growth and development throughout the performance management cycle. Expanding to the entire employee lifecycle, an easy-to-use exit process allows you to compare results and view trends.
Culture Amp
Customers:
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:
Companies of all sizes looking for a full-featured performance management and employee engagement platform.
Why we love it
:
Engagedly features customizable templates and rating scales, giving managers more control in how they collect feedback and evaluate performance.
Engagedly
Review:
Engagedly’s 360-degree feedback module enables you to gather feedback from a variety of sources, including managers, peers, and direct reports, to get a comprehensive view of an employee's performance. Their Multi-rater/360 tool is highly flexible and provides advanced settings for competency-based feedback, anonymity, self-nomination, external reviewers, and customizable rating scales. All of the gathered feedback is analyzed within Engagedly so you can uncover areas of improvement.
Engagedly
Customers:
Engagedly is currently used by organizations in 8 countries. These include Experian, Coupa, and E Source, to name a few.
Engagedly
Stats:
Engagedly
Pricing:
The pricing of Engagedly’s plans and services isn’t fixed. Contact an Engagedly sales representative for a demo as well as a price quote according to the size and needs of your business.
Best For:
We recommend Engagedly for small to large companies. Currently, companies that employ 50 - 200 people account for most of Engagedly’s customer base, however, there are companies that employ over 1000 people that find Engagely to be beneficial.
Why we love it
:
WorkTango empowers employees by giving them a voice while giving the decision-makers a pulse of the workforce.
WorkTango
Review:
While WorkTango doesn’t offer 360 feedback specifically, their powerful survey platform supports a different method of leadership feedback. WorkTango aims to improve business outcomes by providing HR, executives, and people leaders with insights, recommended learnings, and actions powered by employee feedback. Their software helps organizations tackle key themes such as employee engagement, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), and health and wellness.
WorkTango also works towards improving the employee experience throughout the entire employee lifecycle. This includes onboarding/exit, leadership, occupational health and safety, and mergers and acquisitions alignment.
WorkTango
Customers:
WorkTango
Stats:
WorkTango
Pricing:
Starting at around $5,000, WorkTango prices by the number of employees. The best way forward is to request a demo.
Best For:
WorkTango is great for companies that value employee feedback. Currently, WorkTango is effectively used in various industries such as tech, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, government, education, communication, and many more. The platform has been successful for companies with 50, hundreds, and even hundreds of thousands of employees.
360-degree feedback providers enable a review system wherein employees are rated not only by their managers but also by their team members, cross-functional colleagues, subordinates, and sometimes clients or customers. The goal is to gather as much honest feedback from as many perspectives as possible. Feedback reports can show trends in company culture and performance.
Some companies use this type of feedback to replace or supplement traditional performance reviews in determining pay and assessing performance. We don’t recommend tying 360s to raises and promotions because the results are skewed by bias. Instead, this method of feedback is a useful tool for the following reasons.
The best 360-degree feedback programs provide immediate, actionable input. In this section, we’ll explore the top advantages of these programs, as well as common use cases.
The primary pluses to a 360-degree feedback program include:
There are many reasons why companies utilize 360s in addition to their standard performance management cycles. For example, 360-degree feedback tools are extremely helpful for:
As we’ve seen, real-time feedback can support employee development and nurture company culture. However, not all programs are created equal. Set up your human resources team for success by avoiding the following common mistakes.
Pricing for your 360s software will vary based on the size of your company and/or amount of surveys you intend to release. One vendor said pricing averages approximately $4 per employee per month. As part of a holistic approach to performance and engagement, most 360-feedback solutions fit within a more extensive performance management suite.
Congrats to you — you’ve selected your final contenders for 360-degree feedback vendors! When you’re on a demo call with a sales rep, we recommended weaving in the following questions:
Our recommended vendors all emphasized their customizable approach to implementation. One provider said that a company with 100 employees or fewer could implement the new solution within two weeks. As a 360 customer, you will likely be matched with an HR professional certified in change management. This vendor partner should be able to advise you on best practices.
360-degree feedback software are review systems that allow managers, team members, cross-functinoal colleagues, suborinates, and sometimes clients to review and rate employees. It differs from performance management software because it is meant to provide quick, actionable feedback that's not tied to bonuses or rewards.
The goal of 360-degree feedback software is to gather as much honest feedback from as many perspectives as possible. By doing so, your company will understand the impact its employees have, while also providing feedback to each individual employee.
360-degree feedback software typically has features surrounding surveys, employee reviews, feedback generation, 1-on-1 meetings, note taking, and OKRs.
Remember to take your time when planning and implementing your 360 program. The most effective solutions support existing performance processes — making employees more accountable and more aware of their strengths and areas of growth. Conversely, a poorly implemented program can fall quickly into employee disdain or disuse. You can be among the former by implementing change management processes and partnering with one of our recommended 360-degree feedback vendors.
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