Best Performance Management Systems - April 2021
The best performance management and OKR software, benefits, pitfalls, pricing and more
The best performance management systems give managers and employees an in-depth view of the organization as whole, and how their efforts are making an impact. It supercharges employee performance through 1:1s, OKRs, and goal management - all of which are best practices for today’s modern PeopleOps team.
Performance management systems and OKR software have typically been part of the annual review process that gives the employee a snapshot through a superficial performance appraisal. However, this category of HR software is evolving quickly and has become an important part of any company's talent management strategy.
We've spent a lot of time researching this space, and continue to stay on top of the its latest developments. Our goal here is to provide a short list of vendors we believe in for you to do demos with, along with everything else we think you need to be successful in implementing a new performance management system including the key benefits, pitfalls, thoughts on ROI, and more.
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We spend hundreds of hours researching the best HR and recruiting software so you don’t have to. We never take money from vendors during our research phase and rely heavily on practitioners and experts to help us recommend the right software. However we may earn a fee if you click on vendor links on this page.
We put in the effort to make this guide awesome
23
Hours Researched
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2
Experts Consulted
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17
Vendors Reviewed
In this guide you'll find
- Top Performance Management Software
- What is Performance Management Software?
- Common Pitfalls for Performance Management Software
- 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
Featured in
Top Performance Management Software
We track thousands of HRTech solutions, these are the best OKR and performance management solutions per our research and expert council as of April 2021.
Why we love it
:
With Trakstar Performance Management, you can customize forms, competencies, rating scales and more to create a review process that works for your organization.
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.
Trakstar
Stats
- 15% increase in performance scores
- 4x increase in goals set and completed
- 100% access to employee engagement data
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 engagement software.
Worth Checking Out:
Trakstar provides 100 competencies with leveled descriptions of performance at each of five levels. Coaching tips are also included with each competency. Custom competencies may be added to the Trakstar library as desired.
Why we love it
:
Leapsome is highly flexible; you can quickly set up your review process from their best-practice templates and frameworks or customize everything — from questions to timelines and anonymity settings.
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
Stats
- More than 1.2m unique pieces of feedback are shared across the Leapsome platform
- 99% customer satisfaction for interactions with Leapsome’s success team
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.
Best For
Leapsome can be used by companies of all sizes across different verticals.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
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
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
Stats
- Over 2,000 clients
- Founded in 2004
- 640,000 total users
Best For
ClearCompany is best for large companies looking for effective, customizable performance review rollout.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
ChartHop is constantly evolving; what started out as an org chart software is now a product that’s capable of supporting your performance management, employee engagement, DEI, and people planning/analytics efforts.
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
ChartHop
Stats
- Founded in 2019
- ChartHop helped their customer InVision save the equivalent of $2.5M in lost productivity
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.
Best For
Companies of all sizes can find value in ChartHop’s offering.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
eloomi helps companies grow leaders out of performance reviews, with personalized coaching, career pathing, and development tools.
eloomi
Review
eloomi allows HR teams to see performance management data across the organization from one central dashboard. This system makes it easy to start coaching sessions, complete with templates to help make these impactful. Employees can also take control of their growth and OKRs through the system. This solution fits perfectly in the segment of mid-sized to enterprise businesses.
eloomi
Customers
Hertz, Domino's, Iceland Air, Copenhagen Airport.
eloomi
Stats
- 500+ customers
- Offices in London and Copenhagen
- Founded in 2015
Best For
eloomi is best for mid-sized to enterprise companies.
Worth Checking Out:
eloomi also offers a best-in-class learning management system that is very complimentary to the gaps uncovered through their performance management software.
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
- Strava
- Duolingo
- Soundcloud
Small Improvements
Stats
- 750+ customers
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.
Worth Checking Out:
Combining employee engagement with performance management means more insights into your organization (maybe the sales team is high performing, but burnt out!).
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
- AirBNB
- Dropbox
- Comcast
- Squarespace
Reflektive
Stats
- Some customers decreased turnover by over 70%
- Founded in 2013
- Over $100M in funding
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.
Worth Checking Out:
Reflektive allows users to seamlessly interact with their solution through gmail, Outlook, and Slack making it simple to regularly engage employees.
Why we love it
:
Kazoo 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.
Kazoo
Review
Kazoo 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%.
Kazoo
Customers
Allianz, Hitachi, Kia Motors, Patagonia
Kazoo
Stats
- 95% customer retention rate
- 600+ global customers
- 1-3% average improvement in productivity
- 10-20% higher employee retention
Kazoo
Pricing
Kazoo has three plans. The pricing of those plans depends on the modules included. For example, you can either purchase Kazoo’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 Kazoo’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 full platform (Recognition + Performance).
- Enterprise: Designed for companies with 1,000 or more employees, this plan has custom pricing. Contact Kazoo’s Sales team for a quote.
Best For
Kazoo can be used by companies between 100 to over 1000 employees.
Worth Checking Out:
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
- Hulu
- Kroger
- FedEx
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
Worth Checking Out:
Their board member John Doerr is one of the world’s most famous investors, and also the author of “Measure What Matters”
Why we love it
:
Kallidus Perform promotes transparency. It gives companies visibility into individual, team, and organizational objectives and the ability to track progress towards them so they always know where things stand.
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.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Quantum Workplace enables companies with >100 employees to effectively manage their employee experience through performance management software.
Quantum Workplace
Review
Quantum Workplace allows HR teams to build strong, performance-based cultures through their performance management and employee engagement system. Employees can ask for feedback from colleagues or even outsiders. This vendor reports that employees actually get higher quality responses from this practice than from HR mandating feedback. Workers can also read data about their performance, respond to feedback, and directly schedule a 1:1 with a manager or mentor.
Quantum Workplace
Customers
Redfin, Panera, Politico
Quantum Workplace
Stats
- 385+ customers
- 2 million surveys per year
- Over 165k 1:1's launched
Best For
Worth Checking Out:
Quantum Workplace uses data to figure out the flight risk of employees in your company.
Why we love it
:
From employee feedback and reviews to 1:1s, and praise management, Lattice helps managers get a well-rounded view of company performance real-time data.
Lattice
Review
Lattice’s people analytics software empowers managers and HR to get a holistic view of what’s going on in their organization and make more data-driven decisions. Lattice has an expansive product that covers employee engagement, 1:1s, goal setting and recognition. Its easy-to-use user interface is majorly important to customers.
Lattice
Customers
- Slack
- Asana
Lattice
Stats
- 2,000+ customers
- 1.67 million pieces of feedback shared
Lattice
Pricing
Lattice offers three pricing plans as well as add-on features.
Performance
- Base plan
- $9/user/month
- Basic performance management features, such as reviews, analytics, goals management, feedback, 1:1 meetings, integrations, and a mobile app
Performance & Engagement
- $12/user/month
- Combines performance management features with employee engagement features
Enterprise
- Custom pricing
- All-encompassing solution
The add-on feature pack, called Grow, cost an additional $3 per user per month and adds growth plans, career tracking, and competencies to your feature list.
Best For
Lattice is great for mid-sized to enterprise level corporations, but its three different price plans will appeal to any customer.
Worth Checking Out:
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Final Advice
We hope you’ve enjoyed out overview of performance management software. 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 so please subscribe to our newsletter and good luck!
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