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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.
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. Learn more
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Hours Researched
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2
Experts Consulted
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17
Vendors Reviewed
Our criteria: How we chose the best vendors
We take our research seriously and want to make sure we are presenting our readers with the very best solutions in a given software category. Here's how we select vendors to be in our buyer guides:
- Product: We want to have a deep understanding of a vendor's product before recommending it. This usually means getting a demo by a senior executive (their CEO, head of product, etc), and/or using 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 do our best to understand what users say when they experience this product. User input allows us to accomplish a more thorough due diligence of products, put new vendors on our radar, and generally make sure we are presenting the right products to our readers.
- Financial metrics: We are very much finance nerds and so use a product's retention rates, growth, profitability, and scale to understand whether or not it is truly best in class.
- Best for a use case: Sometimes the best solution is the cheapest, the best tool for international companies, or the best for startups. We try to include a diversity of solutions so that our readers can find the tool that is best for what they need.
Here's more detail if you want to read further on how we research vendors.
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 2022.
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
:
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:
Although Kazoo 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.
Worth Checking Out:
Kazoo currently offer language/translation support for the following languages: Chinese (Simplified & Traditional), English, French (France & Canada), German, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), Italian, Korean, and Spanish (Latin America).
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:
- 150+ customers
- 350K users
- 6M goals
Synergita
Pricing:
Synergita has three modules, Engage, Perform, and OKR. When billed annually, those modules are priced as follows:
- Synergita Engage: Synergita’s Engage plan costs $2 per employee per month and includes basic talent information, continuous feedback, rewards & recognition, e-communication, culture score, and employee as well as feedback reports.
- Synergita Perform: For $4 per employee per month, Synergita’s Perform packs lots of features including advanced talent information, smart goals & achievements tracking, metrics import for goals, performance reviews/appraisals, normalization, custom workflows & feedback templates, people & performance reports, 9-box report, strength & weakness report, and reminders as well as notifications.
- 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 & mapping, HiPo score, employee headcount trends, and employee performance trends.
- Synergita OKR: Synergita’s OKR 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 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.
Worth Checking Out:
Synergita offers a 7-day free trial, no credit card is required. To get started, simply head to their website and click the Start a free trial button at the top right corner. This will take you to a page where you can fill in your company’s details then proceed by configuring your instance.
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
:
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
:
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
:
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:
- Founded in 2018
- Used in over 65 countries
Profit.co
Pricing:
- Startup: This plan is free of charge for up to five users.
- Growth: This plan costs $7 per user per month, billed annually.
- Enterprise: This plan has custom pricing. Contact Profit.co’s sales team to get a price quote.
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.
Worth Checking Out:
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
:
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:
- About 11-50 employees
- The only patented, visual-based assessment in the market
- Their 90-second assessment has the predictive power of other tests 10-20 times longer
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.
Worth Checking Out:
Traitify invites everyone to experience their 90-second visual-based assessment on their website firsthand. The personality assessment will gauge the Big Five (i.e. Conscientiousness, Openness, Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, and Extraversion). In addition to the personality scores, the assessment also provides a personality breakdown and a brief of the most and least represented traits.
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
:
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:
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
:
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
:
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.
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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!
Best Performance Management Software
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