Lattice is one of the leading performance management solutions, but it may not be the best choice for all businesses. If you’re looking for a different platform to manage your team’s performance, consider these Lattice alternatives:
Read more: Templates & Best Practices for Employee Performance Reviews
Top 5 Lattice alternatives
While Lattice is a powerful performance management tool, its minimum commitment and the wide array of features may not suit your business needs. Here are some top alternatives that provide excellent performance management capabilities.
BambooHR: Best for basic performance management features
As an all-in-one HR suite, BambooHR is a common favorite among HR professionals. The performance appraisal system is an optional add-on, which makes it a compelling choice if you want to implement formal performance management tools down the road or need a solution to streamline all of your people data right now.
You’ll find that Lattice offers a wider range of features for performance management, but BambooHR is a better option if you want goal-setting, manager/self-assessments, 360º feedback, and performance reports in the same platform as other HR functions.
Leapsome: Best for performance analytics
Like Lattice, Leapsome is an all-in-one performance management and employee engagement platform that enables companies to close the loop between employee engagement, performance, and learning. Leapsome’s offerings are the most comparable to Lattice’s, as it includes tools for:
- Goals and OKRs management
- Performance reviews
- Employee engagement surveys
- Feedback
- Praise and recognition
- 1:1 meetings
However, Leapsome differentiates itself from Lattice in its scope of data analytics tools. Leapsome’s analytics modules provide action-oriented recommendations based on combined performance, engagement, and learning data sets. Plus, custom attributes and advanced segmentation capabilities provide detailed insights for forecasting and decision-making.
Leapsome helps managers interpret data related to the performance of those who report to them. Managers can use data from past performance reviews to track performance changes over time. Lattice users, on the other hand, mention an inability to track data from past performance reviews. Armed with this rich, longitudinal data, Leapsome helps managers identify top performers and facilitate succession planning.
Leapsome also assists organizations with setting up a review process in its platform by providing best-practices templates and frameworks. Teams can create and reuse review templates and timelines cycle after cycle. Once the templates and timelines are set, administrators can set up automated notifications and reminders to employees and managers when a new review period begins.
- Data-driven action plans.
- Review templates.
- Easy data visualization with at-a-glance dashboards.
Culture Amp: Best for standalone performance management
Culture Amp offers performance management and employee engagement solutions that maintain fairness and equity in performance reviews across your organization. Culture Amp reduces bias in the performance review process by providing templated review questions. This ensures each employee gets the same performance-based questions.
Plans are available for companies with as few as 25 employees, making it a great solution for growing organizations. Plus, while Lattice’s solution is more comprehensive, Culture Amp provides a standalone performance management solution. Employee engagement capabilities can be easily added later if needed.
Culture Amp’s unique Calibrations tool generates a report that provides an overview of employee performance and how it compares across teams and the entire enterprise. This feature ensures fairness because it compares apples to apples and gives managers a holistic picture of an employee’s performance to avoid recency bias.
For instance, if an employee’s performance has declined in the last month but has otherwise excelled in their previous two years of employment, the sub-par performance period needs to be contextualized within the broader picture.
Culture Amp also facilitates regular check-in surveys that are connected with employee 1:1s. This helps your HR team assess employee sentiment and maintain a powerful culture of openness.
Creating a culture of continuous improvement and multi-source feedback empowers everyone within the organization to meet and exceed their OKRs. Plus, since Culture Amp regularly updates its solution based on the latest research about how people think, feel, and behave in the workplace, your company can stay up to date on performance management best practices.
- User-friendly design backed by research on how people think, feel, behave, and learn.
- Modular system to accommodate changing business needs.
- Cost-effectiveness.
intelliHR: Best for affordability
intelliHR helps organizations visualize data captured during regular performance reviews to drive productivity and strategic decision-making. You can leverage intelliHR’s insights to evaluate company-wide performance from multiple angles and dig into specific metrics.
Unlike Lattice, intelliHR offers core HR features in addition to performance management and employee engagement features. It’s important to note that intelliHR’s base plan doesn’t include critical performance management features like goal tracking and review templates, but intelliHR offers a wider variety of features at a more affordable price point than Lattice.
Many companies don’t need all the bells and whistles that come with popular performance appraisal software. intelliHR focuses on making the performance review process as quick and easy as possible. Simple evaluation forms and a streamlined dashboard set intelliHR apart.
Automated check-ins help managers consistently collect feedback from their employees. Then, the platform gives managers the tools to interpret that data against cascading goals and foster more effective 1:1 meetings from a coaching perspective, placing development at the forefront.
Plus, one-click performance summaries grant immediate insight into employee and team performance, so HR teams and managers can get a bird’s eye view of how employees are succeeding and where they can improve.
- Cost-effectiveness.
- Data visualization tools.
- Easily accessible, data-driven insights.
Also read: Improving Company Culture During Periods of High Turnover
15Five: Best for team development
Though 15Five and Lattice both offer features for employees’ professional development, the approach each platform takes is slightly different. Lattice focuses more on formal career tracks and standardized growth plans, whereas 15Five helps employees create custom development plans that align with their unique strengths, passions, and interests.
Additionally, 15Five zeroes in on the variable that has the most impact on employee engagement and performance: managers. Multiple statistics illustrate the effect managers have on their teams for better or worse:
- In 15Five’s 2022 Workplace Report, “53.8% of employees said ‘unsupportive management’ was one of their top motivators for leaving a company.”
- BetterUp research from 2021 found that “managers who receive coaching to build resilience saw a 31% increase in team performance, a 9% increase in team innovation, and a 52% decrease in burnout.”
- Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace Report revealed the impact of coaching training for managers: up to 18 months after the training, “their engagement is 10% to 22% higher, and their team’s engagement is 8% to 18% higher.”
15Five’s Transform module provides expert-led training and coaching support for managers through live and on-demand content. The skills and best practices managers learn in these courses help them guide their teams toward success.
15Five’s user interface is optimized for employee engagement and development. Features like Role Clarity, Career Vision, and Strengths Discovery emphasize the non-linear paths most people take in their careers and the opportunities companies can provide to retain employees.
15Five also promotes a collaborative approach to performance management where employees and their managers work alongside each other to achieve their goals. This is a distinct shift from the traditional, top-down ecosystem Lattice and most other alternatives support, where managers set goals for their employees with minimal input.
The software also uses psychological principles to cultivate each employee’s best self. For example, 15Five’s review templates include controls for recency bias, idiosyncratic rater bias, and cognitive biases when a manager reviews an employee’s performance. Instead of forced rankings and external motivators, 15Five favors collaboration and intrinsic motivation rooted in each employee’s individual goals and values.
- Ease of use.
- Collaborative growth plans.
- Manager-specific training and coaching.
Lattice pros
Lattice is a popular performance management solution that managers, HR teams, and employees use for:
- Personalized 1:1 agendas and tracking
- Employee praise and recognition
- Status updates
- Real-time feedback
- Change management
- Tracking employee productivity, engagement, and development
- Goal setting
- Customized performance reviews
- Viewing performance analytics
Lattice offers additional functions through integration with popular HRIS and collaboration platforms.
HR leaders and managers use Lattice to inform compensation and promotion decisions. Employees can also use Lattice to track their goals and provide context for raise or promotion requests.
Also read: Bonus Time: Using Performance Metrics for Payouts
By engaging employees, managers, and HR leaders, Lattice offers a comprehensive way to track and reward employee performance all year long, not just during yearly performance reviews. However, not all businesses need all the features that Lattice includes in its service.
Lattice cons
With a minimum commitment of $4,000 a year, small and medium-sized businesses may find that Lattice isn’t the best financial fit for their needs. Plus, many of the valuable insights and capabilities are only available with the more expensive plans.
Aside from cost, users cite the following drawbacks of Lattice:
- Difficult user interface
- Steep learning curve
- Lack of collaboration tools for instant communication
- Lack of visual tools to track progress towards a goal over time
- Goals, even achieved ones, remain visible until deleted
- Lack of review history when managers change
- Lack of templates for reviews, surveys, and other routine forms of communication
- Difficult navigation to actionable insights within the analytics tool
Choosing the right Lattice alternative
The right performance management platform can make or break your company’s culture. Regular employee feedback is essential to help your teams grow and excel. While Lattice is a powerful platform with tools that empower performance management, that doesn’t mean it’s the right software for every enterprise.
Finding the right solution starts with looking at your company’s specific needs. Pose the following questions for starters:
- What are your biggest priorities in terms of performance management?
- What features would simplify performance reviews and reporting for your organization?
If Lattice misses the mark on your priorities and features, consider alternative solutions like those above that offer different or more advanced features.
For example, if your HR team needs actionable, easy-to-understand analytical tools, check out IntelliHR, Leapsome, and Zoho People.
If you need a more user-friendly solution, look into Culture Amp.
If automation capabilities can help streamline performance management tasks, check out Bamboo HR.
These five Lattice competitors are a great place to start when evaluating what your team needs. But, they’re far from the only alternatives available. TechnologyAdvice can help you narrow down the best options based on your unique HR and business needs.
Call our unbiased experts who will help you find the right performance management solution today!
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