Lattice is a performance management and people management platform, but it’s not ideal for everyone. After evaluating dozens of alternatives, I picked the top five options you should consider based on their features and the competitive advantages they offer over Lattice:
- 15Five: Best AI-powered performance management
- Leapsome: Best for employee growth
- Engagedly: Best for employee experience
- BambooHR: Best for combined performance and core HR management
- PerformYard: Best for performance review management
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Top 5 Lattice alternatives
Product
Overall score
Starting monthly price
Continuous feedback tools
OKRs and goals
Lattice
3.94
$11 per user
Yes
Yes
15Five
3.94
$4 per user
Via integration
Yes
Leapsome
3.84
Custom quote
Yes
Yes
Engagedly
3.78
$2 per user
Yes
Yes
BambooHR
3.68
Custom quote
Yes
Goal and subgoal setting tracking only
PerformYard
3.57
$1 per user
Yes
No
15Five: Best for AI-powered performance management
15Five is primarily a performance management solution. It offers employee engagement, performance review, goal setting and tracking, onboarding, recognition, and skill-building tools. It also has an HR dashboard that allows users to uncover organizational-wide performance trends and outcomes. You can then use the dashboard to assign performance-improving action plans to managers and track their progress. Action plans can include, for example, conducting one-on-one check-ins with direct reports, giving recognition to high-performing employees, or having a career growth conversation with an employee.
15Five uniquely offers:
- An advanced people management dashboard.
- An AI manager assistance.
- Employee recognition tools.
- Manager effectiveness tracking.
We gave 15Five a 3.94 out of five-star rating based on how it scores against competitors, including Lattice, which received a 3.84 score. Overall 15Five scored high on customer support, reporting and analytics, goal tracking, and performance management tools, outperforming Lattice in these areas.
15Five stands out by offering its Spark AI tool, which synthesizes employee feedback, writes unbiased performance reviews, and recommends actions managers should take when managing their reports. For example, it may recommend tasks such as summarizing a previous one-on-one employee check-in in preparation for an upcoming one or putting together talking points for a scheduled check-in.
Once a manager chooses a task from the list, Spark AI assists the manager in completing the task. Managers can also ask the tool questions like “how to set effective goals” or “what should I ask in my next one-on-one?” then receive insights on how to best handle such people management tasks.
- 15Five scores higher than Lattice on reporting and analytics, goal tracking and performance management tools.
- 15Five’s AI manager-assistant tool is more advanced than Lattice’s AI tools.
- Starting at $4 per user per month, 15Five is more affordable than Lattice.
Leapsome: Best for employee growth
Leapsome is a self-proclaimed people enablement software. It stands out by offering tools to enable employee growth. Two of these tools that most contribute to this strength are its competency framework and its learning management tools. When used together, these set employees on a career path to continue advancing through it.
However, you must request a custom quote for the features you want within Leapsome’s offering. Feature sets come in modules that you can combine into one tailored plan. These modules include:
- Employee reviews.
- Employee and company goals.
- Employee surveys.
- Learning management.
- Compensation management.
- Instant Feedback.
- Meetings.
When we ran Leapsome through our evaluation rubric and our internal experts, it earned a 3.84 out of five rating in our performance management software category. Compared to Lattice, it scored higher on the experience and interface, performance management tools, and goal tracking features. It tied with Lattice on reporting and analytics but fell short of Lattice on customer service.
Leapsome’s competency framework gives managers a space to define needed skills at each level of employee career growth. Managers can then compile those skills into a visual format that allows them and employees to track progress and tie feedback to specific skills and their development. The platform further allows for instant feedback around the desired skills. And, in employee reviews, managers are prompted to ask questions that evaluate commonly listed skills and employees can give career goals that are tied to them.
In addition to offering a competency framework, Leapsome offers learning opportunities that help employees gain the skills they need to progress in their respective career paths. For example, you can use Leapsome to create custom courses. To do so, Leapsome offers a curated learning content library and an AI tool that suggests ways you can improve learning pathways as you develop them. It further offers learning content for managers, such as free leadership courses. As follow-up, you can also set up quizzes to test employees’ skill acquisition levels once they’ve completed assigned courses.
When combined, these two tools give managers the power to decide which overall employee skills will help them meet company goals. Then, it provides managers and employees the pathways to develop those skills. Doing so challenges employees and motivates them to fulfill their personal career goals, lending to improved satisfaction and retention.
- There is a strong combination of skill assessment and learning pathway tools available in Leapsome.
- Leapsome is a multi-language platform that provides content in over 13 languages.
- Leapsome’s AI tool assists companies with creating custom learning content to meet specialized talent development goals.
- Unlike Lattice, Leapsome offers a custom plan with only the modules you want included at a custom price.
Engagedly: Best for employee experience
Engagedly is a performance management and employee engagement software that allows companies to create great employee experiences to boost satisfaction and uncover hindrances to employee performance. To this end, its solutions include an employee social network, a team pulse tool, an employee listening tool, rewards and recognition tools, a mentoring program and a talent growth program. Other relevant solutions it offers include:
- Performance reviews.
- Objectives and key results (OKR) and goals setting and tracking tools.
- 360-degree feedback tools.
- Real-time feedback tools.
- Advanced talent analytics.
- Meetings platform.
- A learning experience platform.
- A skill intelligence and talent mobility platform.
- Employee surveys.
- An employee engagement app.
- Workflow automations.
- Compensation management tools.
When we ran Engagedly through our rating rubric and through our expert scoring process, we awarded it a higher star rating than Lattice, with a 3.78 out of five-star rating compared to Lattice’s 3.24 star rating. Overall, while Lattice scored higher than Engagedly on performance reporting and analytics, Engagedly outperformed Lattice on customer support, platform and interface user experience, the quality of its performance management tools, and its provision of advanced goal tracking features.
Engagedly uniquely offers an extensive employee experience toolset that helps to boost employee experience. For example, its Employee Social tool creates a space where employees can get to know each other, share ideas and feedback, receive public praise, and access company updates. It also offers an employee mentoring program where Engagedly’s mentoring experts guide companies in creating their own mentoring program. Then, its AI-powered algorithm then matches employees to their mentors with a 90% compatibility rating. Its employee rewards and recognition suite further offers employees badges, redemptive store points, gamified recognition experiences, and praise wall accolades for top performance.
In addition to these tools, Engagedly provides a Team Pulse tool to keep employee satisfaction and, consequently, performance, high. Managers can create a custom set of recurring questions that go out to employees. Employees can then answer them anonymously and even receive redemptive points for doing so. Example questions include:
- How would you rate your mental health from very happy to very unhappy?
- Describe your manager in a few adjectives.
- Are there any roadblocks you are facing?
Answers are then compiled into trend reports that managers can use to make strategic decisions to keep employee satisfaction and performance high.
- Engagedly has more advanced team engagement tools than Lattice, including a company social engagement platform and team pulse tools.
- While Lattice offers employee praise tools, Engagedly goes further by offering redemptive points, award badges, gamified recognition, and more.
- To boost employee performance, Engagedly uniquely provides a guided mentoring program, complete with tools to match mentors to mentees with a 90% compatibility rating.
BambooHR: Best for combined performance and core HR management
BambooHR is primarily an HR software with robust performance management tools. It provides a selection of two plans that require a custom quote for a more detailed pricing, along with a selection of add-ons you can opt into to cater to your software needs. Overall, it offers the following HR and performance management features:
- Payroll management tools, such as payroll calculations, flexible pay schedules, and tax filing services.
- Tme tracking tools such as a mobile and desktop time clock, overtime calculations, and project time tracking.
- Benefits plans, administrative tools, and approval workflows.
- Hiring tools, including tools to source top talent, such as an applicant tracking system, a mobile hiring app, job boards, and candidate email and offer letter templates.
- Onboarding tools, such as onboarding tasks, electronic e-signatures, and new hire welcome packets.
- Employee experience tools, such as surveys to gather employee feedback on community, rewards, and wellbeing.
- Employee performance tools, including 360-feedback, assessment templates, and goal and subgoal tracking.
- 125+ integrations, allowing you to sync BambooHR with your existing tech stack, such as Slack, Lattice, Google Single Sign-on, Indeed, and Microsoft.
BambooHR earned a 3.68 out of five star rating when we ran it through our scoring rubric and had it evaluated with our internal experts, scoring above Lattice’s 3.24 star rating. Overall, it outperformed Lattice in the categories of pricing and value for money, quality of customer support, and the platform’s interface and user experience. However, it tied with Lattice in our reporting and analytics and goal-tracking categories and underperformed Lattice in our performance management features category.
While Lattice has a plethora of talent management features, BambooHR is primarily an HR platform with robust performance management tools tucked in. Unlike Lattice, it has payroll and time tracking tools, benefits administration tools, and employee hiring tools.
Though Lattice provides direct integrations with around 30 tools across identity access management, communication, payroll, and applicant tracking systems, among other categories, BambooHR stands out by offering more. This includes direct integrations with over 125 common business tools, from learning and training management, applicant tracking systems, and global payroll systems to background check, business automation, and employee communication tools. It also offers an API so you can create custom integrations with tools that are not already available through BambooHR’s direct integrations marketplace.
- BambooHR offers a robust feature set of HR tools in conjunction with performance management tools.
- BambooHR provides far more direct and custom-built integrations than Lattice so you can sync your entire tech stack.
- BambooHR has payroll and time and attendance tracking tools which are currently not offered with Lattice.
PerformYard: Best for performance review management
PerformYard is a powerhouse of performance management capabilities with a specialized suite of tools in this category. It offers plans for performance management and employee engagement toolsets, allowing you to choose one or both suites. Signing up for all plans, however, comes with free setup and implementation, a dedicated support specialist, employee training, single sign-on, and a selection of support channels (including email, video, and phone support). Among its offerings are:
- Employee reviews and check ins, including 360 reviews, quarterly check ins, one-on-one check ins, and project-based reviews.
- Goal management tools, such a collaborative goal setting, cascading goals, employee performance visualizations, and corporate objectives.
- Continuous feedback tools, including employee recognition tools, employee performance notes, and feedback requests.
- Reporting and analytics, including nine-box performance grids, performance histories, performance trends, and summary reporting.
- Employee engagement tools such as surveys, engagement factors and questions, an engagement trends dashboard, and a satisfaction factor analysis.
In our scoring system, we ran PerformYard through our rating rubric and had it evaluated by our internal experts. As a result, we awarded it a 3.57 out of five-star rating compared to Lattice’s 3.24 star rating. Overall, PerformYard outperformed Lattice in our pricing and value, performance management, and goal tracking categories. However, it underperformed Lattice in our reporting and analytics and customer support categories. Finally, the platforms tied in our user interface experience category.
Lattice and PerformYard offer similar tools in many respects. Both of them focus on talent and performance management. Further, both offer a means to track employee engagement, performance, and goal setting.
However, there are some differences. Lattice offers an HRIS platform for employee records, tools for onboarding, and capabilities to create custom reports and workflows, but PerformYard does not. In addition, Lattice will soon offer some complementary performance management tools, such as payroll management and time-tracking tools while PerformYard has made no such announcement. In addition, Lattice provides compensation management tools, which PerformYard does not offer.
So, if you are looking for a straightforward performance management software at an affordable price, PerformYard is the better option of the two products. However, if you need a more robust compensation management, performance management, and employee management software, Lattice may be the better choice.
- PerformYard offers a straightforward performance management software.
- If your company needs a slightly more affordable minimum spend threshold, consider Lattice, which offers a $4000 minimum spend compared to PerformYard’s $5,000 to $15,000 minimum spend.
- There is a more dedicated customer support experience across multiple channels with PerformYard over Lattice.
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 best Lattice alternative for your business
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 robust 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.
Call our unbiased experts who will help you find the right performance management solution today!
Read next: Using Performance Management Software to Combat Burnout
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