Betterworks vs. Small Improvements

[BetterWorks is a] good fit for a 250+ employees company that implements firm wide KPIs/OKRs system to measure employee performance and track corporate goals and progress, promote transparency and accountability.

Incentivized

Small Improvements is well suited in any sector or organization given that it tracks employee performance, 1:1 meetings, employee recognition and so on. I've used other tools previously like ones built in-house, Excel spreadsheets and even competitors like Workday but Small Improvements is leaps ahead of those other tools in its ability to execute well on employee performance tracking, recognition and meetings.

Incentivized

• Web based platform with everyone being able to access it anytime anywhere
• Allows for company wide OKRs management and promotes transparency
• Has some reporting functionalities

Incentivized

• Goal Tracking: Enables users to chart goals, track progress, and provide details about what they want/expect to achieve.
• Praise Wall: A public place to post positive and encouraging comments about other employees.
• 360 Reviews: Users can request and gain 1:1 feedback; this can be anonymous if desired.

Incentivized

• The UX could be updated.
• I sometimes get confused with color assessments and progress tracking.
• Some functionalities are locked according to the type of user.
• Would like to have an option to track specific to-do's.

Incentivized

• Being able to edit projects more easily (and have a documented edit history) would be beneficial.
• Possibly integrations with popular platforms (such as JIRA) to give expanded detail of project tracking.
• Gantt charts would be a nice to have for a top level management view.

Incentivized

We've been using it for going on four quarters now and it's become part of how our team plans our work for the quarter, holds ourselves accountable, and decides who is doing what work and why. Without it we'd certainly have to replace it with something else - plus it's so nice to see the other departments and top company goals so easily.

Incentivized

Overall the platform is clean and easy to use. It's quick to learn and not unnecessarily complex. While a few specific filtering features can be wonky it's nice that it's simple and clean. There are a lot of icons where words may be more appropriate in the navigation but otherwise the platform is easy to use and quick to hop into and check in.

Incentivized

The customer support is quick and thorough, they have access to our account to answers are tailored to our needs. They also have a good knowledge base and self-help site with some video tutorials and FAQs which saved us time as opposed to just calling or emailing support. For the times that we did reach out, it only took one response to get our issue resolved.

Incentivized

BetterWorks is great at implementing the Objectives and Key Results framework, and it also provides a framework for employee feedback and performance reviews. However, BetterWorks' capabilities to follow up on specific tasks or activities are limited, and you would need to complement these features with another app or platform. Nevertheless, I think in many ways is best to keep these kinds of functionalities isolated.

Incentivized

While still far from perfect, Lattice has much stronger goal-setting and 1:1 features (see my list of areas for improvement above). At another company, we put all OKR in Confluence and used Google Drive (specifically Google Docs) for 1:1 notes and performance evaluations. While it may seem cumbersome to conduct something like a performance review process via Google Docs, I appreciated the flexibility that it offered. I also still think that shared Google Doc is a perfectly fine tool for 1:1 notes (it even has assignable tasks now), and Confluence is a perfectly fine tool for defining OKR and tracking progress. Keep it simple (c).

Incentivized

• A tool like this was highly viewed by the new hires as it shows the company's commitment to track everyone's contribution to corporates goals
• Provides transparency into what each team does
• The implementation was a big effort

Incentivized

• Before we had Small Improvements, personal goal setting was completely disorganized. Some managers made sure it was done, likewise many did not.
• Having past goals collected in one repository has been a blessing. I couldn't imagine not having Small Improvements or something comparable.

Incentivized