The Best Employee Evaluation Software Shortlist
Here’s the list of the best employee evaluation platforms that I’ll cover in this article.
- Trakstar
For goal progression assessment
- PerformYard
Best for streamlining performance management processes
- Leapsome
Best for closing the loop between performance, engagement, and learning
- Motivosity
Best employee evaluation software for project and goal-based organizations
- Primalogik
Best performance management system with advanced benchmarking and performance comparison tools
- Culture Amp
For honest, anonymous surveys
- Cornerstone OnDemand
For great performance reporting
- Workday
For simple employee strengths assessment
- AssessTEAM
For detailed performance reports
- Small Improvements
For 1:1 mentoring
Keeping track of employee performance can be difficult and time-consuming, especially for medium-sized and large organizations. But assessing the output of your employees is crucial for your company’s success.
Employee evaluation software helps HR professionals identify the top performers in your enterprise, keep records of employee performance, and makes it easier to provide meaningful feedback.
The following review examines the top 10 employee evaluation software for performance reviews and recognition, along with an explanation of why I chose these tools over their competitors. The review also includes short descriptions of the tools, screenshots, and a comparison chart to help you decide which tool would be the right fit for your organization.
Related Read: 10 Best Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Software Vendors of 2023
Comparison Criteria
What do I look for when I select the best employee evaluation software solution? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria:
- User Interface (UI): I look for solutions that have simple, clean interfaces. Your HR team should be able to navigate the tool and find the right functionalities with ease.
- Usability: I look for tools that are easy to use. The HR professionals shouldn’t spend be able to use most of the software’s features with minimal training.
- Integrations: I look for solutions that integrate with other human resources software, project management, and communication tools.
- Value for $: I look for platforms that can help your team achieve multiple goals, so you get a great value for your investment.
Employee Evaluation Software: Key Features
- Consistent feedback structure - The employee evaluation tool should help your organization create a consistent feedback structure, making it easy for your employees to leave and receive performance reviews.
- Actionable reports - The software should collect and organize the data in actionable reports so your HR employees can present their findings to the management team.
- Goal tracking - It can be difficult to assess employee performance without tracking team and organization goals, so the software should help you set and track them.
- Assessment scheduling - The tool should offer some automation features, helping your HR team to schedule periodic check-ins at various time intervals.
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Overviews Of The 10 Best Employee Evaluation Software
Here’s a brief description of each employee evaluation solution to showcase each tool’s best use case, some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give a snapshot of the user interface.
Trakstar
For goal progression assessment
Trakstar is a flexible performance management system that helps you keep your employees on track with goals and continuous feedback. The software gives managers multiple survey options, so they can weigh different aspects of their team’s performance.
You can use Trakstar to set goals for your employees and organization. The goal section has a timeline, so each individual gets a visual representation of how their progress is going.
With Trakstar, sending and receiving reviews is easy. You can tie certain goals to reviews, add and share goal-related notes, and you can set up notifications to complete evaluations. Team managers receive reports on how their team is doing, and they can set up their dashboard to track department and team member goals at a glance.
Trakstar offers customized pricing upon request. You can also request a live demo.
PerformYard
Best for streamlining performance management processes
PerformYard's employee evaluation software provides flexible features for HR and a simple employee experience. With PerformYard, your HR team will get the tools they need to build out any employee evaluation strategy and employees get a streamlined experience so they can focus on quality feedback and effective performance discussions.
PerformYard focuses on providing a flexible employee evaluation solution. With PerformYard you can customize the software to fit the strategy that's right for your organization: 360s, project-based reviews, rating scales, continuous feedback, and/or cascading goals.
PerformYard provides a simple employee experience that facilitates feedback and quality conversations. It doesn't try to insert itself at every opportunity or replace important conversations. PerformYard provides dedicated customer success managers for every customer. From onboarding, to employee trainings, to ongoing support you'll have someone at your side.
PerformYard integrates with most major HRIS/payroll systems including ADP, BambooHR, Gusto, Rippling, UKG, Paycom, Workday, and Paylocity.
PerformYard costs from $5/user/month.
Leapsome
Best for closing the loop between performance, engagement, and learning
Leapsome is the all-in-one employee evaluation platform that helps organizations enhance their management processes. Used by companies like Spotify, Northvolt, and Babbel, Leapsome enables a continuous cycle of performance management and personalized learning that powers the growth of your people and business.
Their performance review cycles are fully customizable and easy to set up, and can be scheduled to automatically recur at predetermined timelines (e.g., quarterly, semi-annually or annually, or even for closing off probationary periods). Other key features include 360 degree feedback (including anonymous feedback), expert question templates, skill frameworks, development paths, automations, and powerful analytics. Leapsome also includes OKR software to help manage goals and objectives at the company, team and individual level too, as well as helpful visuals like goal trees that help you connect the big picture to the tiny details.
To further enhance your set of employee evaluation tools, Leapsome also includes employee engagement surveys that identify drivers and measure your employees’ satisfaction over time. Whether through custom questions or Leapsome’s expert templates, the tool helps you turn company sentiment into action items. Key highlights of this feature include customizable frequency and questions, the ability to segment surveys by department, performance and more, as well as automated survey analytics.
Lastly, for any employees who have a need for upskilling, Leapsome includes the tools teams need to create highly-customizable learning paths for training, and employee development, built around specific teams, skill sets, or topics.
Leapsome integrates with Active Directory, ADP, BambooHR, GSuite, HiBob, Jira, Microsoft Teams, PayFit, Personio, Rippling, Slack, and others.
Leapsome costs from $8/employee/month and offers a 14-day free trial or a free demo.
Motivosity
Best employee evaluation software for project and goal-based organizations
Motivosity is a cloud-based employee evaluation software that empowers businesses to recognize their employees with evaluations, performance reviews, and recognition initiatives. It utilizes performance tracking and benchmarking to identify and recognize the top performers within the organization.
The software is designed to help businesses capitalize on employee recognition by connecting with organizational, project, and performance-specific goals. Linking employee recognition with specific organizational or project-based objectives can benefit project-based companies or companies that want to increase productivity through a sustainable reward system.
The cloud-based solution provides users access to staff engagement, P2P recognition, incentives, and rewards within a unified platform. There is an intuitive dashboard that can be customized to track multiple teams' and individuals' performance and progress. With peer-to-peer recognition, the software provides a social platform for employees to recognize each other’s efforts and performance, enabling you to increase employee engagement and satisfaction.
Core features include employee feedback collection, peer-to-peer social recognition, gift card management, and monetary reward management.
Motivosity has four main products: Connect is free, Recognize starts from $4, Lead at $5, and Listen at $2 per person/month, all billed annually.
Primalogik
Best performance management system with advanced benchmarking and performance comparison tools
Primalogik is an employee evaluation software founded in 2012 that is known for product simplicity and customer-centricity. Primalogik’s employee performance management software includes a wide range of features that foster employee engagement and empower managers and their employees to reach their full potential.
Through a combination of performance review assessments, 360-degree feedback, engagement surveys, employee goals and OKRs, and instant feedback including 1:1 check-ins, Primalogik helps employees gain insight into their individual performance and uncover areas to make improvements.
Primalogik's 360-degree feedback module makes it easy to solicit feedback from multiple sources. Admin users can select their own rating scales for their evaluation questionnaires, and determine the level of anonymity that will be applied to the feedback. Advanced features in this module include the option for managers and admin staff to launch feedback requests about their employees and solicit responses from specific co-workers; automatic reminders to provide feedback by a certain date; and real-time feedback tracking.
Once employee feedback is in the system, Primalogik has several tools to support deep analysis of the data. For example, their system allows managers to compare employees’ self-ratings side-by-side against other respondents’ feedback. This helps identify any blind spots between where an employee believes they are and what their co-workers have suggested. Primalogik's comparison mode allows admin users to benchmark each employee appraisal and compare them across their workforce— a useful way of identifying their overall top performers or spotting potential company-wide skill gaps.
Primalogik integrates with ADP, BambooHR, Google Workspace, Microsoft Azure, and Okta.
Their performance management software is also available in Spanish or French.
Primalogik costs from $159/month for up to 25 users and comes with a 30-day free trial and/or a free demo.
Culture Amp
For honest, anonymous surveys
Culture Amp is a performance management software that excels at tracking employee engagement. The tool has a plain interface, it’s easy to navigate, and breaks down the information in different areas of focus.
One of the great things about this platform is that it protects the rater’s anonymity. This encourages your team members to provide honest feedback and can improve your organization’s culture.
Culture Amp provides excellent evaluation templates, but you can also customize your surveys to get the most out of your team’s answers. The reports and insights it produces are shareable and actionable, so the tool can help drive your organization’s performance.
Culture Amp offers customized pricing upon request. You can also request a demo.
Cornerstone OnDemand
For great performance reporting
Cornerstone is a human resources management software that leverages automation features to help with onboarding, performance evaluation, team management, and continuous feedback.
This software comes with configurable dashboards and heat maps, so you can tailor it to your company’s needs. You can set up the tool to track various performance KPIs, and you can extract the data in detailed, actionable reports.
One of the things I like about Cornerstone is that it helps you identify your employees’ competencies and set goals that would help your team hone their skills. I also like that you can send out pulse surveys and get real-time feedback from your team, and organize the data in reports or heatmaps before presenting it to the management team.
Cornerstone offers customized pricing upon request. You can also request a demo.
Workday
For simple employee strengths assessment
Workday is a human capital management system that helps HR specialists gather data about what’s going on in their organization. The software is customizable and enables you to create dashboards so you can track employee performance at a glance.
I like that Workday enables managers and HR professionals to review and update the skills of their teams. The software helps managers to identify an employee’s strengths, identify skill gaps, and also suggests some similar skills that might the employee perform better.
Thanks to its customizable dashboards and straightforward skills evaluation processes, I chose Workday as an ideal tool for simple employee strengths assessment.
Workday offers customized pricing upon request. You can also request a demo.
AssessTEAM
For detailed performance reports
AssessTEAM is a performance management system that helps you improve your organization’s culture. The tool offers a lot of evaluation types, from the traditional top-down evaluations to 360-degree feedback, 30-60-90 evaluations, real-time feedback, and others.
Managers can use AssessTEAM to set up goals for team members, track performance, assess the individual’s effort toward achieving a goal, and analyze the results in the same interface. Performance data is neatly organized in charts and reports, and you can get a detailed view of different KPIs.
One of the great things about this software is that it compiles all the gathered information to help managers make better decisions regarding promotions and compensation. You can assess an individual’s performance based on a combination of peer evaluations, self-evaluation, customer evaluations, and other factors that are relevant to your business.
AssessTEAM costs from $3/user/month. The platform offers a free 15-day trial and you can also book a live demo.
Small Improvements
For 1:1 mentoring
Small Improvements is a configurable performance management platform that helps managers improve company culture. The tool has a nice interface, and you can tailor its look to your brand with company avatars.
The software encourages employees to praise their peers and managers to reward team members who live out the organization’s values. You can also set it up to forward the praises via Slack or email for everyone to see.
Small Improvements makes it easy to set up 1:1 meetings, and its notifications system sends helpful reminders at scheduled intervals. You can also create and monitor milestones for individual projects, set goals, run pulse surveys, request and give feedback, and do 360 reviews.
Thanks to the software’s ability to track mentee goals and feedback, I chose it as the ideal platform for 1:1 mentoring.
Small Improvements costs from $5/user/month. You can try out the tool for free for 14 days. You can also watch a 10-minute product tour on the software’s website.
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The 10 Best Employee Evaluation Software Summary
Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Trakstar For goal progression assessment | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
2 | PerformYard Best for streamlining performance management processes | Free demo available | From $5-$10/user/month | Visit Website |
3 | Leapsome Best for closing the loop between performance, engagement, and learning | 14-day free trial | From $8/user/month | Visit Website |
4 | Motivosity Best employee evaluation software for project and goal-based organizations | Free demo available | From $2 to $5/user/month depending on product chosen | Visit Website |
5 | Primalogik Best performance management system with advanced benchmarking and performance comparison tools | 30-day free trial | From $159/month for up to 25 users | Visit Website |
6 | Culture Amp For honest, anonymous surveys | Free trial available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
7 | Cornerstone OnDemand For great performance reporting | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
8 | Workday For simple employee strengths assessment | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
9 | AssessTEAM For detailed performance reports | 15-day free trial | From $3/user/month | Visit Website |
10 | Small Improvements For 1:1 mentoring | 14 days free trial | From $5/user/month | Visit Website |
Other Employee Evaluation Platforms
Here’s a few more that didn’t make the top list.
- Workhuman
For showing your appreciation with real-life rewards
- Lattice
For consistent 360-degree feedback
- Kudos
Best points-for-gifts employee recognition system
- 15Five
Best for identifying high-performing individuals and rewarding top employees
- BambooHR
For easy goal tracking
- Xoxoday Compass
Best for creating gamified incentive programs to boost team performance
- eloomi
For easy employee appraisal
- Synergita
Best continuous performance management solution for building high performance teams
- Sage HR
HR solution that uses a good appraisal process and helps with continuous performance evaluation, talent management, succession planning, time tracking, workflows, and goal setting.
- IntelliHR
People management and analytics software that enables managers to organize all employee data gathered from review cycles.
Related Read: 10 Best Succession Planning Software To Develop Future Leaders In 2023
Improve Your Organization’s Culture With Employee Evaluation Software
Employee evaluations help your employees work better together. According to Sheila Heen, lecturer at Harvard Law School, feedback should communicate three things: “appreciation (I can see you — what you do matters), coaching (helping you get better through advice and mentoring), and evaluation (how you are rated or ranked against a set of standards).”
The software solutions I included on this list help you achieve these goals with ease. They enable you to run surveys, set goals, praise high-performing individuals, and coach team members who can improve different aspects of their work. I hope that, after reading this article, you found a tool that can help you improve your feedback processes so you can make your organization stronger.
You can find out more about performance management tools and how to manage your resources on our blog.
For more insights on how to create a better work environment for your employees and create a team that works well together, subscribe to the People Managing People newsletter.
For even more help on choosing the best HR software, check this out: The 10 Best HR Software Companies 2023
Related Read: Essential Performance Review Phrases And Best Practices