What is a performance management system?
As a small business owner, you likely have all the managerial responsibilities, including ensuring your team members perform at their best.
However, this may be a challenge, considering that you have other issues and critical aspects of your business to manage. This is where a performance management system comes in.
Actually, according to a report by Beterworks, companies adopting continuous performance practices significantly outperformed competition at a 24% higher rate, indicating just the competitive advantage a performance management system can afford your company.
Think of a performance management system as a powerful sidekick that helps you manage your team as you focus on other vital issues. The best performance systems have proved to promote growth, boost performance, and ensure operations run smoothly.
In this article, we’ll discuss the best performance management systems for small businesses to help you empower your team and increase ROI.
Quick Summary
- Folks RH – Best value HR software for small and medium-sized businesses
- Pando – Best management solution for providing frequent and on-time feedback
- Lattice – Best HR software for enhancing employee engagement
- 15five – Best system for performance tracking for small enterprises
- PerformYard – Best performance management system for streamlining processes
How to Choose a Performance Management System
a) Consider User-Friendliness
Managing your team is already a challenge, so avoid splashing money in a system that is difficult to understand or navigate. Otherwise, your employees may avoid using it.
When choosing a performance management system, ensure that it has an easy-to-use interface with a simple dashboard and easy-to-reach menus.
b) Prioritize Integration Capabilities
It helps to have your system integrate well with other existing systems for seamless HR operations. This also saves you time that would be spent performing manual tasks.
A good performance management system will integrate with most of your favorite tools to eliminate the need to switch between software and reduce inefficiencies.
c) Make Cost Considerations
As a small business owner, you must be intentional with all expenses. While PMS is essential for better productivity, you want to be sure you are getting the right tools for the right price.
Do some research to know which solution fits your budget and to ensure that the PMS does not have any hidden costs
1. Folks RH
Folks HR is an HR software designed for Canadian businesses.
The software, one of the best performance management systems, offers a host of powerful features that help transform your team into experts.
To help you save time, Folks allows you to automate your entire onboarding process with the software’s onboarding management solution. The automated reminders and scheduled deadlines allow your managers to define and assign tasks to ensure everything is done on time.
In the digital era we are in, data is critical and, when used correctly, can upscale your business’s performance.
Folks’ HR analytics modules allow you to visualize your business’s key performance indicators and trends, such as retention rate, absenteeism rate, and number of voluntary departures, to make data-driven decisions that can enhance performance.
Small businesses can benefit from Folks’ automation features that automate manual tasks to save time and stay on schedule.
Key features:
- Folks RH’s automation features, such as reminders, help to streamline the onboarding process. Managers can easily define tasks and assign them to different people.
- The software provides a repository for all your employee profiles and records. Employees can edit their personal information, while administrators can edit and add comments in the employee directory.
- Folks RH has a mobile application that enables your team members to access information, make requests, and be notified of approvals and denials from anywhere.
Pricing:
Contact Folks HR for pricing.
2. Pando
Pando is a one-of-a-kind continuous progression platform.
Unlike traditional performance review models, the continuous progression model provided by Pando is more beneficial, accessible, and equitable.
But what exactly is it?
Continuous progression delivers continuous feedback while also connecting the dots to help your team members contextualize the feedback regarding their career progression.
So, instead of providing your employees with general feedback, you provide the details they need to implement the feedback to help them move to the next level.
Additionally, Pando provides role-specific career frameworks that allow you to track and provide continuous feedback to your employees effectively. Even better, the system provides real-time visibility into performance through insights and ongoing performance assessment.
Pando provides a cost-effective, all-in-one solution for managing employees and tracking performance to enhance productivity.
Key features:
- Panda provides clear visibility into employees’ performance in real-time, allowing you to understand what drives performance and identify skills gaps across the organization through competency-based insights.
- The software makes your company goals more impactful by linking business results to individual performance. Employees can also set their goals to help them grow.
- Panda’s feedback templates ensure the right people provide actionable and quality feedback to employees to promote growth.
Pricing:
Contact Pando for a quote.
3. Lattice
This software helps you get the most out of your employees.
Imagine a platform that empowers your managers, boosts performance, and makes data-based decisions all from one place. Well, that is Lattice in a nutshell.
Lattice gives you complete control of your performance by allowing you to run reviews your way. It doesn’t matter whether you run annual reviews, project-based, or automated reviews; the software is designed to adapt to your business’s unique way of doing things.
The provided templates, dashboards, and workflows help customize the platform to your liking and streamline your process.
Additionally, providing continuous feedback is possible thanks to Lattice’s ability to share real-time feedback among peers and across teams.
This is backed by the integration capabilities with Microsoft Teams and Slack that make sharing feedback more effortless and accessible.
Small businesses in 2024 can leverage Lattice’s customizable platform to develop a culture of continuous feedback and boost performance.
Key features:
- Lattice’s performance reviews context panel helps you never lose track of feedback by allowing you to view historical feedback, leading to quick review cycles.
- The one-to-ones enables your manager to create a better relationship with employees and enhance collaborations on meeting agendas.
- The software provides powerful people analytics tools that help you make data-backed decisions, identify high-performing employees, and manage your talents.
Pricing:
Starting plan: $11 per person/month
4. 15five
15five transforms engagement data into guided actions that drive precise results.
Firstly, setting up your first review cycle with 15five is a breeze, making this software one of the best performance management systems. On top of that, the software provides several customization options to enable you to tailor the platform to fit your business requirements.
When creating your review cycle, you have the freedom to make it as you want, whether it is setting up milestones or determining the ideal visibility settings.
Additionally, to ensure that you get quality performance data, 15five features several pre-built performance review templates your managers can use. You can also create your own based on your company’s needs.
The cherry on top is that the software integration capabilities ensure that all your favorite software work harmoniously. For instance, 15Five’s HRIS integrations enable you to maintain accurate employee data.
15five has a lot of features small businesses in 2024 can benefit from to help supercharge employee performance.
Key features:
- 15five’s ability to integrate with other systems, such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Jira, ensures that all your systems integrate seamlessly for enhanced productivity.
- The software allows you to create custom rubrics to provide a standard process of measuring performance and to help managers understand what each rating means.
- 15five has a compensation platform that provides managers with robust reporting to help make performance-based compensation decisions.
Pricing:
Starting plan: $4 per user/month
5. PerformYard
PerformYard is one of the easiest-to-use performance management systems.
Right off the bat, what makes PerformYard one of the best performance systems is its flexibility, enabling it to accommodate any business’s unique needs.
It allows you to create your own performance management process that aligns with your company’s culture.
It is made to ensure that you have an easy time right from the design to its features. With just a few clicks, you can schedule and share review forms and set up alerts for sign-offs and hand-offs so you do not have to keep following up with managers.
Additionally, from one platform, you can automatically track performance and analyze data to help you optimize productivity.
PerformYard allows you to filter and group performance data to identify high-performing employees and compare departments to enhance decision-making.
As a small business owner, PerformYard can help you get actionable insight and manage your employees to enhance performance across all departments.
Key features:
- PerformYard automation features eliminate tedious and repetitive manual tasks, enabling you to schedule reminders, automate reviews, and send approval notifications.
- You can create a system of continuous feedback in PerformYard to help your employees get valuable feedback that they can implement to improve their performance.
- The software provides analytics on employee performance to help you make data-backed decisions that can supercharge your business productivity.
Pricing:
Starting plan: $5-10 per user/month
Conclusion
Performance management software can help you realize your talents’ potential.
If you feel like you are not getting the best out of your team, maybe it is time to consider investing in a performance management solution. Businesses are realizing the power these systems have in enhancing performance and productivity.
In fact, Verified Market Research projects the PMS market size to reach USD 5.82 Billion by 2027 from USD 2.29 Billion in 2019, growing at a CAGR of 12.29% from 2020 to 2027.
These statistics highlight the massive hype performance management systems are getting, and I hope you see why.
If you want to invest in a PMS and don’t know where to start, these five discussed systems are some of the best performance management systems in the market.
However, Folks RH & Pando delivers an affordable option with robust features such as automation, a central repository, and data analytics to help you transform your team’s performance.
