There’s no doubt Lattice is a great HR software that many People teams love, but there are a few reasons you might want to choose something that’s a better fit for your company.
Since finding the best Lattice alternatives is time-consuming, we researched 5 top alternatives to help People teams build a strong, authentic culture their employees are actually engaged with.
In this piece, we break down Lattice’s limitations and offer up the best tools for your team to build better relationships at work — including Candor, Leapsome, Betterworks, 15Five and Workday.
Lattice is a legacy HR tool that generally helps large organizations set top-down annual review processes. Let’s break that down ⤵️.
Lattice is HR software designed to improve employee performance, engagement, and satisfaction. It allows HR teams to:
But, at its core, Lattice is a legacy HR tool. It was designed for legacy organizations that tend to be more bloated and like to put heavy processes in place to manage all of that bloat. Heavy software like this isn’t well-suited — or needed — for small, nimble, mindful organizations that don’t want bloated teams and bloated software to manage their performance.
Don’t get us wrong, there's a place in the world for enterprise software with hundreds of features. But if you’re a smaller company, don’t fall into the trap of entering that world way too soon and buying bulky enterprise tools like Lattice expecting to ‘grow into them’. Instead, you should prioritize tools and processes that are flexible and can adapt as your business and people change.
The most popular use case for Lattice is setting up top-down annual review processes. Generally, the purpose of an annual review in Lattice is monetary: employees either get a promotion or a raise, or they don’t.
Annual reviews like this are a relic of older times. They’re hierarchical processes with an inherent power structure baked into them: a manager gives feedback to a direct report and not vice versa. This isn’t a conversation; it’s a power play where a manager is in control of the situation and an employee is beholden to whatever they say. Since these reviews have a monetary purpose, they feel heavy, stressful, and high-stakes.
Reviews like this don’t exist to help employees improve. They exist to keep employees moving on the corporate conveyor belt their company wants them to be on.
Instead of rigid annual reviews, companies should be investing in continuous two-way feedback.
Think of performance management as a way for teams to help their employees do their best work and grow in their roles. It shouldn’t be a once-a-year chat. It should be an ongoing, lightweight conversation that isn’t tied to compensation and isn’t limited to the manager → employee dynamic. Ideally, this cadence of this conversation should be somewhere between monthly and quarterly. This allows enough time to see examples and projects that tie back to performance, but not so long that the feedback feels like a heavy, high-stakes conversation. A shorter feedback loop enables quicker implementation and growth.
When you approach feedback this way, it’s more pure: people give feedback because they genuinely care and want the people they work with to improve. Since monetary incentives aren’t ruling the conversation, people are more likely to be kind and honest with their feedback, and the receiving party is more likely to listen to constructive criticism without feeling threatened.
Bi-directional feedback also sets a more impactful tone. By creating a safe environment where everyone is encouraged to give and receive feedback, managers show they’re committed to listening and promoting real growth within their teams — even if that means growing themselves.
Candor is a lightweight tool that helps remote teams build stronger relationships through shoutouts, feedback, polls, and more.
Unlike Lattice, Candor is designed for smaller, nimble teams who want to adopt more thoughtful ways of building their culture — not through a once-a-year review, but little by little everyday. Through Candor, teams can take part in fun, intentional exercises that boost productivity, engagement and genuine connection.
✅ A fun, lightweight platform that thousands of teams love using
✅ Allows bi-directional, peer-to-peer feedback that encourages candor and transparency, promoting real growth
✅ Candor ‘missions’ allow you to build culture through exercises that are flexible to your needs and cadence as a team, including 1-on-1,s shoutouts, polls, feedback, and more.
✅ Guided agenda setting accompanied by a library of thoughtful prompts to make sure 1-on-1s are productive, fun, and easy for both parties
✅ Candor’s integration with Slack means you can build your culture in the same place you do your work
❌ Being a newer tool, it has fewer integrations
Leapsome is a cloud-based employee development platform that helps CEOs and HR / People Ops teams set performance reviews, 360s, schedule 1-on-1 meetings, and send out employee surveys.
✅ Performance reviews and 360-degree performance review process allow input from multiple sources
✅ Highly rated by reviewers across G2 and Capterra
❌ May come with a learning curve due to the complexity of the platform
❌ Better suited to larger enterprise organizations with structured processes
❌ It’s tough to see how visible your feedback is and who views it
❌ Lack of integration with project management tools
Betterworks is a performance management platform that help teams improve employee engagement while boosting efficiency at the managerial level. As a comprehensive, purpose-built performance management solution, it incorporates goal-setting, manager-employee conversations, feedback, employee engagement, and recognition.
✅ Excellent goal-tracking features
✅ AI co-pilot
✅ Good promoter of a transparency culture; see the objectives of senior directors and how the rest of the companies objectives are aligned to these.
✅ Provides a wide variety of features
❌ Sometimes requires training to use
❌ No functionality to review previous checkins other than manually clicking each one
❌ No reminders to review goals as end-date approaches
15Five is a human-centered performance management platform designed to create effective managers, highly engaged employees, and top-performing organizations
✅ Encourages teams to have regular check-ins where they discuss their goals and progress
✅ Makes it easy for team members to give and receive feedback, both formally and informally
✅ Helps teams set and track goals, as well as OKRs
❌ Can be a complex platform to use
❌ One-on-one management feature makes it difficult to track action items or search histories across time or multiple employees
❌ Not as customizable as some of its competitors. For example, no ability to customize Check Ins around "How did You Feel At Work This Week"
❌ No help ticket escalation options in case of emergency
Workday is a cloud-based platform that helps HR teams manage all aspects of their workforce, from recruitment and onboarding processes to performance management and compensation programs, all in one place.
✅ Easy navigation with a user-friendly interface
✅ Cloud-based, access from anywhere
✅ Offers adequate integration to other third-party apps
❌ Has a reputation as one of the most expensive HR management systems on the market
❌ Users have to request free trials
❌ Complex system can be time-consuming, with configurations that put a heavy burden on system administrators
The products above are all tried and tested Lattice alternatives you can use to build genuine relationships and an authentic culture across your team. To find out which alternative is the right one for you — give them a try.
If you’re short on time, sign up for Candor’s and start bringing your team closer together today. 100% free for teams with up to 4 teammates. Explore our pricing options for larger teams.
Candor makes it easy to connect and have fun with your teammates, even while you’re remote. Use Candor to do feedback, shoutouts, check-ins, and more, all in one place.
Feel free to share questions or feedback with our team. We will be in touch within 1 business day.
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