The 10 Best Performance Management Software Solutions Reviewed for 2023

The best performance management software helps you allocate tasks as per human resource availability, thereby preventing burnout and boosting employee satisfaction. With the help of robust business performance management software, managers can set individual employee goals, track performance, improve communication, draw insights, and provide useful feedback.

However, with so many employee performance management tools, choosing one can be daunting. That’s why we’ve reviewed the 10 best performance management software solutions based on criteria like affordability, ease of use, and integration support. Read on to learn why platforms like ClearCompany, Monday, and SageHR are among the best in the industry.

The Top Performance Management Software Tools Ranked for 2023

All the below-mentioned tools offer unique value propositions bound to impress various audiences, and you can rest assured that they’ve been picked after thorough analysis and testing. Here’s a quick look at the top 10 employee performance management software solutions:

1. ClearCompany — Overall, the best performance management software with several review-based templates. You can create visual reports, be it monthly, quarterly, or 360-degree reports.
2. Monday — The best free performance management application with a huge template library and customizable forms and management processes, plus intuitive color-coded dashboards.
3. SageHR — A highly rated management platform with seamless shift scheduling and leave management features. The plans are customizable, and you can pay only for the features you need.
4. Zoho People — Popular performance review software with anonymous eNPS surveys and several pre-made report templates. It integrates well with the Zoho suite of apps.
5. ClickUp — Whiteboard-oriented network performance management tool that makes interconnecting tasks a breeze. It also comes with an AI assistant that can take real-time notes.
6. Wrike — An all-in-one platform that lets you build customizable workflows on its easy-to-understand Kanban boards. Plus, you’ll enjoy 75+ templates.
7. Factorial — Top choice for fast-growing businesses, includes several automation and customizable feedback options. Plus, simplify employee expense management with Factorial Cards.
8. Connecteam — Caters specifically to organizations with a remote workforce with social media feeds like updates, and it boasts the best time-tracking capabilities on the list.
9. BambooHR — Employee evaluation software that allows the categorizing of the workforce based on performance. Plus offers great HR tools suitable for small or medium-sized businesses.
10. Workday — The most powerful human resource management tool for large-scale companies. It offers Global Payroll support to manage a diversified workforce from a single platform.

Doеs My Company Nееd Pеrformancе Managеmеnt Softwarе?

Gone are the days of filing cabinets filled with employee evaluations, internal career progress, payment data, and other sensitive information.

Today, human resources departments turn to employee performance management software to simplify performance reviews and goal-setting. Here are the main reasons why your company should consider using this software:

Streamlined HR

With the advent of digital file management and searchable databases accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, employee performance management software empowers HR teams, managers, and employees to have a clear understanding of each individual’s role within the organization.

Motivated Employees and Individualized Insights

Knowing where your employees excel and where they need improvement can be a big motivator for employees. Real-time feedback through performance software ensures they receive consistent and granular feedback, boosting their performance.

Every employee has unique strengths and weaknesses. Another benefit here is that managers can use performance data to identify these strengths and place employees in roles that allow them to shine, leading to better outcomes.

Real-Time Feedback

Millennials thrive on immediate feedback. Performance management software facilitates instant communication, motivating employees, whether they work for established organizations or startups.

These solutions are also among the best online collaboration tools as they often borrow from social media interfaces, offering real-time feedback options that are mobile-friendly and user-centric, ultimately improving collaboration and interaction.

Streamlined Goal Setting

To boost productivity and performance, employees require a clear vision of their objectives and how they contribute to the company’s success.

Performance management software facilitates collaborative goal setting, allowing employees and managers to align themselves with company objectives. Employees can track their progress and accomplishments, further enhancing clarity and accountability.

Insights Into Employee Performance

Performance management systems offer valuable insights by collecting real-time data on employee performance. This data helps identify top-performing employees, recognize achievements, and pinpoint areas for additional training or support. Recognizing and rewarding employees goes a long way in motivation and retention.

Benefits for All

Performance management software benefits everyone. It boosts productivity, retention, and goal achievement. Automated reviews are more objective and save managers time, reducing errors and offering real-time data for decisions.

Efficiency and Time Savings

As organizations grow, manually managing and collating performance data for an expanding workforce becomes cumbersome, particularly when paper-based systems are involved.

Performance management software comes to the rescue by automating the review process, eliminating the need for form-filling, and reducing the risk of human error. Moreover, all relevant information is readily accessible at any time.

The Best Employee Evaluation Software Solutions Reviewed

Looking forward to finding the perfect performance management tool for your organization? Read on as we discuss in detail each of our top recommendations below, including their best features, pros, cons, and pricing.

1. ClearCompany — Overall, the Best Performance Management Software

ClearCompany knows it takes more than just regular annual reviews to accurately test your team’s performance. That’s why it’s partnered with the best performance management experts in the industry to create a reformed performance review model.

It consists of templates of Annual Reviews, 360 Reviews, Quarterly Check-ins, Goal and Role-based reviews, Semi-annual reviews, and New Hire Reviews. ClearCompany has managed to hit the sweet spot when it comes to the frequency of reviews.

You’ll get enough information about your team’s performance without overwhelming them with constant feedback. It also comes with a semicircle meter-like chart that can be used to track your team’s progress.

Below the chart, you’ll find the number of goals your employee has for the month, while the chart itself indicates the progress. We particularly liked how color-coded labels like “on target” or “ahead” tell you how fast a particular employee is finishing their tasks.

This lets you easily check who’s fast-paced and who’s slacking at work, and you can keep your team motivated by constantly reminding them of their progress. Another reason we recommend ClearCompany for performance management is its robust reporting.

You get a number of reporting styles to choose from. For example, you can get a dashboard view to see the number of reviews that are completed, or you can get a graph view indicating how many reviews of each type (i.e., quarterly) have been completed.

Plus, we were happy to see that you’ll also get pie charts indicating the distribution of your team among various departments and under various supervisors. We found ClearCompany’s reporting tool so extensive that it’s almost impossible to miss out on any detail.

2. Monday.com — The Best Free Performance Management Software

Monday.com offers a completely free plan, and although it permits only 2 users to work together, its offerings like unlimited Google Docs creation, Android and iOS apps for on-the-go usage, and over 200 templates covering every industry are nothing to be sniffed at.

We found that the company has really simplified one-on-one performance meetings with its Employee Development tool, where you’ll find a list of your new hires and existing employees at a glance.

Beside each employee’s name, you’ll have their position and manager’s name followed by color-coded labels that tell you when you last had a check-in with them or if they have a review cycle coming up.

This allows you to keep an eye on everyone’s review cycle in one place, and you can smoothly communicate with their managers and get feedback on their performance without them knowing.

Under the Employment Management tool, you’ll also find an attendance tracker. In an Excel-sheet-like chart, you’ll get a list of all employees and their attendance. Separate color-coded labels are used for PTOs, company holidays, weekends, and casual leaves.

We found that this makes it easier for you to check if they’ve been missing work too often. Monday.com also understands the importance of keeping a constant check on your employees instead of just running annual review cycles.

That’s why it provides you with a brilliant project management tool where you can track everyone’s work in real time. We use it daily, giving an overview of the project, followed by its status and a color-coded bar that indicates its progress with respect to the timeline.

If you see someone moving too slowly on every project, you’ll have enough proof to bring that up at their next review meeting.

3. SageHR — Enterprise Performance Management Software With Detailed Shift Scheduling

SageHR offers a very cleanly designed and easy-to-use software that allows you to streamline core HR processes in one place. We found its shift scheduling feature to be a game changer, especially if your business is spread in different locations.

The feature lets you delegate employees to different schedule groups and areas, with dedicated shift managers for each location. We also found SageHR’s pricing model to be rather unique. There aren’t any pre-determined plans to choose from.

Rather, you build a customized package by simply checking and listing the feature modules that you want. With core HR plus leave management as the standard feature, you can handpick the other features like timesheets and expense management.

This is great for small businesses as you can cut down on a few features for the more important ones. Plus, you’re charged on the basis of number of employees you want to manage. Besides all this, Sage also has an easy-to-use leave management module.

This keeps every employee in the loop with a shared company calendar. We found this quite handy as employees can request time-offs, edit, or even cancel requests, and managers can quickly respond to these requests either through the web or Sage’s mobile app.

Employees can also view their time-off summary, list of entitlements, and history. We also loved Sage’s feedback feature that gives employees a holistic view of their performance with regular input from everyone on the project, such as peers and managers.

This leads to transparency and a sense of accountability towards everyone on the team. Overall, Sage stands out with the intuitiveness and ease of use that’s reflected in every aspect of the software — from pricing and app interface to the employee management system.

4. Zoho People — HR Performance Management Software With Unique eNPS Surveys

Zoho People is a cloud-based employee management solution that makes handling employees across multiple locations and departments a breeze. You can add new employees to your database through an invite or through Office365 or GApps integration.

Plus, you can classify each employee according to their location and job roles. As you’d expect, Zoho People emphasizes the importance of feedback from both sides in a business’s success.

With its eNPS (employee Net Promotor Score) surveys, employers can gauge employee satisfaction on the parameter of how much they’d recommend the organization to others, allowing you to gauge employee satisfaction to accurately know where change is required.

Zoho’s Case Management feature helps HR managers respond to employee questions quickly by classifying queries into various heads. For example, employees can choose from categories like compensation & benefits, travel, leave, and training.

Thus, the HR manager will specifically know the type of query and redirect them to an expert on the team. This way, the queries are solved quickly, improving employee engagement. The platform also integrates seamlessly with the Zoho Suite of apps.

One such useful integration is with Zoho Analytics, which helps managers generate in-depth employee reports at macro and micro levels. The best part? You won’t have to create custom reports for every metric (although you have the complete freedom to do so).

Zoho offers a range of pre-made reports, such as employee turnover, hiring vs. attrition, growth rates, and task charts. Apart from this, other features such as attendance management, recruitment, expense, and payroll management are also pretty easy to use.

5. ClickUp — Corporate Performance Management Software With An AI Assistant

ClickUp is a centralized performance software that lets you manage project tasks, employee goals, and progress from a single dashboard. If you’re a goal-driven organization, you’ll love ClickUp’s easy goal-setting feature.

It lets you create goals with measurable targets and automates progress tracking. Let’s say you’ve created multiple goals, all of which are interrelated. You can group these into one folder and get a bird’s eye view of the overall goal completion.

You can even set targets based on tasks, numbers, or monetary value. To make sure managers stay in control of the goals, they can even set user permissions to restrict unauthorized goal edits.

ClickUp’s customizability and flexibility steal the show and make management a whole lot easier. You can start with a blank whiteboard or use pre-made templates and then add custom fields to tailor onboarding and recruitment.

Plus, with over 50 actions, triggers, and conditions available, you can conveniently automate routine work and processes. Similarly, you can create whiteboards for almost anything — from reports and surveys to performance tracking.

We love that ClickUp is AI-compatible, too, and you can purchase ClickUp AI as an add-on with any of the paid plans to get access to the huge library of AI tools to have a virtual assistant help you make summaries of comment threads or meeting notes in seconds.

Among its unique features is the Gantt charts. These represent each activity by a bar and reflect the timelines of all the scheduled activities in color-coded form, giving you a bird’s eye view of all spaces at once.

Employees can update the projects by a simple drag-and-drop action to provide a detailed snapshot that shows dynamic progress percentages to employers so that they can stay updated with the status of the project at all times.

6. Wrike — Comprehensive Performance Management Software With 75+ Templates

In our full Wrike review, we found that it’s an all-in-one project management platform with a host of tools and templates that make managing employees easy. For example, its custom request form helps you create tasks, workflows, and even entire projects.

You can benefit from complete customization while building these forms, add conditional questions, rope in automation features, add checkboxes, dropdowns, and ample more. And that’s not it.

You can pick one of Wrike’s 75+ pre-designed project management templates, customize them as per your needs, and you’re good to go. For example, you can use the Monthly Planner template to set goals for each month, track progress, and prioritize certain tasks.

Wrike’s automation feature makes handling project flows easy. Let’s say you’re leading a project with 5 team members with inter-woven tasks. When a particular task is completed by a team member, Wrike will allocate it to the next person, and so on.

Not only that, members will receive a notification of tasks assigned. This way, you won’t have to micromanage. This is just a simple use case of Wrike’s robust automation — you can even create complex custom rules for each task and project.

Among its important features is the Kanban board facility that eliminates silos by increasing transparency and visibility across the organization. It allows you to create customized workflows and streamline processes with the use of request forms.

Another tool that can be used to increase transparency and communication among teams is cross-tagging. This not only allows for better team connectivity with its shared lists and easy tagging but also leads to improved asset management with custom tags.

There’s a task dependency feature that specifies the interconnection between different tasks. It also indicates the ideal time when a task should begin or end in relation to other milestones, boosting performance and allowing you to match up the project’s progress.

7. Factorial — Popular HR Tool for Performance Management

Factorial’s straightforward software gets the performance management job done with its basic but powerful data-driven tools. It allows you to personalize every aspect of employee performance reviews and ensures complete flexibility.

It offers several question formats like short answer, rating, or multiple choice, and managers can decide whether they want to use the suggested review questions or frame their own. You can also ensure that only relevant people partake in giving reviews.

For example, you can make a reviewer group to include the project head and all other members of a particular project, and only the selected group of reviewers will evaluate the performance of employees.

One major benefit if you use the reviewer feature is the automation that comes with it. Email notifications are automatically sent to reviewers when feedback is due — monthly, yearly, or as you customize it.

All reviews are submitted directly through Factorial to ensure you only receive authorized reviews. One thing that caught our attention was the Factorial Cards. Traditional expense management involves employees making out-of-pocket expenses.

They’d then claim a reimbursement from the company. However, Factorial Cards make the whole process a whole lot easier. Managers can issue these cards to employees, set limits on each card, and activate and deactivate cards when needed.

These cards can also be added to virtual wallets to make faster payments. The best part? Managers receive a real-time notification whenever an employee incurs an expense through the card. They can then approve or disapprove the request.

This makes the whole process seamless and cuts down on unproductive admin time. Just like Wrike, Factorial also offers a ton of templates to make performance tracking a whole lot easier — from shift management and time tracking to recruitment.

Other common features include time tracking, shift management, employee portals, and a document vault.

8. Connecteam — Excellent Tools for Performance Management of Remote Employees

Connecteam’s free performance management software focuses on team communications, especially between non-desk remote workforces. Let’s face it — nobody likes company messages and updates.

However, with Connecteam, you can create social-media feeds like updates with GIFs, images, and videos. You can even insert the company logo and branding, allow or disallow comments, and know who’s viewed these updates.

Similarly, collecting data from remote employees is a challenging task. However, with Connecteam’s customizable forms, managers can automate information gathering. These forms can be used to design workflows, checklists, reports, and policies.

If you want to keep track of your remote employees’ whereabouts, you can even add a geo-location tracker to these forms. Managers can also export the form data into PDFs and Excel sheets to make sharing and analysis easier.

Apart from enabling effective management, employee communication also takes a boost with easy file sharing and access to relevant project information. Deskless employees can even be trained with customizable courses on the apps.

The time tracking tool deserves special mention, too, because it’s among the best ones with a smooth clock-in and clock-out feature. Employers get real-time updates when the employees clock in and clock out, making monitoring possible even from far away.

Moreover, the data collected by the time clock automatically gets converted into live reports and timesheets, making monitoring simple. These reports also make it easier to find out the pain points and help struggling team members efficiently work on the projects.

9. BambooHR — Allows You to Categorize Workforce Based on Performance

BambooHR has found in its research that up to 61% of employees prefer to get feedback on each project they complete. Hence, it’s designed a unique performance review management model that makes frequent feedback possible.

For starters, you can manage both self-assessments and manager-helmed assessments on BambooHR. In either case, you get automated reminders sent to you and your employees with a link to the assessment questionnaire.

If you’re planning to run frequent assessments, it’s good to have someone to remind you, or you might forget about it under the workload. Under Employee Performance, you also get a unique graph that we’ll go over below.

The graph is divided into Rock Star, Achiever, Contributor, Under Performer, and Distraction. Based on the ratings on your team’s last performance review, BambooHR helps you mark the position of each employee on this graph to understand where they stand.

As an added benefit, the positions are marked with their profile pictures just in case you forget who they are. This visual representation is much easier to read than a long typed report. From here, you can identify who needs to be rewarded, helped, or let go.

Collecting reviews on a team from the right source is quite simple with BambooHR. You can use its pre-designed review template where, on the left side, you’ll have a list of employees with their pictures and designations.

On the right side, you’ll have a search tab where you can look up and select employees you want the review from. Plus, all the reviews will be anonymous.

10. Workday — A Global HR Management Tool Meant for Large Enterprises

Workday is a premium cloud-based HR software solution meant for large companies due to its ability to handle huge workforce data a lot more efficiently. It’s trusted by major companies like AirAsia, Netflix, and Bank of America.

Workday’s Skill Cloud is a pretty impressive feature worth mentioning. It uses machine learning to validate and verify your workforce skill sets to generate a skill profile for every employee. Plus, all of your HCM data stays in one place.

This allows you to draw key insights into organizational skill set trends. Workday also helps you close your skill gap by allowing you to create and distribute learning campaigns with personalized courses.

The platform has been designed to be open, extensible, and configurable. There are 600+ third-party software integrations and several partner integrations like Workday Prism Analytics, Workday Adaptive Planning, and others.

With Workday Prism Analytics, you can extract and upload data from any source into Workday to gain insights into important matters like what’s driving labor costs. Plus, the augmented insights reveal key metrics and the drivers of change in the industry.

So even the smaller neglected areas are brought to notice. Plus, Workday has partnered with several payroll service providers, such as Alight and OneSource Virtual, to offer payroll services in countries like the U.S., Canada, the UK, and France.

Thus, even if you have a workforce in these countries, you’ll still be able to handle their payroll through Workday. A centralized dashboard also lets you monitor tax and other compliances and view payroll actuals, third-party payslips, and year-end tax documents.

The Best Employee Performance Management Tools Compared

Here’s a birds-eye view of the key differences between each of our top picks that’ll help you make a quick yet effective decision:

Kеy Fеaturеs to Considеr Whеn Choosing Employее Pеrformancе Evaluation Softwarе

The effectiveness of employee performance management software for your organization hinges on its compatibility with your workplace culture and business requirements. Here are the top factors to consider when choosing the ideal employee performance management software.

Price

It’s crucial to consider the price of employee performance evaluation software for various reasons. Firstly, it helps select software that fits your budget constraints to prevent overspending.

Secondly, it assists in evaluating the software’s overall value by determining whether the features and capabilities provided are worth the cost.

Moreover, understanding the pricing structure, including recurring fees or hidden charges, helps you make informed decisions and avoid unexpected expenses.

By weighing the software’s price, you can find a solution that meets your performance evaluation needs and fits comfortably within your organization’s financial resources.

Features 

Assess whether the software can effectively handle your unique performance evaluation processes and objectives. Furthermore, selecting software with the right features allows you to:

• Streamline performance evaluation workflows
• Enhance employee engagement, and
• Drive individual and team performance improvements

In short, analyzing the features on offer is pivotal in determining the software’s overall suitability and impact on your organization’s performance management practices.

Compatibility

By selecting a software solution compatible with your current technology stack, you can facilitate the efficient flow of data and processes, reduce the risk of disruptions, and enhance the overall effectiveness of your performance evaluation system.

This integration capability enhances data accuracy, reporting, and analytics, enabling HR teams to make data-driven decisions whilst facilitating collaboration with easy data sharing.

Ease of Use

A user-friendly interface makes it accessible to employees, managers, and HR staff, regardless of their technical proficiency. When it’s easy to use, it minimizes the learning curve, reducing the time and resources needed for employee training and onboarding.

Simplicity encourages broader engagement in performance evaluation, ensuring feedback is collected and acted upon efficiently. This leads to a more productive and collaborative work environment.

Ultimately, this allows employees and managers to focus on constructive discussions and development rather than struggling with complicated software interfaces.

User Reviews and Reputation

This can help you make an informed decision, avoid potential pitfalls, and select a solution that matches your specific needs. User reviews also offer insights into the software’s ease of use, scalability, and adaptability to various industries and company sizes.

These factors allow you to avoid costly mistakes by selecting a solution that truly suits your requirements and ensures a smoother implementation process with a higher likelihood of success.

Scalability

Scalability is a crucial factor to consider when selecting employee performance evaluation software, ensuring that as the number of employees increases, the system can handle the increased data, user load, and performance demands without compromising efficiency.

Moreover, scalability enables the software to adapt to evolving evaluation processes and requirements for long-term viability and relevance.

Additionally, as businesses expand geographically, a scalable solution can integrate new teams and locations into the performance evaluation process, fostering consistency and standardization across the organization.

Customization 

Every business has distinct performance evaluation processes, criteria, and goals, and a one-size-fits-all approach rarely suffices. So, look for software that allows you to customize evaluation templates, performance criteria, and rating scales.

This flexibility enhances the accuracy and relevance of performance assessments and fosters employee engagement by reflecting the company’s values and goals in the evaluation process.

Moreover, as business dynamics evolve, the ability to adapt and customize the software enables organizations to stay agile and responsive to changing performance management needs.

Other Business Software Guides

Here are some other well-researched guides that’ll help you manage your workforce and business projects seamlessly:

• The Best Remote Work Tools for Project Management
• The Best Online Collaboration Software for Teams
• The Best Resource Management Software for Businesses
• The Best Employer of Record Services
• The Best Applicant Tracking Systems for Recruiting
• The Best Cloud HR Software

Conclusion – What is the Best Performance Management Platform in 2023?

Our list of the best employee performance evaluation software includes all kinds of options. Whether you’re a small business looking for powerful free plans or a large organization with employees in multiple locations, there’s something for everyone.

Out of all the tools, ClearCompany is an excellent all-purpose choice when it comes to reliable performance monitoring. It offers various performance tracking templates, color-coded chart views, and 360 review and feedback capabilities.

Overall, it’s a well-rounded platform capable of handling the needs of various workforce types. Get a free demo and sign up today to transform the way you manage employee performance reviews and management.

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