Betterworks offers intelligent performance management software solutions. Its enterprise-ready SaaS platform helps workforces and organizations achieve their potential with tools that foster greater manager effectiveness and employee performance, with the goal of increasing engagement and retention. The Betterworks solution combines generative AI and data analytics to enable organizations to make smart, data-informed decisions linked to performance, calibration, skill…
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PiiQ by Cornerstone
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Cornerstone’s PiiQ is an SMB offering formerly known as Sonar6. PiiQ is aimed at small-to-medium sized businesses and includes core learning management and performance management systems, including content creation, mobile accessibility, and in-product reporting.
BetterWorks really helps keep track of quarterly objectives, as long as the entire company follows the OKRs framework. The objectives and key results of each employee can be linked to the general objectives of the organization and that really helps align on the same mission. I wouldn't recommend using BetterWorks as a standalone platform to follow up on objectives if the rest of the organization is not on board with the OKRs framework.
Enables employees to draft work goals and collaborate with their supervisors on a final version - improves mutual understanding right up front.
Combines performance goal ratings with competency ratings and provides a blended score. Simplifies the goal weighting so you don't have to do any calculations.
9-box matrix provides useful definitions and descriptions so managers can prepare development notes or plans for individual employees.
Would be good to have have a virtual "top level" (eg board) user built in to allow senior execs without a direct manager to be able to be set up with KPIs instead of having to create a dummy user
Reports have difficulty downloading if pop ups disabled or in some browser environments
When competencies are updated while a cycle is open, any changes don't effect that open cycle but only future ones. Would be nice to be able to have the option to apply changes to existing "open" cycles
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.
It's not that CSB isn't a decent performance management system, but we have decided to go with just one vendor (Workday) for an HRIS/performance management/payroll system so we can directly relate pay to performance. We are more interested in having just one system that "talks" to the other pieces instead of having to work with several vendors. It reduces the hassle of having to communicate with different support teams, having different contracts, and so on.
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.
There are specific things within the goals and competencies that are user-friendly. For example, the rating slider isn't great in my opinion. You can slide in between ratings which can create some odd scoring (if you use scoring). It seems a better solution would be a drop down where you select your rating. There are also some glitches in the system and have been told Cornerstone is aware of them but are focused on delivering new features. There are workarounds, but that doesn't seem to be a great answer.
The saving process slows it down. It doesn’t auto save. If you leave a page, it will sometimes warn you, but not always. When you hit the save button, a window pops up that says creating/saving packets. It feels very archaic.
My assistant could better address this issue. My perception is that there is not immediate assistance, and that there can be a wait for help. That is not a negative, just a perception. I have not used support in two years.
I think we could have done a better job of rolling out the tool to our managers. We were under a tight timeline. In the training, we showed them everything and said go do it by this date. Looking back, I would have done it in pieces: for example, 2 weeks to write goals, 2 weeks to get sign-off from direct reports. I just let them go at it. Since then we’ve moved to agile development environment and are applying the technique to everything. In future would only do through change sprint. It is a big change I didn’t take it seriously enough.
I had a team of 3 project managing. You need a champion from every department to make sure you’re getting it right and to make sure what’s happening is communicated. It’s not something you can do without input from department heads
I have used Asana, Jira, and VersionOne. I find BetterWorks the most intuitive and organized. It is fairly easy to use and learn, as long as everyone else does the same. Since the team implemented the quarterly reviews and stayed on top of using it, it has been successful so far.
Lesson.ly has been great to work with but it is a very clear and simple, user-friendly system that anyone can pick up with very little training as it is self-explanatory. It also has a great mobile interface and lots of different features that are easy to add for the admin but really impactful for the user.
It's tool and it's only as good as the person wielding it. The investment in PiiQ was accompanied by a quarterly cadence and manager feedback training. We feel like our employees are given regular feedback and bonuses are tied to objective accomplishment.
