Chronus vs. Small Improvements

If you are going to scale a mentoring program with 50+ users (mentor and mentees) you need software, to get out of the "matching" game, this is a Chronus positive. You also want an ongoing pulse on how it's going, whos looking for a mentor, and adding new users. This is very easy to do with the software.

Incentivized

I'm honestly not sure why my company chose to use Small Improvements. We used Lattice before for the all the same use cases I mentioned here. The employee performance review feature might be a bit better in Small Improvements, but the goal-setting tool and the 1:1 tool are very weak. I may not have benefitted yet from all the features that Small Improvements have to offer, but so far it looks like a pretty basic HR tool with much better alternatives out there. If it's cheaper than the competition, that might be the only argument to go with it.

Incentivized

• Algorithmic match
• Admin dashboard
• Connection plan
• User interface, mobile friendly

Incentivized

• Goal Tracking: Enables users to chart goals, track progress, and provide details about what they want/expect to achieve.
• Praise Wall: A public place to post positive and encouraging comments about other employees.
• 360 Reviews: Users can request and gain 1:1 feedback; this can be anonymous if desired.

Incentivized

• Mentoring software is only as good as we provide good internal mentors so accountably is on us to bolster the system with good mentors.
• When I evaluate the satisfaction of our mentees I need to hear "my mentor was great" and this is not a software result but a human result.
• Many of my Chronus contacts have changed over the years, sometimes I feel I know more than them.

Incentivized

• Being able to edit projects more easily (and have a documented edit history) would be beneficial.
• Possibly integrations with popular platforms (such as JIRA) to give expanded detail of project tracking.
• Gantt charts would be a nice to have for a top level management view.

Incentivized

The customer support is quick and thorough, they have access to our account to answers are tailored to our needs. They also have a good knowledge base and self-help site with some video tutorials and FAQs which saved us time as opposed to just calling or emailing support. For the times that we did reach out, it only took one response to get our issue resolved.

Incentivized

These are a "spectrum" of software options, some more sophisticated than others depending on the need. There is no 1 and done tool, so we use a few. Some are for all EEs, some are for 100s, and some are for 10s of EEs. Chronus works well for our mentoring need their value is good. The most recent similar tool I evaluated is MentorEase. MentorEase seems to do much of the same at a lower price but I did not like the UI nor was the rep easy to understand. MentorEase may be good to match up new EEs with a "buddy". Chronus is more powerful we match on more sophisticated attributes.

Incentivized

Lattice was able to link in with core OKRs whereas from my memory, Small Improvements didn't support this goal setting and tracking framework. While it was good for sentiment and management frameworks, it was unable to connect with the greater company vision as well as Lattice - that was the reason that we moved.

Incentivized

• Term rate improvements
• Career Progression counts
• Connectedness

Incentivized

• Before we had Small Improvements, personal goal setting was completely disorganized. Some managers made sure it was done, likewise many did not.
• Having past goals collected in one repository has been a blessing. I couldn't imagine not having Small Improvements or something comparable.

Incentivized