PiiQ by Cornerstone vs. Small Improvements

Well suited for:

• A busy environment where you want learners to be self-sufficient and to be able to access learning solutions at a time that suits them.
• For anyone who wants to access learning using different platforms such as iPad, mobile, PC, etc
• Anyone who needs a more in-depth learning solution rather than an overview of key learning points.

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

• 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.

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

• 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

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

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.

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.

Incentivized

So far 100%.

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.

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

We bought training provided by 3rd party – it was fabulous.

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

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.

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

• 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.

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