Small Improvements Reviews and Ratings

Rating: 7.4 out of 10

Score

7.4 out of 10

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Small Improvements are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Business Problems Solved

Small Improvements is a versatile tool that caters to various needs within an organization. Users have found it incredibly useful for 360 feedback, allowing them to easily send personal feedback to co-workers across the organization. This feature fosters a culture of continuous improvement and open communication. Additionally, Small Improvements serves as a reliable resource for conducting regular reviews and keeping track of personal and company goals. With the ability to request feedback, provide 1:1 and 360 reviews, and display positive comments on the praise wall, employees can engage in interference-free reviews where managers review them while they review themselves.

Moreover, Small Improvements acts as a goal tracker and feedback tool, facilitating quarterly self-assessments. The platform enables users to create recurring 1:1 calendar events for regular meetings, ensuring that catch-ups between employees and managers occur regularly. It also tracks the progress of major projects throughout the quarter, thanks to its flexibility for ad-hoc work. Small Improvements further supports end-of-year performance reviews and future goal setting. The program's functionality and user-friendly interface make it easy to operate, providing employees with a satisfactory platform for self-assessments and manager reviews. By recording employee goals, performance, and public praise in one centralized location, Small Improvements ensures that all team members are aligned and recognized appropriately.

Reviews

11 Reviews

I Love Small Improvements!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

April 30, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Used to give praise to colleagues, have 1:1s with managers, and set goals. Allows everyone to hold themselves accountable and be aligned with managers on expectations each quarter which is nice when it's time to review and reassess at the start of the next quarter. You can also request feedback from other teammates to get better insight into how others perceive working with you and possible room for improvement.

Pros

Agenda for 1:1s
Give praise to colleagues
Give feedback to teammates
Set goals

Likelihood to Recommend

I really love how I can prepare for my 1:1 in the week leading up to it. I can also see what my manager sets on the agenda so I can come prepared which allows the conversation to flow and make the best use of our time. Receiving feedback form teammates is also helpful and can be referred to later on even after the submission period closes.

Verified User

Contributor (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Small Improvements is easy to use and keeps us organized

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

July 7, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Small Improvements (SI) at our organization to:

<ul><li>Manager 1-1 meeting (it's a space to take notes, followup on action items)</li><li>Create 1-1 calendar events that repeat weekly</li><li>Manage 360 peer reviews and formal performance reviews</li><li>Give praise to teammates</li></ul>

Pros

Take shared or private notes tied to each week's 1-1 meeting
Remind each other of open action items until they are checked off
Manage the performance review cycle

Cons

Google Calendar integration. This works well to sync notes and 1-1s calendar events but has limited functionality. This is not a deal-breaker!

Likelihood to Recommend

<ul><li>1-1 management</li><li>Tracking simple action items, but less appropriate for complex project management </li></ul>

Verified User

Manager in Human Resources (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Small Improvements offers Moderate Improvements to team sentiment reporting

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

January 22, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

This tool was used for checking in on employee sentiment and facilitating reviews. It was intended to give the management team a quick overview of how all of the team members were tracking at any given point in time. All team members were given access to it to answer their regular questions and 360 degree feedback as well as 1:1s were recorded in it.

Pros

Easy for team members to add sentiment ratings.
Good integration with Slack.
Nice and easy to record meeting outcomes and goals.

Cons

Didn't link with core goals for the company.
We've gone out of favour with 360 degree feedback.
Wasn't able to fully outline why it was better than competitors or what its core benefit was.
Price.

Likelihood to Recommend

This would be useful for a business that was growing and wants to keep track of the sentiment of their employees in an easy to use way. It would be especially useful if the company was happy to record their overall objectives somewhere else. I believe it would also work well for logging KPIs - if not OKRs, unless that has changed recently.

Verified User

Employee in Sales (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Small Improvements is an easy and flexible way to keep track of your projects and goals

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

January 22, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Sojern used SI to manage "Critical 3s" for our analytics department (80-100 people), which is a simple way to track three major projects we'd work on throughout the quarter. Our company was pretty flexible with projects and most of our work was ad-hoc, so being able to have very loose guidelines is a great advantage of SI.

Pros

Very simple and readable tracking of employee projects.
User interface is easy to use.
The ability to append with updates is a great way to document changes over time.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

I've only used Small Improvements as an official project tracking solution; however it is a great platform when compared to the alternatives of Excel and Google Sheets, which is what my past companies used to track employee projects. Incremental tracking via an all-in-one solution is most appropriate as an additional resource to Kanban style systems such as JIRA.

Verified User

Analyst in Corporate (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Simple individual goal software...but lacks group goals and therefore might be redundant for some organizations

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

November 25, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

My company has Small Improvements for all the departments in the company. Primarily, it is used as a goal tracker and feedback tool. We also use it for quarterly self-assessments.

Pros

Simple to use.
Easy to make goals, track progress and refer back to past goals.
The "Your Company" directory is very useful.

Cons

Since the goals are tied to individuals, it does not allow for departmental goals.
Goals cannot be updated to show how much progress has been made. It is either 0 or 100%.
The software needs more reminders and nudges.

Likelihood to Recommend

I love how easy the software is to use. It requires little training if any. With that said the simplicity is also a problem. Some of our departments such as development use a different software solution to track group goals. It is redundant to have two goal trackers, but it is necessary because small improvements are individual-focused.

Ryan Spaulding

Membership Account Executive in Sales at Digital Pharmacist (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

View profile

A very simple HR tool with poor goals and 1:1 features

Rating: 4 out of 10

Incentivized

November 12, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Small Improvements across the whole organization. We use the following features for the corresponding activities: 360 feedback; quarterly goals for individuals and managers; 1:1 tool; employee performance reviews.

Pros

The 360 feedback tool is straightforward to use and does exactly what it's meant to do: collect private and public feedback across peers (managers can use it too, of course).
The 1:1 tool automatically detects 1:1 meetings on your connected Calendar, automatically creates entries for these meetings in the system and reminds you of the upcoming 1:1s.
The 1:1 tool allows both parties to create a checklist for agenda items and notifies you when the other party added agenda items or general notes.

Cons

While the structured agenda format in the 1:1 tool has advantages, it also limits formatting options that you would otherwise have if you used a plain Google Doc shared with the other person.
1:1 tool doesn't let parties add inline notes/comments under each agenda item, which makes it hard to organize notes during the actual meetings.
1:1 tool lets you mark agenda items as done, but surprisingly doesn't let you copy or move "unchecked" items to the next meeting if you didn't have time to go over them. Lattice does that.
1:1 tool only seems to create an entry for the next meeting on the next day after the current meeting happens. This is inconvenient because I might want to add notes for the future meeting right after my 1:1 happened.
The goal tool makes people's goals private by default, and there's no way to change that setting. Not good if your company embraces transparency and uses a framework like OKR for goal-setting (which prescribes that everyone's OKR is public).
The goal tool doesn't automatically compute the overall goal progress based on key results progress.
The goal tool doesn't seem to support departmental and overall company goals, it only ties goals to individuals. That means you have to keep track of the former somewhere else.
The goal tool doesn't support setting non-binary progress for key results inside an objective. You can only check or uncheck the entire key result. Not good for OKR. Lattice has much stronger goal-setting features compared to Small Improvements.

Likelihood to Recommend

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 <i>might</i> 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.

Dmitry Pashkevich

Senior Fullstack Engineer in Engineering at Calendly (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile

One stop for review, meeting and recognition tracking

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

September 27, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Small Improvements in three majors ways within our organization. The first is for on the stop recognition of a peer, we have four main values which we live by at our company and whenever someone does something around one of those, they're recognized at our daily stand-up call and it is also recorded in Small Improvements. For this alone, Small Improvements has been an outstanding tool given how easy it is to use. The second way we make use of the tool is to track 1:1 meetings between employees and managers. I meet with my manager every two weeks and we just enter the scheduled call into the Small Improvements site and both my manager and I can add items we'd like to discuss during the call. The outcome of the call is that we track what was discussed and any deliverables. The third major function within our organization is for quarterly and yearly performance reviews where employees can seek 360 feedback, enter their self-assessment and receive their review from their manager. The tool is easy to use for this function, everything is in one spot and easy to track for follow-up and progress reports.

Pros

Instant on-the-spot employee and peer recognition
1:1 Meeting tracker
Yearly performance reviews

Cons

Interface can be cluttered at times
There isn't a lot of help or knowledge readily available when first using the tool

Likelihood to Recommend

Small Improvements is well suited in any sector or organization given that it tracks employee performance, 1:1 meetings, employee recognition and so on. I've used other tools previously like ones built in-house, Excel spreadsheets and even competitors like Workday but Small Improvements is leaps ahead of those other tools in its ability to execute well on employee performance tracking, recognition and meetings.

Verified User

Project Manager in Professional Services (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Making check-ins easy

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

September 21, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Small Improvements holds our org chart, records employee goals, performance, and is a platform for employees to give each other public praise across the business. It is owned/admin'd by the HR team and used by all employees. We use it to track and ensure regular catch-ups between employees and managers are occurring, for individuals to track their progress against goals and to encourage positive reinforcement with praise.

Pros

The organization chart is really well designed, easy to use, and navigate.
Tracking 1-1 to meetings between employees and their managers.
Giving praise to fellow employees for tasks well done - Giving a framework to make this easier.

Cons

Being more mobile-first would be great!
More nudge reminders.

Likelihood to Recommend

It's well suited for a growing business that wants to track goals, ensure 1-1's are happening, and recognize other employees.

Verified User

Manager in Human Resources (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Small Improvements: Functional and useful if a bit basic

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

December 20, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Small Improvements is a basic tool that my company uses for end of the year performance reviews and future goal setting. The program is functional and easy to operate. It helps delineate when an employee should put in their self assessment and when the manager should complete their review. It is totally sufficient for what it needs to provide.

Pros

Prompts users with questions to assess their performance
Reminds people who haven't filled out their reviews
Keeps record of past reviews and goals in one place

Cons

The interface could use an update
Doesn't do much more than let employee and manager share reviews with each other, so it could be considered unnecessary

Likelihood to Recommend

Small Improvements is well suited to end of year performance reviews (which is how my company uses the service) and next year's goal setting. I am not familiar with other performance review tools in this space, but this one appears quite basic beyond providing a centralized service for submitting and receiving performance reviews.

Verified User

Manager (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Does The Job But Not A Market Leader

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

March 29, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Small Improvements as a way to send personal feedback to co-workers across the organization. Furthermore, we use Small Improvements to request feedback, provide 1:1 and 360 reviews, there is also a praise wall for users that want to make their positive comments visible to everyone. The tool also keeps track of personal and company goals, it serves as a resource when conducting regular reviews.

Pros

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.

Cons

The UI is slow, clunky, and sometimes lags when navigating to different menus.
When inputting personal reviews many of our users have complained that their content gets removed/deleted while inputting it into the answer boxes.
Small Improvements is slow on alerting users of updates (i.e. 360 reviews feedback is completed, someone made a comment on the Praise Wall, etc).

Likelihood to Recommend

The product is passable and does the job but it doesn't seem to represent the gold standard or be the market leader in anything, it also seems very outdated in terms of aesthetics and functionality. I have used numerous products that serve a similar purpose that seem to offer many more features and ease of usability.

Dustin Hovey

Sr. Strategist & SEM Manager in Marketing at SendGrid (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

Loading Reviews List....

A very simple HR tool with poor goals and 1:1 features

Rating: 4 out of 10

Incentivized

November 12, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

The 360 feedback tool is straightforward to use and does exactly what it's meant to do: collect private and public feedback across peers (managers can use it too, of course).
The 1:1 tool automatically detects 1:1 meetings on your connected Calendar, automatically creates entries for these meetings in the system and reminds you of the upcoming 1:1s.
The 1:1 tool allows both parties to create a checklist for agenda items and notifies you when the other party added agenda items or general notes.

Cons

While the structured agenda format in the 1:1 tool has advantages, it also limits formatting options that you would otherwise have if you used a plain Google Doc shared with the other person.
1:1 tool doesn't let parties add inline notes/comments under each agenda item, which makes it hard to organize notes during the actual meetings.
1:1 tool lets you mark agenda items as done, but surprisingly doesn't let you copy or move "unchecked" items to the next meeting if you didn't have time to go over them. Lattice does that.
1:1 tool only seems to create an entry for the next meeting on the next day after the current meeting happens. This is inconvenient because I might want to add notes for the future meeting right after my 1:1 happened.
The goal tool makes people's goals private by default, and there's no way to change that setting. Not good if your company embraces transparency and uses a framework like OKR for goal-setting (which prescribes that everyone's OKR is public).
The goal tool doesn't automatically compute the overall goal progress based on key results progress.
The goal tool doesn't seem to support departmental and overall company goals, it only ties goals to individuals. That means you have to keep track of the former somewhere else.
The goal tool doesn't support setting non-binary progress for key results inside an objective. You can only check or uncheck the entire key result. Not good for OKR. Lattice has much stronger goal-setting features compared to Small Improvements.

Likelihood to Recommend

Dmitry Pashkevich

Senior Fullstack Engineer in Engineering at Calendly (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile