Small Improvements

Score7.4 out of 10

23 Reviews and Ratings

What is Small Improvements?

Performance Reviews & 360s

Provide employees with structured opportunities for reflection and assessment through performance reviews and peer feedback. Customize the questions, define who participates, establish a cadence that suits an organization’s schedule, and run reviews for different departments at the same time.

Ongoing Feedback

Praise coworkers for a job well done and request feedback at any time from anyone. Prepare for 1:1s and share notes afterward to make sure you are aligned.

Objectives

Keep employees accountable and help them grow by setting objectives and tracking key results. Objectives can be shared with managers, the team, or the entire company, so it’s easy to understand everyone’s priorities, communicate progress, and receive valuable feedback from others.

Pulse Surveys

Gather real-time employee feedback through frequent Pulse Surveys to improve employee experience year-round.

Retention Analytics

Quickly identify teams or employees that might need your attention. Retention Analytics predicts which employees are most likely to leave so you can take action before they do.

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Provide employees with structured opportunities for reflection and assessment through Performance Reviews

Decide whether or not you want manager to approve nominations for 360 Feedback

Share agenda items, meeting notes, and follow-up discussions with 1:1 Meetings

Create templated 1:1 meeting agendas for your managers

Identify goals, set success measures, and track the results with Objectives

Give public kudos to your colleagues with Praise

Use our Slack integration to create 1:1 meeting agendas and publicly share Praises and Objectives

Track completion rates and nudge participants directly from our reporting

Track employee engagement over time with frequent Pulse Surveys

See who is likely to leave soon with Retention Analytics

1 / 10

Individual goal setting
Individual goal setting is the ability to define individual goals that align to organizational and subordinate goals.
Category average: 7.3
Performance plans
Supervisors have ability to build individual performance plans including, goals, competencies, etc..
Category average: 9.1
Manager note taking
Ability for managers to insert ad-hoc notes about performance or evaluation process; supports continuous feedback.
Category average: 8.6

Line-of sight-visibility
Line-of-sight visibility is the provision of line-of sight visibility for each goal to see how goals support overall corporate objectives.
Category average: 6.1
Subordinate goal setting
Subordinate goal setting is the ability to define subordinate departmental or team goals in support of overall corporate goals.
Category average: 6.9
Corporate goal setting
Corporate goal setting is the ability to define corporate goals, and/or vision statements in the system.
Category average: 6.6

Verified User

Contributor (501-1000 employees employees)

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

Return on Investment

Our 800+ employees can consistently add their goals within the same set timeframe.

Other Software Used

Coda, Slack, Ashby

Dmitry Pashkevich View profile

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

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.

Return on Investment

It's been less than a year since we rolled out Small Improvements, so it's too early to tell.

Alternatives Considered

Lattice, Google Drive and Atlassian Confluence

Ryan Spaulding View profile

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

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.

Return on Investment

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.

Verified User

Manager in Human Resources (201-500 employees employees)

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!

Most Important Features

1-1 notes organized by date
Performance review cycle management

Return on Investment

SI has made it easier to track folks first 90 day goals in one place
SI has helped us stay accountable to weekly, documented 1-1s with direct reports
SI has removed manual setup of our performance review process

Other Software Used

Airtable, BambooHR, GitHub, Lessonly, The Okta Identity Cloud, Zapier, ScheduleOnce

Dustin Hovey View profile

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

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).

Return on Investment

The tool has positively empowered us to chart, track, and report back on goals.
The tool has had a negative impact on our ability to conduct personal reviews due to the clunky UI and feature set.
The praise wall has been positive for the users that take advantage of it.

Alternatives Considered

ADP Workforce Now

Other Software Used

WordStream

Small Improvements