As a business grows, so too do its demands on HR. In general, the more success the company experiences, the more plates you have to keep spinning. Productivity has to be high, turnover needs to be low, and it all needs to happen on a finite budget. That’s why you’re looking at Leapsome, or possibly alternatives to Leapsome.
Leapsome is a people management platform with a great breadth of AI functionality. With some native support for HRIS and compensation management, it poses itself as an all-in-one HR solution. It’s a truly impressive competitor to any Leapsome alternatives out there.
The relationship between engagement and performance
Gallup’s Q12 meta-analysis report analyzed the relationship between employee engagement and performance across eleven outcomes. Their research found the following median differences between employees in the top quartile for engagement compared to the lowest:
- 10% higher customer engagement and loyalty
- 23% more profitability
- 18% higher sales productivity
- 14% higher productivity by records and evaluations
- 21% less turnover in high-turnover businesses
- 51% less turnover in low-turnover businesses
- 63% fewer safety incidents
- 58% fewer patient safety incidents
- 78% less absenteeism
- 28% less shrinkage (theft)
- 32% fewer product defects
- 70% higher employee wellbeing
- 22% more organizational participation by employees
Specifically, turnover levels are split by organization size and safety incidents by type, for a total of thirteen outcomes. As you can see, employers that support engagement as part of the employee experience are measurably more successful than those that ignore engagement.
Additionally, people management tools allow HR and leadership to be more proactive in shaping the employee experience and removing barriers to performance. In other words, the right tools elevate your human capital policies, from improving employee onboarding to enabling upskilling and supporting employee wellbeing.
About Leapsome
Leapsome is a performance management platform that emphasizes continuous feedback and performance management platform with a wide selection of features, including a growing body of AI tools. Moreover, it functions as a standalone platform, with an array of built-in core HR functions, but also offers a good number of integrations.
Core features
Certainly it’s difficult for most Leapsome alternatives to compete with the extent of its toolset. From AI to HR, the platform’s major features include:
- Leapsome AI: Like most of its competitors, Leapsome has fully embraced AI to enhance its services.
- Review tools: As noted, Leapsome’s performance reviews builder is AI-assisted. You can also run 360 feedback, create review templates, automate key functions, and create skills profiles.
- SMART Goals and OKRs: Leapsome offers your choice of goal-setting method, which is something it actually has in common with Zensai’s Perform365. SMART Goals are great for breaking complex projects down into manageable milestones, while OKRs connect major goals to projects across the whole business for maximum alignment.
- Native HR tools: Leapsome’s Core HR tools centralize HR data, along with essential functions like documentation, workflow automation and role-based permissions management.
- Surveys and instant feedback: With Leapsome, you can quickly dispatch engagement surveys using templates or your own customized question sets to examine workplace issues in a timely manner.
Strengths and selling points of Leapsome
As you can see, Leapsome is a platform with a lot to offer. Its major strengths and selling points include:
- Firstly – Reliance on psychology and data science: Leapsome’s surveys are designed based on insights from occupational psychology and workplace data from across industries, ensuring they’re fit for purpose.
- Secondly – Great customer service: Leapsome has a reputation for strong customer service, with an engaging support team able to help with system setup and any other issues. Be sure to look at the customer service reputations of any Leapsome alternatives you consider.
- Thirdly – Plenty of HR integrations: With over integrations plus their native HR features, it’s safe to say that Leapsome covers its bases effectively.
Drawbacks and limitations of Leapsome
Basically, if this platform did everything right, there wouldn’t need to be an article called Alternatives to Leapsome. And while it’s no doubt a successful solution for many companies, there are a few issues to consider before you start setting up a subscription:
- Opaque pricing structure: While it’s not uncommon for SaaS providers not to list exact prices online, there’s still usually an underlying pricing structure. Besides its core platform, many of Leapsome’s features sit in separate modules or add-ons, which makes it hard to evaluate potential costs.
- Shallow Microsoft integration: For all its 50+ integrations, you’d think more than one would relate to Microsoft services. Unfortunately, Leapsome only offers basic Microsoft Teams integration.
- Unintuitive user interface: An extensive list of features is a double-edged sword. The more complex your system, the harder it is to navigate. This is definitely the case for Leapsome, meaning that first-time users might struggle and that some things are more fiddly than they need to be.
- Lacks support for customization: If you want to be able to customize your people management platform to reflect your brand (colors, logos, branded imagery, etc), you might want to consider alternatives to Leapsome.
Best fit and price structure of Leapsome
Based on its features alone, Leapsome is a great option for medium-to-large businesses and enterprises. Unfortunately, its lack of pricing transparency means we can’t firmly recommend it for small businesses or start-ups. Further, the range of modules with little apparent pricing structure means you’ll definitely need a quote to determine affordability.
- Core platform ($):
- Leapsome AI
- Meetings
- Instant feedback
- Q&A boards
- Competency frameworks
- Individual modules ($$):
- Core HR
- Reviews
- Surveys
- Goals
- Learning
- Compensation
- Time tracking
- Additional add-ons ($$$):
- Learning content
- Compensation benchmarks
- Whistleblowing
- DATEV integration
1. Zensai
First up on the list of alternatives to Leapsome is our very own Human Success Platform. At Zensai, we believe employee learning and development are essential for long-term engagement and performance. Altogether, our platform is an agile people management solution combining continuous feedback with comprehensive support for employee training and growth.
Core features
While Leapsome goes out of its way to be a standalone tool, the Human Success Platform takes full advantage of its Microsoft and HRIS integrations. Chiefly, its most important features (including its three modules) are:
- AI-powered reporting and analytics: Our platform centralizes data from performance management, engagement and L&D for a comprehensive overview of how employees are doing. The engagement data is especially important. Check-ins and surveys feed sentiment analysis, which our AI delivers in the form of bespoke reports.
- Built into Microsoft 365 and Teams: The Human Success Platform is built to run through Microsoft Teams, and as part of the broader Microsoft 365 toolset. This makes everything easier, from employee onboarding to running performance reviews.
- Learn365: Zensai’s learning management software delivered in Microsoft Teams. It offers a bevy of features designed to enable accessible employee learning and development across your whole organization. These include:
- Online course creation builder with AI
- Individually customized learning experiences
- The Learn365 skills framework
- Huge content libraries through our Content365 add-on
- Progress tracking dashboard
- Engage365: Our system for tracking and measuring engagement, designed to give employees a voice. This module comes with the following features:
- Regular employee check-ins for real-time feedback
- Feedback best practice framework
- Employee recognition
- Sentiment analysis for engagement insights
- Perform365: Zensai’s solution for performance management. Perform365 streamlines performance review prep and bridges the gaps between reviews. Its features include:
- Performance conversations with automated admin and AI insights
- Your choice of OKRs or SMART Goals
- 360 feedback software
- 1:1 meeting support
Strengths and selling points of this Leapsome alternative
As an agile people management solution, the Human Success Platform brings a lot to the table. Specifically, here are some of the main selling points we take pride in:
- End-to-end automation: We mean it when we say our platform is agile. Zensai automates a lot of the HR admin necessary for things like L&D, performance reviews, and analytics. Specifically, this allows your HR team to confidently onboard and support employees as the business grows.
- Fully mobile accessible: While most alternatives to Leapsome provide some kind of mobile application, they can vary in quality. Thus, we can confidently say that Zensai’s mobile app puts the full Human Success Platform in the palm of your hand.
- SSO and quick deployment: Since you’ll access our entire platform via Microsoft Teams, everything works through Single Sign-On for secure, convenient data protection and access control. Deployment is quick and easy, especially for existing Microsoft 365 customers.
- Connects learning, engagement and performance: Many Leapsome alternatives offer features for learning, engagement and performance. But alot of them separate these things, which limits your ability to assess their impact on one another. The Human Success Platform centralizes all three facets of people management for comprehensive depth of insight.
Best fit and price structure of this Leapsome alternative
Altogether, the Human Success platform offers great scalability, making it a good fit for individual teams, SMBs and Enterprises alike. Zensai’s clients include Aston University, the assembly tech company Bossard, and the law firm Nelson Mullins.
Specifically, each module in the Human Success Platform are available individually, but we recommend going with one of our combined packages:
- Grow Basic ($):
- Learn365
- Engage365
- Perform365
- Success Basic support plan
- Grow Plus ($$):
- Access to all three modules
- Success Plus support plan
- Advanced analytics (Success Plus)
- Admin automation (Success Plus)
- Grow Premium ($$$):
- All of the above
- Customization support from our expert team of consultants
2. Lattice
Secondly, if you’re seeking Leapsome alternatives due to its lack of user-friendliness, then Lattice might just be the platform for you. They offer a straightforward, accessible approach to performance management and continuous feedback.
Core features
Don’t let Lattice’s simple UI fool you. It’s anything but light on features, which include:
- Ongoing feedback and performance management
- OKRs and goals that integrate with Jira and Salesforce
- Engagement surveys and industry benchmarking data
- Lattice AI
Strengths and selling points of this Leapsome alternative
Lattice stands out among alternatives to Leapsome with its fine balance of usability and complexity.
- Robust analytics capabilities: Thanks in part to AI assistance, Lattice has strong analytics and reporting. Additionally, they have analytics for Diversity, Equality, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB), program adoption, and team analytics for managers.
- Transparent pricing online: Lattice stands out from other Lattice alternatives by confidently displaying their pricing for their various modules. Specifically, this allows you to easily assess its affordability for your organization.
- Straightforward UI design: Lattice’s design makes it easy to navigate, minimizing the need for training, and making it easy to work efficiently.
Drawbacks and limitations of this Leapsome alternative
Despite the many things it does right, there are still a few reasons Lattice might not be your ideal solution, which include the following issues:
- Employee development but no training: Despite Lattice Grow supporting employee development and even encouraging coaching, it offers no course structure or content. That means, with Lattice, you’ll have to rely on another provider for training materials.
- Known technical issues: Lattice frequently upgrades elements of its platform or brings out new features. This is great for increasing the value they offer. But can come at the cost of stability. Hence, be careful with it’s newest features.
- Needs greater Microsoft integration: While Lattice beats Leapsome by having integrations beyond Microsoft Teams like Outlook, Azure and Entra ID, it lacks integration with SharePoint and Viva. Thus, the Teams integration is shallow, pulling users back into the Lattice platform for many functions.
- Another platform lacking customization: Lattice is another on the list of Leapsome alternatives that doesn’t support branded customization. So if that’s important to you, look elsewhere.
Best fit and price structure of this Leapsome alternative
Altogether, with its breadth of features plus its transparent and affordable pricing, Lattice appeals to businesses of all sizes. Its general price structure is as follows:
- Core HRIS ($):
- Employee records
- Report Builder
- Onboarding
- Workflows
- Talent Management/Foundations ($$):
- Performance and talent reviews
- Feedback and praise
- 1:1s
- Goals and OKRs
- Add-ons ($$$): Paid extras for the various modules.
- Payroll (Core HRIS, early access)
- Time tracking (Core HRIS, coming soon)
- Engagement module (Talent Management)
- Grow module (Talent Management)
3. Culture Amp
Thirdly, Culture Amp is another big brand in people management software. As their name suggests, their platform helps you build workplace culture and improve the employee experience through ongoing feedback.
Core features
Culture Amp comes out swinging with a great combination of core features:
- Real-time engagement surveys with industry benchmarking
- L&D pathways with integrated coaching options
- Ongoing review processes, shoutouts, goals and OKRs
Strengths and selling points of this Leapsome alternative
Further, Culture Amp competes well against other Leapsome alternatives by being a solid employee experience platform, with the following strengths:
- Another big industry leader: Like Leapsome, Culture Amp has a solid reputation as a platform provider with a lot of name recognition. In a lot of ways, this makes it a very reliable choice.
- Fully integrated continuous feedback: Ongoing feedback allows managers to guide employee performance through the use of feedback templates, embedded coaching and smart suggestions.
- Highly focused on the employee experience: As an employee experience platform first and foremost, Culture Amp positions itself as a tool for change in workplace culture. This makes it a good option for HR teams trying to better understand the people in their workplace.
Drawbacks and limitations of this Leapsome alternative
Of course, as with most alternatives to Leapsome, even Culture Amp isn’t perfect. Specifically, these are the limitations we think really hold it back:
- More development for managers than employees: While Culture Amp offers plenty of options for tracking and supporting employee development, their Skills Coach content delivery system is only for managers.
- Vaguely defined AI features: While Culture Amp definitely uses AI in its platform, it doesn’t provide much detail about the features on offer. It uses some form of analytics to summarize survey results and provide retention insights.
- Lacks pricing transparency: Culture Amp offers its modules individually, or together with a bundle option or “custom” enterprise pricing. Beyond that, it’s hard to know how affordable it actually is.
- Known technical issues: Although Culture Amp has a great reputation overall, users report technical issues with some of its features.
Best fit and price structure of this Leapsome alternative
In theory, Culture Amp’s features support both small and large businesses, which is all well and good. Unfortunately, its opaque price structure means we can’t confidently recommend it to smaller companies. Customers include Canva, Soulcycle and Etsy.
- Individual modules ($):
- Engage, with survey tools, retention insights, focus areas and action planning.
- Perform, with continuous feedback and goals or OKRs.
- Develop, with employee development, career paths, growth tracking and capability reporting.
- The Full Platform ($$): A bundle rate for all three modules.
- Custom enterprise pricing ($$$): Vaguely defined, but exactly what it sounds like.
4. 15Five
Lastly, we have 15Five. Like its competitors, the platform promotes engagement and productivity by using continuous feedback in its performance management strategy. It’s also a return to form for Leapsome alternatives with clearly defined AI features.
Core features
15Five’s modular design is loosely comparable to Zensai’s. Unlike the Human Success Platform,15Five has less of an overall focus on learning and development. It does, however, have the following core features:
- A centralized HR dashboard
- Performance management with metrics, scheduling and review writing
- Surveys, impact reporting and benchmarking for employee engagement
- AI features like Manager Copilot (which predates Leapsome’s) and review-writing assistance
Strengths and selling points of this Leapsome alternative
With a good array of tools, including AI features, 15Five has plenty of strengths to its name:
- Strong AI support for managers: 15Five’s Manager Copilot offers 24/7 guidance with team summaries, suggested actions and recommendations for the manager’s personal development.
- Great support for continuous performance management: The Perform module allows you to quickly set up review cycles and customize review processes to fit your work culture.
- AI feedback summaries: 15Five’s AI can distill summaries of open-text engagement surveys to provide basic actionable insights.
Drawbacks and limitations of this Leapsome alternative
Unfortunately, 15Five falls down in a few key areas compared to other alternatives to Leapsome:
- Lacks actual sentiment analysis: Despite its AI insights, 15Five doesn’t provide full-on sentiment analysis, which limits the depth of its reporting and feedback summaries.
- Favors managers over employees: Much like Culture Amp, 15Five does more to develop managers than employees. If you really want to improve the employee experience, L&D should be accessible to everyone.
- Poor user-friendliness: A complicated layout means 15Five isn’t too friendly for first-time users. Your HR team may need training to use it effectively.
- Paywalled features: A lot of 15Five’s most useful features require their Total Platform subscription to access. Things like the HR dashboard and the platform’s heavily touted AI features.
Best fit and price structure of this Leapsome alternative
Accordingly, 15Five is a good fit for mid-sized businesses and large enterprises. However, its complexity may make it unwieldy for small businesses. Although it is transparently priced and affordable.
The modules are available individually:
- Engage ($):
- Engagement surveys
- Predictive impact model
- Analytics (plus heat maps, insights and action planning)
- Perform ($$):
- The core platform (check-ins, 1:1s, high-fives, integrations and mobile access)
- Performance reviews
- Goals and OKRs
- Transform: Manager development with two subscription tiers.
- Copilot and Content ($$) offers an on-demand learning library and courses, as well as the AI manager assistant, content customization and discussion resources.
- Live group and 1:1 coaching ($$$) provides everything from the Copilot and Content level, plus group and individual coaching features.
- Copilot and Content ($$) offers an on-demand learning library and courses, as well as the AI manager assistant, content customization and discussion resources.
People management software improves business performance
Now there you have it. Those are the best alternatives to Leapsome on the market today. Still, let’s finish up by looking at some ways the right HR and people management software can help your business thrive.
Data-driven engagement insights for greater awareness
Firstly, HR and leadership won’t always have the most objective view of the overall employee experience, much less the finer points. And that’s why most modern people management software includes reporting and analytics. Particularly AI-assisted.
Most importantly, real-time workplace engagement insights give you an objective view of the state of your workplace. Undeniably, this helps HR predict things like turnover, burnout, or the level of employee buy-in for new policies.
Continuous feedback and performance management
Secondly, the problem with old-fashioned performance management practices is that they hinge on review season. Likewise, if your managers are waiting for full-on performance reviews to deliver feedback to employees, they’re missing countless opportunities.
Chiefly, feedback is most effective when delivered at the point of impact. Basically the sooner it’s delivered, the clearer its inciting incident will be in the recipient’s mind. People management tools have channels to support regular feedback, whether it’s through check-in replies or easy 1:1 scheduling.
Streamlined admin for timely employee support
Thirdly, automation might well be the most important function that HR software provides. Without it, HR teams would struggle to scale their efforts across growing organizations. Not only does the ability to automate workflows with custom rules free up time for your team, it ensures employees dealing with HR aren’t frustrated by a slow turnaround.
Fully explore your Leapsome alternatives
Finally, that’s about it for our latest Alternatives article. We’ve outlined the alternatives to Leapsome, detailed the eponymous platform, and left you with some pearls of wisdom. Lastly, a final piece of advice:
Don’t be content with just reading reviews when picking HR software. Further compare your options, and look for demos or free trials. For example, you could schedule a demo for Zensai’s Human Success Platform today. So, what’s stopping you?
