If you’re looking for performance management software and engagement software, 15Five and Lattice may end up on the same shortlist.
With both 15Five and Lattice, you can run performance reviews, track goals, enable 1:1s, and run engagement surveys.
But if you’re looking for a Lattice alternative, what sets 15Five apart?
If your bar is simply to stop using spreadsheets and manual email for reviews and surveys, you may find 15Five easier to use, but both platforms solve that pain. The real question is what happens after you have the data? That's where 15Five and Lattice start to diverge.
Process Platform vs. Outcomes Engine
Lattice gives you visibility into how programs run. You can see cycles completed on time, engagement scores and themes, goals progress, and how feedback is flowing, but you're stuck looking in multiple places to bring that data together.
15Five is the only platform that brings it all together. 15Five goes a step further by bringing together three key outcomes in one place: engagement, performance, and turnover. You can filter by business unit, demographic, tenure band, or location, and use built-in AI insights to see where outcomes are moving in the right direction and where they’re at risk.
With 15Five, you have a strategic command center that helps you tell a story about business outcomes like where engagement is eroding in a critical team, how that correlates with performance ratings and attrition, and which pockets of the organization are getting better or worse over time.
Tracking Managers vs Improving Manager Effectiveness
Managers are the biggest lever in creating high-performing teams.
Lattice tracks activities like if 1:1s are happening or if reviews are completed on time
But running processes doesn't change behavior. These signals are helpful for operational visibility, but they don’t reveal whether managers are having effective coaching conversations, creating clarity for their teams, following through on commitments, or addressing issues before they escalate. And if your managers aren't getting better, neither are your business outcomes.
Lattice shows what managers did, not how they lead.
15Five offers those same basics, but goes much further to make managers more effective over time with Kona Meeting Assistant and Kona Coach.
Kona Meeting Assistant is an AI-powered manager assistant that joins real 1:1 meetings in the flow of work on Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet as a silent participant. It automatically captures notes and action items and provides summaries and action steps. KMA helps draft performance reviews and frees up managers to actually engage with and coach their team instead of taking notes.
Kona Coach uses the content of the conversation plus data from 15Five (like engagement and review history) to give managers personalized coaching tips on how to improve key behaviors like recognition, accountability, feedback, and difficult conversations.
Instead of asking an over-stretched HR team to coach every manager 1:1, Kona makes that support continuous and in the flow of work. HR can even target specific cohorts (for example, first-time managers in a particular business unit) and track how their behaviors evolve over time.
Kona helps managers improve with in-platform coaching that's specific to their gaps, not generic best practices.
See how ReUp Education Uses Kona Coach to Empower Managers
AI Promises vs Proven AI Results
Lattice currently uses AI in areas like performance summarization and engagement insights. Lattice has announced upcoming AI features with Lattice AI Agent and AI Meeting Agent. But since they are not available yet, not much is known about them.
15Five has been shipping and refining AI capabilities for over two years. Our AI doesn't just draft performance review text (though it does that too). It predicts which employees are flight risks. It identifies which specific actions will improve engagement for each team. It joins actual meetings to coach managers in real-time.
AI in 15Five includes:
AI in Performance Reviews
15Five’s AI inside performance reviews speeds up and improves performance reviews by pulling in relevant signals like feedback, High Fives, objectives, and check-in history, then using that context to suggest summaries and draft responses.
Managers can have AI generate or refine written answers so reviews are clearer, more complete, and more consistent, while still staying in full control of the final wording.
Kona by 15Five – Meeting Assistant & AI Coach
Kona is 15Five’s AI assistant that joins live 1:1s, takes secure notes, and turns meetings into clear summaries and action items so managers can focus on the conversation instead of scribbling.
On top of that, Kona acts as a coach, analyzing what happens in those conversations alongside 15Five data and then giving managers personalized guidance on how to improve specific leadership behaviors over time.
HR Outcomes Dashboard
In the HR Outcomes Dashboard, AI helps HR leaders make sense of performance, engagement, and turnover by surfacing where outcomes are trending up or down and which groups need attention. Instead of manually hunting through charts, teams get guided insights that point to the most important issues and suggest where to focus energy first.
Predictive Impact Model (PIM)
15Five has an AI-powered Predictive Impact Model. Using over 600,000 completed engagement surveys as its training data, it uses machine learning to calculate “Predictive Impact Scores” for each survey statement and shows which specific drivers are most likely to move overall engagement for a given group if improved.
Data Collection vs Data Analysis
Lattice shows you three separate dashboards, gives you data, and leaves you to interpret it and make decisions.
15Five not only gives you data, but connects the dots.
Both platforms have analytics. But only 15Five connects Performance, Engagement, and Retention modeling together, not in silos.
When engagement drops in a high-performing team, we predict the retention impact. When performance improves after a manager change, we quantify the difference. When compensation adjustments reduce flight risk, we prove the ROI.
15Five is built to help you walk into an exec meeting and confidently share how engagement, performance, and turnover have changed in your key segments.
Compensation
Lattice offers compensation planning that helps you manage review cycles and merit increases with standard comp admin functionality.
With 15Five, compensation is connected to performance and engagement. Our compensation insights use annual compensation reviews and salary benchmarking, and are significantly more customizable. It shows you how pay impacts engagement scores, how to run a merit cycle, how performance ratings correlate with retention at different comp levels, and where compensation might be creating hidden risks in your organization.
We're not just helping you run a merit cycle. We're helping you understand how compensation decisions impact every other people metric you care about.
15Five for stronger performance management
Strong performance isn’t the result of running more processes. It’s the result of managers who communicate clearly, act with intention, and understand the needs of their teams.
15Five is built to strengthen those capabilities. With insights, coaching, and outcome-focused analytics, it helps HR turn information into action and action into measurable improvement. For organizations committed to developing better managers and healthier teams, it’s the clear choice.
Get in touch today if you're curious about:
- Why teams report that 14% lift in manager effectiveness after switching from Lattice
- How our AI actually changes behavior vs. just writing reviews
- What compensation insights you're missing
- How to prove ROI on your people programs
Learn more about 15Five or schedule a Demo.
