What Is Trakstar?

Trakstar is a performance management software solution that offers:

  • Goal setting and management
  • Performance reviews
  • Check-ins
  • 360 feedback
  • Employee engagement
  • Reporting and analytics

These tools help employees and managers set goals, monitor performance, provide feedback and understand employee satisfaction to ensure employees’ goals, performance and overall job satisfaction are aligned with overarching business goals.


Trakstar Features

Trakstar performance management software includes goals management, performance reviews, check-ins and more.

Goal Management

Trakstar’s goal management features enable managers and employees to set goals and monitor their progress collaboratively.

Employees and managers can set a variety of goal types, including developmental goals and cascading goals, with specific due dates and milestones. Employees receive automatic email reminders about upcoming milestone due dates to help keep them on track toward their goal. Trakstar also has tools, such as check-ins and data visualizations, to help employees and their managers track goal progress in real time.

According to Trakstar’s site, Trakstar Perform has goal templates designed to help managers align employee goals with departmental and business goals. However, the site doesn’t offer more information on what these templates look like and how they work.

Performance Reviews

Trakstar’s performance reviews are customizable in terms of frequency and competency scoring. They can also be aligned closely with an employee’s job duties as listed in their job description.

Automated, Customizable Frequencies

Trakstar Perform enables those in human resources (HR) to coordinate and set up automated performance review schedules at various frequencies, depending on employees’ start dates. You can set reviews to take place on 60-, 90- or 180-day cycles and Trakstar will send automated reminders to ensure employees and managers complete their reviews in a timely manner.

Weighted Scoring

Managers can set up review templates by adding competencies from Trakstar’s library of more than 100 competencies or creating your own that are unique to a particular role. Each competency and question in the review can be given a scoring weight, with higher weights assigned to the most important competencies for the job.

Job Description Alignment

Plus, when you link up Trakstar Perform with Trakstar Hire, you can compare an employee’s performance to their job description as Trakstar provides a centralized repository for job descriptions when customers opt for Perform and Hire products together.

Engagement Check-Ins

Companies usually conduct check-ins between performance reviews to address any issues that may come up in the interim. Check-ins also keep employees on track and connected to their managers, which can boost employee satisfaction.

With Trakstar’s Engagement Check-in feature, managers can set up a customized questionnaire for their employee to fill out before a check-in to provide structure and ensure all important points get covered in the conversation. Employees and managers can also make notes in the check-in section of Trakstar Perform.

360 Feedback

360 feedback in Trakstar Perform can come from managers, team members or anyone else who’s requested to give feedback, even outside parties, such as clients and vendors. Trakstar sends an email to each party who’s requested to provide feedback. Trakstar has prebuilt questionnaires to help you get started and managers or HR staff can configure feedback to be anonymous if they choose.

Employee Engagement

Trakstar Perform includes employee engagement software that allows HR teams to administer employee surveys and analyze results. Trakstar’s website doesn’t mention any templates, so you’ll likely have to create your own surveys from scratch. Once you create your survey, you can distribute it to employees via email or via integration with communication tools, such as Slack or Microsoft Teams. When the results are in, you’re able to filter the data by groups and specific time periods to uncover trends.

Reporting and Analytics

As noted above, Trakstar provides reporting and analytics for employee engagement but it also has benchmarking analytics for employee performance.

Trakstar Benchmarking for Perform helps management identify top performers and their engagement levels. In addition, this tool compares your employees’ performance and engagement to industry peers to give HR management a more accurate picture of your company’s talent management health.

Trakstar Benchmarking also displays performance, engagement and retention analytics by stage in the employee lifecycle to help HR management identify ways to better retain talent based on tenure status. For example, if new hires are shown to perform at subpar, this informs HR management that new employees need more support. Alternatively, if retention is low among more tenured employees, this could signal the lack of promotion and development opportunities for this subset of the workforce.


Trakstar Pricing and Plans

Trakstar does not publicly post any pricing information for its platform or any of its four software products. Prospective customers must contact Trakstar to receive a quote.


Trakstar Customer Service and Support

Trakstar customer support is available via email or phone but its website doesn’t state what days and hours customer support is available.


Trakstar Alternatives and How They Compare

  Trakstar Engagedly Lattice PerformYard
Rating
Starting Price
Contact for a quote
$5,000 each year for 65 or fewer employees, plus $9 per person, per month, for each additional user
$8 per person, per month
$5 per person, per month
Free Trial
No
No
No
No
Goals Management
Included
Included
In separate objectives and key results (OKR) product
Included
Performance Reviews
Included
Included
Included
Included
Check-ins
Included
Included
Included
Included
Feedback
Included
Included
Included
Included
Peer Recognition
No
Included
Included
Included
Customizable Workflows
Included
Included
Included
Included
Automations
Included
Included
No
Included
Scheduling Tools
Included
Included
Included
Included
Analytics and Reporting
Included
Included
Included
Included
Templates
For performance reviews and goals
For performance reviews
For performance reviews
For performance reviews and check-ins
Third-Party Integrations
26
25
22
15
Customer Support
Email and phone
Dedicated account manager, knowledge base, support ticket and email
Knowledge base, support ticket and email
Dedicated success manager, knowledge base, support ticket, email, phone and chat
Mobile App
No
iOS and Android
iOS and Android
No
Read Reviews

Trakstar vs. Engagedly

Trakstar and Engagedly’s feature offerings are pretty similar, but Engagedly offers peer recognition and a mobile app while Trakstar does not. Engagedly also has succession planning tools that allow employees to set up a career path.

Users prefer Engagedly for key aspects of performance management, including 360 reviews, continuous feedback, check-ins and goals management. However, Trakstar users give its templates, review status tracking, reporting and level of customization higher ratings than Engagedly’s users do.

Trakstar vs. Lattice

Lattice enjoys a bigger reputation in the performance management space than Trakstar does. This is evidenced by the user reviews that reveal that Lattice is easier to use and set up. Additionally, Lattice has peer recognition tools and more ways to get in touch with customer support. Lattice even has sentiment analysis to help managers understand how employees feel about their jobs and the company.

However, a major benefit of Trakstar over Lattice is that it includes goal management, a cornerstone of performance management, while Lattice customers may purchase its OKR software product separately.

Trakstar vs. PerformYard

Trakstar and PerformYard are comparable in terms of their features. However, Trakstar lacks a peer recognition tool and transparent pricing. Trakstar does have more integrations than PerformYard and includes employee engagement, but user reviews reveal that they prefer PerformYard in terms of ease of use and ease of setup.


Bottom Line: Is Trakstar Right for You?

Trakstar is a great performance management software solution for companies that want integrated employee engagement tools and benchmarking analytics.

Trakstar is best for:

  • Companies that need robust analytics that connect employee performance with engagement
  • Companies that want employee engagement included in their performance management software of choice
  • Companies that want software that can integrate into a broader platform to maximize the benefits of performance management

Trakstar is not recommended for:

  • Budget-conscious small businesses that need upfront pricing models before deciding on a performance management solution
  • Companies that conduct frequent and varied employee engagement surveys (Trakstar doesn’t offer templates)
  • Companies that already have employee engagement software and, therefore, don’t need it bundled into their performance management software of choice

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is Trakstar used for?

Trakstar’s software products are used for performance management, hiring, learning management and workforce analytics. Trakstar Perform helps managers monitor their employees’ performance through check-ins and reviews. It also helps HR managers measure and improve employee satisfaction.

What are the benefits of Trakstar Perform?

Three key benefits of Trakstar Perform are its approach to performance management that incorporates employee engagement, its inclusion of employee engagement software and its Trakstar Benchmark tool.

Who uses Trakstar Perform?

Executives, managers and employees at small and midsized businesses are Trakstar Perform’s primary users. Other users might include clients and vendors to provide 360 feedback on an employee’s performance.