Lattice
A focused performance management and engagement platform — not an HRIS
Lattice is a US-based people success platform covering performance management, employee engagement, goals, career development and compensation. Founded in 2015 and independently privately held, it is used by mid-market and enterprise organisations globally including Australian teams. Lattice is not a system of record and does not provide payroll — it is designed to sit alongside an existing HRIS, providing the performance and engagement layer that most core HR systems handle inadequately. In late 2024 and 2025, Lattice launched and then announced the discontinuation of HRIS and Payroll products, with affected customers given until July 2026 to migrate. The company has returned its strategic focus to its core capability: performance management, engagement and people development. Australian buyers should note this context — Lattice’s current scope is performance and engagement only, and any positioning around HRIS or payroll capability should be disregarded for procurement purposes.
What they do
Lattice’s platform spans five interconnected areas. Performance management covers structured review cycles, 360-degree feedback, manager-led one-to-ones and continuous feedback workflows, designed to replace episodic annual reviews with more frequent, development-focused manager-employee interactions.
Goals and OKRs provide structured goal-setting and alignment from company to individual level. Career development tools — branded Grow — allow managers and employees to build development plans, track progress and map career pathways within the organisation.
Engagement surveys and analytics provide listening program capability including pulse surveys, engagement drivers and manager-facing dashboards. Compensation management covers salary banding, review cycles and equity tracking, integrating compensation decisions with the performance data that should inform them.
The platform integrates with HRIS systems including BambooHR, HiBob and Workday, as well as collaboration tools including Slack and Microsoft Teams, keeping employee data current without requiring Lattice to function as the system of record.
Lattice’s defining design choice is that it prioritises manager behaviour over HR administration. Most performance management tools are built around HR workflows — configuring review cycles, collecting forms, archiving results. Lattice is built around the manager-employee relationship — structuring one-to-ones, surfacing feedback, prompting development conversations, connecting goals to performance outcomes. This is not a subtle difference. It means the platform’s value is realised primarily through changed manager behaviour rather than through HR process completion, which has implications for what kind of organisational conditions are required for the investment to pay off.
Key differentiator
Lattice’s integration of performance, engagement and compensation in a single platform is its clearest differentiator at the mid-market. Most organisations manage these three functions separately — performance in one tool, engagement surveys in another, compensation reviews in spreadsheets — which creates the disconnect between performance data and pay decisions that Lattice explicitly addresses. For HR leaders who have experienced the frustration of running a performance cycle, generating development feedback, and then making compensation decisions from a separate process with no data connection, the integrated model has practical value.
The HRIS and Payroll discontinuation is worth framing clearly for buyers. Lattice’s attempt to expand into core HR infrastructure and then retreat from it within roughly twelve months illustrates a genuine market dynamic: performance management trust does not automatically transfer to payroll trust, and the operational maturity required to run compliant payroll at scale is different in kind from the capability required to run effective performance conversations. Lattice’s retreat is a market signal, not a product failure — and its decision to refocus on what it does well is a more credible long-term position than attempting to compete in infrastructure categories where established vendors have decade-long compliance advantages.
Australian market context
Lattice does not have a local Australian office — support and account management are delivered from the US. For most Australian mid-market buyers, the primary practical implication is time zone alignment for support and the absence of local implementation expertise.
The platform’s lack of Australian payroll capability is not a limitation in its current positioning — Lattice does not offer payroll and does not position itself as a replacement for Australian payroll systems. It operates as a specialist performance and engagement layer that integrates with whatever HRIS and payroll the organisation uses.
Considerations
Lattice’s value is almost entirely dependent on manager adoption. The platform provides structure, prompts and workflows, but it does not automate leadership behaviour. Organisations with low manager capability, limited leadership buy-in or a preference for HR-administered annual review models will not extract meaningful value from the investment without significant accompanying change management and capability building. This is not a platform limitation — it is a design philosophy — but it means the procurement question is less about platform features and more about organisational readiness to shift performance management from an HR process to a manager practice.
Lattice competes most directly with Culture Amp in the Australian mid-market. The two platforms overlap significantly in engagement and performance capability, with Culture Amp generally stronger on benchmarking depth and people analytics, and Lattice generally stronger on the performance execution and compensation integration. Organisations should assess which capability gap they are most urgently trying to address before evaluating either platform in depth.
Who it suits
Lattice is best suited to mid-market organisations — broadly 200 to 2,000 employees — in knowledge-work sectors where goal alignment, feedback quality and manager-led development are strategic priorities. Technology companies, professional services firms and fast-growing businesses with distributed or hybrid teams are its most natural fit.
Organisations that already have a capable HRIS and payroll system and are looking for a specialist performance and engagement layer to sit alongside it are better placed to realise Lattice’s value than those still consolidating core HR infrastructure. Organisations that need an HRIS, payroll or Australian compliance capability should resolve those requirements through a different platform before evaluating Lattice.