Trakstar Software

Pros

We are able to make changes in program of how we want appraisals completed and with what parameters. We dont have to rely on others to do this for us

Cons

Learning curve can be a bit much, but customer service is awesome for training and being there via phone

See my review - it focused on competencies, so as an organization looking to be more progressive, we were ready to use it.

Pros

Focus on competencies - which many other cheap - to - affordable products don't offer.

Cons

You can't customize the appraisal process. It's either the formal appraisal (with ratings) or a 'goal setting' function. So, it won't work for orgs like mine who tend to do a mid-year 'check-in' as opposed to the full appraisal process. Customer service is slow, email only really, and not always helpful in giving you a complete solution. They also do not do 360s which is something we've begun to do at my org. Also, if you are not focusing on competencies, as an org--which I'm certain MANY are not, I'm not at all sure how you would use this tool.

Pros

I love how the process is interactive and continuous, allowing and encouraging ongoing training and assessments so they are built into the process.

Cons

I love this, but it is a bit pricey for a small company. I would love to have a program with just a few tools for less costs.

Our rep just provided us the second part of our training via webinar; we asked for "Goals & Notes" to be given last June and finally the "Scoring" given today as we wrap up the performance period.

I am VERY pleased with our rep's professionalism, and knowledge about the Trakstar program. The way he guided us through the webinar was wonderful. Many employees and managers have expressed trepidation about the upcoming sequence of events, but our rep broke it down very easily and methodically. Our rep has a very good quality about his delivery of information, his voice, and ease of going through the screens as he proceeds, making the learner feel more confident. I already received the videos he created -- within minutes after completion of the training -- so I'm able to share with the employees and managers who could not attend today's webinar. Thank you!

I wish Trakstar would create a "Quick Start Guide for Administrators" as they have for both managers and employees, and then load it on the Support Articles page, but for the meantime I am very pleased to have access to the Support pages, tutorials, videos, etc. and can email Support whenever I have need. I'm grateful about that, too.

If you allow me one more "wish list" item would be the ability to change an employee's job title easily throughout the year -- as long as it does not represent a promotion that would affect change of goals, etc. When we've had a change of management, the new manager will come in and request change of titles (not duties, etc.) of his/her direct reports. This need is likely common among certain industries and such a change would be a huge improvement. Thank you for asking for our feedback.

Thank you to our rep, for making Trakstar look easy to use to our employees!

Cons

There ought to be a Quick Guide for Administrators; too often I've searched the support pages and did not find precisely what I've wanted, so had to email and did not have direct phone access because we don't pay for that added service. We're three hours apart from each other so there've been a few times that I was not able to get answers as immediately as I would have liked (in an ideal world). LOL.

Advice to Others

A lot of companies are leaving the "annual performance" review, so I'd like to see Trakstar embrace that and afford more "employee engagement" on an ongoing basis throughout the year -- allow for feedback from manager to employee through Trakstar during the year, please.

So far so good! We just implemented Trakstar at our company and I have been happy with our experience thus far. The tool is very intuitive to use, highly customizable, and was exactly what we were hoping for. Implementation was made easy due to how great customer service was - helping from the initial upload through holding the trainings.

Lot of issues here that I want to point out with this software:

1) This software does not do corrective actions or Performance Improvement Plans, they try to tell you that it does in the sales presentations, but this software does not do it. They will tell you about a work around, but it is so complex and contrived that your managers will never use it, I promise.
2) We were trying to get the software to allow us to do a 6 month check-in, so essentially our managers would be able to meet with our employees halfway to their annual review and check in to see how they were coming along, not to be rated, but just a checkup to see how things were going. Sounds easy, right? Well, you'd be wrong on that too, and so was I. They launched into a super complex work around, which again was way more complex than any of my managers would ever need or be able to use.
3) Whenever I first looked at signing up to use this software, I liked the seemingly easy and simple to use interface that I had seen on demos and on videos on youtube. I thought, well, it's just about loading in positions and job data, then I should be off and running with this system. Well, their estimate for getting setup is typically at least 3 months, that should tell you something. I thought that they would just be doing a lot of hand holding, turns out that what they were really doing is making up for a poor UI and UX in their system. It is next to impossible to anticipate where to go, what to click, etc. They try to make up for it with their training, but it just seemed to frustrate me more that they wouldn't fix the clear weaknesses and complexness of their interface to suit the customer. They would rather spend an hour training you on how to do something super complex, and oh, by the way, if you mention to them that something is complex, unnecessary, or just plain not intuitive, instead of take the feedback, they actually get defensive and back up their reasoning for doing whatever they are doing in a totally illogical and contrived way. They need to take a page from Google and Apple and go back to the drawing board with their system and design something from the ground up that is EASY TO USE.
4) Scoring for employees is extremely complex and contrived, just ask them to show it to you in the sales process, you will see

I could write more, but I ran out of room, check out JuvodHR if you are looking for a better solution, that's where I went.

Pros

Not really much to like, to be quite honest

Cons

5) There is this wonderful background jobs pop-up that pops up every time that you do ANYTHING in the application, I'm serious. You have to dismiss it manually every time, it is ridiculous, unnecessary, and very annoying.
6) There is no simple way to have them tie any type of notes or issues with an employee back to a part of their job description that it is supposed to match. Which, is really the basis of why you are keeping records for corrective actions, notices, etc, to protect yourself from an employee if you have to terminate for performance based reasons/issues.
7) If you have employees who don't sit at a desk or have their own computer, this system is not for you. It does not offer you a way to accommodate those employees. Again, they will talk about a solution or work around, but again, don't be fooled, they have no solution here either.

Advice to Others

Look elsewhere, this is a glorified system to upload docs and forms to, you can find similar functionality with Google's G Suite. They will offer little to no help in the way of Best Practices in HR

We recently implemented Trakstar and this is the first time that we're using it for our annual review cycle. Every team member went through PA training, which included learning about Trakstar. The feedback so far has been great - it's easy to use, intuitive, and will make the process so much easier than what we've done in the past (a form we created in Excel!).

As an administrator I've reached out lots of times to Trakstar's support group with questions about reports, functionality, etc. They are super responsive, great to work with, and have helped me find some work-arounds for things that we needed for our company.

This tool is a GREAT VALUE. The implementation was very easy, went quickly, and we were able to deliver an online tool that we had not originally planned to do this year.

We're looking forward to learning more and make the most out of Trakstar.

Pros

Ease of implementation, ease of use. The price is great. Our team members have picked up on it quickly.

Cons

We have some specific reporting needs that Trakstar doesn't have. It's okay, we've found workarounds.

We originally selected Trakstar because it was affordable and the demo given to us was good overall. Though this product does the basics, it is still extremely outdated and lacks a lot of intuition. The reports are all saved as PDF's or you can export excel documents. The excel docs are a major mess for the most part and will leave you with hours more work editing them. Once you get everyone's assessment, you have to load the PDF into the employee's folder so that they can see their grade. Though the rating dashboard is decent, viewing your individualized grading metrics afterwards is nowhere near as user-friendly.

The product lacks many simple features that we're just forgotten during its build. You cannot update your grading scale without going into EVERY SINGLE COMPETENCY manually and changing your grading scale (ie. going from a 5-point grading scale to a 4-point grading scale, etc.). Basically, there is no way to mass-edit a lot of things in the system. I hope you have someone on your team that has days worth of time to manage this system.

The 360-review capabilities are even more difficult. As an admin of your organization system, you can't send out 360 reviews unless you log in as that specific manager's manager. Yes, you will have to continuously click links to log in as another user in order to edit (or even view) that person's appraisal.

We've also had a lot of issues with grading schemes not working properly and various bugs popping up frequently, impacting our entire review cycle. The support team is VERY small and leads to long response times which gets crazy in the middle of your review cycle.

The new UI is pretty, but the UX still lacks a lot of intuition. Unfortunately, Trakstar is a lot of form over function at this point. They need to hire a good UI/UX guy and a senior engineer to fix some things and then I would maybe suggest using it.

Pros

Affordable, decent design (UI, not UX)

Cons

Difficult UX, can't pull many of the reports you would need, doesn't give you many meaningful insights at all, lots of bugs, slow response by support (they have a very small team), almost every process is manual and takes a LONG time to make changes in the system due to this issue

Performance review doesn¿t have to be a painful process! Trackstar allows our team to put structure around our evaluation process and the online reporting helps our employees stay focused on achieving goals year round. We've been satisfied.

I have been using and training our employees on TrakStar. We have 60 employees in one of our many branches.

Pros

I like the easy navigation in TrakStar. I think everything is pretty self explanatory. I like that managers can ask for feedback from other employees, as we are using that function a lot at my current work.

Cons

I don't like that you can't carry over only some specifics goal. When there is an option for managers -would you like to carry over the goals to next appraisal... What if I would like to carry over only one of my 3 or 4 goals?

I have enjoyed using the product and find it to be a huge improvement to emailing work templates around.

Pros

That everything is kept in one place. That I can easily incorporate other peoples feedback directly

Cons

Either as a manager of managers or just a manager I do not think my access to completed reviews is very good.

Advice to Others

Not really

Ease of use is an issue for managers and admins. The functionality needs to be improved. The training is good but not everyone takes the time to complete the training. Instead they try working intuitively and it doesn't go well.

Pros

Inexpensive, good customer support

Cons

It seems like the improvements are not run by actual users of the program. The users would tell you more clearly what functionality changes are needed. The newest version made changes that didnt' seem necessary and ignored necessary items.

First time user, so easy to use and understand. My job entails training staff when we have new programs, sometimes getting everyone to understand how to use a new program can be a challange, but not with Trakstar, it was a breeze.

Pros

No hidden directions, everything was in plain sight.

Cons

No cons.

We were looking for a product that gave us flexibility in the questions we asked and an easy way to score them. We also wanted to have anonymous feedback from other employees. The Trakstar product provides a solution for all our needs.

Pros

Ease of use, flexibility

Cons

None

Advice to Others

Great support in getting the product set up and training different groups of users. The training was segmented and short so our employees felt it was tailored to their functions within the program.

Great customer service through live demo to implementation and going live in Trakstar. Deadlines given were met and when a last minute change after going live was needed, customer service was able to get the mass edit uploaded before the time we were originally told so we were able to get back on track quicker than expected. That was greatly appreciated!

Pros

Easy to use, great format that is familiar to most everyone due to social media, employee folder having the ability to contain a multitude of uploaded files including past reviews prior to the electronic system.

Cons

Employee acknowledgement of appraisal does not actually show an electronic signature on the printed appraisal so unless the employee manually signs the appraisal it is difficult to show an employee acknowledged their appraisal for HR documentation purposes.

Trakstar has helped streamline our performance review process and provided an opportunity to rethink our evaluation structure. Trakstar has excellent customer service and make it easy to go live. It has been an enjoyable process and now our reviews are less burdensome for the supervisors and HR department.

Pros

Easy access from anywhere, ease of making adjustment or changes, incorporating organizational goals, employee input, on-going feedback, pricing is reasonable, access to training videos...

Cons

It will be nice if additional components are options such as compensation manager, tracking applications, those are what I can think of off the top of my head.

Advice to Others

We purchased the product because of the customer service is excellent. I never felt pressured from the sale rep and in fact felt like they were more about finding solutions about our current frustration with our old system. I called three references of current Trakstar users that had been customers for years. The whole process was transparent, easy and affordable.

Trakstar has been a great add to our organization. It ensures performance evaluations are completed in a timely manner and none are missed.

Have had a wonderful experience with Trakstar; it gives the employees the access they need through out the year to work towards their goals and development. Managers are able to work more efficiently and put accountability in the hands of the employee.

Pros

The efficiency of the workflow and the way we can customize it to our needs.

Cons

I would like to see a better org chart!

Advice to Others

Keep the same great customer support. Loved all of "Julie from Trakstar" training sessions. Each update makes it better and better.

Our company was in need of a performance evaluation software that would be available online and easy enough for our professional but extremely busy (sometimes overwhelmed) staff to learn and use. We used to use the Excel sheets and we needed something that everyone could quickly "pick up" and implement. Fastrak was the most advantageous in meeting our company's needs due to the ease of adding goals, editing the staff list (in times of growth, promotions, turnover, etc.), adding measurements to assist in showing efforts and when goals (or portions of them) were met/completed, and provided reminders to those who neglected deadlines. The last item was essential to those who work in Human Resources and did not want to "badger" nor take responsibility of repeatedly reminding the busy and often traveling supervisors and employees who found it difficult to make time for this important effort.

Pros

I've had top-notch help from your reps who have answered my calls and answered my questions. Your company is also proactive in sharing information via frequent webinars. Matt Weissenborn was very helpful, articulate and professional in his presentation.
I enjoy using the Measurement tools in the online software.

Cons

I wish there was a Guide for Administrators -- just as there is one called "Employee Guide" for users. It would take significantly less time to refer to one than to call or try to figure out something myself (trial/error). I would like a means to SEE the individual's goals without having to download to export.

Advice to Others

Our IT Project Manager (Christerfer Frazier) has already provided a great deal of feedback to your team, and some of the response is that they will consider implementation in the next revision.

My supervisor and I are both "Administrator" level. It would be nice (but not essential) if I were able to make a comment but hide it from her, just as the rest of the employees are able to do online. But she and I have complete access to each other's comments due to sharing the same level of "rights." It'd be nice to see a box on the "front page" of each employee's "home" page that if checked shows that he/she has created multiple goals. That way, at the beginning of the new year, we can know this before we ever download the exported goals.
A few employees wrote text in their goals the size of a small paperback. It'd be nice to have them see some character limit (and how many remain -- JUST like the survey to which I'm typing answers now) so they begin to abbreviate thoughts while inputting or after cut/paste.

Users seem to find it the tool easy to navigate. training has been good since the purchase of the tool. , Rene, the account Rep has been very helpful to date.
It would be great if the tool could include performance management - e.g. template for verbal performance guidance, written warnings, etc. to help track for HR history

Pros

the rating system and tracking of goals

Cons

admin usability is still confusing at times, to many steps to remember