WorkSimple – Results-Driven Performance Tracking

Digital workplaces are making professional teams less and less connected, as businesses adopt more lenient work from home policies and add more freelance employees to their ranks. WorkSimple is a social performance platform that helps teams connect and work together in a digital environment.

The WorkSimple platform is split up into three basic products: personal edition, team edition, and business edition. If you need custom support, admin tools, and performance review features, then you’ll want to opt for the business edition. Anyone who has ever used a social networking site like Facebook or Twitter should be able to understand WorkSimple right away. From the dashboard page, you can view all the latest updates posted by your colleagues. These updates can be filtered based on focus, so personal goals show up separately from team goals, and team goals show up separately from company goals. Above these updates is a space for you to add your own goals, whatever those may be. You can also comment on other people’s goals and get feedback from colleagues on what you should do to make your own business goals a reality.

Although WorkSimple works great as a platform for teams, it also works well for individuals looking for feedback from their managers and colleagues. Freelancers who use WorkSimple’s personal edition can create project portfolios and solicit recommendations from people they’ve worked with in the past.

Practical Uses:

• Find out what tasks or projects your colleagues are working on
• Get a feeling for how busy your staff is in a given week
• Solicit feedback on how to tackle a specific project
• Recognize employees who’ve done a great job recently

Insider Tips:

• Privacy features allow teams to keep certain goals private from lower-level staffers
• Managers can give our special badges to deserving employees
• HR managers can track results to gauge employee performance
• Managers can give out performance reviews through the WorkSimple system

What we liked:

• Group focus boards are a great way for colleagues to make sure they’re on the same page
• Managers can give private or public feedback to their employees
• All goal updates and actions appear immediately on a team’s dashboard page
• Managers can select who gets access to which forums on WorkSimple

What we didn’t like:

• 24×7 email and phone support is only available to people who sign up for the business edition

Alternatives:

• Chatter – www.salesforce.com/chatter
• Socialcast – http://www.socialcast.com
• Yammer – https://www.yammer.com

Company Info:

• Launched: 2010
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: San Francisco, California
• Founded by: Morgan Norman and Ben Moore
• Web site: http://getworksimple.com

Costs:

• Personal edition is free
• Team edition is $5 per user, per month
• Business edition is $9 per user, per month