All in on continual feedback, Lattice acquires Pando

The annual performance review has been becoming less and less annual for years now, as the value of continual feedback proceeds to work itself into corporate America. But new evolution in AI technology might finally support managers in the trenches, aid employees in their performance and growth while they’re working, and allow for performance management to appear consistently inside the flow or work.

That’s the bet for execs at performance management platform Lattice, anyway.

Lattice announced on Aug. 19 its acquiring Pando, a “just-in-time” performance platform tool, and bringing its CEO Barbra Gago on board as its new chief marketing and growth officer.

“Pando was really started to help organizations really unlock untapped potential,” Gago told HR Brew. “That was sort of the thing that I felt was missing in performance management. That employees didn’t really know what they needed to do to be performing. They didn’t know what the expectations were. And managers didn’t have the best tools to fairly or adequately assess performance, and so we came to market with this competency-based approach.”

The deal is less about adding another performance-management platform or feature to the Lattice suite, Gago said, and more about building out Lattice’s people and AI strategy. Pando’s approach to performance management, according to Gago, aligned nicely with the Lattice’s roadmap.

“It’s a very aligned vision around what the future of performance looks like, and we’ve [at Pando] been doing a lot of work towards that, which will help us accelerate that vision at Lattice,” she said.

Pando brings its competency-based employee progression, evidence-based calibrations and real-time signals to the existing Lattice platform, as Lattice continues to grow its AI features and focus on regular, on-going performance management. Pando clients will migrate to Lattice, she added, and the company is working with customers on transition plans. The company is also working to incorporate Pando’s framework and features.

“A lot of the methodologies that we had in Pando are going to be carried over in those types of tools,” Gago said.

The partnership aims to help HR teams better connect employee performance to business outcomes right in the workflow, and understand how employee capabilities are changing as AI changes jobs.

“The goal [is] to drive continuous performance through ongoing feedback and check-ins around those competencies and how people were performing, and have your growth be something that is tracked on a regular basis and not something that happens in performance reviews only,” Gago said, adding that it’s a premise Lattice has been moving toward in recent years. “It’s all one platform, one experience that we’re bringing: tools and methodologies to enhance, and it’s going to carry through within the existing roadmap.”