Lattice Life

“I think everyone deserves to feel that sense of clarity and ownership in their careers:” Lakshmi Manikantan on Career Growth at Lattice

March 3, 2022 — By Lattice Team

Lakshmi Manikantan is a Product Design Manager at Lattice, where she has worked for over 2 years. Here, we talk to her about her journey to Product Design, the ERGs she’s a member of, how Lattice helped her grow in her career, and so much more.

How did you get started in Product Design?

I did Psychology in college and was very fascinated with the idea of changing behaviors and opinions. I started in Marketing Design when I graduated, focusing on ads, landing pages, physical collateral, etc. But I learned more about Product Design and how you could build products that change how people behave and interact with a product.

I took some online classes and started trying my hand at it with a few freelance projects. I fell in love with it and never turned back!

What drew you to Lattice?

I really like Lattice’s mission of making work meaningful, and the Lattice Grow product particularly spoke to me. I have definitely struggled with my own career growth, not knowing where I need to grow, what skills to develop, or how to develop those skills. All that resulted in me feeling frustrated that I wasn’t “going anywhere.”

Lattice Grow puts employees in the driver’s seat of their own career development, and I think everyone deserves to feel that sense of clarity and ownership in their careers.

What’s your favorite part of working here?

The Latticians are my favorite thing about Lattice. They’re a group of humble, collaborative, smart, and kind people that make coming to work a joy.

What ERGs are you a member of?

I’m a part of Lattice Ladies, our Women’s ERG, and LOUD (Latticians Organizing for Unity and Diversity), for People of Color at Lattice.

One of my favorite rituals is “Friday Highlights” in the Lattice Ladies Slack channel, where ERG members share any highlights from their week. It’s a great way to give some gratitude, celebrate one another, and end the week on a positive note!

Favorite Lattice Slack Channel and why?

#soc-no-context — it’s a channel where members post something absurd or silly someone says in a meeting, but without any of the context. So it’s a mystery to everyone reading why someone would have said that.

One of my favorite posts was “Puka shell necklaces meets cat teeth” by Matt P, an Engineering Manager.

What’s something you’re passionate about outside of your job?

I love singing and making music with my partner. We don’t post it anywhere, mostly it’s just time for us to jam together and have fun. We met in high school and did a lot of musicals and stage shows together, so this is a chance for us to get back to those roots.

How do you think Lattice has helped you grow in your career?

When I started at Lattice, I was an individual contributor. I was interested in management, but also nervous to try it out.

My amazing manager Jared found opportunities for me to practice the various skills needed for management: process changes, focus on people, facilitation skills, etc. And when there was synergy, he gave me the opportunity to not only transition but to also do it in a sustainable way. I’m very grateful for the opportunity and excited to continue this new journey!

Cheez-Its or Goldfish?

Oooo I’d say neither lol 😉 More of a Ritz cracker person!

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Lattice works with People teams across the globe to turn managers into leaders, employees into high-performers, and companies into the best places to work. Interested in joining our team? Check our Careers page for all open positions across a variety of departments.

Industry News

Focusing on People Success to Drive Business Success

March 2, 2022 — By Jack Altman

People are central to the success of every company. Every product, invention, innovation, and discovery was made by individuals or teams of people working together to achieve a meaningful goal. People are the heart and soul that drives every organization forward. And when you don’t help them succeed, they won’t help your company succeed — and they will leave.

Years ago, my cofounder Eric Koslow and I decided to leave a company we’d cared about deeply and invested a lot into because we saw what happens when a company doesn’t attend to its people with intentionality. We knew that not only was this not uncommon but that it was perhaps the norm.

Without a clear and persistent investment in people, companies can’t succeed.

This was the central insight that led us to start Lattice. We could see that the world of work was changing. We saw an opportunity to be the answer for companies that realized they could get better results when they put the employees’ interests first.

Now, work is changing yet again. An unprecedented two years of pandemic, hybrid work, and personal reevaluation have pushed people to rethink how and why they work. And as companies grow and need to hire quickly, the competition for talent in nearly every industry is at an all-time high.

Rightfully so, employee expectations have reached new heights. Employees want much more than a transactional relationship. They want companies to invest in them as much as they invest in those companies.

They expect leaders to be transparent and authentic, to engage in a dialog about their needs, and to make quick and impactful adjustments in response.
They want companies driven by a meaningful mission and they require a clear understanding of their role in that mission.
They expect companies to offer more flexibility, in some cases asking for permanent shifts away from offices, yet expecting companies to keep them feeling connected and inspired.
And ultimately employees want to work for leaders who not only meet these needs but who invest as much in their people’s long-term growth as they do in their short-term productivity.

We at Lattice want everything that we build to reinforce that symbiotic relationship between people and business success. From goals and OKRs to performance management to engagement surveys to employee development tools to People analytics, we want leaders and HR teams to have the tools and insights they need to ensure people success.

We believe that People Success is the starting point for business success. While it can feel scary, we couldn’t have more conviction that if you trust the process of focusing on the success of your employees, the success of your business will follow.

Lattice’s People Success platform is the best way to start investing in your employees so they can invest in your business.

Announcements

Lattice Announces New OKR and Goals Solution to Help CxOs and Operational Leaders Align and Engage Employees

March 1, 2022 — By Lattice Team

Lattice, the leading people success platform for businesses with people-first cultures, today announced a new OKR and Goals product aimed at driving strategic alignment between organizations and their employees. This product helps businesses consistently set and manage goals and activate teams in order to stay aligned and on track for success.

“Beyond business growth, Lattice OKRs and Goals are meant to accelerate employee performance by connecting personal and team objectives to larger company initiatives and focuses,” said Dave Carhart, VP of People at Lattice. “When done right, goal setting can align all employees around a shared vision — encouraging a culture of top-down transparency and empowerment where everyone drives continuous impact for the business while also equipping employees to directly measure their contributions to the bottom line.”

The importance of transparency and operational efficiency throughout the organization has never been more important as companies struggle to align and engage employees in the new world of work and its heavy emphasis on remote and hybrid workforces. By going beyond surface-level mission statements, Lattice’s OKRs and Goals offer a tangible way for everyone in the organization to understand the company’s north star and rally around it at a department, team, and individual level.

Lattice’s OKRs and Goals offering ensures that organizational priorities stay top-of-mind by incorporating them into employees’ daily routines and conversations such as 1:1 meetings with managers, weekly updates, and other platforms in order to continuously guide work. While the OKRs and Goals was developed as a standalone product, it is most impactful when integrated into the wider Lattice platform to offer an intuitive way for goals discussions to be integrated into various conversations and milestones like performance reviews and career development/progression conversations. This enables employees to have insight towards goals as well as actionable, targeted feedback, and stronger performance centered on shared success.

In addition to being integrated across the Lattice platform, OKRs and goals set in Lattice can also be tied to other key productivity software tools including Salesforce, JIRA, Slack, and Microsoft Teams, among others.

Status dashboards and real-time progress data allow operations managers and business leaders to quickly view team-wide or company-wide status and identify areas to focus on to keep the business moving forward on the path towards success.

“By integrating objectives and goals into daily conversations across the organization, employees have more transparency to how they can directly impact the business and are better able to directly connect their work to the company’s overall mission and vision,” said Jack Altman, CEO and Co-founder of Lattice. “This makes work more meaningful for employees and directly ties people success to business success.”

Learn more about Lattice’s new OKRs and Goals product at: https://lattice.com/goals.‍

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About Lattice‍

Lattice is the People Success Platform that brings together all of the tools, workflows, and data to help leaders at organizations develop engaged, high-performing employees and winning cultures. By combining continuous performance management, goal-setting, employee engagement, compensation management, career development, and people analytics into one unified solution, Lattice helps HR, People, and Operations teams develop insights that build enviable cultures and drive impactful business outcomes. Ranked on the Inc. 500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies list two years in a row and certified as a Great Place to Work by 99% of its employees, Lattice serves nearly 4,000 customers worldwide, including Slack, Solera Health, Guild Education, and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Learn more about Lattice by visiting: www.lattice.com.

Awards & recognition

Lattice Wins Gold and Silver Stevie® Awards for National Sales Team of the Year and Customer Service Department of the Year

March 1, 2022 — By Lattice Team

Lattice, the leading people success platform for businesses with people-first cultures, has been awarded both a Gold Stevie® Award for National Sales Team of the Year and a Silver Stevie® Award for Customer Service Department of the Year in the 16th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, announced today.

Both awards distinguish Lattice as not only a top organization but one that builds strong relationships and experiences for customers and prospects.

More than 2,300 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry, in 51 nations, were considered in this year’s competition. Winners were determined by the average scores of more than 150 professionals worldwide on eight specialized judging committees.

Lattice’s award-winning Customer Experience team prides itself on its commitment to helping customers achieve success with the Lattice platform. Supporting nearly 4,000 companies and their 500,000+ employees, Lattice offers strategic and tactical support to its customers – earning a CSAT (customer satisfaction score) of 96% and vast recognition from its customers.

“Supporting and guiding our customers through the turbulence of the past year has been a top priority,” said Gillian Heltai, Chief Customer Officer at Lattice. “We’re so proud to be recognized for our efforts and look forward to continuing to build strong relationships and provide an exceptional level of experience for our customers.”

Complimentary to Customer Experience, the Sales team at Lattice has seen equal amounts of growth and success since its inception. The team works hard to build real partnerships across the organization, becoming a core driver of collaboration within the organization. They have enabled Lattice’s growth to nearly 4,000 customers and over 675,000 active users across industries and geographies.

“Growing over 100% per year, while consistently exceeding revenue targets is exciting,” said Dini Mehta, Chief Revenue Officer at Lattice. “However, the team’s true measuring stick has always been its ability to successfully nurture talent and provide opportunity for development, both for our prospects and our internal team. We currently have 93% employee retention rate (unheard of in the industry) and a 2 to 1 ratio of internal promotions vs external hires.”

Given the evolving needs of performance management for international HR teams, Lattice Sales and Customer Experience teams have increased their global footprint to support international hours and cover from morning GMT to evening PST.

Details about the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service and the list of Stevie winners in all categories are available at www.StevieAwards.com/Sales.

Lattice is a people success platform that enables companies to make work meaningful for their employees. Interested in learning how Lattice might benefit your company? Consult with our team or request a demo.

About The Stevie Awards‍

Stevie Awards are conferred in eight programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards®, The International Business Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com.