Betterworks Survey: HR Leaders Can’t Improve Performance Impact Alone
A Betterworks survey reveals that while roughly 85% of HR leaders are confident performance management drives business outcomes, fewer than half can support that claim with concrete metrics — exposing a significant measurement gap in the performance management space.
Key facts
- ~85% of HR leaders surveyed report confidence that performance management drives business outcomes
- Fewer than 50% say they can support that claim with hard metrics
- The gap implies a ~35-percentage-point measurement blind spot among HR leaders
- Research is published as Betterworks' 2026 Performance Management Survey via Business Wire
- Survey methodology and sample size have not been disclosed in available materials
A new survey from performance management platform Betterworks is putting a number on one of HR's most persistent tensions: the gap between believing performance management works and being able to prove it.
According to the company's 2026 Performance Management Survey, released via Business Wire, nearly 85% of HR leaders report high confidence that their performance management programs drive meaningful business outcomes. Yet fewer than half say they can substantiate that confidence with hard metrics.
The delta — roughly 35 percentage points — suggests that for a large share of HR organizations, performance management ROI remains more intuitive than empirical. That matters in an environment where CFOs and executive teams increasingly expect people functions to demonstrate impact with the same rigor applied to other business investments.
For HR-tech buyers, the data raises pointed questions about the platforms they use. If performance management tools are not equipping HR teams with the analytics needed to connect talent interventions to business outcomes, the measurement gap may be as much a product gap as a capability gap. Betterworks, which offers continuous performance management and OKR software, has an evident commercial interest in surfacing this finding — but the underlying problem it describes is widely acknowledged across the industry.
The survey's full methodology, including sample size and respondent demographics, had not been disclosed in available materials at the time of this report. Nonetheless, the headline statistic offers a useful benchmark for HR leaders and vendors alike as the field moves toward more outcome-oriented accountability.
Verified vendor profiles for the companies named above — DHRMap wires every story to its directory.
DHRMap tracks every HR-tech company over time — here's the rest of the coverage.
For DHRMap's audience of HR-tech buyers, vendors, and practitioners, this data crystallizes a systemic challenge: confidence in performance management is high, but the analytical infrastructure to validate that confidence is lagging. As ROI scrutiny on HR tech investments intensifies, platforms that close the measurement gap — connecting performance programs to quantifiable business results — will hold a clear competitive advantage. The survey is also a reminder that vendor-published research, while useful directionally, should be evaluated alongside independent benchmarking.