Why choose Karma over
Lattice?

When evaluating employee recognition platforms for Microsoft Teams, it's important to look beyond basic notifications and consider how recognition, feedback, and engagement fit into your team's everyday collaboration. If you're comparing Lattice and Karma or searching for an alternative, this guide will help you understand which platform is the better fit for your culture and workflows.

What's the difference between
Karma and Lattice? What's right
for me?

Lattice and Karma both integrate with Microsoft Teams to improve employee engagement and communication, but they approach recognition and culture-building from very different directions.

Lattice is primarily a people management platform focused on performance reviews, engagement surveys, goals, feedback cycles, and manager workflows. Its Microsoft Teams integration is designed to bring those HR processes into the flow of daily work through notifications, reminders, and activity updates. Employees receive updates for reviews, 1:1s, goals, surveys, and feedback directly inside Teams, helping organizations improve participation and visibility across performance initiatives.

Karma takes a more recognition-focused approach. Instead of centering around performance management workflows, Karma is built to make appreciation and engagement feel natural inside everyday Microsoft Teams conversations. Recognition can happen instantly using trigger words, commands, reactions, and automated workflows without requiring employees to leave the conversation or interact with formal HR systems.

The two platforms also differ in how recognition is experienced. Lattice supports public, private, and manager-only feedback, with a strong emphasis on structured feedback and employee development. Karma focuses more heavily on visible peer-to-peer recognition, social engagement, company culture, and positive reinforcement across teams.

From an engagement perspective, Lattice helps organizations manage employee development through surveys, updates, reviews, and analytics tied to performance management. Karma expands engagement through leaderboards, achievements, rewards, celebrations, company values, and interactive recognition moments that encourage ongoing participation across the organization.

There's also a difference in complexity and implementation. Lattice requires more administrative setup, permissions management, and workflow configuration inside both Microsoft Teams and Lattice itself. Karma is designed for lightweight adoption, allowing teams to launch quickly and begin recognizing employees immediately without introducing additional process overhead.

Ultimately, Lattice is best suited for organizations looking for a comprehensive people operations platform tightly connected to performance management. Karma is a better fit for teams that want recognition, appreciation, and engagement to become a visible and seamless part of everyday collaboration inside Microsoft Teams.

• Set up the account

  Karma

  Karma integrates directly into Microsoft Teams with fast onboarding and minimal setup. Employees can immediately start recognizing teammates within existing conversations and channels without learning additional HR workflows.

  Lattice

  Lattice requires admin setup across both Microsoft Teams and Lattice, including permissions, app availability settings, sync preferences, and notification configuration before rollout to employees.

• Reinforce company values

  Karma

  Karma connects recognition directly to company values using trigger words, structured recognition flows, leaderboards, and analytics that continuously reinforce culture across teams.

  Lattice

  Lattice supports value-based feedback and recognition as part of its broader employee engagement and performance management workflows, helping organizations connect feedback to company principles.

• Create rewards

  Karma

  Karma includes customizable rewards, gift cards, donations, achievements, and long-term point accumulation systems that encourage ongoing participation and engagement.

  Lattice

  Lattice focuses primarily on feedback, goals, reviews, and employee development rather than rewards and incentive systems inside Microsoft Teams.

• Give recognition

  Karma

  Karma allows employees to recognize teammates instantly inside Microsoft Teams conversations using commands, trigger words, automations, and reactions. Recognition remains highly visible within channels and conversations, encouraging social engagement across teams.

  Lattice

  Lattice allows employees to receive and manage public, private, and manager-only feedback notifications directly inside Microsoft Teams while also supporting updates tied to goals, reviews, surveys, and 1:1 workflows.

A more recognition-focused
alternative to Lattice

Lattice and Karma both help organizations improve employee engagement inside Microsoft Teams, but they prioritize different aspects of the employee experience. Lattice excels at structured people management, performance workflows, and employee development processes tied to HR operations.

Karma focuses more directly on making recognition visible, engaging, and embedded into everyday collaboration. With rewards, celebrations, leaderboards, achievements, and lightweight adoption, Karma provides a more flexible recognition experience designed specifically for modern teams using Microsoft Teams every day.

For organizations that want employee recognition to feel social, natural, and consistently visible — rather than primarily process-driven — Karma offers a more engagement-focused alternative to Lattice.