Case Study: SmugMug achieves a structured, transparent promotion process with Lattice

How SmugMug Built a Structured Approach to Employee Promotions

SmugMug, the “do-it-all photo place” for protecting, sharing, storing, and selling photos and videos, was struggling to scale its informal approach to promotions and career development as it neared 200 employees. With no formal job competencies or levels and career progress left to manager discretion, SmugMug’s nine-person People team sought a people success platform and selected Lattice (using Lattice Grow and Performance tools on the Lattice Plan with Premium Support) to bring structure and transparency to promotions and performance conversations.

Using Lattice, SmugMug built IC and manager career tracks, added promotion-focused questions to quarterly Lattice Reviews, and centralized Feedback, Updates, and 1:1s so managers and employees could have ongoing, documented career conversations. Lattice enabled a more objective promotion process, real-time visibility into manager-employee interactions, stronger executive buy-in, boosted review completion rates, and the highest feature adoption among senior leadership—making it easier for the People team to approve promotions and for employees to understand what they need to do to advance.

SmugMug

Raman Bola

Principal People Partner