According to research, only one out of every three employees is engaged at work, which is a concerning number.
Maintaining employee engagement requires fostering a sense of purpose, open communication, employee appreciation, receiving and acting on feedback, and creating a positive overall employee experience.
Criteria for evaluating employee engagement software
When I’m looking for the greatest employee satisfaction platforms, what do I look for?
The following is a list of my evaluation criteria:
Engagement software should have an engaging user interface (UI). I’m seeking for visually appealing and entertaining employee engagement tools. Bonus points if they use gamification techniques or take inspiration from social media.
Will the system be straightforward to use for both employees and managers? Will the features motivate people to participate on a regular basis?
Does the software integrate well with other employee management tools? Do major HR systems have pre-built integrations?
Is the pricing reasonable for engaging employees in both small and large groups? Is the pricing structure straightforward?
Key Features of Employee Engagement Software
This category includes a wide range of software. There are survey tools for collecting feedback and message software for improving internal communication, as well as 1:1 feedback systems.
Here are the important characteristics to look for:
Dashboards, gamification, and activity feeds where team members can interact to enhance engagement throughout the employee lifetime
Goal Setting & Tracking: tools for defining and tracking objectives and expectations, as well as rewarding motivated employees who meet them.
Performance Evaluation: evaluates performance from the time of onboarding to the present.
Indicators of Key Performance
Employee Training Tools: Ensures that everyone understands how to use the software to its full potential.
Options for surveys and feedback: collect real-time input from employees to track progress, identify problem areas, and boost retention.
Employee Recognition: identifies and rewards employees who go above and beyond in their jobs.
Collaborative Spaces are community-building spaces that encourage participants to share common interests.
The 10 Best Employee Engagement Tools: An Overview
Here are some quick summaries of each of the employee engagement solutions on my list, highlighting what they excel at (with screenshots to highlight some of the functionalities).
1. Empuls – Best for building a culture of appreciation
Empuls is a digital workplace engagement solution aimed at improving company culture and bringing the entire digital workplace to life. Empuls may help people leaders create a culture of appreciation, bring teams together, break down silos, and give every employee a voice.
Empuls has features including one-on-one feedback, peer and societal recognition, and a variety of rewards and advantages. You may also use a social intranet platform to centralise internal communications and inspire staff with a reward of their choice when they do well and exceed expectations. With Empuls, you can get real-time feedback on the impact of your employee engagement programmes and employee sentiment.
Empuls allows you to manage employee recognition programmes and link them with business culture and values. Empuls makes recognition simple, candid, sociable, and enjoyable.
Microsoft Teams, Slack, Okta SSO, OneLogin SSO, Ping Identity SSO, Azure AD SSO, Google Workspace SSO, Gusto, Keka, Darwinbox, Zoho People, Freshteam, BambooHR, greytHR, SAP SuccessFactors, People Strong, LinkedIn, and Giphy are among the apps that Empuls works with.
2. Assembly – Best for making employees feel appreciated, connected to their work, and aligned with company values
Assembly is an employee engagement software that uses customised workflows to help you work smarter, not harder. Their solution gives you access to 40+ workflow templates, such as Employee Recognition & Engagement, so you can streamline your daily processes while enhancing team efficiency.
By making it simple to celebrate milestones, issue company-wide announcements, and recognise top performers, Assembly has helped hundreds of firms reach 95 percent employee engagement. Team retrospectives and standup sessions are also included in Assembly. Assembly works with Slack, Microsoft Teams, and other popular SSO and HRIS systems.
3. Leapsome – Best for closing the loop between employee engagement, performance management and personal development
Leapsome is an all-in-one platform that helps businesses increase employee engagement and is used by firms such as Spotify, Northvolt, and Babbel. Leapsome offers a never-ending loop of engagement, feedback, and tailored learning that propels your people and company forward.
Employee engagement surveys, for example, allow you to uncover engagement factors and track employee satisfaction over time with Leapsome. The tool lets you turn corporate emotion into action, whether through unique questions or Leapsome’s expert templates.
These surveys can be customised in terms of questions, frequency, and participants, as well as departmental segmentation, performance, and other factors.
You may share and request peer input to anybody, at any time, with Leapsome, and you can select settings like public, private, and mentor visibility. This tool allows you to more easily link your actions to the company’s values or competencies. The learning module in Leapsome allows you to create appropriate learning routes for your workers’ professional development and advancement.
Performance and 360° reviews from Leapsome are entirely customizable and simple to set up, and they can help you create a workplace culture that values constant input. Leapsome has all the features you need, whether you want anonymous or non-anonymous feedback, expert templates, skill frameworks, development routes, automations, or advanced analytics.
HRIS tools, SSO, and several popular communication and collaboration tools are all supported by Leapsome.
4. Workvivo – Best engagement app for emotionally connecting your people to your company, wherever they work from
Workvivo is an employee experience app that promotes engagement and emotional connections between employees and your company culture, regardless of their location.
Their platform is a modern intranet, communications hub, and employee engagement tool all rolled into one.
Their technology has a social media-like feel to it, which increases engagement. Users can also customise their activity stream to view more items from the colleagues or departments in which they are most interested. Leadership members can also use multimedia messages to communicate throughout the platform, as well as other engagement tools like surveys and engagement analytics to monitor team morale. Additional options, such as public shout-outs and peer-driven award nominations, give employees a voice and help them connect more deeply with your company’s culture, goals, and values.
Workvivo is compatible with a variety of HR software, including payroll software, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.
5. Kazoo – Best for creating a work culture
IntelliHR is an employee engagement technology that uses continuous feedback and engagement analytics to assist employers increase employee engagement. HR and managers can use the platform to align, manage, and enable a people and culture plan as part of a larger company strategy.
IntelliHR’s robust engagement analytics and active listening, such as eNPS scores, sentiment analysis, wellbeing check-ins, and engagement surveys, are where it offers value. This information gives HR managers a thorough understanding of concerns and opportunities that they may utilise to make better decisions.
IntelliHR has built-in engagement analytics as well. Through a variety of easy-to-use interactive dashboards, employers can get a firsthand picture of their people’s happiness, engagement, and wellbeing, capturing insights on training investment, team sentiment, attrition, performance, and employee satisfaction. Managers can use the analytics tool to stay on top of their teams by using elements such as goals, feedback, and regular check-ins.
With an award-winning customer support team with HR and change management experience, intelliHR has an industry-leading NPS. To ensure that the software is released smoothly and with a high adoption rate, the team employs design thinking workshops that are personalised to each customer.
6. Officevibe – Best employee engagement software for ease of use
Kazoo is an employee experience platform that allows you to design a social rewards system to encourage good behaviours and foster a positive work environment. Employees, for example, can earn points that can be used to claim prizes when they fulfil duties such as recognising their colleagues.
Employees can also request and provide feedback using themes like ‘Start, Stop, Continue’ in Kazoo’s 360 Reviews. Managers can also conduct surveys, set up one-on-one meetings, and check in with their employees.
BambooHR, Rippling, Speakap, and Verb are all integrated with Kazoo. Their API and SFTP provide access to other integrations.
7. Nailted – Best employee engagement platform for remote and distributed tech teams.
Officevibe is a trust-building employee experience platform that allows you to engage with your team members at home or at work. Over 50,000 managers worldwide use the site, including executives from Dyson, Trivago, and Bose.
With features like the Pulse Survey and a science-based approach, Officevibe helps you better understand your staff. Team members can respond anonymously, creating a safe environment for honest input that can be implemented. Customizable 1-on-1 surveys, feedback templates, and reports are also available, allowing you to take action in real time.
You and your team can utilise the platform to plan out your agenda ahead of time so that everyone is prepared. After that, you can share your notes and cooperate to get the outcomes you want.
Microsoft Teams, Slack, Office 365, Google Workspace, and BambooHR are all integrated with Officevibe.
8. Pingboard – Best for visualization and rich profiles
Nailted is a full employee engagement suite created exclusively for tech organisations and remote/hybrid/distributed teams. It helps you give your employees the greatest possible experience.
It’s not easy to increase engagement. And there’s more than one thing you should do.
You may use Nailted to implement all of the processes you need to boost employee happiness and reduce attrition. First, there are comprehensive built-in statistics based on pulse surveys that include an anonymous feedback channel, allowing you to collect honest input and better understand what’s going on in your company.
Then, once you’ve identified your pain spots, Nailted has modules to assist you with each one: ensure that each manager performs their 1:1s efficiently, get everyone recognised with the claps function, and advance people’s careers with 360° campaigns.
Nailted interfaces with other common communication technologies like Slack, Google Workspace, and Microsoft Teams, making it easy to encourage employee engagement.
They also offer native Zoho and BambooHR connectors.
9. Waggl – Best for easy employee feedback
Pingboard provides you with easy-to-understand visibility into your organisation. You may tailor employee profiles to your company’s culture and construct an always-up-to-date organisational chart that shows how teams interact.
A fun “who’s who” quiz is included in the peer recognition features to assist everyone get to know each other. Pingdom interfaces with common business apps such as Slack, LinkedIn, and Google Calendar to make it simple to incorporate into your daily routine.
10. Employee engagement
Employee engagement is simple with Waggl. They vote after answering questions and providing comments. Then you provide your findings for additional discussion. Participants respond to simple questions in a game-like environment.
Employees can vote on each other’s anonymous comments in this dialog-centric strategy, which increases engagement. HR teams can then decide how to disseminate outcomes based on OKRs and other important corporate goals
