Best Employee Engagement Software - June 2020
Best Employee Engagement Software, ROI calculator, questions to ask on demos, and more
This article is all about employee engagement and is based on weeks of research talking to experts as well as the many vendors in this space. We're going to tell you the best employee engagement platforms to focus on, the benefits/pitfalls/pricing related to employee engagement software, and so much more!
Our goal with this guide is to save your first 5-10 hours of research into this category, and drastically increase your chances of successful implementing an employee engagement platform that will supercharge your company culture.
Please use this article as a reference as you go through the vendor selection process. We've got details on questions for demos, ROI analysis and everything else we think you need to be successful. Good luck and let us know how it goes!
We spend hundreds of hours researching the best HR and recruiting software so you don’t have to. We never take money from vendors during our research phase and rely heavily on practitioners and experts to help us recommend the right software. Most of the vendors featured on our site have no commercial relationship with us, we want to feature the best software for our readers regardless. Learn more
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Top Employee Engagement Tools
We track thousands of HRTech solutions, these are the best Employee Engagement tools and services per our research and expert council as of November 2019
Kazoo’s employee engagement solution is coupled with rewards and performance management all in one platform. This three pronged approach allows People teams to use one vendor that seamlessly shares data across all three modules.
Worth Checking Out:
It’s no wonder they have over 600 customers, which include Patagonia, Kaiser Permanente and Allianz. Also worth noting is they have a customer retention rate over 90%! Learn More About Kazoo
CultureIQ is an employee engagement platform that ties employee listening to culture, and culture to business strategy. Their offering is part SaaS, part high touch consultants that will help you plan and execute your program. This is helpful especially for their core target of large enterprise customers that include Sanofi, AirCanada, AXA, and many more.
Worth Checking Out:
15Five has been around since 2011, and has over 2,000 customers that rely on their performance management suite to figure out what drives their employees, and how to incorporate this knowledge into feedback/coaching. The product is easy enough to setup where they didn’t even have a sales team the first 6 years of the business.
Worth Checking Out:
Glint is now part of LinkedIn/Microsoft and definitely one of the pioneers in this space. They are worth taking a look at, although it’s unclear how their solution will evolve post-acquisition, and how their pricing fits into the rest of your overall contract if you are an existing LinkedIn customer.
Worth Checking Out:
Waggl is an employee voice platform that started with the unique insight that organizations can get more insights from employees by asking less, more often (relative to arduous annual surveys). Waggl is a great way to understand what aspects of your culture need help. Their product can help small teams all the way up through customers like 3M, Boeing and Microsoft.
Worth Checking Out:
Tinypulse’s employee engagement software allows managers to have a holistic understanding of their organization to cut down on unexpected employee departures, build the right culture, and increase performance. Their solution is used by Microsoft, the Red Sox, Nike and many more.
Worth Checking Out:
Reflektive’s software covers the gambit of performance management to employee engagement. This means their product allows you to measure and track OKRs, 1:1’s, real time employee engagement, etc all from one platform. Reflektive’s customers include Comcast and Dollar Shave Club.
Worth Checking Out:
Companies looking to boost their employee retention should take a look at Reward Gateway’s engagement solution (we also have them featured on our rewards page). Their product offers employee communications, peer to peer recognition, automated awards and so much more.
Worth Checking Out:
7Geese is an employee first performance management system which has focused on the under-resourced HR teams of small to mid sized companies. They are very focused on tracking OKRs and allowing employees to see how their actions are contributing to the overall performance of the organization. 7Geese has a dedicated team of talent advisors who can help you get started, all of whom have backgrounds in both HR and change management.
Worth Checking Out:
Workvivo is an enterprise social network that becomes the central hub for employee communication. Employees can share content, give one another shoutouts, and tie company news/events back to values. Their product looks and feels like a traditional social network. This familiar experience drives engagement, collaboration, and belonging.
Worth Checking Out:
Emplify uses a data driven methodology to understand the state of engagement in the org (which they point out, is different than happiness/satisfaction!), and then uses their dedicated engagement strategists and manager coaches to help organizations action this data. They look at 17 different data points across the organization, and strive to get statistically significant data on a regular cadence that aligns with your business’s metrics.
Worth Checking Out:
CultureAmp was one of the first next generation employee engagement companies to hit the market, and did a great job of building community around their PeopleGeek meetups/newsletter. They have 2,500 customers from Adobe to Pixar.
Worth Checking Out:
Peakon is a data driven solution focused on allowing organizations to make better people decisions. Their people analytics software includes real time management training modules that are suggested based on employee data. While based in Denmark, their largest market is the US and their customers include Capgemini and Verizon. Peakon powered data is being used in their customers’ annual reports alongside more traditional financial metrics.
Worth Checking Out:
Final Advice on Employee Engagement Software + Our Best Pro Tip
We wrote a bit about cross functional buying committees in the past and think they are so relevant for employee engagement platforms.
A cross functional buying committee is a group of 5-10 people who care about a given topic, in this case culture/retention. They brainstorm, and then figure out the best way to tackle the issue is to execute some sort of initiative, in this case buy employee engagement software. Then, there are usually 1-2 leaders in the group who do all the work of executing the initiative. They usually have KPIs related to the results of the initiative - and of course in this case will be the people who are in charge of talent management.
There are some huge benefits to having this committee. First off, getting budget for your initiative is so much easier. You now have leaders from marketing, sales, engineering, etc on your side when you go to the CFO to get money. They can help you pitch, and throw their weight behind the initiative.
You also have the help of every organization during implementation. This is especially useful when rolling out a tool like employee engagement where individuals need to be bought into the initiative across all different functions. Having the person from your engineering team who’s on the committee tell their team why they need to use a solution can resonate a lot more than someone from outside of the organization doing the same.
Final Advice
The best employee engagement software is a game changer for organizations looking to supercharge their workplace experience, and decrease employee turnover. There are no silver bullets when it comes to disengaged employees or having perfect insights into what’s going on with your business. However, this is a great place to start.
If your company needs a better way to start gathering employee feedback, or is simply looking for ways to improve culture, then our suggestion is to start by getting demos with 2-3 of the top employee engagement software companies in order to figure out the details around how this would work within your organization. Good luck!
Top Employee Engagement Solutions
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