The Top 19 Best Employee Engagement Tools in 2021
This article includes our research on the top Employee Engagement Software, questions to ask vendors on demos, an ROI calculator, and more
If you're looking to buy employee engagement software, you've come to the right place. We continue to do regular research on what the best employee engagement tools are, along with what price you should pay, questions to ask vendors on demos, ROI calculations, and a whole lot more.
The right employee engagement platform will allow your organization to build a stronger culture, which will lead to better employee retention, and an easier time hiring. Employee engagement tools have become even more important as:
- 2 out of 3 millennials state their organization's purpose and culture are the reason why they chose to work there. Without a healthy culture, companies simply cannot retain young talent.
- People Analytics is becoming a more important discipline with 71% of companies regarding it as a high priority in their organizations. A top employee engagement solution allows HR to have more insight into what's going on in their organization.
- Employee engagement software allows companies to keep their hand on the pulse of their organization to see what managers need more training, which teams have higher flight risk, and how key objectives are being met within the organization.
The below guide is meant to help HR and People teams to select the right engagement platform for their business. We've provided a shortlist along with general info on use cases, pitfalls, best practices, etc. You may also be interested in performance management software which allows companies to track the goals of an individual, group, division, and company. Good luck!
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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. However we may earn a fee if you click on vendor links on this page.
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28
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In this guide you'll find
- Top Employee Engagement Tools
- What is Employee Engagement Software and What Are the Benefits?
- Most Common Pitfalls of Employee Engagement Software
- The Business Case Behind Employee Engagement Platforms
- Questions to Ask on Demos
- Employee Engagement Software FAQs
- Final Advice on Employee Engagement Software + Our Best Pro Tip
Featured in
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.
Why we love it
:
Empuls focuses on all things employee engagement. Companies, particularly SMBs, use it to connect and align their employees, measure sentiment through real-time feedback, and incentivize good performance through various rewards and recognition features.
Empuls
Review
Empuls is a cloud-based, holistic employee engagement platform built for SMBs to improve their internal culture. Trusted by over 1000 brands across the world, Empuls packs features that facilitate continuous employee communication, collaboration, rewards, recognition, Pulse / eNPS surveys, people analytics, and more.
Empuls
Customers
Rakuten, Signzy, Luminous, Brenntag, Near
Empuls
Stats
- Launched in 2019
- 1000+ customers
Empuls
Pricing:
Empuls has two plans. When billed annually, they cost as follows:
- Starter: This plan costs $2 per person per month and is ideal for teams with up to 200 employees.
- Proficient: This plan costs $3.60 per person per month and is ideal for teams with more than 200 employees.
Best For
Empuls is built for small and mid-size businesses.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Besides engagement surveys, Kazoo also packs performance management and employee recognition capabilities in their robust platform.
Kazoo
Review
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.
Kazoo
Customers
Allianz, Hitachi, Kia Motors, Patagonia
Kazoo
Stats
- 95% customer retention rate
- 600+ global customers
- 10-20% higher employee retention
Kazoo
Pricing:
Kazoo has three pricing levels:
- Growth costs $12.50 per month per employee billed annually. It is designed for 100 - 250 employees.
- Standard costs $10.50 per month per employee billed annually. It is designed for 250 - 1000 employees.
- Enterprise is for 1000+ employee companies and is offered at a custom quote.
All tiers get the features previously mentioned. More higher level plans provide extra solutions tailored to your company's needs. There are also additional onboarding fees, listed as $5,000 for Recognition features and $7,000 for performance features.
Best For
Small-to-medium-sized businesses to Fortune 100 enterprises will find a use case for Kazoo.
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
Why we love it
:
Reward Gateway is an employee engagement platform (SmartHub) that combines employee recognition, surveys, communication, discounts (instant vouchers and cashback offers), and analytics in a single solution.
Reward Gateway
Review
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.
Reward Gateway
Customers
Ikea, McDonald's, Unilever, Heineken
Reward Gateway
Stats
- Net Promoter Score of 72
- Used by 5 million employees
- Over 1900 customers
Reward Gateway
Pricing:
Reward Gateway does not publicly share price. You will have to get in touch with a salesperson.
However, if you are a UK customer, they offer small business pricing for companies with under 100 employees. It costs £6 per employee.
Best For
Reward Gateway is best for any company looking to boost their engagement efforts.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Leapsome is highly flexible; you can choose to build on their best-practice surveys and questionnaires developed by psychologists or customize everything — from questions to timelines and anonymity settings.
Leapsome
Review
With customizable, easy-to-set-up employee engagement surveys, Leapsome allows you to measure the pulse of your company culture and make strategic decisions based on real-time insights. The platform also features Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning technologies that analyze written responses to open-ended questions, helping you quickly uncover sentiment, identify common themes, and undertake data-driven actions to tackle the biggest challenges.
Leapsome
Customers
Mercedes Benz, Spotify, Trivago, Eventim, Babbel, Plus Dental
Leapsome
Stats
- More than 1.2m unique pieces of feedback are shared across the Leapsome platform
- 99% customer satisfaction for interactions with Leapsome’s success team
Leapsome
Pricing:
Leapsome’s pricing depends on the number of your employees, the modules you want to use, and the length of your contract. Its modular pricing starts from $7 per user per month when billed annually. To get a detailed quote, contact Leapsome’s sales team. You can also test out Leapsome free of charge for a full 14 days - no credit card required.
Best For
Leapsome can be used by companies of all sizes across different verticals.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Motivosity is quite comprehensive; it has features for employee engagement, recognition, performance management, coaching succession planning, and much more.
Motivosity
Review
Motivosity combines four products in one. Their platform allows you to connect with employees, understand their performance drivers, and recognize them for a job well done. What’s great about Motivosity is that it isn’t just for managers to use, but employees too. The platform facilitates peer-to-peer recognition so everyone’s feedback is heard.
Motivosity
Customers
Instructure, University of Michigan, WGU, Cotopaxi, HealthEquity
Motivosity
Stats
Motivosity
Pricing:
Motivosity offers 4 products:
- Connect: Connect costs $1 per person per month and is automatically bundled with the other Motivosity products. E.g. if you purchase Recognize, Lead, or Listen, you’ll automatically get everything within Connect as well.
- Recognize: Recognize costs $3 per person per month.
- Lead: Lead costs $6.50 per person per month.
- Listen: Listen costs $2 per person per month.
Best For
Motivosity is best suited for SMBs.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
eloomi combines engagement with their best in class LMS and performance management systems which means you can fully utilize feedback for employee development.
eloomi
Review
eloomi's employee engagement tool offers a simple to use survey to capture employee feedback through multiple choice, sliding scale, etc questions. Feedback can come in the form of anonymous or non-anonymous answers from employees.
Combining their LMS with engagement allows you to automatically send surveys that relate to certain learning modules. For example, you may have a module about your company's new year strategy that details a group's OKRs. You can immediately send an engagement survey to make sure employees are understanding where they fit into the organization.
eloomi
Customers
Domino’s, Jabra GN, Sophos, Le Creuset, Icelandair Hotels, Delta.
eloomi
Stats
- eloomi was established in 2015
- eloomi has been used by over 500 customers
Best For
eloomi is a good buy for companies across different industries looking for an integrated employee learning, development, and appraisal solution.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
ClearCompany is a one-stop-shop for all sorts of enterprise-grade HR software. You can combine their employee engagement solution with their onboarding, performance management, and workforce planning solutions.
ClearCompany
Review
ClearCompany's employee engagement solution can take care of everything from recognition and celebrations to goal-planning and real-time feedback. It is also a mobile-friendly and multilingual tool. Their survey tool is particularly powerful, with template reviews that are proven to work and you can choose or create your own from.
Another thing we like about this vendor is their excellent customer service and the wideness of their offer. With their platform, you can choose to use only one or a few modules or use one of their tools for each stage of the employee lifecycle.
ClearCompany
Customers
The Salvation Army, Fujifilm, Chick-fil-A, and the Supreme Court for the State of Arizona.
ClearCompany
Stats
- Over 2,000 clients
- Founded in 2004
- 640,000 total users
ClearCompany
Pricing:
With ClearCompany, you can choose to buy a single module, several, or the whole platform. The latter includes an ATS, onboarding tool, performance management, planning & analytics, and, of course, the employee engagement tools. However, the price for either modality isn't provided, as it would be based on your company size and particular needs.
Best For
ClearCompany is best suited for companies looking for a complete employee engagement solution and also get their ATS, onboarding tool, or many types of HR software from the same vendor.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Used by several Fortune 500 companies, Reflektive's platform offers all the tools you need to analyze then drive employee engagement and performance.
Reflektive
Review
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 was recently acquired by LTG, the company who owns PeopleFluent.
Reflektive
Customers
AirBNB, Dropbox, Comcast, Squarespace
Reflektive
Stats
- Some customers decreased turnover by over 70%
- Founded in 2013
- Over $100M in funding
Reflektive
Pricing
While Reflektive does offer a free product demo, they do not publicly reveal pricing. You must contact a sales representative.
Best For
Larger companies will see the best ROI from Reflektive, but that doesn't mean small businesses won't find use cases.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Glint helps companies measure employee sentiment in real time, with customizable surveys spanning employee engagement, effectiveness, lifecycle, culture, diversity and inclusion.
Glint
Review
Glint considers itself a People Success Platform. It is now a part of LinkedIn/Microsoft and definitely one of the pioneers in this space. They are worth taking a look at, especially because of their predictive AI-for-HR analytics and People Science team.
Glint
Customers
- Ancestry
- Spectrum Health
- DISH Network
Glint
Stats
- Owned by LinkedIn
- Founded in 2013
- Raised almost $80M in funding
Glint
Pricing
While Glint does not share their pricing publicly, you can try out a free demo before you buy.
Best For
Glint is best suited for companies looking for extremely in-depth analytics with their employee engagement platform.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Officevibe helps companies engage employees and increase their satisfaction - all while nurturing managers and improving how they tackle challenges in the workplace.
Officevibe
Review
Officevibe is a cloud-based platform that focuses on employee engagement and manager growth. It allows managers to measure employee satisfaction through pulse surveys, then provides them with guidance on how they can improve work environment and culture. The platform packs several pre-made templates and questions to ease the survey creation process. It also offers features for polls creation, reporting, 1:1s planning, scheduling, and more.
Officevibe
Customers
WeTransfer, Dyson, Bose, PayScale, Trivago
Officevibe
Stats
- Founded in 2014
- 275 employees and growing
Officevibe
Pricing
Officevibe has three plans:
- Basic: This plan is free of charge for 1 team with up to 10 users.
- Premium: This plan allows for unlimited teams and costs $4 per user per month.
- Organization: Designed for larger teams, this plan has custom pricing. Contact Officevibe’s Sales team to get a quote.
Best For
Officevibe can be used by companies of all sizes.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Emplify measures 14 drivers of employee engagement, helping company leadership understand and solve underlying engagement problems.
Emplify
Review
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 different data points across the organization, and strive to get statistically significant data on a regular cadence that aligns with your business’s metrics.
Emplify
Customers
- Ivy Tech Community College
- California Closets
- OKC Zoo
Emplify
Stats
- Customers have seen 50% reduction in turnover
- Emplify has completed 2,500+ executive strategy sessions
Emplify
Pricing
Emplify prices its platform based on employee count, and is billed annually. You must contact the Emplify sales team to negotiate actual numbers.
Best For
Emplify is best suited for companies that want to diagnose engagement issues with more than just software alone. Emplify teams your company up with their "People Insights Consultants" to help you make sense of the data.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Quantum Workplace helps companies with 100+ employees manage and improve experience through engagement and performance management tech.
Quantum Workplace
Review
Quantum Workplace allows HR teams to build strong, performance-based cultures through their employee engagement and performance management systems. From the employee perspective, you can keep tabs on what's going on with the company via a social media-like newsfeed. This lets you see goals for the organization/team/individual and what progress has been made, as well as recognition that colleagues are getting.
Quantum Workplace
Customers
Redfin, Panera, Politico
Quantum Workplace
Stats
- 385+ customers
- 2 million surveys per year
- Over 165k 1:1's launched
Best For
Companies with >100 employees
Worth Checking Out:
Quantum Workplace uses data to figure out the flight risk of employees in your company.
Why we love it
:
Used by some of the world's biggest companies including Microsoft, Unilever and Sony, you can rely on TinyPulse's platform to cover your culture building and performance management needs.
TinyPulse
Review
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.
TinyPulse
Customers
- Ben & Jerry's
- Dole
- Indeed
- Microsoft
TinyPulse
Stats
- Over 1,000 customers
- Featured in Forbes, TechCrunch, BBC
- Customers have seen over 50% engagement
TinyPulse
Pricing
Pricing must be negotiated with the TinyPulse sales team. Their chatbot makes it easy to provide company details to receive a quote in your email.
Best For
TinyPulse is used by teams of all sizes, from 10 to 10,000.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
WorkTango empowers employees by giving them a voice while giving the decision-makers a pulse of the workforce.
WorkTango
Review
While WorkTango's powerful survey platform supports a different method of engagement analytics and leadership feedback. WorkTango aims to improve business outcomes by providing HR, executives, and people leaders with insights, recommended learnings, and actions powered by employee feedback. Their software helps organizations tackle key themes as employee engagement, as well as DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), and health and wellness.
WorkTango also works towards improving the employee experience throughout the entire employee lifecycle. This includes onboarding/exit, leadership, occupational health and safety, and mergers and acquisitions alignment.
WorkTango
Customers
- Telus
- The City of Toronto
- Hub International
- Snowfox Group
- H.B Fuller
- Deckers Brands
- Harris Computer
WorkTango
Stats
- 93.5% customer retention rate
- Available in 40+ languages and 100+ countries
- CEO Rob Catalano was featured in Forbes
WorkTango
Pricing
Starting at around $5,000, WorkTango prices by the number of employees. The best way forward is to request a demo.
Best For
WorkTango is great for companies that value employee feedback. Currently, WorkTango is effectively used in various industries such as tech, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, government, education, communication, and many more. The platform has been successful for companies with 50, hundreds, and even hundreds of thousands of employees.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Not only is Peakon a great employee engagement solution, it has a ton of analytical functionality that makes it great for people planning too.
Peakon
Review
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. Peakon powered data is being used in their customers’ annual reports alongside more traditional financial metrics. Peakon was recently acquired by Workday.
Peakon
Customers
- Duke University
- Lush Cosmetics
- Aldo
- Verizon
Peakon
Stats
- 1000+ customers
- Recently acquired by Workday
- Customers have cut employee turnover from 64% to 23%
Peakon
Pricing
Peakon has three different plans:
Essential is the basic plan. It offers the baseline engagement features, a mobile app, an d 24-hour online support.
Business is the next plan. It provides everything from Essential, but adds personalized benchmarking, custom insights, action plans, and HRIS integrations. You'd also have a dedicated Customer Success consultant.
Premier is the top level plan. You'll receive everything previously mentioned, plus micro-learning sessions, attrition prediction, hierarchy mapping, business impact metrics, and unlimited custom dashboards. You all have extended Customer Success support and change management training.
You must contact a Peakon representative for cost details.
Best For
Peakon will be best used by large and enterprise sized organizations who can make use of the nitty gritty people planning features.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
With over 30 science‑backed and customizable survey templates, detailed analytics, and more, CultureAmp helps over 3000 companies keep their employees engaged.
CultureAmp
Review
CultureAmp is an all-encompassing employee engagement suite, that runs the gamut from engagement to performance management to education to coaching. With over 3000 customers that include some big names across many industries, it's a tried-and-true solution for any company looking to boost engagement efforts.
CultureAmp
Customers
AirBNB, Yelp, Slack, Warby Parker
CultureAmp
Stats
- Used by 3000+ companies
- Used by 3 million employees
CultureAmp
Pricing
CultureAmp has three different plans. Each one features all of the engagement and performance management features that CultureAmp is known for. The plans differ in coaching and education features.
The plans are as follows:
- Self-starter: Designed for 25-200 employees. Includes all Engagement and Performance features. Limited HRIS integrations. Group coaching and education. Coaching and education features include survey design review, project working sessions, and demographic mapping under education.
- Standard: Designed for 200-1000 employees. Includes all the features from Self-starter. All HRIS integrations. Adds one-on-one Coaching features, including feedback strategy review, project planning, and results & report sharing follow up. Group Education features.
- Enterprise: Designed for 1000+ employees. Includes all Standard features. One-on-one Coaching and Education features, including meetings with Success coach, action guidance, management training, and People Scientist insights.
You may also purchase the employee engagement or performance management modules individually. You must contact a representative for exact pricing.
Best For
CultureAmp is used by businesses of all sizes. However, their Standard package is marketed specifically towards companies with 200 - 1000 employees.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Bonusly helps bring visibility around small wins in multiple ways. You can create surveys to communicate with employees, integrate it with your communication tools to boost recognition, or evaluate recognition trends with detail reports.
Bonusly
Review
Bonusly’s goal is to increase employee engagement and retention through authentic interactions and positive reinforcement. Through its social media-style interface, Bonusly allows employees to shout out their colleagues for great work on a company-wide scale. Bonusly has also recently added an employee feedback feature, allowing companies to gain real-time, actionable insights into employee satisfaction levels through pre-made and custom surveys.
Bonusly
Customers
Hulu, InVision, SurveyMonkey, Headspace, and more
Bonusly
Stats
- Customers from over 100 countries
- Over 16 million bonuses given
- 89% of Bonusly users participate within their first month
- 79% receive recognition at least once a month
Bonusly
Pricing
The pricing details of Bonusly are as follows:
- Core: This plan costs $2.70 per user per month when billed annually.
- Pro: This plan costs $4.50 per user per month when billed annually.
- Custom: This plan is designed for large organizations and has custom pricing.
Note: Free trials and demos are available
Best For
Bonusly serves companies in different verticals. As for company size, Bonusly has been used by companies between 50-5,000 employees.
Worth Checking Out:
Bonusly has automated bots built in that will reward people for things like anniversaries and birthdays.
Why we love it
:
Perceptyx simplifies survey creation; their platform hosts a library of more than 250 benchmarked questions. They also offer translations for over 160 languages and on-demand expert help.
Perceptyx
Review
Perceptyx is a comprehensive employee listening platform. It features 4 solutions that help you drive employee engagement, gain insights into your company culture, promote inclusion, and deliver better experiences at every stage of the employee lifecycle - all while developing capable leaders.
Perceptyx
Customers
Sysco, Dell, 3M, FedEx, Citi, OhioHealth
Perceptyx
Stats
- Founded in 2003
- More than 30% of the Fortune 100 companies use Perceptyx solutions
Perceptyx
Pricing
The pricing of Perceptyx’s solutions isn’t disclosed on their website. Contact their sales team to get a custom quote based on the size and needs of your business.
Best For
Perceptyx mostly caters to large companies.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
15Five’s Engage solution comes with a robust survey tool that can help you accurately measure employee engagement. With 30 templates and 120 questions to select from, you can choose or design surveys that reflect your goals.
15five
Review
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.
15five
Customers
- Hubspot
- Capital One
- Spotify
15five
Stats
- Over 2,000 customers
- 3 unique survey templates and 120 different questions to choose from
- Founded in 2011
15five
Pricing
15Five has three product tiers, Basic, Plus, and Performance. All are billed per person per month on an annual basis.
- Basic is priced at $7 per person per month. It's presented as the essentials package for small companies or large teams within a bigger company.
- Plus is 15Five's recommended package, priced at $14 per person per month. It's designed for organizations of all sizes.
- Performance is their custom plan with even more features on top of the Plus plan. You must get in contact with 15Five to discuss pricing.
Best For
15Five is good for companies of any sized. Their $7 per user per month plan is affordable for small businesses, while large corporations will see plenty of use with more expensive plans.
Worth Checking Out:
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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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