16 Best Employee Engagement Software Tools in 2023
This article is the summation of our years of research on the top Employee Engagement Software category. We demoed and tested dozens of tools to come up with this shortlist, which includes best-fits, pros & cons, screenshots, pricing details, and more.
Browsing for excellent employee engagement software? You've come to the right place.
All too often, we find that companies don’t realize they need an employee engagement tool until it’s too late. Although this is a multi-faceted and complex topic, we have found the right employee engagement platform is critical to support your company’s efforts to keep productivity high and attrition low.
In this guide, we cover the entire landscape of employee engagement solutions. We start with a brief history to provide context, then we share the results of our research and experience. We hope to give you an end-to-end understanding so you can make a confident and informed decision on what to buy. But first, we share a list of some of our favorites and few words about how we decide who's the best among the best.
Top Employee Engagement Solutions
Our selection criteria for this best-of list is based on what we believe is best for our readers. For an in-depth look at how we do that, read this article about our editorial guidelines. Here’s the gist: in addition to doing full-on product demos with each vendor, we use a mix of user research, expert feedback, and in-house knowledge to determine which products are the best.
For this list in particular, we assessed each platform for the features most important for employee engagement software: the ability to encourage and monitor employee engagement, automation features, ease of integration, and ROI.
Encourage and monitor employee engagement
These platforms should be as friendly and approachable as they are powerfully analytical.
We selected platforms that enable engagement by making it easy for employees to share feedback, log complaints, take surveys, and generally share their thoughts. We chose tools that wove this engagement seamlessly into everyday tools like Slack, MS Teams, and email.
It follows that the best tools know what to do with that engagement data! We love analytics dashboards that provide meaningful insights, letting you slice, dice, and serve up info by office, function, or even demographic. This allows HR teams to see how engaged or not each part of the organization is.
Automation features
No one has time for an employee engagement tool that doesn't have built-in automation!
We only select tools that support a scheduled cadence for collecting employee feedback and seamless automation processes that disseminate that information to HR teams and execs through email and/or dashboards.
In my experience onboarding hundreds of employees in businesses of types and sizes, the most important automation feature is integration with employee onboarding systems. Automated check-ins, customized to an individual’s start date, keep the onboarding process running smoothly.
Integrations
Like automation, integration is critical for engagement tools. The link between integration, implementation, and adoption should be key factors in the choice.
Having implemented many of these tools, the integrations that matter most are: employee onboarding so you can time engagement surveys with employee start dates, “employee tech” like email/Slack/teams so you can seamlessly collect information without making someone log into another system, and the HRIS so that you can tie employee data (office, function, demo, etc) back to the engagement data.
Simply put: you need your team to be on board with this adoption, it must make a good first impression. Limited or integrations lead to implementations that are slow and sloppy, often bungled by things like manual data transfers.
ROI
We looked for employee engagement tools that have a track record of delivering employee retention increases so that HR teams can look at the cost savings associated with decreased talent acquisition costs, along with employee productivity gains. These are essential to understand which employee engagement system is best for your organization.
We pride ourselves on strict editorial standards and use a thorough process to vet and review software before we publish it on the site (and in fact, most vendors we have to end up rejecting). This process includes having our team of HR and recruiting experts use the tool themselves, getting user feedback, and then evaluating the vendor on key metrics like their financial health, customer retention, and responsiveness to customer queries. You can read more about how we evaluate vendors here.
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Deel is most known for their global payroll system, but they've expanded their offering a ton to give HR teams a great way to manage and engage colleagues internationally.
PROS
- Built in employee virtual hangouts
- Slack integration for pulse surveys increases engagement
- Segment-able dashboard of employee responses
- One of the best features of Deel is its customer service. They offer 24/7 in-app support and the fastest-in-class onboarding speed of 2-3 days. Users get access to local payroll experts in each jurisdiction, and support is available for contractors facing challenges setting themselves up as an LLC.
- Integrates seamlessly with common platforms like Quickbooks, Bamboo, Greenhouse, and more. They also offer custom integrations to automate and sync processes.
- Self-service approach; tech-enabled features so customers can jump in quickly and easily. Our user researchers found it quite easy to set up: the identity verification process consistently took less than 24 hours, and in some cases, it took mere minutes.
- Automated invoices, which are a breeze to do as long as they’re in English, both on the company and the contractor or employee’s side.
CONS
- No performance management features yet
- Product doesn't have goal tracking and OKRs
- No built in coaching
- Some of Deel’s best and most powerful services, like onboarding automation, appear to be add-ons, which might be too costly for some companies
- There is little to no flexibility when it comes to altering their contracts or service agreements, so many changes would require an addendum.
- There is a $5 fee per payout
- As far as we’ve seen, it’s not possible to generate invoices in another language.
Deel was built in a global, remote first way which shows up in many small ways throughout the product. For example, they have a feature called "connections" which enables colleagues to connect either 1:1 or in groups to get to know each other better. This is very much trying to simulate the interactions and bonds you'd experience in an office. This "connection roulette" is great for meeting new colleagues, or expanding your network within your organization.
Like any good HR tool for employees, you can work with Deel's employee engagement module right from Slack. Employees can receive pulse surveys and answer them, which drastically increases the number who actually do. You can also translate a survey into a slack group around shared interests with the click of a button. Now employees have something to connect on beyond the latest project they're working on.
Overall, it's impressive to see this level of employee experience software built our from a company that was originally started to solve a very different problem (global payroll).
Best For
WorkTango combines engagement surveys, continuous performance management and employee recognition into one powerful platform to help you improve employee experience and by extension, company culture.
PROS
- WorkTango is available in English, Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Korean, although the latter is only available for the performance management module.
- You can add modules as you go and these will be charged on a prorated basis.
CONS
- Billing is only done annually and all plans require a minimum agreement for a 24-month subscription (see our FAQs for more and their pricing page for full details).
- Several users have complained about the rewards redeeming process being not very intuitive.
WorkTango packs features for employee engagement, rewards and recognition, and performance management—all into a single user-friendly platform. Their three-pronged approach allows People teams to use one vendor that seamlessly shares data across all three modules.
To put it in stats, WorkTango sees over 80% of users engaging with their platform on a monthly basis. They also have a customer retention rate of over 90%.
Allianz, Hitachi, Kia Motors, Patagonia
WorkTango has three plans. The pricing of those plans depends on the modules included. For example, you can either purchase Kazoo’s Recognition or Performance solutions individually or have them combined in a single plan (i.e. the full platform). When billed annually, the pricing of Kazoo’s plans is as follows
- Growth: Designed for companies with 100 - 250 employees, this plan costs $5 per employee per month for the Recognition module, $9 per employee per month for the Performance module, and $12.50 per employee per month for the full platform (Recognition + Performance).
- Standard: Designed for companies with 250 - 1000 employees, this plan costs $4.25 per employee per month for the Recognition module, $7.50 per employee per month for the Performance module, and $10.50 per employee per month for the full platform (Recognition + Performance).
- Enterprise: Designed for companies with 1,000 or more employees, this plan has custom pricing. Contact WorkTango's Sales team for a quote.
Best For
Although WorkTango can be used by any company size, from SMBs to Fortune 100 enterprises, their 600+ clients are predominantly mid-sized to small enterprises in knowledge worker industries, such as software & tech, FSI, healthcare, and business services.
Unlike many vendors in the recognition space, Motivosity believes in an employee driven culture which manifests itself in a product focused on peer to peer recognition and engagement versus the top down nature of most incumbent players in this space.
PROS
- Employees can access this system from their phones, desktop, and apps they are in at work such as Teams/Slack
- One platform that combines rewards, recognition, employee engagement, and more
- Built in reporting with insights around potential attrition, most recognized employees, managers that need coaching, etc.
CONS
- Only has dollar (not points) based rewards. Their research shows dollars is more effective, but many companies want points.
- Some users claimed sometimes it can be a bit buggy connecting to Slack to notify people that an appreciation came through.
- It would have broadened the number of gift card options for users to choose from.
- There could have been an easier way to integrate the software with swag stores. For now, you have to transfer funds to a card and then link that card with the swag store, which slows down a bit the process to cash in funds.
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.
Instructure, University of Michigan, WGU, Cotopaxi, HealthEquity
Motivosity’s pricing works per module. “Connect” is included with every license of the other three. They do offer a free trial for each of them and the pricing is as follows:
- Connect: Free
- Recognize: $4 per person per month
- Lead: $5 per person per month
- Listen: $2 per person per month
Best For
Movitosity’s employee recognition software has customers from 10 person startups to 10,000 employee large enterprises. However, their sweet spot tends to be mid market (100-3,000 employee) companies that are looking to take their employee experience to a new level.
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.
PROS
- Intuitive user interface.
- Available in German, English, French, and Spanish.
- Supports Android and iOS.
- Discounts for nonprofit and education organizations.
- 14-day, full-featured free trial.
CONS
- The starter plan is for small businesses that cap out at 50 users.
- Analytics and reporting features are relatively underdeveloped.
- The reward catalog lacks in-person experience and physical goods, and options and focuses on gift cards, cash, or donations.
- Unused bonus funds don’t roll over: users use it or lose it.
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.
Hulu, InVision, SurveyMonkey, Headspace, and more
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.
Aside from the fact that they snatched one of the best possible names for an employee recognition and engagement platform, Kudos® features robust people analytics that provide companies with insights into their employee experience and the overall health of their work culture.
PROS
- Unique, company culture-oriented features are present all across the platform, such as in the way they approach analytics, or on the actual Culture Accelerator module.
- Excellent relation of mobile / desktop functionality. You basically get all the bells and whistles on both versions.
CONS
- Unless you get a demo and start exploring the tool with the help of an insider, we’d say it’s somewhat hard to get a good idea of what features are like, how they work, and even what they do, just from their website alone.
- From our research, we could gather that the points system and how this works can get a bit confusing for some users.
Kudos® is a cloud-based employee recognition and engagement platform. Leveraging the impact of peer-to-peer recognition, values reinforcement, open communication, and actionable feedback, Kudos helps organizations boost engagement, reduce turnover, improve culture, and drive performance.
With robust dashboards and real-time people analytics, Kudos® provides organizations with deep insights and a clear understanding of their workforce.
In addition to software, the team at Kudos® also offers consulting services for companies that need extra help.
KidsPeace, Kronos, DHL, Chewy.com, Make A Wish
With a minimum requirement of 500 employees, Kudos offers pricing starting at $3.25 per user per month. The actual cost varies based on factors such as the number of users and the length of the contract.
Best For
Kudos® is best-suited for companies with large teams, from 250 to thousands of users in practically any country and industry.
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.
PROS
- Leapsome is quite feature-rich; the platform packs modules for employee onboarding, learning management, engagement, performance management, goals tracking and much more.
- The majority of users find Leapsome’s UI to be friendly and easy to navigate.
- There are lots of third party integrations options to choose from, including Slack, which many users appreciate.
- The platform has transparent pricing, and you only pay for the modules you need.
CONS
- There is currently no way to post or upload an image or file into your feedback.
- Since Leapsome can do so many things, you may need some time to get used to it. The implementation process can also take some time.
- There currently isn’t a mobile app that users can download and access Leapsome quickly on-the-go.
- Free 14-day trials are available but you need to book a demo with the sales team first to sign up for one; you can’t do so on your own.
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.
Mercedes Benz, Spotify, Trivago, Eventim, Babbel, Plus Dental
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.
Reward Gateway stands out for combining employee engagement surveys, recognition features, reward options, communication tools, wellness guidance, analytics and more in a single solution.
PROS
- Easy to use for both the employees and the admin users.
- Remarkably good customer support thanks to their 24/7 help desk team and multiple communication channels.
- Varied rewards, including products from Amazon, customizable ecards, and experiences.
- You can purchase modules separately if you prefer it.
- Integration includes HRIS, directory, authentication apps, and collaboration tools. There’s also an open API.
- Remarkably good customer support due to their 24/7 help desk team and multiple communication channels
- Varied rewards including products from Amazon, customizable ecards, and experiences
- You can purchase modules separately if you prefer it
CONS
- The “Reward Gateway for Small Business” version is only available for companies in the UK, Australia, and Ireland.
- The platform’s free trial is only available for the Reward Gateway for Small Business version.
- The reporting feature isn’t very easy to navigate, according to some users.
- Several users noted they had poor experiences using the mobile app to access discounts provided by employers. The app also hasn’t been updated since Dec 9, 2022.
- Users are unable to change employee profiles or create new recognition themselves but have to rely on customer support.
- No free trial
- The “Reward Gateway for Small Business” version is only available for companies in the UK and Australia
Reward Gateway’s employee engagement platform is popular for its flexibility and wealth of features. It offers a range of engagement tools covering rewards, recognition, communication, surveys, well-being, and employee discounts — and gives you the option to purchase all or whichever of those tools as you need.
Another standout point of the engagement platform is its customer service. Businesses will have a dedicated client success manager, an implementation team, and a 24/7/365 employee support staff. According to several users, the support team has been proactive and helpful.
The platform also has flexible layouts. Non-IT users can navigate and modify it pretty easily. While reports are not as user-friendly as other features, the well-being center and segment surveys that support voice feedback are some unique elements it possesses.
Reward Gateway has over 1900 customers, including Ikea, McDonald's, Unilever, and Heineken.
- For companies under 100 employees and are based in the UK, Ireland, or Australia: It costs £6 (around $7.5) per employee per month for an annual subscription.
- For companies with 100+ employees: Undisclosed pricing. You will have to get in touch with their team to get the quote.
Best For
While having customers in 23 countries, Reward Gateway’s customer support is available in English, making it more helpful for English-speaking organizations. Their special scheme for small companies in the UK, Australia, and Ireland also makes it a compelling option for teams with under 100 employees and are based in these countries.
With over 30 science-backed and customizable survey templates, detailed analytics, and more, Culture Amp helps over 6,000 companies keep their employees engaged. Behind their all-in-one employee experience is platform is a team of data experts focused on all things engagement.
PROS
- People science team
- Tons of engagement surveys
CONS
- Their people science plus offering is not available for very small companies
- Enterprise clients might find that they lack some of the integrations and customizations a bigger team needs.
Culture Amp is an all-in-one employee experience platform, that runs the gamut from engagement to performance management to employee development and skills coaching. With over 6,000 customers that include some big names across many industries, it's a tried-and-true solution for any company looking to boost engagement efforts.
Culture Amp 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. While you must contact a representative for exact pricing, as these will vary depending on the modules subscribed, most companies pay between $3 to $9/per person per month.
Best For
Synergita helps company’s dig deep to understand their employees’ performance and company culture. The platform’s natural language processing (NLP) feature allows you to uncover sentiment, while HiPo Score helps you identify top performers.
PROS
- Synergita’s platform is affordable and scalable. On top of that, you get to choose between their modules for employee engagement, performance management, and OKR tracking, or combine them as needed.
- The majority of users find Synergita’s UI to be user-friendly and fairly easy to navigate.
- With the help of natural language processing (NLP), the platform can analyze the tone of your employees’ responses and assign team a sentiment score, which is valuable data you can use to improve the experience of your employees.
CONS
- Several users noted that the reporting module lacks customizations, and speed/performance issues can be experienced with it, particularly when working with larger reports.
- A few users have also reported that the customer support team is slow to respond and resolve issues.
- The platform currently doesn’t offer a mobile app for on-the-go access.
Synergita is a cloud-based solution for employee engagement, recognition, performance management as well as goal setting, and tracking. To achieve all of the above, the platform packs a comprehensive set of features including engagement surveys, AI-powered sentiment analysis, measure culture score, performance reviews, 1:1 meetings, e-communication, peer recognition, HiPo rating, and employee development planning.
Secova, Global Edge, Indegene, American Micro
Synergita has three modules, Engage, Perform, and OKR. When billed annually, those modules are priced as follows:
- Synergita Engage: Synergita’s Engage plan costs $2 per employee per month and includes basic talent information, continuous feedback, rewards & recognition, e-communication, culture score, and employee as well as feedback reports.
- Synergita Perform: For $4 per employee per month, Synergita’s Perform packs lots of features including advanced talent information, smart goals & achievements tracking, metrics import for goals, performance reviews/appraisals, normalization, custom workflows & feedback templates, people & performance reports, 9-box report, strength & weakness report, and reminders as well as notifications.
- Synergita Perform Plus: For $7 per employee per month, Synergita Perform Plus packs everything in Synergita Perform, along with 360-degree feedback, promotion cycle, career aspirations, appraisal letter distribution, skill repository & mapping, HiPo score, employee headcount trends, and employee performance trends.
- Synergita OKR: Synergita’s OKR plan costs $4 per employee per month and includes basic talent information, personal OKR, company/dept OKR, and OKR reports.
Note: Synergita’s modules can be combined together. You can take advantage of the price calculator on their website to find out how much your subscription is going to cost based on the modules you need.
Best For
Synergita can be used by companies big and small, across different industries.
Officevibe is laser-focused on pulse surveys to help managers gain insights into teams' performance and just rolled out a recognition feature — Good Vibes. The platform has a scalable model and a generous free plan with all core features, making it a go-to option for both SMBs and large businesses.
PROS
- Officevibe is easy to use and set up. The platform also has a free plan with a feasible set of employee engagement features: automated pulse surveys, custom surveys, feedback, 1-on-1s, goals & OKRs, and recognition a team of up to 10 users can use.
- Officevibe puts effort into ensuring that feedback is truly anonymous without the manager or anyone with higher access being able to guess who submitted what response by requiring a minimum of 5 responses sent in before the survey manager can access the anonymous feedback.
- Officevibe has a peer-to-peer recognition feature, allowing your employees to praise one another for outstanding work.
- Officevibe built-in surveys cover a wide range of topics.
- Officevibe’s 14-day free trial lets users try all the Officevibe features without asking for their credit card info.
- Several users shared that Officevibe’s integration with Slack brought convenience for employees and improved their survey completion rates.
- Officevibe is easy to use and has a free plan that a team of up to 10 users can use.
- To ensure that feedback is truely anonymous, without the manager, or anyone with higher access being able guess who submitted what response, a minimum of 5 responses need to be sent in before the survey manager is able to access the anonymous feedback.
- The platform has a feature for peer-to-peer recognition, giving your employees the ability to praise one another for outstanding work.
CONS
- Personalized onboarding is available for 100+ users. A dedicated success manager is available for 500+ users.
- Resetting or adjusting OKRs has some limitations, some users noted.
- The Good Vibe lets employees do peer-to-peer recognition that only Good Vibes recipients, senders, and team managers can see. There has yet to be an option for public praise.
- Some users found the 1-on-1 templates and scheduling clunky.
- Some users have reported that Slack integration sometimes malfunctions.
- Officevibe does not include a complete performance management solution among their offerings. They have an OKR tool that lets you set goals but there isn’t a mechanism in place to track those goals or conduct performance reviews.
- There currently isn’t a mobile app that managers and employees can use on the go.
Officevibe is a cloud-based platform that focuses on employee engagement and manager growth. It allows managers to measure employee satisfaction through automated pulse surveys and anonymous feedback, then provides guidance on improving the work environment and culture. In line with those efforts, the employee engagement platform features agency-wide and team reporting so client-based businesses can spontaneously track and compare engagement across clients, departments, and managers.
Lately, the platform has rolled out some new features for manager-to-employee and peer-to-peer recognition. Good Vibes recognition is a simple feature that enables employees to recognized and being recognized for their great work in the form of e-cards. It also provides managers with a report on driving recognition, what’s being celebrated most, and who is at their absolute best.
WeTransfer, Dyson, Bose, PayScale, and Trivago are some of their 8,000 Officevibe customers.
Officevibe has four plans. When billed annually, these are charged as below:
- Free: This plan is free for 1 team with up to 10 users.
- Essential: This plan allows unlimited teams and costs $3.5 per user per month.
- Pro: Designed for larger teams, this plan costs $5 per user per month.
- Business: This plan has custom pricing for companies with over 500 users. Contact Officevibe’s Sales team to get a quote.
Best For
Officevibe focuses on employee engagement, recognition, and OKR management, making it a nice option for medium and large-sized businesses. However, small teams can also benefit from Officevibe’s free plan, which is available for up to 10 users.
With an adoption rate of over 90%, Assembly is a rewards and recognition platform that also allows you to customize and send out all sorts of engagement forms and receive actionable feedback.
PROS
- Explore the platform for free, no need for a credit card or demo
- Great set of features for the price point
- Make your own rewards and even set up a points system with automated incentives
- You have the option to go with a month-to-month plan or a long-term contract. For the latter, you can reach out to their team for a custom deal if it’s a larger team. However, keep in mind that the minimum agreement is 12 months.
CONS
- Coins and points do expire, so sometimes they’ll expire by the end of the month before you can use them, although you get more the next period.
- SSO is only included with some plans. For others, it can be purchased as an add-on.
Assembly started out as an employee rewards product and rapidly grew into a comprehensive platform that facilitates employee engagement, project management, and performance management.
Thanks to customizable forms and workflows, companies can use Assembly to send pulse surveys, conduct routine standups and 1:1s, track progress, automate employee recognition, and much more.
To put it in numbers, Assembly sees around 90% of employees use it on a monthly basis which is evidence that companies are successfully using it to build stronger cultures with more engaged employees.
Cocacola, Quest Nutrition, Nesco Resource, HelloTech, Amazon
Assembly has four plans that are priced as follows:
- Starter: Limited to 10 members, the Starter plan is free of charge and is designed for small teams that are interested in employee recognition.
- Lite: For $2.80 per member per month, billed annually, the Lite plan is designed for teams that want to maximize their employee engagement. This plan is limited to 50 members.
- Standard: For $4.50 per member per month, billed annually, the Standard plan packs all the necessary features for businesses to amplify cross-functional engagement, without any limits on the number of members on board.
- Premium: Designed for large organizations that need a custom and unique program, the Premium plan can accommodate unlimited members. Contact Assembly’s Sales team for a price quote.
Best For
Assembly can be used by companies of all sizes across different verticals.
Empuls is one of the few employee engagement platforms that let you create your own social intranet to keep them abreast of the latest company updates, industry news, and seek feedback via interactive polls and quizzes. Your team can also celebrate milestones using built-in rewards, gift cards, and exclusive employee discounts.
PROS
- Empuls features a modern UI that’s easy to navigate. They also offer plenty of self-help articles to help you get started.
- The platform is quite comprehensive, with tools covering employee communication, engagement surveys, recognition, rewards, and analytics.
- Employees are able to participate in surveys on the go with the help of Empuls’ mobile app available on both iOS and Android devices.
- Their affordable and tiered pricing ensures different size companies can try out the tool and scale up or down as needed. They also offer a 30-day free trial that anyone can sign up for.
CONS
- A few users find the options for rewards rather limited. Several of them are specifically wishing for the inclusion of more Amazon gift cards viable in their countries.
- Employees cannot share their points with each other at this time.
- Once you assign a sub-domain, you cannot change it later.
- Several users have experienced performance speed issues with Empuls’ mobile app.
Empuls helps you create your own social intranet, a place where your employees can communicate with one another, send private messages to individuals or groups, create channels for specific teams or projects, and share files and documents securely. The platform also gives you the capability to create and deploy a variety of surveys covering every stage of their journey so get the insights you need to drive engagement, performance, and create a better workplace culture overall.
Empuls has over 1000 global customers, including Prodevans, Bahwan Cybertek, Magzter, FCA India Automobiles Private Limited, KPIT, Quixy, and more.
Empuls offers three pricing plans. Here are the prices if you choose to pay annually:
- Starter: This plan costs $20/year per employee. It offers features, including rewards and recognition, employee surveys and feedback, social intranet, and reports and analytics.
- Proficient: This plan costs $50/year per employee. It offers features, including white labeling, polls & quizzes, customer support, and everything that is in the Starter plan.
- Enterprise: This is a custom plan that offers everything from Proficient plan, plus custom HRMS integration, multi-region deployment, multi-currency payoffs, and dedicated customer success manager.
Best For
While Empuls offers several competitive features for every business, it’s most suitable for small to medium-sized businesses who want to build a people-first environment.
What makes Quantum Workplace stand out is their hands-on customer service. Once you buy their software, you don’t just get a one-off implementation service that most vendors provide but instead an ongoing support team that helps you make the most of your investment.
PROS
- Easy to use, the user interface is intuitive, you can find what you’re looking for and still see the most important items pinned on top.
- The option to personalize surveys, make them from the best practices templates, or build entirely from scratch.
- The ability to share and review recognition with your teammates in a social newsfeed format. What’s great is that you have the option to make it as detailed and scheduled or as succinct and impromptu as you please.
- An ever-present customer service team. Many users have complimented on their responsiveness.
- Easy to use, the user interface is intuitive, you can find what you’re looking for and still see the most important items pinned on top.
- The option to personalize surveys, make them from the best practices templates, or build entirely from scratch.
- The ability to share and review recognition with your teammates in a social newsfeed format. What’s great is that you have the option to make it as detailed and scheduled or as succinct and impromptu as you please.
- An ever-present customer service team. Many users have complimented on their responsiveness.
CONS
- Many users have expressed their issues with canceling, rescheduling, and the inability to schedule 1-on-1s on a short notice.
- Some users have found the goals feature to be a little confusing to understand because of its extensivity.
- This is a rather unprecedented one, but we found many users wishing for more vibrant colors for the platform.
- Many users have expressed their issues with canceling, rescheduling, and the inability to schedule 1-on-1s on short notice.
- Some users have found the goals feature to be a little confusing to understand because of its extensivity.
- This is a rather unprecedented one, but we found many users wishing for more vibrant colors for the platform.
Quantum Workplace’s employee engagement software is easy to navigate and is highly flexible in terms of customizations. It has three types of engagement tools: Engagement surveys, pulse surveys, and lifecycle surveys.
While the first type of survey is more in-depth and conducted after a long period of time (usually annually), pulse surveys allow teams to quickly survey employees on any topics and get real-time feedback. On the other hand, lifecycle surveys are fully automated and take place during key moments like hiring, onboarding, and retirement.
All the tools are built with research-backed survey design and provide you with multiple ways to slice your data.
Quantum Workplace is used by over 10,000 companies, including Dentsply Sirona, Panera Bread, Fossil Group, DSW, BKD, and Getty Images.
Pricing is not disclosed upfront but you can get it after booking a demo.
Best For
Quantum Workplace is best suited for mid-sized and large enterprises who have greater needs for engagement.
Not only is Peakon a great employee engagement solution, it has a ton of analytical functionality that makes it great for people planning too.
PROS
- Workday Peakon keeps feedback anonymous, which allows employees to give their opinion without fear of reprisal.
- Surveys are easy to navigate, and employees can answer as many questions as they like from the survey—and skip over any that they don’t want to answer.
- Based on responses, Workday Peakon offers suggestions on what you can do to improve employee experience.
CONS
- Peakon doesn't come with the ability to create custom reports. It does, however, offer a variety of pre-built reports that you can use.
- A few users shared that it can be hard to navigate Peakon and find employee profiles at times.
- The platform’s pricing isn’t transparent and there aren’t free trials at this time.
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.
- Duke University
- Lush Cosmetics
- Aldo
- Verizon
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.
For employee engagement: TINYpulse saves you time by providing crystal-clear, actionable insights about your team’s engagement. It allows you to distribute surveys and use the data to identify trends and take appropriate action on them.
PROS
- TINYpulse helps you save time by offering a standard set of questions, so you don’t have to worry about what and how to ask.
- Survey results can be visible to everyone, confidential, or completely anonymous, empowering employees to give honest feedback.
- TINYpulse Engage helps large organizations to create an environment where employees feel heard.
- The Cheers to Peers solution helps in cross-department recognition.
CONS
- The user interface can be a little difficult to get used to for new users and admins.
- If employees do not interact with the tool, you cannot get much out of it. There should be some type of incentive structure to motivate employees to use it.
- You might find some of the existing questions irrelevant to your team or goals.
- The price of the software isn't available on their site, and they don't offer free trials.
TINYpulse Engage lets you send out standardized surveys at the perfect time. While it has a library of over 300 pre-built templates and science-backed questions, you still have the option to choose a different question from the library or write your own.
Surveys are available in five types: Scale 1-5, Boolean, Open Text, Multiple Choice, and Multi-select. You can schedule, pause and remove these surveys at any time. You can make these surveys completely anonymous so your employees feel more comfortable responding honestly. You can even send private messages to respondents to clear any doubts you might have about their feedback.
TINYpulse’s customer list includes Microsoft, First Financial Credit Union, One Click, Wheelhouse DMG, and more.
- Cross-department engagement: You can share your survey results with other team leaders to help them build an improved workflow culture.
- Anonymous feedback: This empowers employees and everyone in the system to share their feedback without hesitation.
- Employee recognition: Acknowledging your employees' efforts from time to time will make them feel appreciated, which helps increase their loyalty and retention.
- Quick decision-making: It offers useful data filters to simplify the process of finding the best work and recognizing it.
- Real-time data: You will receive real-time feedback to start damage control before it starts controlling you.
Best For
TINYpulse is suitable for mid-sized and large businesses to boost their retention rate and relationship building among teams.
15Five provides administrators with access to assessments that collect employee feedback on topics including working from home, and diversity & inclusion. The questions are science-backed and confidential, allowing employees to be candid when giving their feedback.
PROS
- 15Five helps HR leaders run their performance programs from start to finish and make talent decisions based on a 360-degree view of each employee.
- With the help of visual dashboards, HR leaders can access colorful and easy-to-comprehend insights that will make their talent decisions easier.
- The platform is fairly easy to use, comes with a mobile app, has transparent pricing, as well as a 14-day free trial so users can try before they buy.
CONS
- Some users reported experiencing difficulty creating new objectives or connecting existing objectives to parent objectives in the objectives section.
- When you create an engagement survey using 15Five's template, you can only choose from a selection of pre-made categories rather than creating your own.
- The out of the box integration options are quite limited, and a Zapier integration used to be available but is now sunsetted. As an alternative, 15Five does have a public API for users to plug-in custom tools but that requires a bit more work.
15Five’s Engage tool helps HR leaders start meaningful conversations and get actionable feedback from their team members. The tool lets you have an engagement score and measure the response rate. It also lets you view response breakdowns, heatmaps, people involved, and more.
As an administrator, you get access to existing science-backed assessments and an intuitive dashboard that lets you perform weekly check-ins and 1-1 conversations to stay connected with your team. You can also use the High Five feature – a small, quick gesture of appreciation – to drive connectivity and gratitude within your teams.
15Five’s customer base includes Hubspot, Spotify, American Red Cross, Clearbit, Pendo and more.
- Engage: $4 per user per month. Its features include Core engagement surveys, Topic-based assessments, Custom topic-based assessments, Filterable heatmap & analytics, Enterprise-grade security, an Action plan dashboard, and more.
- Perform: $8 per user per month. Its features include Performance reviews, 360º feedback, Talent Matrix, Data insights, Career Paths & Plans, and more.
- Focus: $8 per user per month. Its features include Goal setting with OKRs, OKR chart view, Data insights, Jira & Salesforce Integration, and more.
- Total Platform: $14 per user per month. Its features include everything in other plans, plus DPAs and security questionnaires.
Best For
15Five is more suitable for growing companies and enterprises wanting to ensure that they're getting feedback from all corners of the organization.
What Are the Top Benefits of Employee Engagement Tools?
Here are just a few among many:
Improve Employee Experience: By learning what they care about and representing their perspectives on the company culture, HR teams can build trust and a sense of belonging with each individual and the company. This is the foundation of a positive employee experience.
Trust building starts with the first contact with a recruiter and continues throughout the employee lifecycle. Benefits manifest at every step– when employees feel heard, and their concerns are addressed, it leads to less turnover and higher productivity.
To learn more, check out this article about employee engagement featuring our friend and engagement expert, Hallie Bregman.
Gather Real-Time, Actionable Insights: Unlike an annual survey, most engagement platforms use pulse surveys to gather small amounts of data in frequent intervals. These low-pressure samples ask only one or two questions and have high response rates. Pulse surveys offer real-time input on real-time issues, and the swift turnover turns data into actionable insights that can be deployed immediately.
Focused Strategy: Most employee engagement programs include a built-in playbook for engagement strategy. This is a massive bonus for HR teams who are (probably) already doing a lot (too much?) and don’t have the resources to drive this initiative with the focus it deserves.
The built-in playbooks are built on solid research, which often includes the input of experts in Industrial and Organizational Psychology (IO). You can expect companies in this space to follow best practices for surveys: what to ask, who to ask, how to ask, and how often.
Holistic Talent Management: An employee engagement platform provides a holistic view of your company across the entire employee lifecycle. They give the People Operations team and functional leaders a means to examine and de-bug cultural issues before they become systemic predicaments. This benefit, in particular, requires a mindset that may benefit from more context than we can fit in this article. We encourage you to read more about holistic talent management in this article: 31 Effective and Actionable Employee Engagement Ideas.
Increase Employee Performance: Though performance management platforms are available as standalone tools, some engagement platforms include performance management features. This feature adds the ability to assess the effect of employees' efforts toward company goals and how these efforts compare to their peers.
What are Common Pitfalls When Buying and Using Employee Engagement Solutions?
1. Unreasonable Expectations of Impact: To be effective, the platform must work alongside a distinctive, authentic, and positive company culture. The software can supplement your efforts, but it won't “fix” company-wide problems with engagement. Herrin and Marie agree here, and Marie's experience has borne this out. She reminds us in no uncertain terms that software cannot replace the power of a human connection.
2. Unreasonable Expectations of Adoption: Affecting a company-wide change will take time. Simply put, inspiring behavior change is difficult. After working in an environment that could have been more attentive to their engagement, employees are sometimes distrustful of initiatives that promise brighter days. The process of winning over the skeptics can’t happen overnight, but it can happen. The right time to start, whether with engagement software or other means, is now.
3. Underestimating the Slow Pace of Implementation: Like the plodding, uphill struggle of behavior change, implementation can also move at a painfully sluggish pace. To make it as easy as possible, choose a platform with an open API and/or partnerships with tools you already use. Consider your HR tech stack and daily communication tools: both must be seamlessly connected to your new tool to ensure a seamless transition.
4. Trying to do Too Much, Too Fast: Be conservative and methodical about your rollout game plan. Some vendors offer assistance with this process, but if yours doesn't (or you chose not to follow it), you can orchestrate a successful rollout with good planning and reasonable expectations.
In our experience, creating a schedule with a regular cadence that introduces features slowly is best. We’ve also found it helpful to take feedback from departments across the organization about the rollout order: the insight of your leadership and individual contributors is a massive asset.
How Can You Prove the Business Case for Employee Engagement Tools?
In addition to being our HR Tech Editor, Alison has years of personal experience working in HR.
Early in her career, she saw firsthand how this tool could bring a significant change to a struggling company. She shared this anecdote with us – it’s a “best of” use case.
“I was temping at a large company, and there were obvious signs of trouble on my first day; people were conspicuously unhappy and disengaged due (in part) to a change in leadership. But then, a corporate intervention in the form of employee engagement software arrived.
Initially skeptical, I witnessed a fundamental transformation over about six weeks. People became happier and more focused on work. Among other things, simply giving a voice to people's dissatisfaction was enough to lift people's spirits, and the company's culture took a positive turn.”
Balancing the benefits of a holistic, people-first approach with the requirements of a data-driven work environment is challenging. Still, there are many ways to cite the connections between one and the other.
For example, employers can reap bottom-line benefits like decreased attrition by using employee engagement software. This is achieved by studying the losses and identifying trends that can be accounted for with a shift engagement strategy. To learn more about bottom-line benefits, check out this article highlighting the 9 best employee engagement metrics to measure.
Many HR pros are drawn to the field because they have an innate ability to connect with people and a heartfelt desire to help them. While those skills are critical and should be recognized, they can’t do much when tackling tasks like calculating Return On Investment.
And that is why we created these HR Tech, ROI calculators! This is a tool designed to address both the desire to help and the means to do so.
Here’s a video on calculating the ROI of employee engagement software to address the desire to help and the means to do so. We highly suggest you use the video to the right to understand best how to use this spreadsheet!
How to calculate the ROI from Employee Engagement Software
We also offer a free course on ROI for HR tech for the extra nerdy, deep divers among us (we see you!)
What are the Key Features of Employee Engagement Platforms?
Here are some of the features that should be a “given” for any tool in the marketplace.
- Easy, Daily Engagement: This tool should be effortlessly embedded wherever your teams “talk.” Whichever email or internal comms platform you use, be sure your employee engagement tool fits right in. In addition to being there for the office chit-chat (and please don’t undervalue casual conversation, whether virtual or in person!), some vendors include a dashboard for daily activities, status checks, and up-to-date info. These can be highly customized or generalized depending on team needs.
- Encouragement: Some platforms include performance management and goal-setting features, which are great! But be mindful of when and how you use features like these. While a thriving team will appreciate tools like talent assessment, coaching, and feedback, a team in a slump needs a little TLC before the talent show.
- Peer Recognition: While performance management and goal-setting must be applied with care, our experience says it’s best to apply peer-to-peer recognition liberally! Employee recognition is a staple of engagement. Though employee recognition software is a platform unto itself, elements of this highly effective tactic should be built into your engagement software selection.
- Employee Surveys: Designed for lightweight deliveries and swift returns, frequently-deployed “pulse surveys” can net a significant effect from small servings. They can also focus on topics like “uh, what just happened?” which is helpful for situations where the follow-on is “something needs to be done.” We love these surveys because they are, on the employee end, very low effort, and on the HR end, uniquely and highly informative.
- Collaborative Spaces: Whether for work or play, virtual or in-person, employee engagement platforms can create “spaces” where people connect. They are sometimes built to mimic the look and feel of social media, so workers are naturally drawn to spend time getting to know each other inside and outside of work topics.
What Do You Ask During a Demo With an Employee Engagement Vendor?
When the time comes, you’ll want to understand key concepts regardless of your industry or specific use case. We have had great luck with these questions and suggest you ask them all!
1. What is the core philosophy behind your employee engagement solution?
Some vendors are focused on employee health, others on company health. Some started by operationalizing OKR tracking, others employee recognition. Find the vendor that best aligns philosophically with your organization. You’ll find their product manifests their beliefs in what the most critical aspects of culture are.
2. Do you have these features that we need?
While feature parity exists across many of these vendors, you should keep a list of key must-have features. Ask if they are available or when they will become available.
This is unusual, but we recommend speaking to the customer service rep you’ll be working with. This person will play a massive role in implementing and adopting the platform, so you must have a good rapport.
We recommend this because there are a remarkable number of reviews of employee engagement platforms that specifically mention customer success managers. Given the delicate nature of engagement and change management, it’s no surprise that this person can make or break a customer’s experience.
We’ve done it ourselves, and you should too. It’s not as awkward as it sounds!
3. How does your employee engagement software leverage AI?
AI-enabled products are everywhere, but how the technology is used for employee engagement can vary widely. You should ask how AI is part of the current product and how (or if) the team thinks about using AI to improve their product over time.
HR tech has a complex history with sentiment analysis, the computational understanding of “affective states of subjective information.” This emerging field of AI will likely play an increasingly important role in assessing expressions of emotion, including engagement.
4. Do you have guidance on the rollout?
Ask the vendor for their take on best practices for the rollout, specifically on internal communication. They are experts; their input is precious even if you use another company’s product.
Pro tip: As you introduce your team to the tool, also introduce them to the “why?” behind the decision to use it. Make it clear that they are why. The goal is to improve their work experience by checking in and voicing their concerns.
Between those of us at SSR with experience in rolling out engagement software (on teams of all sizes across the globe), this sentiment meets with universal head nodding.
5. Do you have partnerships or notable integrations with communication tools like Slack or Teams?
Ask all the tech questions! Get to know their capabilities (Open API? Partnerships?) and specifics of their product (Web-based? Mobile apps?). Ask about information security too, and if you’re unsure what to ask, talk to your IT team, engineers, or other techy folks on hand about multi-factor authentication (2FA) and OAuth.
Specifically, ask if your team will have to log into their system to use it. If yes, you may want to consider removing this vendor from your list.
Many factors contribute to workplace stress, including the cumulative annoyance of multiple minor stressors, like creating a profile and managing login information for yet another tool. Avoid this by using a platform that has streamlined integrations.
6. How do you manage visibility and permissions?
Understand the who, what, when, where, and why of visibility on employee feedback. This information should be highly privileged, anonymized by default, and carefully provisioned.
Don’t shy away from asking highly specific questions about minuscule elements of the product's features. The sales rep you speak with should know this product inside and out!
Employee Engagement Software FAQs
What is employee engagement software?
Employee engagement software aims to boost job satisfaction and retention by emphasizing the worker's involvement in company culture and the goals of workers with the organization's mission and culture.
Simply put, this software aims to inspire workers to improve performance. If the link between engagement and performance is unclear to you, it may be helpful to picture the initiatives in action. This article on employee engagement strategies to inspire your workforce can help you do just that.
What is the difference between employee engagement and employee recognition?
Employee recognition is a culture and performance-building method that praises the exceptional performance of individuals. It is one of the many components that affect employee engagement, which is the entire scope of emotional connection employees feel to their employer.
There are software platforms for each; in many cases, one will contain elements of the other. But keep this in mind: employee recognition software can benefit the company’s overall engagement strategy but should not be used as a substitute for engagement software. The opposite is also true: employee engagement software should not be used in place of employee recognition software.
If you feel like we just asked you an SAT question, or if the subject of employee rewards and recognition is of particular interest to you, our blog covers these topics (and many more) in depth. Take a break from the SAT prep with this fun read: nearly 300 ideas for employee award titles.
What are some use cases of employee engagement software?
Broadly, the use case for this software is the analysis of engagement across the employee lifecycle. Engagement starts with a recruiter's first “hello!” and continues to the exit survey. It can carry a new hire through onboarding and provide valuable insight for process improvement. Engagement data and KPIs are interrelated and can be measured and analyzed with these platforms. I would even argue that an employee's engagement can outlast the duration of employment so that it can defend or debase a company’s reputation.
The use case for employee engagement software is also apparent at the company level. This tool is crucial for shaping strategic recommendations and generating actionable steps that encourage engagement. This can improve organizational culture, enhance retention, and increase overall productivity.
When is the Best Time to Use Employee Engagement Software?
Choosing the right time to buy and use this tool takes time and effort. Moran emphasizes that there’s no exact headcount or state of company development, but the right time will be connected to your company’s needs.
She recommends being on the lookout for signs that indicate widespread disengagement. This can include decreased productivity, absenteeism, and complacency.
She adds, “Like with any software purchasing decision, the software should make your life better, easier, and higher-performing in the realm it’s being added to. It should be an enhancement, a value-add, not just an accepted cost.”
Our collective experience at SSR is in keeping with this wisdom.
Our staff has seen a slight trend toward waiting too long. We’ve seen startups blocked by tight budgets, enterprise companies who moved too slowly, and executive buy-in is challenging at any size. But here’s one more trick about timing gleaned from our real-world experience: the “best time” window might be narrow, but it opens and closes slowly.
Looking for a pro tip? Try This For Buying Employee Engagement Software
Some of us have learned the hard way that this is different from the kind of choice you can make (or roll out) alone! Put together a team exclusively focused on selecting and implementing this software.
A cross-functional buying committee is a small team assembled to speak to the needs of the departments they represent. In addition to the benefit of their perspectives, their collective knowledge, skills, and “weight” will help secure the budget you need to support the program.
Equally important is the personal connection to their divisions, amplifying the sense of safety and trust needed for a successful implementation.
Final Advice
There is no silver bullet for engagement or crystal balls for insight, but the right employee engagement software can do the work of some serious magic. Take your time, and remember to use the wisdom of your buying committee! We recommend scheduling product demos with at least three companies.
Whether looking for a better way to gather employee feedback or exploring new ways to support a thriving culture, employee engagement software will do the trick. See examples of an employee engagement action plan (complete with templates!) if you’re too excited to wait for the new software.
We hope this article will help you prepare and that you’ll take your next steps with confidence. Good luck!
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