20 Best Employee Engagement Software Tools for 2025
The results from the latest round of tech tests are in! Let's take a look at which employee engagement software has come out on top.
Employee engagement software allow employers to continuously gauge team culture via employee surveys that gather feedback on various topics and issues. The ultimate goal behind these tools is to boost employee morale, satisfaction, and retention.
We’ve just wrapped up our Q1’s review updates, with a thorough reevaluations of all featured vendors, their pricing, product enhancements, and more. Read on to get all the juicy details. Also, feel free to book a free consultation with one of our HR tech experts if you need help narrowing down the best options for your business.
To select the best employee engagement software, we combine insights from product demos with user feedback, the knowledge of industry experts, and the experience of our in-house team. We think the features distinguishing great engagement software from good ones are ease and anonymity of use, reporting and analytics, and automation.
- Ease and anonymity of use: The best employee engagement platforms make it easy for employees to take surveys and share their feedback regularly from different devices. Tools that integrate with Slack, MS Teams, and email scored particularly high in our selection process. We’ve also spent extra time looking for tools with anonymity settings, which ensure you’re getting the most honest and actionable feedback from your employees.
- Reporting and analytics: The most effective employee engagement software allows you to track engagement metrics, identify trends, and gain insights into employee sentiment. Reports can be generated to measure progress, spot areas of concern, and inform decision-making.
- Automation: We only select employee engagement 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.
Our selection criteria prioritize 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.
Motivosity
Terryberry
ThriveSparrow
Leapsome
Connecteam
Mo
Matter
Profit.co
Quantum Workplace
Bonusly
Reward Gateway
Culture Amp
Kudos
Workleap
Empuls
Assembly
WorkTango
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Motivosity
Motivosity’s product is changing every time we see it! We like that their employee Net Promoter Score survey (eNPS) goes out on the cadence you choose, and their feature-rich tools combine community, recognition and rewards, and employee insights.
PROS
- Easy to use for both employees and managers.
- Employees can access this system from their phones, desktop, and apps they are in at work, such as Teams/Slack.
- Free implementation support is included in all plans.
- Premium support: Help desk, help site, community site, training videos, quarterly QBRs with a dedicated Customer Success rep (for large customers) in every product.
- The average administrator spends 43 minutes per month in this system.
- Robust analytics to measure the impact of their platform as well as measure employee sentiment
- eNPS surveys, template surveys, plus build your own surveys.
- 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 are more effective, but many companies want points.
- Doesn’t allow for as many rules regarding who can give what dollars to whom (for example, a team member could theoretically give 100% of their rewards to a friend each month).
- 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 product’s philosophy is that engagement and recognition should come from the bottom up, not from the top down, which explains why the software is designed to be simple for employees to access via their mobile devices, Slack/Teams, and also easy to use with an interface that looks like a social platform vs. enterprise software.
Motivosity’s solution is based on three pillars: Building Community, Employee Recognition, and Manager Relationships. The platform enables employees to interact with their entire team via a Facebook-like social feed and recognize and reward peers for a job well done, while managers engage with their team members, see where their employees are going above and beyond, and understand and track employee engagement.
What’s also great about Motivosity is that it’s scalable. Users can upgrade plans and add additional products or team members as they grow.
Instructure, University of Michigan, WGU, Cotopaxi, HealthEquity, DF Credit Union.
Motivosity costs $4 per person per month for the Recognition & Rewards package and $2 per person per month for the Employee Insights product.
Best For
Movitosity works best for mid-market (75-750 employees) companies looking to take their employee experience to a new level.
I used Motivosity for employee engagement, which comprised a small portion of my weekly workflow. We primarily used it to increase connectivity among employees and promote appreciation and engagement. This was particularly relevant for our performance-driven roles in sales, customer service, and account management, where there was an emphasis on making extra efforts for better results. We used it in short intervals when team milestones were achieved or initiatives were launched.
- Motivosity has a user-friendly UI that makes employee engagement easy to understand.
- It is helpful for small businesses that lack a framework for employee engagement.
- Motivosity improves connectivity among employees in businesses with multiple locations.
I used Motivosity at a previous employer. I only had the opportunity to use it for about three months, as we needed a way to increase and manage employee engagement. Before implementing this system, we relied exclusively on survey-driven initiatives. Motivosity was intended to bridge the gap in these engagement initiatives and provide a more consistent way to foster engagement.
- Motivosity is too expensive for the features it offers; I believe there are cheaper options for enterprises looking to invest more in employee engagement.
- Some of Motivosity's fringe features can be confusing to use or lack clear use cases.
- Its reporting capabilities are not as advanced as many competitors.
Motivosity offers a very user-friendly UI that is easy for any employee to use and understand, unlike competitors that often require more administrative management to oversee user experience. It also has features that create community-like interactions, which is especially helpful for companies without other platforms for employee interaction, particularly remote or multi-location companies.
- How much are you willing to invest in employee engagement?
- How much do you already spend on engagement initiatives?
- What is the size of your business, and do you have multiple locations?
- How valuable are employee engagement and rewards for your type of company (e.g., sales-heavy roles)?
Motivosity has been investing in improving user experience, aiming to make it feel seamless for employees.
Motivosity is good for sales-driven or performance-driven organizations.
Motivosity is not good for large enterprises that need more robust and horizontally integrated systems.
Terryberry
Terryberry offers a comprehensive employee engagement solution that integrates recognition, wellness, and engagement measurement into one platform. With over a century of experience, their all-in-one approach helps mid-market organizations streamline their engagement initiatives while providing powerful analytics and insights, making them an excellent choice for companies looking to consolidate their employee experience programs.
PROS
- Advanced analytics toolkit featuring custom pulse surveys, template library, and demographic filtering for data-driven decision-making
- Comprehensive well-being features, including mental health resources, physical activity tracking, and social challenges tied to rewards
- Strategic measurement tools tracking engagement impact on retention, satisfaction, and organizational performance
- Complete integration between engagement initiatives, recognition moments, and reward fulfillment
- Mobile-first design with an intuitive interface
- They recently added Amazon Business to their rewards catalog— now U.S. users can redeem points for a massive variety of items.
- Customized physical goods as employee rewards
- Wide range of employee engagement features, including rewards, incentives, and a wellness tracker.
- Customer support and account management at Terryberry are quite good. Their reps stand out for being very responsive and attentive, which is evidenced by some of the client testimonials we read.
- The implementation process, while six weeks long, is quite comprehensive, and you get tons of help along the way. For instance, the last two weeks consist of internal and customer testing, as well as user training.
CONS
- No open API is currently available, though it's on the development roadmap
- Limited free trial options for testing the platform
- It may be complex for smaller organizations with basic engagement needs
- Interface design could benefit from modernization to match competitor offerings
- While Terryberry is easy to use, its design could look more modern and sleek.
- No open API, but on the roadmap for the end of 2023.
- No free trial at the moment.
Terryberry's engagement platform stands out for its cohesive and well-rounded approach to employee experience, combining recognition, rewards, and wellness initiatives in one system. During our recent 2024 demo, we observed how the platform effectively unites multiple engagement tools while maintaining clear visibility into program participation and cultural impact.
The platform's survey capabilities for gathering employee feedback impressed us during our evaluation. The manager dashboards provide comprehensive insights into recognition program adoption and value alignment, a feature that particularly resonated with HR leaders we consulted. We found the built-in wellbeing features effectively support both physical and mental health through team challenges and activity tracking, complemented by flexible reward options that can be tied to wellness achievements.
In our conversation with their product team, they highlighted how the platform's analytics suite has evolved to provide deeper insights into engagement metrics. We observed how organizations can track the correlation between recognition activities and employee satisfaction, providing actionable data for program optimization. The pulse survey functionality, complete with template libraries and demographic filtering, enables companies to gather targeted feedback and measure engagement trends over time.
We were also particularly impressed by how the platform integrates milestone programs with broader engagement initiatives. The system automatically triggers communications and recognition moments while maintaining personalization through configurable workflows. Lastly, while the interface could be modernized, the mobile-first design facilitates engagement across hybrid and remote workforces.
Terryberry serves over 40,000 clients worldwide, including notable names like Tesco, Epsilon, General Motors, and Trilogy Health.
Terryberry offers flexible pricing models tailored to each organization's engagement needs. Their basic subscription plans start at approximately $3 per employee receiving an award. To get an accurate quote, it's best to contact their sales team directly.
Pricing factors include:
- Subscription costs based on selected engagement features
- One-time setup fees
- Annual administration fees calculated by total employee headcount and program utilization
Best For
Terryberry's engagement platform is optimized for mid-market organizations wanting to consolidate their recognition and engagement programs into a single, measurable solution. It particularly serves companies looking to eliminate the complexity of managing multiple vendors while maintaining program effectiveness. The platform's integrated approach makes it ideal for HR teams seeking to connect recognition moments with engagement initiatives and wellness programs.
ThriveSparrow
ThriveSparrow stood out as an employee engagement tool with solid AI-driven insights, flexible survey distribution, and strong integration capabilities throughout our tech tests. Its recurring pulse surveys, sentiment analysis, and structured action plans are a big help for HR teams to gather and act on employee feedback efficiently.
PROS
- Highly customizable pulse surveys with pre-built templates and flexible anonymity settings.
- AI-powered sentiment analysis auto-categorizes employee feedback and highlights key concerns.
- Heat map visualization makes it easy to track engagement trends by department, location, or tenure.
- Action Plans help HR teams document, assign, and track engagement initiatives.
- Strong integration options with HRMS platforms and API support.
- Offers deep customization, allowing full control over survey questions, rating scales, and visibility settings.
- AI-powered sentiment analysis categorizes qualitative responses into key themes and presents insights in a visually digestible format.
- Granular data filtering by department, tenure, or location for precise trend analysis.
- Transparent pricing starting at $2 per user per month.
- Strong integration capabilities.
CONS
- Some integrations may incur additional costs.
- On-the-go usability is not yet available for HR users.
- Relatively new to the market so may lack experience compared to more established competitors.
- Some integrations may require an additional cost.
- No dedicated mobile app for admins.
- As a relatively new product, ThriveSparrow may not have the experience of more established vendors.
ThriveSparrow’s employee engagement tool offers a highly customizable, AI-powered approach to gathering and acting on employee feedback.
During testing, we found its survey system particularly well-designed, featuring pre-built templates for engagement, leadership, and culture, along with flexible customization options. Organizations can adjust anonymity settings, select distribution channels (Slack, MS Teams, email, SMS), and automate check-ins on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis—whatever suits them best.
One of our favorite features is its AI-powered sentiment analysis, which processes open-ended responses and categorizes them into key themes like leadership, communication, and workload. In our test, negative feedback on “management style” was automatically flagged, helping us quickly pinpoint leadership concerns. The heat map visualization made it easy to spot trends by department, location, or tenure, a functionality that compares well with platforms like Quantum Workplace, which also offers AI-driven sentiment tracking.
For organizations that struggle to turn feedback into action, the Action Plans feature provides a structured approach to engagement efforts. We tested this by setting up a plan to improve leadership communication, assigning tasks to managers, and setting deadlines. The system tracked action items in an interactive dashboard, making it easy to monitor progress and ensure accountability.
However, ThriveSparrow is relatively new in the market, (founded in February 2020), which may mean they might not have the same level of experience as more established companies such as TerryBerry (1918) or Quantum Workplace (2002).
Another thing we noticed is that ThriveSparrow actually does offer a free trial, but it wasn't immediately clear from their pricing page. We only found it after doing a quick search for “ThriveSparrow free trial” on Google, which led us right to their sign-up form. Also, it's worth mentioning that some integrations might cost extra, depending on your contract, so definitely double-check that before signing up.
Lastly, while employees can easily complete surveys on mobile devices, on-the-go usability is not available for HR users just yet. They still get to rely on a desktop to access the engagement dashboard.
ThriveSparrow's client list includes major companies such as Tropicana, Tesla, and Ikea, though the total number of companies using the software remains undisclosed.
ThriveSparrow's Engage module costs $3 per employee per month, billed annually. It includes automated survey scheduling, multilingual support, AI-driven text insights with sentiment analysis, action plans, and eNPS analytics.
Best For
ThriveSparrow is a strong choice for companies looking for deep employee engagement analytics, flexible survey distribution, and structured action planning.
I use ThriveSparrow to gather feedback from employees, which helps improve our service delivery. Additionally, I integrate the tool with WhatsApp to automate the collection of reviews from employees in different regions we operate in. The tool's chat system also enables real-time feedback collection from clients who visit our pages, enhancing our responsiveness and engagement.
I appreciate the user-friendly interface of ThriveSparrow, which makes navigation straightforward. The pricing is affordable, scaling reasonably with the number of users, which suits our budgetary constraints. Furthermore, I value the tool's ease of integration with other live chat tools, streamlining the collection of reviews directly from chat interactions.
Our organization purchased ThriveSparrow to enhance our feedback collection and review processes, aiming to improve service delivery within our human resources sector. Additionally, it facilitates the collection of client feedback, particularly useful when integrated with employee automation tools. I have been using this tool for over three years, during which it has significantly raised the standards of talent acquisition management at our company.
The customer care team is slow to respond to technical queries via live chat, which can be frustrating. The tool supports very limited payment options, complicating the subscription process. Additionally, some integrations, such as with Intercom, do not function properly, limiting its utility.
ThriveSparrow offers more competitive pricing compared to other tools I have evaluated, making it a cost-effective choice for our needs.
Potential buyers should carefully consider the pricing and the tool's capabilities relative to their specific needs before making a purchase. ThriveSparrow is particularly well-suited for HR departments focused on collecting employee feedback and customer reviews. Assess whether the tool's features align with your organizational requirements to ensure it adds value.
Over time, ThriveSparrow has been enhanced with a faster-loading browser extension, improving ease of use and accessibility. This development demonstrates the company's commitment to evolving in response to user feedback and technological advancements.
This tool is especially beneficial for human resource managers who need to manage and improve internal feedback mechanisms efficiently.
ThriveSparrow is not well-suited for support operators, as it lacks specific functionalities tailored to optimizing support operations.
Leapsome
Leapsome is highly flexible; you can choose to build on its best-practice surveys and questionnaires developed by psychologists or customize everything — from questions to timelines and anonymity settings.
PROS
- Leapsome is feature-rich and easy to use.
- Through anonymous surveys, managers can collect honest feedback to understand employee sentiment.
- Users appreciate how Leapsome centralizes feedback and reviews in one place.
- The notifications and reminders ensure tasks aren’t neglected.
- The visual charts, graphs, and analytics in Leapsome help you understand feedback and performance data.
- 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
- Users can’t include images or files in feedback.
- Leapsome’s wide range of features does mean a learning curve and lengthy implementation.
- There isn’t a mobile app for quick access on the go.
- Free trials require a sales demo to access.
- 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.
Leapsome offers a host of features dedicated to measuring and improving employee engagement. Through easy-to-create surveys featuring pre-made templates based on scientific research, you can regularly collect anonymous or identified feedback from your employees and gain valuable insights.
Among the Leapsome features, what stood out for us is its advanced sentiment analysis. Using AI and machine learning, the software can analyze open-ended survey responses to uncover hidden insights and common themes. It automatically scores the sentiment of qualitative feedback to reveal how employees truly feel. This level of analysis provides the actionable data you need to tackle the biggest engagement challenges.
Leapsome also enables the segmentation of survey results by factors like tenure, team, and manager. By spotlighting correlations between engagement drivers and performance or turnover, you can develop targeted strategies for improving the culture at your organization. Selective sharing options allow managers to view trends and feedback relevant to their teams without compromising anonymity.
With its focus on survey customization, automated deployment, advanced analytics, and anonymous follow-up dialogues, Leapsome combines comprehensive feedback collection with the tools to turn insights into positive action. If you’re seeking to measure employee experience and make positive changes to workplace culture, we think Leapsome is worth checking out.
Over 1,500 companies use Leapsome, including Mercedes Benz, Spotify, Trivago, Eventim, and Babbel.
The starting price for Leapsome is $7 per user per month with an annual billing plan. A 14-day free trial is available.
Best For
Leapsome is suitable for medium-to-large companies across different verticals.
The tool has allowed them to create a cohesive performance management system, foster engagement, and support continuous learning and development, which are critical for building a high-performing organization. The client uses it for performance management, 360-degree feedback, employee engagement, pulse surveys, and onboarding of new employees.
The OKR functionality has increased collaboration and transparency, especially for remote teams. They leverage the data analytics and reporting modules for performance tracking, identifying training needs, and monitoring employee engagement and satisfaction. The client also uses Leapsome for employee recognition and rewards to increase retention.
The client appreciated the simple and intuitive interface, making it easy for both employees and managers to navigate. The platform’s design minimizes the learning curve, making it quick to adopt for teams of all sizes, which is a plus for a growing company.
The ability to integrate goal-setting (OKRs), continuous feedback, and performance reviews was highly valued. Another advantage was the ability to create custom review cycles, run 360-degree feedback, and effectively track performance.
Leapsome was purchased to streamline performance management, OKR tracking, and employee engagement. It allowed my client to align team and individual goals with the organization’s objectives through goal-setting frameworks like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). It increased visibility and tracking to ensure that everyone was working toward measurable outcomes.
Leapsome provided customizable performance review cycles, including 360-degree feedback, continuous reviews, and self-assessments, which helped tailor reviews to organizational needs and culture. The ability to engage employees through surveys and gather real-time feedback was also a key selling point. The learning and development tools were valuable, although the client was using an existing tool at the time and had not yet begun leveraging this aspect of the platform.
There are limitations in customization for features like performance review templates and feedback processes, which could benefit from more flexibility. Companies with unique organizational structures or processes may find it challenging to tailor every aspect to their needs.
The learning curve for advanced features, such as custom analytics or deep performance tracking, can be difficult to fully grasp and utilize. The per-user pricing model and modular nature of the platform can become cost-prohibitive as the organization scales, which is interesting since scalability is also a pro, but the cost structure could be more considerate of hyper-growth companies.
Leapsome offers a modular approach, allowing companies to choose and pay only for the features they need, offering flexibility that many competitors lack. While some competitors provide all-in-one solutions that can be less customizable, Leapsome allows companies to avoid paying for unnecessary features.
Unlike many performance management platforms that emphasize periodic reviews, Leapsome strongly encourages a culture of continuous feedback and recognition, making it ideal for companies that prioritize ongoing development.
Competitors like Lattice and 15Five offer feedback options, but Leapsome’s seamless integration of real-time feedback and performance tracking helps embed feedback as a constant part of the employee experience.
Companies should clearly define the must-have versus nice-to-have features and consider how their future growth could impact their needs. Customization options for performance cycles, feedback, and surveys are essential.
Organizations should evaluate their data requirements, such as the need for deep data analysis versus standard performance, goal, and engagement tracking. Ease of use for both users and administrators, including integration with existing tools and the level of skill required for customization, should also be key considerations.
Leapsome initially focused on performance management and employee engagement. Over time, it expanded to include a full suite of tools covering goal setting (OKRs), continuous feedback, learning and development, and detailed reporting and analytics.
Recognizing that different companies have unique processes, Leapsome introduced greater customization options. Users can now tailor performance review cycles, feedback forms, and learning paths to meet their specific organizational needs.
Leapsome is ideal for tech companies and startups that are scaling, especially those with a feedback-rich culture. It’s also well-suited for medium-sized companies looking for scalability, as well as companies focused on learning and development and personal learning tracks for employees.
Leapsome may not be a good fit for budget-constrained small businesses. It is also not ideal for companies that are not interested in creating a culture of continuous feedback, or for highly hierarchical, traditional companies like those in banking. Industries with minimal need for data-driven HR decisions may not benefit from the platform’s extensive capabilities.
Connecteam
Connecteam’s platform is mobile-first, user-friendly, and packed with tools to drive engagement, including surveys, polls, rewards, recognition, chat, news feed, skills development courses, and much more.
PROS
- Connecteam’s platform is user-friendly and mobile-first, designed with deskless workers in mind.
- The platform covers a wide range of features for team management, communication, training, and engagement.
- The pricing of all modules is transparent, with free plans for small businesses.
- There’s a 14-day free trial you can sign up for, no credit card is needed.
- One of the only fully-mobile HR tech tools for deskless workers
- Very adequately-priced for all it entails, SMB-friendly
- Quite open to feedback, having implemented user suggestions as features in the past.
CONS
- It can take some time to fully get the hang of the platform because of how many features there are.
- Although the platform’s scalability is a good thing, many essential features are locked behind the higher pricing tiers.
- The surveys module is offered as part of the communication hub, while the rewards, recognition, and training modules are under the HR & skills hub, which means to use all modules together fully, you may need to purchase subscriptions to both hubs.
- In the communication hub, the app offers no confirmation that messages were sent and/or seen.
- Certain features that some teams consider essential, such as GPS-tracking, are only available in the higher-tier pricing plans.
Connecteam offers a series of employee-centric tools for communication, training, and Ops management. We’ve trialed their employee engagement features for this review and are happy to report that there’s a lot to like. First up is the surveys and live polls functionality, which you can access from the Communication hub in the left side panel. Through it, you can gather insights and opinions from team members on various topics. The platform also excels at keeping teams informed in real-time. Through the Updates module (also accessed through the Communication hub), employees can easily get relevant company updates, share insights, and discuss best practices from the field.
Another thing we like about Connecteam is its focus on employee recognition, which isn’t something we usually find on deskless employee management platforms. There’s a dedicated space within Connecteam where managers can showcase the achievements of exceptional team members, celebrate special occasions, and acknowledge personal milestones through rewards, awards, and shout-outs.
Connecteam also prioritizes professional growth, offering features that support employees from onboarding to ongoing skill development. New employees can be efficiently trained and connected through the platform's digital onboarding process, while mobile-first learning enables personal improvement at every stage of an employee's journey. Additionally, Connecteam's customized information hub keeps teams engaged and informed, ensuring they have access to the resources they need to succeed.
Finally, Connecteam streamlines business operations, making it easy to assign shifts according to employee availability, manage tasks remotely, and submit requests from the field. The platform even allows for the promotion of activities and events, further raising morale and fostering a sense of community within the organization.
Connecteam is used by 36,000+ businesses, including Subway, Hilton, and Volvo.
Connecteam offers 3 hubs: Operations, Communications, and HR & Skills. Each hub has various plans from $29 to $99 per month for 30 users, and a free plan for under 10 users.
Best For
Connecteam’s employee engagement tool is best for midsize businesses with deskless teams.
We use Connecteam to monitor shift statuses and changes, how many hours employees were working a week, and to provide site-wide communications to our team. We've always leveraged the chat option to optimize employee engagement, the location during check-ins for quality assurance, and our financials.
I specifically do most of the report extractions to visualize how many employees are onsite per day directly and to support forecasted staffing plans.
I love the easy employee and administrator interface, so the training guidelines are easy. I value the reporting features, which make collecting data seamless. Also, Connecteam has an app, so it's useful for those who leverage their phones for timekeeping and the chat system for direct contact with employees.
We initially purchased Connecteam to assist with our onsite hourly personnel. Their export template aligned perfectly with our corporate timesheet system, Unanet, so it was a seamless integration to ensure our invoices were accurate for billing.
We used Connecteam for 3 years, leveraging the personnel allocated to each shift, the seamless check-in process, and the direct communication tool to reach onsite management on time. Since the onsite Program Managers weren't always next to their email, they could view the employees' questions and check-ins from their phones for fast turnarounds with responses.
The only con I could think of is that sometimes the site glitches, and their customer service team is overseas, so the timezones can result in delayed support.
It's very affordable, supportive of customer service, and easy to use. Monthly costs are not driven per license, and it's better with allocating funding or keeping on-site timesheets.
Connecteam is easy to integrate for employers who staff employees who are shift workers or hourly personnel working outside of the primary headquarters. It's best to implement it after a pay period so you can track the hours worked with the provided pay schedule.
Monitoring is also included, where you can track the employees' location when they're checking in to prevent any pay discrepancies. It's an amazing, user-friendly system to implement into a business.
Yes, Connecteam’s chat feature and app support have surely evolved. Their response time has been fast, fluid, and very supportive.
Small or large organizations, hourly workers, onsite personnel, and companies who staff shift workers can benefit from Connecteam.
I don't believe full-time staff workers would benefit much from Connecteam since they're exempt. There's not much need to track the personnel and their worksites.
Mo
Mo drives morale and engagement through its easy-to-understand rewards system, peer nominations, and an AI Assistant that ensures appreciation never falls through the cracks.
PROS
- User-friendly UI with a wide range of vouchers available.
- System auto-nudges employees to recognize achievements if recognition is overdue.
- Reasonable pricing with no rewards fees.
- Free onboarding and implementation support.
- Users can access the platform in 12 languages.
- Android and iOS mobile apps are available for on-the-go access.
- UI is easy to navigate, and users seem to appreciate the varied choice of gift cards they can offer through the platform.
- Transparent pricing starting from $2.25/user/month with no rewards fees.
- Free onboarding and implementation support for all users.
- Robust and feature-rich mobile applications.
- Available in 12 languages and growing.
CONS
- Base plan does not offer HRIS integration. Additional implementation fees may apply for Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations.
- The availability of customer support is limited to weekdays from 9 AM to 5 PM GMT.
- There aren’t free trials or free plans that you can sign up for at this time.
- HRIS integration absent in Base plan. Possible implementation fee for Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations.
- The customer support hours are limited to weekdays, 9 AM - 5 PM GMT.
Mo’s platform takes on employee engagement through meaningful rewards and recognition. At its core, you’ll find Moments and Boosts - which are simple yet effective features engineered to fuel morale. Managers can easily create Moments to praise team or individual accomplishments, pairing the shout-outs with gift cards or custom rewards. Boosts, on the other hand, are automations that ensure day-to-day kudos are never forgotten.
We appreciate Mo’s attention to different preferences through its varied and customizable reward options. We also like how straightforward their rewards program is; if a user puts in $5 to recognize someone, the recipient gets $5 to redeem. Having a clear dollar value to rewards is great for a few reasons: it’s simpler for users to understand (as opposed to confusing point-based systems), and it also makes budget tracking infinitely easier.
Mo also promotes inclusiveness in its peer-to-peer nomination features, which give employees the ability to actively recognize one another. This not only makes employees feel more empowered but also contributes to a positive and supportive company culture.
To complement its core offering, Mo recently introduced its AI-powered Assistant tool, which provides customized recommendations on actions leaders can take to boost engagement further. For example, it will automatically remind managers of upcoming employee milestones like birthdays and work anniversaries. Or if someone hasn’t given praise to a deserving co-worker in a while, the Assistant will gently prompt them to send some appreciation.
Mo counts over 58,000 users using its platform, including SGN, The O2, NHS, Aspen, William Hill, and SHL.
Mo’s pricing starts at $2.25 per user per month. More specifically, the employee engagement tool offers 3 plans: Appreciate at $2.25/user/month for basic recognition, Engage at $4.5/user/month adding awards and advanced reporting, and Transform with custom pricing for large companies including full features, program design, and premium support.
Best For
Mo is suitable for companies of all sizes looking to drive employee engagement through rewards and recognition.
Matter
Matter is unique in that its engagement tool works right inside Slack and Teams. For a plugin-type tool, it’s notable that it enables companies to automatically reward survey completions with coins, which employees can later redeem for gift cards, donations, and numerous other rewards.
PROS
- Option to reward survey completions with redeemable Matter coins.
- Pulse Survey delivered and responded to right in Slack or MS Teams.
- Pulse Surveys use real-time data from a library of 100 questions to provide insights on cultural categories.
- Survey recipients won't see the same question twice within 90 days.
- Real-time anonymous feedback with custom notifications.
- Affordable and transparent plans with discounts for non-profits and schools.
- Option to reward survey completions with redeemable Matter coins.
- Pulse Survey delivered and responded to right in Slack or MS Teams.
- Pulse Surveys use real-time data from a library of 100 questions to provide insights on cultural categories.
- Survey recipients won't see the same question twice within 90 days.
- Real-time anonymous feedback with custom notifications.
- Affordable and transparent plans with discounts for non-profits and schools.
CONS
- To use Matter, you must have either Slack or Teams installed.
- At this time, the vendor doesn't allow the Pulse Survey questions to be editable.
- Pulse surveys are only available on the highest-priced plan.
- To use Matter, you must have either Slack or Teams installed.
- At this time, the vendor doesn't allow the Pulse Survey questions to be editable.
- Pulse surveys are only available on the highest-priced plan.
If you’re eyeing a solution that effectively engages employees within Teams or Slack, you wouldn’t want to miss out on Matter. With this tool, you can deliver your Pulse Surveys right within Slack or Teams so your employees can finish them within either of these communications platforms—no need to log in to or learn a separate app.
But that’s only part of the reasons we love this employee engagement tool. Another reason is its unique approach to encouraging survey participation. Matter is the first solution we've found that rewards completed surveys with "Matter coins," which can be redeemed for gift cards, donations, or custom company rewards. We can imagine a notable difference in how team members engage with surveys with this feature contribution.
Another big plus we found was how it handled feedback and updates. We could choose who to give anonymous feedback right away, and there's a weekly digest of company stats shared privately through Slack or Teams, which is a great way to stay connected and informed.
Matter’s Pulse Surveys provides a library of 100 questions across multiple engagement categories; however, we're hoping for a bit more flexibility here. As of now, there’s no way to edit the questions. You’ll have to stick with what the system has built out instead.
Also, a word of caution for those considering the free plan of this engagement tool: the plan barely touches the survey element and focuses mostly on recognition. It also limits historical analytics data to only 30 days. To access Matter’s pulse surveys, you'll need to upgrade to the highest-priced plan.
4,700+ organizations, including SIEMENS, Microsoft, and Sephora.
Matter pricing ranges from $0 to $5 monthly, with a 30-day free trial (no credit card required).
Best For
Matter’s employee engagement software is best for SMBs seeking a solution to engage employees within Teams or Slack.
Profit.co
With Profit.co, you can quickly conduct anonymous pulse surveys using the built-in survey builder, review the results, and see how your team members feel about their workplace. To boost engagement further, the platform also facilitates 1:1 meetings, rewards, and recognition.
PROS
- The surveys on Profit.co are customizable, anonymous, and can be deployed in multiple languages.
- Their engagement model is enhanced with features for 1:1 meetings and employee recognition.
- The support team is available 24/7 via phone and chat.
- There’s a free 30-day trial anyone can sign up for.
- The platform has tutorials available that walk you through how to use the system and guide your team onto the platform. There are also examples of different types of goals, objectives and KPIs, so it's easy to see how they work in practice.
- Profit.co offers an intuitive interface that makes it easy for teams to set goals, collaborate and track progress. The tool allows users to set up OKRs for each team member, which can be done fairly fast with the help of step-by-step instructions.
- Users can choose from several pre-defined KPIs that range from sales to customer satisfaction, which helps them visualize their progress over time with just one glance at their dashboard.
CONS
- The employee engagement module is only offered as an add-on. To use it, you need to purchase either the OKR or performance management module.
- The pricing isn’t publicly available, which means you need to book a demo to get an estimate.
- There’s a bit of a learning curve simply because of how many features there are. Mastering them all does take some time.
- While Profit.co offers a free plan for up to five users, it has limited features. The only way to unlock more features is by upgrading to another plan.
- One complaint about Profit.co is that there are too many features in one platform. While this might sound like a good thing at first glance, it can actually be frustrating for users who want something simple and straightforward – especially if they’re new to OKRs and performance management.
- As an administrator, you can create and edit tasks and goals. However, there’s no way to edit or upload tasks or goals on a mass scale. For example, if you want to change the title or description for every task, then you’ll have to manually do it one by one.
Profit.co's employee engagement module is designed to complement their flagship offering for OKR and performance management. We’ve given it a go and liked how easy it was to create and run pulse surveys. You can have these surveys be in different languages and choose to make them anonymous so employees feel at ease giving honest feedback. Once submissions are in, the built-in dashboards help you get quick insights into the results, while the export functionality allows for deeper analysis in external tools.
Profit.co also emphasizes the importance of regular 1:1 meetings between managers and their direct reports to stay connected and course-correct as needed. The platform facilitates this by allowing managers to schedule and define an agenda framework and employees to plan discussion points, review their work and results, and openly discuss any roadblocks they're facing.
Recognizing and appreciating employee accomplishments is another key strength of Profit.co. The Awards feature allows managers to celebrate their team's successes in the context of specific achievements and have this recognition showcased publicly to boost morale and motivation. And for an added element of friendly competition, Profit.co's Leader Board helps you highlight top performers across the organization, further igniting performance.
Overall, Profit.co delivers a thoughtfully designed platform that touches on the key drivers of employee engagement - from clear goal-setting and consistent feedback to recognition and organic team interactions. If you’re looking for a holistic platform to track OKRs, manage performance, and drive engagement, we highly recommend checking Profit.co out.
Over 1,000 businesses use Profit.co, including SunTec, Altheo, and CWB Financial Group.
Profit.co offers a 30-day free trial and pricing starts at $7 per user per month, billed annually.
Best For
Profit.co is suitable for mid-size companies looking for an OKR and performance management platform with employee engagement features.
Quantum Workplace
Quantum Workplace’s platform is expert-designed and comprehensive. Its validated survey, expansive benchmarks, and action-oriented tools make it a powerful solution for measuring and improving employee engagement.
PROS
- Easy to use and intuitive interface; you can find what you’re looking for and still see the most important items pinned on top.
- You can personalize surveys, make them from the best practices templates, or build them entirely from scratch.
- You can share, review recognition with your teammates in a social newsfeed format, and make it as detailed and scheduled or as succinct and impromptu as you please.
- Ever-present customer service team. Many users have complimented them 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
- The platform lacks anonymity options, with feedback being visible to peers/colleagues.
- Navigation can be confusing at times, particularly when trying to find past goals/feedback.
- The platform could benefit from more customization options, like adding more details when updating goals or customizing feedback questions.
- 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. You can design surveys using the platform's library of validated, research-backed questions that employ a standardized Likert scale to ensure high-quality results. Open-ended questions are also integrated to gather examples of what employees think your company should start, stop, or continue doing.
Once survey data is collected, the built-in reporting and analytics provide insights into overall trends as well as breakdowns by team and demographic. Additionally, Quantum Workplace provides unparalleled benchmark data from over 10,000 organizations to add context to results.
Beyond measurement, the platform enables you to take action on engagement data through features like the action planning library, personalized employee engagement reports with recommendations and lightweight one-on-one tools for managers. The platform also makes it easy to collect data through multiple access options like desktop, kiosk, and SMS text surveys. This allows you to reach every employee, including dispersed and deskless teams.
There are lots of neat automation in place: the automated invitations and reminders significantly reduce survey administration work for HR teams, while the AI-powered Narrative Insights quickly analyzes employee comments to uncover themes, sentiments, and sensitive topics needing follow-up.
With easy-to-interpret analytics, robust benchmarking data, and built-in action planning features, we think Quantum Workplace has got what it takes for you to be on top of employee experience. If you’re looking to reliably measure and improve employee experience, Quantum Workplace’s offering is worth considering.
Quantum Workplace is used by over 10,000 companies, including Fossil Group, DSW, BKD, and Getty Images.
Quantum Workplace cost starts at $7,500 per year.
Best For
Quantum Workplace's employee engagement platform is designed for medium to large businesses that require advanced engagement and analytics capabilities.
We use Quantum Workplace on a monthly, and sometimes weekly, basis as it is integrated into all our HR processes, from onboarding to offboarding. It is instrumental for pulse surveys and in-depth employee engagement surveys.
Recently, we began using Quantum in a new learning program to gather regular insights on how participants are feeling. Our next step will involve leveraging Quantum as a skill matrix and for succession planning, helping us identify skill gaps and plan our workforce for the future.
The platform is intuitive and easy to navigate, requiring no in-depth manual to use effectively. The support and customer success managers are excellent, helping us translate data for senior leadership. The AI capabilities are impressive, allowing us to summarize survey data quickly, which saves a significant amount of time.
My company has used Quantum Workplace for two years now. The primary reason was to have a global solution for employee surveys, as we operate in both the US and Europe. Beyond just a survey system, we sought a partner with the knowledge and benchmarking capabilities to support our growth.
Quantum Workplace provides insights that help improve employee engagement at all levels. They deliver key questionnaires and go further by analyzing the data, using AI to summarize employee input and creating presentations with the key results for both leadership and employees.
The analytics can feel quite complex if you don’t work with them daily. Customization options are limited, particularly for the emails sent from the system. Additionally, I would like to see more flexibility in administering access rights.
Compared to other tools I’ve used, which tend to be more generic HRIS solutions, Quantum Workplace stands out by staying ahead with technology like AI. This technological focus is a significant advantage.
Don’t limit the tool’s use to an annual survey; instead, leverage it regularly to gain insights into the sentiment of your organization and employees. Ensure there is a dedicated person to manage and maximize its potential. Take your time to implement it properly and become familiar with the software. Once you’re comfortable, it will significantly enhance your work.
Quantum Workplace consistently evolves with technology and listens to customer feedback to improve. We see yearly updates, each of which becomes increasingly relevant and beneficial.
Quantum Workplace is well-suited for large organizations looking to improve employee engagement.
For smaller organizations, Quantum Workplace may be excessive for their needs.
Bonusly
Bonusly helps you engage employees, celebrate their wins, and hear their thoughts on improving company culture. It does this through peer recognition, integration with team communication tools, analytics, and more.
PROS
- Modern, easy-to-use UI that’s available in multiple languages.
- Employees can recognize one another with GIFs, points, and more.
- Its social-media-style spreads recognition across teams/departments.
- Employees can redeem points for gift cards and other tangible rewards.
- There’s a 14-day free trial you can use to test the waters.
- 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 analytics and reporting functionality is limited in customization and scope.
- The rewards catalog lacks experiential options and is focused on gift cards instead.
- Employees outside the U.S. have reward caps and fewer options.
- Some technical issues like downtime, user imports, and redemption bugs may be experienced from time to time.
- 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.
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Bonusly aims to improve employee engagement through frequent, meaningful peer-to-peer recognition and rewards. Employees can choose from over 1,200 gift cards across popular vendors, redeemable in over 200 countries. There are abundant options for apparel, food and beverage, travel, and more to match individual preferences. Bonusly also enables companies to offer unique branded swag using an AXOMO integration. Employees can browse and order items right from the Bonusly platform.
For those who prefer cash rewards, Bonusly points are redeemable for PayPal, Visa gift cards, and prepaid Mastercards. You can also create customized experiential rewards like lunch with the CEO, tickets to local sports games, additional PTO, and more. For employees passionate about certain causes, rewards can be redeemed as donations to over 50 integrated charities.
Beyond rewards redemption, Bonusly helps you put appreciation on auto-pilot through features like automated awards for milestones and integrations with HRIS platforms for automated birthday and anniversary recognitions.
Peer recognition is also simplified through Bonusly. There’s only a few steps to do it: employees receive a monthly allotment of points valued from $10-$20 to recognize fellow team members, then it’s as simple as choosing the recipient, points amount, reason, and optional hashtags or GIFs. To top it all off, all recognition shared around is showcased on a public feed, spreading and amplifying the positive vibes further.
Among Bonusly’s 3000+ customers are Hulu, InVision, SurveyMonkey, Headspace, and more.
Bonusly's Core plan costs $2.70/user/month (up to 50 users) and suits small businesses. The Pro plan ($4.50/user/month) offers more features for larger teams. The Custom plan, with premium support, is priced based on user count and feature needs.
Best For
Bonusly is best for companies between 50-5,000 employees.
One of the most effective ways to use Bonusly is by tying it directly to company values. Attaching values to recognition helps reinforce what they look like in action. The tool also gamifies recognition, allowing employees to reward each other in a fun and engaging way.
Employees could redeem their points for rewards, donate to nonprofits, or even support coworkers in times of need—for example, we once set up a special donation fund when an employee's dog required expensive veterinary care. This flexibility made Bonusly a powerful tool for fostering both engagement and community support.
- It's easy to set up and use.
- Employees loved using it, and it was the most widely adopted recognition tool I’ve seen in my career.
- It provided visibility into employees' contributions, which was especially valuable in a remote work environment.
I administered Bonusly for over two years as our primary reward and recognition tool. We used it to celebrate employees, provide positive feedback, and reinforce company values and culture. As a predominantly remote company, we relied on Bonusly to foster connection and encourage behaviors we wanted to see more often.
Full disclosure: I worked for Bonusly when we used it, but I left the company two years ago. One of the reasons we implemented it was to "dog food" the tool—using our own product to better understand its impact.
- I wished it had broader functionality, so we didn’t need separate tools for other recognition-related needs.
- The reporting capabilities were limited, missing opportunities to provide deeper insights into employee engagement.
- They introduced an engagement survey tool, but it couldn't compete with more established solutions in that space.
Bonusly was extremely easy to use and integrate into workflows, especially for companies that rely on Slack. While other HR tools include recognition features, Bonusly’s gamification made it more engaging and widely used. However, it could be a harder sell to executives since some competing platforms bundle recognition with other HR functions.
Think about your goals and how your team works. Avoid traditional mindsets that limit recognition to managers or leadership—peer-to-peer recognition can be just as impactful. Consider how a tool like Bonusly can help amplify your culture and reinforce company values in a meaningful way.
Bonusly has always excelled at core recognition but struggled to expand its functionality beyond that. Recent updates suggest they are working on additional features, and I’m curious to see how those develop. If they continue to evolve, it could become an even stronger tool, particularly for smaller companies.
Bonusly works well for companies of any size, from small teams of five to large enterprises with 15,000 employees.
If a company does not prioritize employee recognition or struggles with engagement, Bonusly may not be the right fit. Without an existing culture of appreciation, adoption and impact would likely be limited.
Reward Gateway
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.
- 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 provides a robust yet user-friendly employee engagement solution that can help you boost morale, retention, and productivity. It centers on employee surveys, including its proprietary four-question Engaged Index that benchmarks engagement. You can use this Index to identify at-risk areas for turnover and presenteeism, then conduct follow-up surveys on specific topics to dig deeper. Surveys can be created from existing templates or customized as needed.
A major advantage of Reward Gateway is how effectively it turns survey insights into impact. The platform makes acting on feedback easy with digestible analytics tied to engagement drivers. Leadership teams can clearly see potential areas for investment and how interventions may influence key metrics like retention. This proves the ROI on employee engagement spend and lends credibility when proposing new programs.
All in all, there’s a lot to like about Reward Gateway as an employee engagement software solution. It offers versatile survey options, an easy-to-understand yet robust scoring system, powerful segmentation, and actionable analytics. Companies looking to boost engagement and improve culture through data-driven insights would do well to shortlist Reward Gateway.
Reward Gateway has over 4000 customers, including Ikea, McDonald's, Unilever, and Heineken.
Reward Gateway costs £6 (around $7.5) per employee per month for an annual subscription for companies under 100 employees. Larger teams receive custom quotes.
Best For
Rewards Gateway is best for organizations based in the U.S., UK, Ireland, and Australia.
We use Reward Gateway daily as part of our employee engagement strategy. The platform is the core of our recognition measures, with a system in place for both peer-to-peer and manager-to-non-manager recognition, supporting employee achievements and effective efforts throughout the organization. Employees redeem recognition points daily for their contributions, which can be exchanged for benefits such as gift cards and unique experiences.
The employee discount feature offers exclusive discounts and cash-back offers from many retailers. We also rely on the well-being programs provided by Reward Gateway, which offer resources on physical, mental, and financial health to support our employees' overall well-being.
The communication tools are used for company news, updates, and surveys to gather important employee feedback. Analysis of engagement analytics helps us monitor and measure the efficacy of our recognition and rewards programs, allowing for data-driven improvements.
Reward Gateway is easy to use for both employees and administrators. It's highly configurable, allowing us to customize recognition programs and rewards to meet specific organizational needs. The platform offers a comprehensive suite of tools, including recognition, rewards, well-being programs, and communication tools, which helps simplify our HR processes and increase overall engagement.
We purchased Reward Gateway to help improve our employee engagement and recognition because there was a gap in providing formal and meaningful rewards and recognition for our employees. We've had it in place for approximately two years. Reward Gateway was chosen for its platform capabilities in combining recognition, rewards, employee discounts, and well-being programs. The organization believed it would add significant value. Additionally, the ability to configure the platform and gain data-driven insights has been a crucial feature for our needs.
The platform is not cheap. The extensive features require professional training for proper use. Integration with existing HR systems can be challenging and may require additional effort from developers.
Unlike similar tools that focus on one or two areas, Reward Gateway offers an all-in-one solution, making it easier to manage and improving engagement across the board. The platform is user-friendly for both employees and managers and offers high levels of customization to align with our branding. Constant upgrades ensure it remains relevant and scalable as our company grows.
Key criteria include the features offered to meet recognition, reward, well-being, and communication needs. Ensure the platform allows easy customization according to organizational needs and branding. Check the integration capability with existing HR systems to ensure seamless functionality. Consider the cost and scalability of the solution. User-friendliness and support services are also crucial for smooth implementation and operation.
Reward Gateway has expanded its features beyond recognition and rewards to include well-being programs, communication tools, and engagement analytics, making it a comprehensive platform for organizations with diverse needs.
Reward Gateway is ideal for organizations aiming to improve employee morale, satisfaction, and overall engagement through a structured and multifaceted approach.
Companies with complex integration needs may need additional solutions or tools that would cover all their needs, and they may not find Reward Gateway to be the best fit.
Culture Amp
Culture Amp boosts engagement through dozens of ready-made and customizable surveys, powerful analytics, and integration capabilities. To top it all off, the platform is supported by a group of data experts focused on everything relating to engagement.
PROS
- Culture Amp has an intuitive, easy-to-navigate interface.
- You can choose from multiple survey templates or create your own.
- Upon survey completion, the platform gives you insights into employee sentiment via heatmaps, trendlines, and benchmarks.
- You can set goals and track their progress seamlessly.
- You get useful reminders about different things like tasks, reviews, and 1:1s.
- People science team
- Tons of engagement surveys
CONS
- Customization options for reviews and ratings are limited.
- The platform features a text-heavy design that lacks visual elements like charts.
- It takes time to understand the platform’s full capabilities.
- The pricing isn’t publicly disclosed and can only be obtained after booking a demo.
- 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 provides organizations with an effective system to regularly pulse their workforce, dig into key drivers of engagement, and take proven steps to create a thriving culture.
One of Culture Amp's greatest strengths is its library of 40+ customizable survey templates designed by experts in organizational psychology. You can leverage these prescriptive questionnaires to glean actionable insights around engagement, inclusion, onboarding, company events, and more. The software also benchmarks results against over 1 billion survey responses, allowing you to understand your engagement levels compared to top-performing companies.
Another feature worth highlighting is Culture Amp’s Retention Insights, which gives you early warning signs around employee flight risks. It doesn’t stop there though, Retention Insights also gives you suggestions on what you can do to bring these employees around.
The insights Culture Amp gives you aren't just comprehensive for leadership - they empower each employee to feel heard while driving change at an individual level. Both managers and employees appreciate the customized reporting and focused recommendations that translate feedback into clear steps forward. The platform is thoughtfully designed for each stakeholder, providing leaders with a birds-eye view of engagement while giving teams and individual employees visibility into areas requiring their input. This connectivity fosters a culture of accountability at all levels.
Culture Amp is used by over 6,500 companies, including SoulCycle, Canva, McDonalds, Etsy, and Bombas.
The annual subscription for Culture Amp starts at $4,500, and they only accept yearly billing.
Best For
Culture Amp is designed for growing and large companies, regardless of industry and location.
The first feature we wanted to utilize in Culture Amp was quick surveys. This allows us to set up automated surveys triggered by specific events, helping us measure our progress. We also use the platform to assess our DEI initiatives and determine if they are making a meaningful impact.
By understanding what employees value, we can scale our development programs accordingly. The workflows help managers and their direct reports stay aligned and on track. Notifications alert them when adjustments are needed, ensuring that goals remain achievable.
- Culture Amp is science-based and intuitive.
- It provides a streamlined approach to surveying employees and gathering actionable insights.
- It has contributed to an increase in our retention rates.
Our organization chose Culture Amp because we needed a specialized system to help build an engaged workforce. After two years of attempting to create initiatives on our own, we decided to implement Culture Amp.
The platform allows us to focus on employee development and retention more effectively. Since adopting it, we have seen a 12% increase in our retention rate. Culture Amp also helps us design development programs that align with our company culture.
- Culture Amp is somewhat limited in its survey capabilities. For example, anonymous surveys restrict our ability to pinpoint specific areas for improvement.
- Some key survey results lack the level of detail we need for deeper analysis.
- The employee goal development feature does not integrate with our primary HR system.
Few platforms offer a seamless approach to both employee surveys and development. Culture Amp stands out by combining these functions into a single, user-friendly platform.
When evaluating this type of tool, consider your long-term goals and how frequently you will use it. Integration with existing systems is another key factor—ensuring compatibility with your HR and payroll software can prevent operational inefficiencies. It’s also essential to assess whether the platform will provide long-term value rather than just meeting short-term needs.
Culture Amp has introduced new features that make it easier to conduct surveys and support employee development.
Culture Amp is ideal for mid-sized, growing organizations that have established HR processes but want to improve employee engagement and development.
Very large global organizations may find Culture Amp less effective, especially if they require more extensive customization and enterprise-level integration.
Kudos
Though it primarily focuses on employee rewards and recognition, Kudos has expanded its platform with features for understanding and driving engagement, including sentiment surveys, detailed analytics, incentive campaigns, and more.
PROS
- Kudos’ interface is quite intuitive, making recognizing coworkers very easy.
- Employees like the ability to reward and appreciate peers.
- Employees can earn points to redeem for gift cards and prizes.
- 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
- The monthly point limits to award others can be restrictive.
- The system can be buggy at times, especially when redeeming points for rewards.
- The gift card options are somewhat limited, especially for local brands.
- There is no free plan or free trial.
- 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’ platform packs several modules aimed at improving employee experience. For starters, it lets you create and deploy anonymous Sentiment Surveys, enabling employees to safely provide feedback and giving you reliable insights to identify issues within the current workplace culture. All of these insights, along with trend analysis, are neatly displayed in the Kudos Dashboard.
Going beyond surveys, Kudos can help you create a culture of appreciation through its user-friendly peer recognition tools. Employees can send customizable Kudos cards to colleagues to highlight appreciated actions, from individual contributions to team efforts.
You can also use the platform to delight employees with all sorts of rewards, including merchandise, events, travel, charities, gift cards, and even custom rewards. Kudos’ rewards system is point-based, which means you give employees points as incentives, and they get to choose to redeem their accumulated points for. For the most part, we’ve found the point value assigned to rewards fair, without added fees.
Another stand-out module you’ll find within Kudos is its Culture Accelerator. Through it, you can create specialized campaigns to incentivize behaviors aligned with your company’s values and objectives. All of these campaigns can be customized to reflect your company brand and messaging, and if you need any help, you can work with a Kudos Program Designer to ensure your campaigns hit the mark.
If you’re a mid-to-large company looking to elevate employee engagement through data-backed insights and values-driven recognition strategies, we think Kudos checks all the boxes and is highly worth checking out.
Kudos is used in over 80 countries. Some of their customers include KidsPeace, Kronos, DHL, Chewy.com, and Make A Wish.
Kudos pricing starts at $3.25 per user per month with a minimum requirement of 500 employees.
Best For
Kudos is best for companies with 500 to thousands of users in practically any country and industry.
I used Kudos to shout out my coworkers on my team and other teams. I used it to keep track of my successes and achievements. With the graphs, I could see what prominent words were used the most to describe me as a colleague, so that was neat to see in what ways I was adding value to the team. During performance reviews, I could review all the projects I completed and the recognition I received since it keeps track of all the kudos I have received from my colleagues and managers. I also used it to see how others viewed me as a teammate and to identify areas where I might need improvement.
I liked that it was fun to give shoutouts to each other. I appreciated seeing how my coworkers viewed me. It was easy to use as it’s an intuitive tool that takes hardly any learning curve to get started.
We used Kudos to give praise to each other. It was a way for us to recognize each other's work within our team and while collaborating with other teams. It was also a good way to keep track of our successes and achievements. When it came time for performance reviews, I could look back on all my shoutouts and accomplishments. I used this tool for six months.
I disliked the limited ways the data could be split; there weren't enough tables and graphs. I felt the incentive program led to giving kudos just to earn points for redemption; there weren’t many options for gift cards. The pulse surveys didn't explore company culture deeply enough.
N/A - I haven't used another tool similar to Kudos before, so I don't have enough data for comparison. If I had to say, I feel Kudos is a good tool to at least check out to see if it’s something to implement in one’s organization.
People should consider how they would use this tool to encourage company culture and what type of culture they want to build on their teams. They should also consider if this tool is necessary or if there is another way to build company culture without using a tool.
I'm unsure. I didn't use this tool long enough to see it evolve.
Kudos would be useful for a small startup or a company trying to build up its culture. It would be best for organizations that work cross-functionally since it would help build trust among the various teams that work together, such as recruiting working alongside sales, HR, and hiring teams.
I can't think of any organization that couldn't find Kudos useful. However, if the organization is starting out with less than 100 employees, then I could see this tool being too premature for an organization of that size.
Workleap
Workleap (formerly 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
- Workleap 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.
- Workleap 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.
- Workleap has a peer-to-peer recognition feature, allowing your employees to praise one another for outstanding work.
- Workleap built-in surveys cover a wide range of topics.
- Workleap’s 14-day free trial lets users try all the Workleap features without asking for their credit card info.
- Several users shared that Workleap’s integration with Slack brought convenience for employees and improved their survey completion rates.
- Workleap 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.
- Workleap 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 thos
- e goals or conduct performance reviews.
- There currently isn’t a mobile app that managers and employees can use on the go.
Workleap 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 Workleap customers.
Workleap offers a free plan for up to 10 users and 3 paid plans: Essential ($3.50/user/month), Pro ($5/user/month), and Business (custom pricing for 500+ users).
Best For
Workleap’s employee engagement solution is best for medium and large-sized businesses, though small teams can also benefit from the platform’s free plan, which is available for up to 10 users.
I use Workleap several days a week. I am the admin of the tool for our organization, so I am the one who manages teams and adds new employees to the program. We use the tool to report on each manager's team, as well as on department ratings, and all-company ratings. We also use the tool to send out any company-wide surveys, including our yearly Employee Engagement survey. Team members engage regularly with Good Vibes recognition.
- It allows you to build as many teams as you would like.
- It is clear on its anonymity policy so that team members feel comfortable sharing honest feedback.
- It allows you to conduct custom surveys on any topic.
We bought this tool for our organization because we take employee feedback very seriously. We have been using the tool for 3 years. I have been using it as a regular employee for 2 years and as an HR professional (admin of the tool) for 1 year. It allows you to get regular feedback (at whatever frequency you prefer) and allows you to put team members into teams so that managers can get team-specific feedback. It also allows you to give "Good Vibes" so that any team member can provide recognition to their peers.
- It does not have a Performance Management feature, which other similar tools do. For the price point, I would expect more features.
- It does not have industry benchmark data for specific questions, which is something our ELT was hoping to see.
- It currently does not integrate with our HRIS, which I mostly fault to the HRIS but it means I have to manually add all of our members and put them on teams.
I have not personally used comparable tools but I have done demos with others. I think this tool is very clear (more so than competitors) on its anonymity policy which is very important to our employees. I also think Good Vibes is a fairly unique feature that our team heavily uses and appreciates.
People should consider what features they need the tool to have. This tool does not have performance management, which is something that many similar tools do. They should also consider pricepoint. Workleap is a high price point for the limited number of features. Overall, I think it is a great tool, just hard to justify the price considering it is lacking a crucial feature (performance management) that we will need soon.
Workleap has launched new features throughout our time using it and I know it is currently working on others. Good Vibes was a feature that was added due to requests, and it has been a great addition to the tool. It also has an amazing Customer Support system, where you can answer your own questions or if you can't, they are very prompt at responding.
It is very good for large organizations that want specific team feedback. It is also good for teams that have a large budget for employee engagement metrics.
It is probably not a good fit for a small company or a start-up due to its price point. However, I do think any company could benefit from the tool.
Empuls
Empuls’s engagement solution lets you run a variety of surveys, including Pulse, eNPS, and 360 Feedback surveys. All surveys are customizable and can be anonymized so your employees feel at ease giving honest feedback.
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 companies of different sizes can try out the tool and scale it up or down as needed. They also offer a 30-day free trial that anyone can sign up for.
- 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.
- There is no monthly billing option.
- 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 provides organizations with a host of tools to listen to, diagnose, and act on employee feedback to boost engagement. Central to its offering are anonymized pulse surveys which can help you elicit honest input. You can customize these surveys or choose from existing templates, thoughtfully created in partnership with HR experts at SHRM.
Another powerful tool is Empuls’ simplified eNPS surveys, which help you identify brand promoters, passives, and detractors with a single score. The detailed classification, coupled with guidance on how to engage each segment, enables you to convert detractors and passives into loyal promoters.
Once feedback is in, Empuls makes it easy to diagnose problem areas through cross-linkage insights between engagement, performance, culture, and more granular analytics. The platform detects interconnections that highlight priorities for improvement. These data-backed insights inform Empuls’ Act phase, where you are given action plans and change management recommendations tailored to addressing each engagement obstacle.
The ability to capture feedback across the employee lifecycle is another thing we like about Empuls. Right from onboarding to exit interviews, Empuls’ conversational surveys help you uncover how employees feel at each touchpoint. These staged insights along with data from pulse and 360-degree surveys, allow you to craft targeted strategies that elevate the experiences of your employees.
Empuls has over 1,000 global customers, including Prodevans, Magzter, KPIT, Quixy, and more.
Empuls pricing starts at $1 per employee per month (annual billing) depending on your chosen module:
- Reward and Recognize: $3 per employee per month
- Surveys: $3 per employee per month
- Social Intranet: $1 per employee per month
- Perks and Benefits: $2 per employee per month
Best For
Empuls is most suitable for small to medium-sized businesses who want to build a people-first environment.
Assembly
Assembly’s platform helps companies automate a host of employee engagement and recognition processes through customizable templates and workflows - eliminating manual effort and ensuring consistency.
PROS
- The platform is easy to use and customize.
- The pricing is transparent and affordable. There’s also a free plan you can sign up for without a demo.
- Make your own rewards and even set up a points system with automated incentives.
- 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
- A few users noted needing more control over their notifications to avoid notification overload.
- 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.
- 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 originally started as an employee rewards product but rapidly evolved into a comprehensive platform that facilitates employee listening, recognition, and collaboration. With the help of its customizable workflows and templates, companies large and small are able to celebrate their employees’ achievements, drive engagement among their teams, and streamline their daily operations.
Among the key workflows Assembly offers is one dedicated to engagement surveys. Designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of employee sentiments, this workflow lets you craft concise surveys, collect actionable feedback, and establish a consistent benchmark for measuring engagement over time. Another valuable workflow is centered around employee recognition. Whether it's acknowledging exceptional work, celebrating milestones, or simply expressing gratitude, the Recognition workflow can help you convey heartfelt recognition effortlessly.
Assembly also facilitates transparency and open communication through its Executive Updates and News Feed workflows. These features allow executives to share strategic decisions, company milestones, and important announcements, keeping employees informed and fostering a sense of connection to the organization's goals and successes.
There’s a lot to like about Assembly’s platform; it is user-friendly, customizable and affordable. There’s lots of other workflows you can customize and deploy within as well. If you’re an SMB looking for a flexible and budget-friendly employee engagement platform, we think Assembly is worth checking out.
Over 4,000 companies use Assembly’s solutions, including Coca-Cola, Quest Nutrition, Nesco Resource, HelloTech, and Amazon.
Assembly has four plans that are priced as follows:
- Recognition: Packs all the employee rewards and recognition features for $2 per user per month, billed annually.
- Engagement: For $4 per member per month, billed annually, this plan is designed for teams that want to maximize their employee engagement.
- Digital HQ: For $6 per member per month, billed annually, this plan packs all the necessary features for businesses to amplify cross-functional engagement, without any limits on the number of members on board.
- Custom: Designed for large organizations that need a custom and unique program, the Custom plan can accommodate unlimited members. Contact Assembly’s Sales team for a price quote.
Best For
Small and mid-size businesses across different verticals can benefit from Assembly’s solutions.
Assembly is used on a monthly cycle. Users receive a monthly allotment of points to give to their coworkers. Recognition posts are created on the board by tagging one or more employees, assigning Assembly Applause Points, and posting for the company to view, like, and comment on.
Once enough points are earned, users can redeem them for rewards in the form of gift cards or charitable donations. Admin users have additional permissions to allocate extra points to individuals based on performance and reward metrics, creating a customizable and engaging experience.
Assembly is excellent for boosting employee engagement. It helps organizations align their core values and vision through a recognition-based culture. Its pricing is affordable for small businesses, as it is based on the number of active users.
My organization has used Assembly for over three years, and I personally used it for one year while working with the team. Leadership needed a user-friendly platform to promote engagement and rewards for their hybrid workforce.
Assembly provided customizable tools for giving kudos and gifts to individuals and teams for a job well done, all on a secure platform. It allows individuals to choose how to spend their points in a rewards storefront, which includes local businesses and big-box store gift cards.
Additionally, it offers the option to donate points or cash rewards to various fundraisers, making it a great tool for supporting corporate social responsibility initiatives.
The program should be integrated into self-service portals for easier access. It generates excessive email notifications, which can reduce productivity during the workday. Some employees may struggle to understand or fully appreciate the concept of virtual recognition.
Assembly stands out for its user-friendly interface and customizable features that enhance employee engagement. However, competitors may offer more competitive pricing or better integration with existing tools.
Assembly encourages daily use and provides a feed page that functions similarly to social media, making it intuitive for users familiar with platforms like Facebook. Ensuring proper customization can optimize user engagement and deliver a solid return on investment.
Consider your company culture and communication style when evaluating this tool. If your team relies on digital communication, Assembly can be an excellent fit for fostering engagement. Review the pricing structure to ensure it aligns with your budget, and assess whether the program's features match your organization's needs.
Assembly has continuously updated its platform to offer more integrations that meet customers’ needs. Its rewards catalog is always expanding, and users can even create custom rewards to support local charities, families, or non-profits. The platform is evolving to include new ways for teams to interact, making it more engaging and user-friendly.
Assembly is ideal for organizations with hybrid or remote employees. It’s also well-suited for companies with multiple shifts or locations, as it helps connect employees and celebrate achievements through an easy-to-navigate online platform. Its feed page allows team members to create and respond to content, much like social media, which many employees find intuitive and engaging.
Assembly may not be suitable for organizations that do not use computers or tablets in their daily operations. Additionally, it requires a proper budget to maintain and fund the program long-term.
Before implementing Assembly, ensure that a rewards and recognition program aligns with your team's needs by requesting a demo and conducting employee surveys to assess its effectiveness.
WorkTango
WorkTango helps you measure engagement and collect actionable feedback easily and confidentially. You can leverage its real-time dashboards and analytics to understand employee sentiment, empower managers to act, and drive positive organizational change.
PROS
- You can run unlimited surveys, available in over 20 languages including English, Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Korean.
- You can use WorkTango’s research-backed and statistically validated assessments, or create your own.
- Anonymous Conversations enable managers to acknowledge and respond to open-text survey comments while protecting employee anonymity.
- You can compare your engagement survey results to internal and external benchmarks.
- Open-text responses can be summarized with Natural Language Processing (NLP). It can also bring the most used terms front and center in a word cloud.
- Unlimited surveys available in English, Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Korean.
- You can add modules as you go and these will be charged on a prorated basis.
CONS
- There isn’t a monthly billing option. You have to pay by year.
- All plans require a minimum commitment of 12 months.
- Free trials aren't available at this time.
- 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’s Surveys & Insights module is all about helping businesses measure and improve employee engagement. We like that users can customize and deploy an unlimited number of surveys to gather feedback across the entire employee lifecycle. Survey creation is made even easier with WorkTango’s library of expert-designed questions, ready to be used as needed.
Once responses are collected, WorkTango's dashboards and reporting features kick in. The sophisticated analytics help identify key themes and trends from both quantitative data and open-ended comments. Features like the Sentiment Cloud summarize the overall positive and negative sentiment within employee feedback, while easy benchmarking shows how your company compares to other players in your industry. These insights are presented through highly visual, easy-to-grasp dashboards tailored to different roles.
But WorkTango isn't just about measuring engagement. The software offers predictive recommendations and suggested actions based on survey results. Leaders can then turn these recommendations into accountable action plans with progress tracking. For developing leaders' capabilities, WorkTango even suggests relevant learning resources to build skills in areas needing improvement. It’s overall, a very well-thought-out platform.
Over 1,000 companies use Worktango’s solutions, including Kia Motors, HUB International, Rexall, and Accruent.
WorkTango starts at about $8,000 per year with an annual commitment.
Best For
WorkTango is best for mid-sized to large companies.
We used WorkTango regularly for engagement surveys, pulse checks, surveys following development events, for onboarding and so on. We used it to get feedback from our employees on specific events as well as general engagement feedback. We also used it for pulse surveys to get more insight into particular topics.
It's really easy to use in terms of setup of surveys and adding and deleting employees. You get results instantly with many ways to view the data and drill down. Their support is really good as well - knowledgeable and responsive.
I used WorkTango in a previous role, and used it for about 4 years. We bought it because we were looking for a better way to conduct employee engagement surveys, and WorkTango helped us do that in a way that was completely customizable. We did annual surveys as well as regular pulse checks. With WorkTango we could see participation rates throughout the survey periods and got results instantly. The tool provides some analysis and different ways to cut data (department, tenure, etc.).
The exporting of results isn't perfect - it got better while we were using it but we still had to manually create certain views to share the results we wanted with our executive. The trending feature, which is great overall, doesn't work if you change the wording of a question in any way, so if you want to reword a term the trending doesn't work.
I had always used companies to run engagement surveys and it was a less intuitive process and the results took weeks if not months to get. WorkTango makes it easy and instant.
Think about how often you want to use it and how to make the most of it. If you do one survey a year it's likely not worth it. Make sure you're comfortable interpreting results as well. The system does some of that but you need to be able to analyze responses and determine why things might be surfacing. And don't buy this type of tool if you're not going to do anything with the results.
WorkTango was very responsive to our suggestions for features or improvements. During the 4 years we used it there were some upgrades or changes, as well as one significant upgrade that addressed a lot of things and made the tool better, especially in terms of how data is displayed and exported.
Great for HR teams and people with little to a lot of technical savviness.
Very small organizations wouldn't benefit from this as it relies on a certain number of responses to maintain anonymity.
Deel
While Deel isn’t specialized in employee engagement, the global payroll vendor has expanded into a comprehensive system covering simple yet effective tools for managing and engaging international employees and contractors.
PROS
- You can offer employee benefits through Deel, as well as other perks such as discounts at known service providers.
- The Slack integration allows the creation and deployment of pulse surveys to increase engagement.
- Getting paid through Deel is fast and easy. Payments arrive on time without delays.
- Deel's interface has a modern design and is fairly easy to navigate.
- Users praised Deel's customer support for being responsive and quick to resolve issues.
- It’s completely free to get started with Deel’s HR offering.
- Excellent 24/7 customer service with fast onboarding (2-3 days) and local payroll experts in each jurisdiction.
- Deel HR is free for companies of all sizes.
- Seamless integration with platforms like QuickBooks, BambooHR, and Greenhouse, plus custom integration options.
- User-friendly, self-service features enable quick setup; identity verification often takes under 24 hours.
- Automated invoices simplify payments, provided they're in English.
CONS
- Pulse surveys are offered through the Slack plug-in, and aren’t built into Deel.
- The HR offering isn’t as developed as specialized HRIS/HCM solutions.
- Deel's fees and exchange rates are high compared to other platforms.
- The 30-day withdrawal deadline is inconvenient; many users would prefer for Deel to function as a wallet.
- There currently isn’t a mobile app for Deel; users can only access it through the web version.
- Despite being a global platform, Deel’s debit card feature is only available in a few countries.
- You can’t edit some of Deel’s contract clauses.
- Key features like onboarding automation are add-ons, which may increase costs.
- Limited flexibility in modifying contracts or service agreements; changes often require an addendum.
- Invoices cannot be generated in languages other than English.
Deel was designed with distributed teams in mind, which is evident in its flagship global payroll offering, but also in their continuous rollout of features that foster connections and engagement among remote employees. The "Connections'' tool enables 1:1 and group interactions to build relationships like those formed organically in an office.
Integrations like Slack make employee engagement initiatives accessible right within familiar workflows. Pulse surveys delivered via Slack see higher response rates. Surveys can also create interest-based Slack groups to connect employees around shared hobbies/topics beyond work projects.
It's impressive to see the employee experience capabilities Deel has built out, considering the company started by solving a different need - global payroll. The focus on relationships, networking, and engagement really caters to the needs of distributed, remote-first teams.
Over 15,000 businesses use Deel including Nike, Shopify, Redbull, and Zapier.
Deel’s employee engagement tool starts at $20 per employee per month.
Best For
Companies of all sizes can use Deel’s solutions to pay employees on time, offer benefits and engage them, wherever they may be.
We use it to track our contractors, pay their invoices, collect W9s. As our EOR, it allowed us to bypass the financial and time costs with establishing a subsidiary overseas. It keeps us in compliance with international labor laws, includes global payroll, offers benefits/participates in local social welfare programs and ultimately retains key employees we would have lost as 1099 contractors.
I like that the process and layout is very similar regardless of which product and service you use from them - quite intuitive. It supports employers ability to maintain compliance by listing out requirements and flagging missing items or expired items. Lastly, being able to file 1099s digitally is a luxury I hadn't had previously. A total time saver.
We implemented Deel initially as a way to pay our onshore 1099 contractors, track their contracts and contact information outside of our HRIS. After two years, we had a new problem to address and changed our Deel platform to include an EOR. We had offshore contractors that we wanted to bring on as full-time employees to retain them and ensure compliance with the IRS. The change was seamless and the EOR is intuitive, informative and our offshore employees have been satisfied with the service from their end.
I think there is room to improve the connection between employer and the EOR service representatives in that a dedicated point-of-contact that is in house with Deel and not an international partner. Another consideration for EOR is having to pay a month's salary deposit up front for payroll is not ideal for cash flow. Lastly, I would love to see more employee and contractor features that you might find on a traditional HRIS because I believe it would be a better and more enriched experience for them.
For 1099 contractor management, oftentimes you use an ERP or accounting SaaS which has limitations. Deel bridges the gap between accounting SaaS/ERPs and an HRIS. For EOR, Deel is middle of the road in value. It is a great option for smaller OPEX budgets, but there are other EOR companies who offer more desirable features and better in-house service partners.
Consider the number of contractors or employees you would need for the upfront and annual costs to be justified. Whether or not you are familiar with global payroll, consider how much compliance support you need or is desirable for you. Lastly, consider whether you are up to converting your local currency to the international currency. Deel does not currently offer this in the employee profile, they only show the employee's local currency.
There is better customer service and help tutorials. Further, I have found there is an increase in the amount of educational materials available through Deel in order to stay current on contractor and global payroll trends and compliance.
I have known it to be used by HR and Finance professionals alike. Payroll administrators, regardless of where they fall organizationally, will find this tool beneficial. I believe organizations where these contracts or payrolls are relatively straightforward can benefit. Running payroll and paying invoices takes 10 mins or less per pay period.
I believe complex and large organizations may not find Deel to be scalable to their needs. At volume, Deel is not the best for tracking or reporting. For smaller teams, these features are acceptable and function appropriately.
Eletive
We’ve tested hundreds of tools in this space and have yet to come across anything that matches the way Eletive handles engagement. Seamlessly blending ready-to-use, automated pulse surveys with AI, this platform covers every stage of the employee lifecycle and offers a unique, personalized experience where the survey questions are tailored to each individual.
PROS
- Pre-made survey packages cover 11 different areas of employee engagement, ranging from onboarding to diversity and inclusion and offboarding.
- Machine learning personalizes the pulse survey question distribution.
- Tailored advice and suggested actions based on Organisational Behavior Management theory for active participation.
- The dashboard offers a clear, concise report and analysis of survey answers and trends (see screenshot).
- 40+ native HRIS integration options are available.
- 40+ languages support.
- Pre-made survey packages cover 11 different areas of employee engagement, ranging from onboarding to diversity and inclusion and offboarding.
- Machine learning personalizes the pulse survey question distribution.
- Tailored advice and suggested actions based on Organisational Behavior Management theory for active participation.
- The dashboard offers a clear, concise report and analysis of survey answers and trends (see screenshot).
- 40+ native HRIS integration options are available.
- 40+ languages support.
CONS
- AI analysis is done in English. Non-English answers have to be translated before analysis.
- The Base plan's report lacks export options, alerts for sensitive questions with low scores, and positive improvement and attrition risk insights.
- 1-on-1s, OKRs, 360-degree feedback, and HRIS integrations cost extra.
- AI analysis is done in English. Non-English answers have to be translated before analysis.
- The Base plan's report lacks export options, alerts for sensitive questions with low scores, and positive improvement and attrition risk insights.
- 1-on-1s, OKRs, 360-degree feedback, and HRIS integrations cost extra.
If you're on the hunt for an employee engagement tool that feels personal, intelligent, and genuinely designed for modern organizations, Eletive is worth a closer look.
Unlike most pulse surveys we’ve tried before, Elective’s is AI-supported—it can tailor the employee survey-taking experience by asking questions based on each individual's previous responses.
To test how this feature works, one of our editors scored a question low, and interestingly, they received a follow-up on that topic in the next survey. We can see how valuable this is for managers who want to understand their employees' feelings more deeply without spending hours reviewing responses to previous surveys in order to personalize the next ones.
Considering how important privacy is today, we were pleased to see how Elective integrated anonymity into its platform. The Chat feature, for example, enables any team member to respond to a manager’s question without revealing their identity unless they choose to do so. Moreover, allowing users to comment on any survey question—not just the open-ended ones—is a thoughtful way to collect nuanced feedback.
Unsurprisingly, as the brand is from Sweden and primarily targets the European market, it is more renowned in the U.K. and the E.U than in the U.S. Pricing-wise, Eletive’s is undisclosed and varies from user to user, but from what we've gathered, it’s pretty much in line with what you'd expect from other platforms like Profit.co or Quantum Workplace.
We like the abundance of HRIS integrations Elective offers—over 40 options. What we don’t like, though, is that these aren’t free. You must opt for their priciest plan or an integration add-on to access them. And while we’re on the topic, features like 1-on-1s, OKRs, and 360 feedback cost extra, too.
Undisclosed number. Some brands that have used Eletive include Halton, Orka, and Purmo.
Eletive has 3 plans: Essential, Standard, and Professional. All are quote-based.
Best For
Teams with at least 100 employees, ideally but not necessarily based in Europe.
AdvantageClub.ai
If you need a mobile-friendly, feature-rich solution that goes beyond basic surveys to actively measure and improve employee sentiment, AdvantageClub.ai is worth considering—just be prepared for some hands-on vendor support and a potentially higher price point.
PROS
- Full-featured web platform with a mobile app covering benefits, wellness, and more.
- Smooth integrations with HRIS, LMS, Slack, Teams, and other workplace tools.
- Real-time sentiment tracking with Mood-O-Meter and Polls for instant feedback.
- Advanced survey and quiz tools with branching logic and AI-driven personalization.
- AI-powered engagement nudges to encourage participation and feedback.
- AI-powered messaging feature streamlines the process of giving and receiving recognition.
- Extensive global rewards marketplace with 10,000+ brands across 100+ countries.
- Flex-Benefits program allows employees to customize how they use perks.
- AI-driven engagement assistant (ADVA) nudges employees to stay active in recognition programs.
- Seamless integrations with HRMS, Slack, Teams, and Outlook for workflow automation.
CONS
- Undisclosed pricing, no free trial.
- Can be expensive for budget-conscious teams.
- Analytics and reporting tools require vendor support for full customization.
- No public pricing. No self-service free trial.
- Instead of self-configuration, users may require additional support to leverage the power of analytics and dashboard features fully.
We tested AdvantageClub.ai’s employee engagement product, and it quickly became clear that it offers a robust suite of features designed to enhance employee participation, well-being, and feedback collection.
Our experiences with the web and mobile apps were both enjoyable. While the former offers a full range of features, the latter holds its own, covering everything from corporate benefits and wellness to dining, education, gyms, entertainment, and more. We especially liked how we could filter savings and offers based on relevance and location right in the app. This made it so convenient to access key benefits on the go.
Another thing we always prioritize when assessing staff engagement tools is integration capabilities, and on this front, AdvantageClub.ai didn’t disappoint. It integrates with nearly every HRIS, LMS, and communication app we’ve known, which is a nice touch to ensure employee participation and easy data sharing across your company’s existing tools.
For those curious about this software’s real-time employee sentiment features, it has plenty to offer. The Mood-O-Meter instantly gauges employee well-being, while Polls provide an open and transparent way to gather feedback.
And we loved that for more structured engagement, there are interactive quizzes and survey tools, which support various question types, randomized answer choices (to reduce bias), and even branching logic for personalized survey experiences. This AI-driven approach allows each participant to follow a tailored survey path based on their responses, which truly sets AdvantageClub.ai apart from competitors.
However, despite its abundant features, AdvantageClub.ai isn’t very affordable, especially for teams on a budget. We’re also not fans of its pricing approach: it’s undisclosed with no free trial offered.
Additionally, while the analytics and reporting tools are robust, we found that fully leveraging them often requires extra support from the vendor. Customizing dashboards and interpreting engagement trends might take some learning, especially for teams that aren’t as data-savvy.
1,000+ companies, including TARGET, EY, Concentrix, and BCG.
AdvantageClub.ai has custom pricing only, and no free trial is offered.
Best For
AdvantageClub.ai is best for large enterprises and mid-sized companies, especially those with a global workforce, looking for a highly customizable employee recognition platform with a vast rewards marketplace and AI-driven automation to boost engagement.
Benefits of Employee Engagement Tools
There’s a lot to gain from employee engagement software. Most notably, these tools enable you to:
- Make employees feel heard: Employee engagement software provides an outlet for employees to anonymously share their opinions, voice out any concerns about the workplace and work culture, and propose suggestions for improvement. When employees feel heard and their feedback is taken into account, it leads to less turnover and higher productivity.
- Craft and deploy surveys like an expert: There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. The best employee engagement platforms are built on solid research, which often includes the input of IO psychology experts. They also often come with a host of ready-made survey templates you can deploy in minutes, with recommendations on what to ask, when to ask it, and how often.
- Automatically analyze and uncover employee sentiment patterns: One problem with traditional employee engagement surveys is that it can take a long time to analyze all the feedback gathered. A lot of what is uncovered relates broadly to the employee experience but lacks actionable next steps. The best employee engagement tools can analyze feedback as it comes and give you a comprehensive understanding of employee sentiments, preferences, and areas for improvement.
- Continuously perform culture health: Most employee engagement platforms use pulse surveys to gather small amounts of data in frequent intervals. These surveys ask only one or two questions, keeping the pressure low and the response rate high. By establishing a consistent feedback loop, you can identify trends, address concerns before they grow into systemic problems, and adapt strategies to maintain a psychologically safe working environment.
- Do a lot more than surveys: Oftentimes, employee engagement platforms bundle up their offerings with other solutions in the employee experience tech space, such as employee recognition and performance management software. Having all of these tools integrated into one platform reduces tech fatigue for your team and is easy on your budget too.
Common Mistakes When Buying and Using Employee Engagement Platforms
- Unreasonable expectations of impact: To be effective, the platform must work alongside a distinctive, authentic, and appreciative work culture. The software can supplement your efforts, but it won't “fix” company-wide problems with engagement. Employee engagement experts Mallory Herrin and Tracie Marie agree here, and Marie's experience has borne this out. She reminds us in no uncertain terms that engagement software cannot replace the power of a human connection.
- Unreasonable expectations of adoption: Affecting a company-wide change will take time. Simply put, inspiring behavioral 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.
- Underestimating the slow pace of implementation: Like the plodding, uphill struggle of behavior change, implementing a new HR tool can also be painfully sluggish. 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.
- 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 choose not to follow it), you can orchestrate a successful rollout with good planning and reasonable expectations. From 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.
The Business Case Behind Employee Engagement Platforms
Employee engagement software allows companies to have a better understanding of the health of their organization. These solutions give People and HR teams more insights into what is working and what needs to be fixed.
When used right, HR can reap benefits by increasing the productivity of their workforce and studying losses caused by employee attrition. Plus, we all got into HR to help people have a better employee experience, right?
We’ve designed this Excel-based calculator to help you calculate the basic ROI from using the best employee engagement solutions. We highly suggest you watch the video below to learn how to use this spreadsheet best.
We also have a page on our site dedicated to HR Tech ROI calculations if you want to check it out.
Key Features of Employee Engagement Software
Here are some key features of employee engagement software:
- Employee surveys: Employee surveys are a fundamental capability of employee engagement software. These include pulse surveys for regular sentiment check-ins, eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) surveys to measure loyalty and satisfaction, and more in-depth annual or quarterly surveys. Sophisticated survey builders make it easy for HR teams to craft customized question sets while choosing from preset expert-validated templates.
- Anonymity settings: The best employee engagement platforms allow admins to configure anonymity settings on a per-survey basis. For example, demographic data collection can be toggled on or off. Respondents can also opt to submit written commentary anonymously with no identifying details. Setting the right anonymity parameters helps drive survey participation and enable tracking of trends for different subgroups.
- Automated distribution: Employee engagement tools allow you to configure surveys to be sent out either via email or other internal communication apps to pre-defined audience segments at the time and frequency of your choosing. There are often automated nudges and reminders, too, which further alleviate manual intervention, freeing admins and HR teams to focus on reviewing results and implementing ideas to enhance employee engagement.
- Real-time analytics: With the help of artificial intelligence and user-friendly dashboards, employee engagement software helps you analyze employee feedback and visualize key engagement metrics like eNPS and satisfaction scores. Trends can be segmented across teams, locations, or any custom attributes captured, allowing HR professionals and leaders to respond promptly to emerging trends or critical issues.
- Reporting: Employee engagement software typically offers robust reporting tools. You can auto-generate and share reports for stakeholder audiences that showcase response rates, trends, and insights over time. You can also tailor reports by including or excluding sensitive groups and export results into various formats, such as PDF and CSV.
Questions to Ask in Demos with Employee Engagement Software Vendors
- How does your platform measure and track employee engagement? What metrics and analytics does it provide?
- How customizable are the surveys and feedback tools? Can I tailor questions and flows to my organization's specific needs?
- What methods does the platform use to gather employee feedback (e.g., surveys, pulse polls, open text, etc.)?
- Does your system integrate with our current HRIS, payroll, or other platforms?
- What types of participation tracking does it offer (e.g., survey response rates, event attendance, etc.)?
- What kinds of real-time feedback capabilities does it have? Can employees provide input anytime?
- What types of employee segmentation and filtering options are available? Can I analyze data by role, team, location, etc.?
- How are the results and data visualized? What dashboards, reports, and insights can I access as an administrator?
- Does your platform provide employee engagement action plan templates and tools and follow-up workflows based on feedback results?
- How do you ensure data security and compliance with regulations? What is your security and privacy protocol?
- What type of support, training, and account management do you provide?
- Can you explain the implementation process? How long does rollout typically take?
- What are the pricing models available? Are there options to scale up or down as needed?
- Can I see a demo tailored to our specific use cases and needs?
Employee Engagement Software FAQs
What is employee engagement software?
Employee engagement software provides tools to gather employee feedback through surveys and pulse checks, facilitates internal communications and social connections, and enables managers to coach employees and analyze engagement metrics. The software leverages data and analytics to identify areas for improving the employee experience and sparks action to nurture a highly engaged, satisfied workforce.
What is the difference between employee engagement and employee recognition?
Employee engagement refers to the level of enthusiasm, connection, and commitment an employee has toward their organization and its goals.
An engaged employee is one who is fully involved in and enthusiastic about their work. In contrast, employee recognition is about acknowledging employees for their efforts and contributions. Forms of recognition include praise, rewards, awards, and appreciation events.
How do companies use employee engagement software?
Employee engagement software serves various purposes within an organization to improve the employee experience.
Human resources teams use the software to conduct regular surveys to monitor engagement levels and pinpoint problem areas. Managers also use it to check in with their direct reports, provide coaching, and recognize achievements. The software also facilitates company-wide communications from leadership to all employees and social connections between peers.
When is the best time to use employee engagement software?
Our community expert, Christina Moran, emphasizes that there’s no exact headcount or development phase for buying employee engagement software. The right time depends on your company’s unique needs. She recommends looking for signs that indicate widespread disengagement, such as 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.”
What is a good measure of employee engagement?
A good measure of employee engagement encompasses multiple factors, such as job satisfaction, enthusiasm for work, and alignment with company values. Key indicators include high levels of participation in workplace activities, positive feedback in surveys, low turnover rates, and strong peer relationships.
When employees feel connected to their roles and company mission, they tend to demonstrate higher productivity, discretionary effort, and commitment. Engagement metrics, therefore, combine quantitative data (like retention and productivity) with qualitative insights from regular employee feedback.
Final Advice on Buying Employee Engagement Software
There are no silver bullets when it comes to tackling disengaged employees and understanding what's really happening in your business. However, having an employee engagement platform in place can help you engage your remote workers as well as in-office ones.
Given companies using employee engagement gamification are seven times more profitable than those that don't, you may also want to figure out ways to add gamification to your employee engagement programs.
Last but not least, providing proper training for your managers and teams is crucial for creating a culture of appreciation in your workplace. This list of the best employee engagement training courses can be a great starting point.
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