Engagement is the extent of someone’s commitment to their role in your organization, and the level of pride and focus they’re able to bring to their work. As such, its knock-on effects can’t be overstated. If you want to keep morale and motivation high in your business, you’ll need the best software for employee engagement you can find.
Best software for employee engagement
Employee engagement plays a key role in business growth and success, as shown by research from Gallup. Their findings show that organizations with high level of engagement show marked improvements compared to disengaged workforces across eleven performance outcomes, including:
- 23% higher profitability
- 81% less absenteeism
- 18-43% less turnover
- 64% fewer safety incidents.
Clearly, employees are more dedicated and on-the-ball when they’re engaged. But other findings from Gallup illustrate that, when disengagement runs rampant, employees might as well be asleep at the wheel. The global productivity cost of disengagement is roughly $8.8 trillion, which they estimated to be around 9% of the global GDP.
In a rapidly changing world of work, HR needs modern tools and solutions to tackle the scourge of disengagement. That’s why we’ve put together a list of the top employee engagement platforms on the market.
Key features for employee engagement software
If you’re looking for tools to boost employee engagement and retention, you’ve come to the right place. But don’t take our word for it. Instead, learn what separates the great employee engagement tools from the mediocre.
- Feedback collection tools: Honest, insightful feedback is essential for managing employee engagement. It’s a way of giving your people a voice. A seat at the table. A say in their work culture. Good feedback tools cut both ways, allowing both managers and employees to raise concerns and insights.
- Recognition and reward systems: Recognition features allow people to credit each other for work well done. They’re a great way for employees to build social bonds while giving each other positive reinforcement.
Reward systems, like gamification, badges and tangible rewards like prizes are another form of positive reinforcement for hard work and engagement. - Real-time analytics: Engagement may be very broad, but it’s still measurable. Analytics algorithms use feedback and even performance data to establish engagement trends in your organization. This allows you to monitor the positive or negative impacts of different policies and obstacles.
- Customizable surveys: Plenty of engagement platforms include out-of-the-box survey tools. The best software for employee engagement, however, gives you full control over questions, frequency and more, even on an individual level.
- Comms tool integrations: Constantly navigating between different apps can gradually become a drain on your time. The ability to get notifications or submit updates through everyday communications tools like email, Microsoft Teams, Slack makes engagement software easier to manage in the flow of work.
- Mobile accessibility: Not everyone’s job involves working on a computer all day. A solid mobile app makes engagement platforms universally accessible across your business. Frontline workers and anyone away from their desk can have fully optimized access right there in their pocket.
1. Engage365
Engage365 is the module in Zensai’s Human Success Platform designed to measure and enable employee engagement through real-time feedback and AI-powered analytics.
Like the rest of our platform, Engage365 is built from the ground up to work with Microsoft 365 and Teams. Our agile employee check-in system connects managers with their employees, and collects HR-actionable, data-driven insights.
Core features of this employee engagement tool
Zensai’s Engage365 gives you everything you need to build a dialogue with your employees and start collecting data. The module’s main features include:
- Employee check-ins and feedback: Our employee check-in system uses small, focused question sets customized on an individual level to track things like employee engagement, wellbeing, needs and insights. In turn, managers reviewing updates can reply directly to employee responses to deliver feedback and answer questions.
- Recognition dashboards: Employee check-ins include recognition questions where people can tag their colleagues to highlight helpful behavior or standout performance. Managers can then review recognition dashboards to keep track of their MVPs.
- Real-time engagement insights: At Zensai, we emphasize regular, two-way feedback as a real-time source of engagement data. Our sentiment analysis AI uses this data to create bespoke reports full of trends and insights, giving you a moving picture of employee engagement.
- Engage365 mobile app: Zensai’s engagement and performance mobile app lets you submit or review an update no matter where you are. This means the Human Success Platform can serve a wider range of industries, including those with many deskless workers.
Selling points
Engage365 is a light-touch employee engagement tool with processes designed to support your work culture without disrupting employee workflows. The main strengths we want to highlight are:
- Ease of use: Our platform’s deep Microsoft integration and simple design philosophy make it easy to navigate for even first-time users. Submitting or reviewing an update takes only a few minutes either side, saving time for managers and employees.
- Robust reporting: Engage365’s workplace engagement insights offer HR detailed analytics about the state of your workforce. The more extensive your check-in histories are, the more data our sentiment analysis algorithm has to work with.
- Great multilingual support: The Human Success Platform supports 32 languages, with its primary language being US English. Strong multilingual support helps us more effectively deliver solutions to international enterprise businesses, or those with remote staff in different places.
Drawbacks of this employee engagement tool
Of course, since we’re taking the time to hype up our own platform, it’s only fair that we balance things out. The main criticisms of Engage365 include:
- Less useful without Microsoft functionality: While Engage365 doesn’t rely on Microsoft 365, they do have extensive cross-functionality. If your business doesn’t often use Microsoft’s suite of apps, you won’t quite get the full range of benefits from our platform.
- Fewer UI bells and whistles: Our simple UI minimizes training requirements with a straight-forward design. However, that does mean it may not have as many fancy GUI features as some of its competitors.
Best fit and pricing
Engage365 may be a light-touch tool, but it’s still highly scalable. This makes it some of the best software for employee engagement, whether you’re running a tiny start-up or a major enterprise corporation. Zensai’s customers include manufacturing companies like Liberty Steel, tech companies like Priva, and educational workforces like those at Aston University.
As for our pricing, here’s the gist of it:
- Individual module ($): If the rest of the Human Success Platform doesn’t interest you, we’ll offer a quote for Perform365 by itself, including our Success Basic support plan.
- Grow Basic ($$): All three of our modules, as well as Success Basic support.
- Grow Plus ($$$): The full Human Success Platform with Success Plus support, automation and advanced analytics.
- Grow Premium ($$$$): Our expert team of support specialists can help with any issue or query, no matter how custom your setup is, with Success Premium support.
2. Leapsome
Leapsome offers a variety of modules for learning, engagement and performance management. Of course, today, we’ll be focusing on how well they fit the criteria to be the best software for employee engagement.
Core features of this employee engagement tool
In total, Leapsome offers seven modules plus add-ons. We’d be here all day if we tried to talk about them all, so bear with us. The most relevant to engagement is their Survey module. Its core features include:
- Customizable engagement surveys for team, company-wide or leaders-only use.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) sentiment analysis.
- Anonymous follow-up conversations.
- Leapsome AI to summarize feedback insights.
Selling points
Leapsome’s platform has achieved great popularity among users thanks to these major strengths:
- Useful AI features: Leapsome’s AI features are indispensable. Sentiment analysis makes actionable HR insights far more attainable, while Leapsome AI streamlines the workload for managers engaging with dense survey results.
- Honesty through anonymity: Leapsome’s anonymous conversations help employees speak their minds without fear of reprisal. This means insights are less likely to be watered down, and that people are more likely to speak up when they’re struggling or experiencing poor treatment.
Drawbacks of this employee engagement tool
While Leapsome is a great platform overall, it struggles in these areas due to being a bit overwrought:
- The learning curve: Leapsome has numerous features with quite a bit of complexity. This can make it unintuitive to first-time users, meaning they may need some training.
- Long implementation time: Users complain that it takes a while to set up Leapsome, especially for larger businesses with more intensive rollout needs.
Best fit and pricing
Leapsome has customers ranging from SMBs to enterprise businesses. Each of Leapsome’s modules are available individually, or bundled together under customized quotes obtainable from their sales team.
3. Engagedly
We talked about Engagedly recently in our discussion on performance management software. They’re playing on their home field today, or at least, the concept they’re named for. Overall, they definitely live up to their moniker.
Core features of this employee engagement tool
Engagedly’s employee engagement tools offer a solid range of features for generating actionable insights while giving your people a voice:
- Customizable team pulse and employee engagement surveys.
- Gamification features like scores, leaderboards, badges and custom rewards.
- Employee social media for recognition, peer feedback and casual interactions.
- Engagedly mobile app and the EmployeeApp for frontline and deskless workers.
Selling points
Engagedly is certainly an impressive option, and could well be the best software for employee engagement with strengths like:
- Connects engagement with performance: Engagedly blends engagement and morale-boosting with its feedback and goal management using features like gamification. It’s easy to see the impact of high engagement when it’s closely reflected by performance data.
- Great customer support reputation: Even negative user reviews for Engagedly admit that their customer support team are quick and responsive. You’re in safe hands if you choose them as your provider.
Drawbacks of this employee engagement tool
All in all, Engagedly is a hard platform to critique. That said, it does have a couple of flaws worth bearing in mind:
- UI difficulties: Engagedly’s design could be better optimized, as users report navigational difficulties, and some frustrating limitations like late check-in availability and the lack of a dark mode.
- Has something of a learning curve: You’ll need to factor training into implementation with Engagedly. Its feature-rich layout makes it easy for new users especially to get lost.
Best fit and pricing
Engagedly is suitable for businesses of all sizes, and is a great fit for companies with a high percentage of deskless workers thanks to its dedicated app.
Engagedly’s price structure is typical of many SaaS providers:
- Single modules ($): There are a total of seven modules including Engage & Listen, Manage Performance, Learn & Grow, and the app for deskless employee comms.
- Full platform ($$): A bundle for all seven modules.
- Enterprise pricing ($$$): Custom quotes for businesses with extensive or unique implementation requirements.
4. Workleap Officevibe
Workleap Officevibe, formerly just Officvibe, claims to serve more than 20,000 customers in 100+ countries. As part of Workleap’s suite of solutions, Officevibe provides simple, effective employee feedback and recognition software.
Core features of this employee engagement tool
Officevibe offers many of the features typical for employee engagement technology, including:
- Automated pulse surveys and custom employee surveys.
- Good Vibes peer-to-peer recognition.
- Anonymous feedback messaging.
- AI-assisted reporting based on employee experience data silos.
Selling points
Regardless of whether it’s the best software for employee engagement or not, Workleap Officevibe wins points for these strengths:
- Easy to use: Much like our Human Success Platform, Officevibe uses a simple design philosophy which makes it easy to navigate. Besides being efficient, this means you can get stuck in with only minimal training.
- Prioritizes the employee experience: With a great blend of survey tools and its system for anonymous follow-up communication, Officevibe does so much to help you support your employees’ working lives.
Drawbacks of this employee engagement tool
While Officevibe does so much right, it sadly falls down in a couple of key areas:
- Needs better customization and control: Otherwise great tools like automated pulse surveys lack customization options. This makes it harder to react to trends with survey tools, as you can’t easily change survey questions to reflect relevant topics.
- Reporting could be more robust: Users complain that Officevibe needs better reporting functionality, such as improved results filtration options.
Best fit and pricing
Officevibe is a great fit for SMBs. While they do have enterprise pricing, their lack of granular reporting controls makes it harder to suggest them for larger organizations.
Here’s Workleap’s typical pricing structure:
- Officevibe by itself ($): Like the rest of Workleap’s individual products and services, you can get an individual quote for Officevibe.
- The Full Experience bundle ($$): The full Workleap platform, including onboarding, skills, learning and performance management.
- Custom enterprise quotes ($$$): You know the drill by now. Special pricing for massive or unusually structured businesses.
5. Lattice
Lattice is a centralized people management and HR platform that gets a fair bit of name recognition. It offers in-built HRIS functionality, and its Talent Suite covers a wide range of areas. These include performance, goal-setting, learning, analytics, and obviously the engagement features we’re talking about today.
Core features of this employee engagement tool
Each tool in Lattice’s Engagement module adds up to a strong final product, which is apt given its name. These include:
- Pulse surveys for ongoing, real-time insights.
- Onboarding and exit surveys to understand the employee journey.
- eNPS, engagement surveys and industry benchmarking.
- Survey analytics through Lattice AI.
Selling points
Lattice is a very versatile platform with a lot to offer. Is it enough to make it the best software for employee engagement? We’ll let you decide. A couple of its biggest strengths are:
- Growing list of AI functions: Besides its engagement and performance analytics, Lattice is trying to expand what its AI is capable of. It can also recommend growth plans, monitor team health, and generate onboarding videos. There’s even an upcoming Lattice Assistant to handle policy queries and offer personalized development plans.
- Highly integrated with other tools: Lattice offers 26 in-built integrations for various HR, SSO and comms tools, from ADP and BambooHR to Workday and Zenefits. On top of that, due to Lattice’s brand recognition, plenty of software providers have their own integrations with it.
Drawbacks of this employee engagement tool
While Lattice does a lot right, there are some key considerations to bear in mind:
- Engagement is a Talent Management add-on: While functionally its own module, Engagement is priced as an add-on solution. That means you’ll have to subscribe to their performance management tools, even if you don’t need them.
- Difficult to use: Users report that Lattice can be confusing, hard to navigate, and intimidating for new users. This is another case where you’ll need to include some formal training in your implementation.
Best fit and pricing
Lastly, Lattice is a highly scalable platform with a certain degree of price flexibility. Lattice offers an incredibly transparent pricing model, although its platform is broken up into a series of modules and add-ons.
- Core modules ($):
- Talent Management (performance management, goals and OKRs)
- Core HRIS (report builder, employee records, onboarding and workflows)
- Add-on modules ($$):
- Engagement (for Talent Management)
- Grow (learning and development for Talent Management)
- Compensation (for Talent Management)
- Payroll (early access for Core HRIS)
- Time tracking (coming soon for Core HRIS)
Choosing the best software for employee engagement
Of course, even the flashiest employee engagement platforms won’t be the right fit for every company. So let’s wrap up by going over some key considerations for choosing software.
- Cost efficiency: How much will it cost to license and implement this platform, and what kind of ROI will it deliver? You need to look beyond the immediate costs and factor in things like lost productivity and training costs.
- Ease of implementation: How long will it take to roll your chosen software out? Again, this includes not just the initial setup, but also the costs of any required training. The longer it takes to introduce or replace a system, the longer your business spends operating at sub-par levels. After all, time is money.
- Employee needs: It’s easy to see how having the best software for employee engagement benefits HR and management. But consider what your people need. If there are problems with your hardest workers going unappreciated, you clearly need new tools for employee recognition. If you’re losing people to burnout, you need some sort of wellbeing check-in. The list goes on.
Other things to keep in mind:
- Organization size: While smaller businesses can get by with simpler engagement tools, larger ones need tools which support complexity and granularity. On the other hand, enterprise-level businesses can afford to invest in the most powerful tools, while SMBs may be confined by stricter budgets.
- Integration requirements: While you may be excited to get a new engagement platform, that’s no reason to throw out everything but the kitchen sink. Great employee feedback and recognition software should integrate with tools you already use, like Microsoft Teams, Slack, or your company’s preferred file-sharing platform.
- Vendor support: Everyone has a plan until they experience system errors. In the event you hit a wall with implementation, or simply want a better grasp on how the system works, you’ll likely rely on your vendor’s customer support team. That’s why a solid vendor reputation is essential for your chosen platform.
Try before you buy whenever possible
Don’t be taken in by flashy ads and presentations. Services may make all sorts of promises, only for the reality to fall short of expectations.
While some service providers only have videos demoing their products, the best have live, interactive demos with a member of their support team on-hand. And the best of the best have free trials so you can experiment with their systems for yourself.
At Zensai, we offer both. So, why wait? Schedule a demo call and set up your free trial for Engage365 today!