In a recent webinar, Robin and Andy, our chief business and product officers respectively, sat down to talk about the growing problem of disengagement at work. To follow up, we’ve laid out the case for how Zensai’s Human Success Platform provides an effective solution for employee engagement.
- Why connect engagement, learning, and performance?
- How Human Success Platform solves disengagement
- Engage365: Employee engagement software
- Learn365: Learning management system
- Perform365: Performance management solution
- Customer cases
- Free on-demand webinar
Employee disengagement has reached alarming levels, posing a serious challenge for organizations worldwide. When employees feel disconnected from their work, motivation, productivity, and retention all suffer—creating a ripple effect across teams and businesses. Despite the well-documented benefits of an engaged workforce, many companies continue to struggle with fostering meaningful connection, growth, and feedback.
Gallup research shows that engagement has dropped to a 10-year low, with only about a third of U.S. employees feeling engaged at work. That leaves nearly two-thirds unmotivated and uninspired—an issue that directly impacts innovation, collaboration, and overall performance.
One key driver of disengagement?
A lack of feedback. In fact, 79% of employees say they don’t receive enough of it. But feedback alone isn’t the answer—it’s just one piece of a much larger puzzle. To truly solve the engagement crisis, organizations need a comprehensive approach that addresses learning, performance, and connection in a meaningful way.
Why connect engagement, learning, and performance?
If your organization is in the middle of a disengagement crisis, it’s natural to consider employee engagement software. This is a great first step, but if you want to build a more engaging work culture from the ground up, you’ll need agile systems for learning and performance too.
While they may not seem like essential parts of a solution for employee engagement, the fact is that these three concepts overlap in more ways than you might assume. By taking a comprehensive approach, you can support the three pillars of engagement much more effectively.
Alignment
As stated by Andy Roberts in our webinar:
“The sweet spot for engaged employees is understanding how they impact the organization, and actually the work that they do, how valuable that is to the organization.”
The first pillar of engagement, alignment is the extent to which people understand top-level company objectives and how their own projects fit into them. It’s also arguably a measure of how well people in your organization can collaborate and share information with one another. In a misaligned company, poor communication can lead to projects which work against each other.
Alignment is also a great example of how managers influence employee engagement. A person’s line manager is often their primary point of contact with the company. It’s their job to set employee expectations about their role and responsibilities, including goal alignment.
Managers also play an essential role in employee performance and development through coaching and critical feedback. These things support engagement by showing employees their development is a priority, and by making sure they have clarity in their work.
Growth
Speaking of development, growth is the next pillar of engagement. It’s also something which benefits from taking a unified approach to people management. The question HR and managers need to be asking is, as Robin Daniels puts it:
How can we give you the learning and the mentorship and the knowledge that you need every single day, both for success today, but also for the future?
As mentioned, almost 80% of employees are dissatisfied with the amount of feedback they get. This shows a real desire on the part of the workforce to learn and grow. Most people don’t want to stay at the same level their whole careers.
Training and development courses help employees to master new skills, while feedback is often how they learn in the flow of work. In either case, you need people to be engaged if you want them to absorb the information. That’s why engagement, learning and performance stand much stronger together than apart.
Recognition
Recognition is the extent to which an employee’s efforts are acknowledged and appreciated. Managers trying to find a solution for employee engagement should make sure to build strong recognition habits. Regularly checking in with your people can offer plenty of opportunities to congratulate excellent performance and dedication.
Of course, while managerial recognition is really important, peer recognition is just as vital. That’s why the best software for employee engagement includes tools for sharing praise and acknowledgements.
There are few things more disengaging than putting in hard work, only for it to go seemingly unnoticed. This makes employees feel undervalued, which is a major precursor for disengagement. That’s why it’s critical to build a self-sustaining culture of recognition in your workplace.
How the Human Success Platform solves disengagement
Zensai’s Human Success Platform is a comprehensive engagement, learning and performance system, which makes it the ideal solution for employee engagement.
Our platform is purpose-built to work with Microsoft 365 and through Microsoft Teams, for goal management, feedback, training and support in the flow of work. Now, let’s see what each module brings to the table.
Engage365: The engine for employee engagement
Since we’re talking about employee engagement, it only makes sense to start with Engage365. This Zensai employee engagement software gives HR easy ways of opening up the dialogue between employees and their line managers. Some of its most useful features include:
- Real-time check-ins and pulse surveys: Bulky engagement surveys aren’t fit for purpose. That’s why our system uses weekly employee check-ins, which combine small sets of personalized engagement and wellbeing questions with the regular goal-tracking of Perform365. You can even collect employee feedback in Microsoft Teams for zero disruption.
The weekly cadence gives you a real-time view of how each individual in a team is doing. If you want to poll engagement-related issues across your team, you can use our pulse surveys for broader insights. - Automated feedback loops: The scheduled, asynchronous nature of our check-ins mean managers and employees both know when the next one is around the corner. Managers can even respond directly to an employee’s answers, which is the perfect opportunity for ongoing feedback loops.
Using check-ins to create automated feedback loops makes them the perfect bridge between formal performance reviews. At the same time, the employee’s own feedback is one of your most valuable sources of engagement data.
- AI analytics and insights: Speaking of data, Engage365 comes equipped with AI-powered analytics and reporting tools. Our sentiment analysis algorithm can take data from check-ins and pulse surveys, and create bespoke reports distilling actionable insights from what your team tells you.
AI analytics can find trends much more quickly and easily than human analysts. Our sentiment analysis reports provide essential, data-backed context for engagement decisions.
Learn365: Personalized L&D for every employee
Of course, Engage365 isn’t the only module of ours that can boost employee engagement. Let’s look at how Learn365 delivers training for increased job satisfaction and personal development at work.
- Learning path personalization: The idea of a one size fits all approach to learning is horribly outdated. People don’t have the same strengths and weaknesses, or career goals. To be an effective solution for employee engagement, training must be personalized to the individual.
Learn365 allows you to designate mandatory and optional training content with its flexible content rules. This means you can make sure employees learn the essentials, while they’re free to sign up for any courses that catch their interest. No matter which courses someone picks, everything will run smoothly thanks to automated certification and customizable notifications. - AI-powered learning recommendations: Manual learning path personalization is one thing, but our AI takes things a step further. The algorithm can make personal recommendations for individuals based on things like role type, and the history of courses they’ve shown interest in or completed.
This ensures that employees are made aware of interesting courses they may not find otherwise if you offer a particularly large content library. It’s about fostering a culture of learning by helping employees to be proactive about expanding their skill-sets.
- Flow-of-work learning with Microsoft 365: As mentioned, the Human Success Platform was purpose-built to work with Microsoft 365 systems like Teams and SharePoint, as well as Copilot and Azure AI.
In Learn365’s case, this is to better enable learning in the flow of work. When training occurs in a fake, isolated space, it can limit how well employees transfer new skills to their work routines. When training software functions as an extension of the tools they already use, it’s much easier to make those connections.
Perform365: For goal clarity and feedback
Finally, we have Perform365. Since our module names aren’t exactly brain teasers, you don’t need us to tell you that it’s the Human Success Platform’s performance management software. It’s designed from the ground up to enable agile performance feedback and goal management. Let’s look at its key features as part of the solution for employee engagement.
- OKRs for transparency and alignment: Objectives and Key Results are one of two goal-tracking methodologies available through Perform365, and they’re an option we definitely recommend using. They ensure alignment by connecting projects throughout your business with overarching business objectives.
OKRs are also a very transparent form of goal management. They show employees exactly how their efforts contribute to business growth, and with Perform365, key results are viewable to everyone involved. This helps to ensure that nobody feels like their work is pointless. - Weekly check-ins for employee support: Our weekly employee check-ins get another shoutout. That’s because Perform365 uses employee updates as a vehicle for goal-tracking. That way, managers have fresh reports every week without having to chase anyone up.
Just like Engage365, Perform365 uses check-ins to help you support your employees. Weekly updates mean you can track performance fluctuations in real-time and pinpoint when someone is struggling.
- Performance insights for managers: Perform365 also offers a bevy of insights to inform manager decision-making. You can set personalized SMART Goals for each employee, and use them to generate performance reports.
It’s also easy for managers to review the histories of everything, from personal feedback and OKR histories to 360 feedback and peer recognition. This sort of thing is really useful when preparing for performance conversations. Up to date insights ensure that managers give fair, transparent reviews that won’t leave employees disengaged.
Zensai’s impact as a solution for employee engagement
If you still aren’t convinced that our Human Success Platform is the solution for employee engagement, then here’s proof. Here are three customer success stories that show how Zensai’s platform supports engagement at work.
Flight Centre UK
Flight Centre UK is a travel and tourism company that’s part of the Australia-based Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG). They first established a need to improve performance conversations and feedback during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Engage365’s system of weekly employee check-ins allowed Flight Centre to significantly increase their rate of feedback frequency for employees. Meanwhile, Perform365 has made performance conversations more open and honest.
“As a result, we are having better quality conversations more often. We have more focused 1:1s that really help our people get the support and opportunities they need to grow. Now, they’re more engaged, happier, and best equipped to continue to deliver great service to our customers.”
HR executive for Flight Centre UK
Penske
Penske is a US-based transport and logistics company. Their old learning management systems were horrendously outdated, and they struggled with accessibility barriers for training. By switching to Learn365, they were able to consolidate multiple systems into one platform.
Penske values Learn365 for its deep integration with Microsoft Teams and other tools in the Microsoft 365 suite. Its familiarity helped to make training much more accessible for their people.
“People were buying their own LMSs and paying for them. So, our company had three, four, five, six different LMSs in their own right that are not centralized […] so, that was a hurdle. What’s nice about that, though, is that we consolidated about three LMSs into [Learn365]”
Randy Cruz, Director of Talent and Organizational Development, Penske
Phoenix Software
Lastly, we have Phoenix Software, an IT services and consulting company. They needed a learning management system that could deliver effective training in an accessible and timely way, while also helping them to meet their compliance requirements.
They eased into using the Human Success Platform, starting with check-ins to support engagement, and planning to roll out goals shortly after. Now, they’re using Learn365 to provide training for all employees.
“We have rolled out the weekly check-ins, and the next phase is to roll out the Goals element to track goals and objectives set as part of personal development plans. We will be linking the goals to the team, department, and company-level goals, so every employee can see how they contribute towards the company goals.”
Emma Taylor, Culture and Organizational Development Manager, Phoenix Software
The Human Success Platform secures engagement
Our Human Success Platform is the ideal solution for any HR leader unsure how to improve employee engagement. Just remember, the longer you wait to start engaging employees, the more of them will start eyeing the door. After all, the grass always looks greener elsewhere when you hate your job.
The sooner you invest in modern employee engagement software, the sooner you can build a better dialogue with your people and start collecting data.
Disengagement is draining your business – learn how to fix it today!
Employee disengagement is costing businesses more than they realize—lower productivity, higher turnover, and a workplace culture that struggles to retain top talent. But how can organizations turn the tide?
In this must-watch webinar, our experts break down the hidden impact of disengagement and share actionable strategies to reignite motivation, boost retention, and drive real business success. Don’t let disengagement hold your company back!
