Deploying the right employee engagement software can help you increase productivity, improve retention rates, and even boost your bottom line. But with so many options to choose from, it can be difficult to know which platform is right for your organization. In this article, we’ll share our thoughts on 10 of the top solutions to help you make your decision.
What is employee engagement software? (And why your company needs it.)
Employee engagement software can be any number of tools that allow employers to measure and improve employee engagement. By gathering real-time feedback through employee engagement software, organizations can get valuable insights into how employees are feeling. They can then use that same software to improve engagement through a variety of different functions like rewards and shout-outs, employee communities, employee spotlights, and peer-to-peer recognition.
According to a recent Gallup survey, only 23% of employees globally are engaged at work — and 15% are actively disengaged. Gallup also estimated in 2023 that low employee engagement costs the global economy $8.9 trillion every year. Employee engagement management software can help employers avoid the costs of employee disengagement and ensure their teams are motivated and satisfied at work.
The benefits of employee engagement software
Wondering if employee engagement software is worth the investment? Here are some of the biggest employee engagement benefits that a software platform could bring to your organization.
- Improved quality of work: Employees who are engaged at work are 27% more likely to report “excellent” performance. Employee engagement software could help you boost productivity and enable your employees to do their best work.
- Lower turnover: Employee turnover is between 18% and 43% lower for organizations in the top quartile for employee engagement compared to bottom-quartile companies. Employee engagement software could be key to keeping your best people around for longer.
- Higher customer satisfaction: Having highly engaged employees is also better for your customers: Top-quartile companies had a 10% higher rating for customer loyalty and engagement.
- Better safety records: Using software for employee engagement could even help keep your people safer at work. According to a Gallup survey, workplaces with high levels of engagement report 70% fewer safety incidents.
- Increased profitability: One study found that engaged organizations experience 22% higher profitability than those whose workforces are not engaged. Investing in employee engagement software could significantly boost your company’s bottom line.
Key features of an employee engagement platform
Today, there are many different employee engagement software solutions to choose from — and they each have their own unique set of functionalities. The right choice for you will ultimately come down to what you want the software to accomplish for your business. That said, there are a few key features that are shared by many employee engagement platforms, and which could have a big impact on engagement in your organization.
Multi-directional communication
Effective communication is key to engaging employees. Employee engagement software should enable top-down communications that help employees feel aligned with the company culture and engaged with the organization’s vision and mission. It should also allow employees to ask questions, provide feedback, and share their ideas with management and leadership, which fosters a culture of open dialogue, transparency, and employee empowerment. Lastly, peer-to-peer communication can create a sense of belonging and increase engagement and morale over time.
Surveys and polls
You can’t fix an employee engagement problem if you don’t know you have one — which is why surveys and polls are a key feature for employee engagement software. Sending out regular pulse surveys gives you an overview of the feeling on the ground in your organization and helps you identify problems before they get out of hand. Plus, regularly soliciting feedback via employee engagement surveys (and then acting on it) demonstrates your commitment to continuous improvement, which can strengthen employee loyalty and engagement.
Employee recognition and feedback
Many employee engagement platforms come with features for employee recognition, including peer-to-peer shout-outs, likes, and employee-generated news feeds. These things allow employees to acknowledge and celebrate each other’s achievements in real time, which can boost morale and engagement. Additionally, built-in mechanisms for employee feedback allow employees to provide their input on new initiatives. This both gives leaders valuable insights from workers on the ground and helps those workers feel seen, heard, and valued.
Access for frontline and desk workers
Not all employees work at computers — and the best employee engagement software is built with both deskless and office-based workers in mind. That means that an employee engagement platform should be accessible from various devices, including computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. This way, all employees can stay connected to their organization and colleagues, wherever they work.
Groups and communities
The ability to connect with colleagues and build relationships based on shared interests and values can play a big role in employee engagement. That’s why many employee engagement platforms come with groups and communities built around employees’ interests. Employees can use these platforms to subscribe to groups they care about, connect with others on topics of interest, and stay up to date on the latest events and information.
Personalization and targeting
Each one of your employees is a unique individual with their own experiences, values, and priorities. That means there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to employee engagement — and the best platforms recognize this. These tools allow organizations to personalize employees’ experience of using the software and target messaging to specific groups.
Employee onboarding tools
The best employers know they need to start building engagement with new employees from day one — and employee engagement software can help you to do this. By acting as a “digital water cooler,” employee engagement software allows new employees to begin connecting with their colleagues, even if they’re remote or offsite. Some employee engagement software also comes with digitized employee onboarding materials with feedback mechanisms like surveys and forms built right in.
Reporting and dashboards
The best employee engagement platforms provide admins and HR with valuable insights through built-in analytics and reporting capabilities. Typically, this is accessed through an intuitive dashboard, which gives an overview of employee sentiment. Admins can then filter information by demographics, locations, and other factors to get more actionable insights.
How to choose the right employee engagement software for your organization
With a host of employee engagement software solutions on the market, there’s no one right choice for every organization. When selecting your tool, you should think carefully about the problems you want the software to solve for your company, and look for solutions that are capable of meeting those goals.
Here are a few other key things to consider when shopping for employee engagement software:
- Security: Choosing a provider that takes data security and compliance seriously is crucial to protecting your business. Look for employee engagement software with ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certifications if you want to be sure it’s trustworthy.
- Customer service: It’s also important to choose a tool that comes with comprehensive customer support. For example, Staffbase’s customers get access to dedicated support during the onboarding and launch phases. Once their platform is set up, we keep in touch through regular reviews, and our team is always on hand to answer questions.
- Pricing: Of course, it goes without saying that you should look for a tool with competitive pricing. However, keep in mind that it’s not just about choosing the cheapest tool, but the one that will give you the biggest ROI.
- Integrations: Ideally, you should choose a tool that will work well with the other software and systems your employees already use. That might mean looking for a tool that integrates with your chosen communication platforms, HR management systems, or productivity suites.
The top 10 best employee engagement software
We’ve put together this list of the best employee engagement platforms on the market to help you decide on the right option for your organization. For each one, we’ll share a brief summary, plus the pros, cons, and pricing information.
1. Staffbase
Staffbase is the leading platform for employee communications and engagement. Designed to connect and engage remote employees, office-based team members, and deskless workers alike, Staffbase offers a suite of tools including an employee app, intranet, email, digital signage, and SMS updates, all designed to drive adoption and empower employees to engage no matter where they work.
The platform supports both top-down communications and change management comms, helping HR leaders and internal communicators drive transformation by aligning employees with company goals. It also provides bottom-up and peer-to-peer engagement with features like communities, social walls, surveys, and feedback forms helping to cultivate a sense of organizational belonging by allowing employees to participate in the company culture.
With strong admin collaboration features and advanced analytics dashboards, it’s easy for comms and HR professionals to understand how employees are engaging, and identify the areas where their work is having the most impact.
Pros
- Advanced employee engagement features including communities, branded push notifications, surveys, feedback forms, and social feeds to drive employee participation and satisfaction.
- Intuitive design, fully branded to each company, ensuring high adoption rates.
- Allows people and comms teams to plan, deliver, and measure strategic communications, ensuring employees understand key programs, company changes, employee benefits, and organizational goals.
- Advanced analytics dashboards and actionable insights allow admins to measure the impact of key communications.
- Smooth integrations with key HRIS systems like Workday, ADP, and SAP and productivity suites like Microsoft 365 to ensure syncing user management data is seamless and automated.
- Dedicated support team to help customers achieve their goals at implementation and beyond.
Cons
- Because it combines corporate updates, peer-to-peer engagement, and knowledge management, Staffbase is not best used solely as a social tool.
- Staffbase integrates well with big HR systems like Workday, SAP, and ADP. However, it does not provide end-to-end human capital management processes like payroll or expense reporting.
Pricing
Staffbase offers three main pricing plans tailored to different business sizes and needs:
- SMB: For companies with up to 1000 employees, featuring a branded mobile app, push and email notifications, targeting and personalization, news feeds, and more.
- Business: All of the above plus Companion AI Editor, auto-translation, in-depth analytics, editorial calendar, customization options, and APIs.
- Enterprise: All business plan features, plus campaigns, ghostwriting, automated journeys, local content management (Spaces), and custom app distribution options.
For detailed comparisons and quotes, visit our pricing page.
2. Lattice
Lattice is a performance management platform that helps employers track and improve performance across their organizations. Customers can also purchase an add-on for employee engagement, which includes features like employee engagement surveys, pulse surveys, exit interviews, and eNPS surveys. This is complemented by an analytics layer that allows HR to draw out key insights and take measures to increase engagement.
Pros
- Benchmarking feature allows companies to understand how performance has changed since previous surveys.
- 1:1 meeting feature helps managers and their reports have more productive, positive meetings, which could ultimately improve motivation and drive performance.
- Integrations with key HRIS, productivity software, and more, including Microsoft Teams, Google Calendar, Salesforce, Rippling, and Workday.
Cons
- Primarily intended for employee performance tracking, so not the most advanced software for employee engagement on the market.
- No functionality for internal comms or employee communities.
- Some customers say customization options for surveys are limited.
Pricing
$11 per employee per month for the core package, plus $4 per employee per month for the engagement add-on.
3. Culture Amp
Culture Amp is an employee experience platform designed to tie individual and team goals to an organization’s big-picture strategy. Through Culture Amp’s employee engagement features, employers can create and send out surveys to employees. The tool’s advanced analytics provide HR, leadership, and managers with the insights they need to drive organizational change.
Pros
- Highly flexible and customizable surveys for employee engagement, onboarding, and exit, making it easy to track the employee experience from start to finish.
- Advanced analytics and insights including heatmaps, trends, correlation analysis, and impact analysis, helping HR to find areas for improvement.
- Strong performance management features including continuous feedback, goal-setting, and performance tracking.
Cons
- Comes with a wide range of features, meaning it can be overwhelming for some users.
- Integrations with other platforms aren’t always smooth or intuitive.
- While Culture Amp excels at building positive company cultures, it isn’t built for strategic communications and provides only minimum functionality for peer-to-peer engagement.
Pricing
Culture Amp offers three pricing levels for organizations of different sizes, with add-ons available for an additional cost.
4. Bonusly
Bonusly is a peer-to-peer recognition platform that uses gamification to encourage employees to celebrate each other’s achievements. It works on a points system, in which users are given a certain number of points to award to their colleagues through public shout-outs each month. Employees can then spend their points on rewards ranging from gift cards to charitable donations to company merch.
Pros
- 360° feedback feature means colleagues can receive recognition from both managers and peers.
- Analytics function allows managers to track which employees give and receive the most points.
- Automatic rewards for work anniversaries or custom milestones to keep employees engaged.
- Integrations with workplace communication tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack, plus various HR platforms.
Cons
- The focus on gamification means there’s no space for strategic top-down communications, which can be very effective in driving employee engagement.
- The analytics function only provides limited insight into employee engagement since the focus is on rewards and recognition.
- Bonusly’s points system can be confusing, especially for new users.
Pricing
Bonusly offers three pricing tiers, ranging from $2 to $7 per employee per month.
5. HiBob
HiBob is a human resources information system (HRIS) designed to streamline and simplify core HR processes. Though not primarily an employee engagement platform, it comes with some key features that can help employers to measure employee sentiment and gather feedback from their teams.
Pros
- Built-in templates for anonymous employee sentiment and satisfaction surveys.
- Intuitive dashboard and visual heatmaps to help HR interpret and analyze survey results.
- Admins can share relevant results with team leads, management, or C-Suite to enable action.
- Peer-to-peer shout-out function helps build a sense of community.
Cons
- Surveys come with limited customization options, which could be too rigid for some companies.
- HiBob is not built primarily for employee engagement, but also has more limited features than robust HCM offerings like Workday and Rippling.
- No option for non-anonymous surveys.
Pricing
HiBob’s pricing is variable depending on the needs of the organization.
6. Leapsome
Leapsome is an employee engagement tool with a focus on goal-setting and employee development, which helps organizations to build high-performing teams. While Leapsome’s focus is performance management, it also includes tools for employee engagement like customizable surveys. The platform’s machine learning (ML)-driven analytics help HR to spot patterns and identify areas for improvement.
Pros
- Large feature set including 360° reviews, anonymous and non-anonymous feedback, skill frameworks, and development paths.
- Powerful analytics and ML-based sentiment analysis that automatically uncover improvement areas based on survey data.
- Integrations with HRIS, SSO, and collaboration and communication tools including HiBob, BambooHR, Rippling, Slack, MS Teams, and more.
Cons
- Leapsome’s extensive feature set can make it confusing compared to other employee engagement software.
- Modular pricing means costs increase as you require more functions.
- Leapsome is mostly focused on productivity and personal development, meaning it isn’t set up to support strategic communications or peer-to-peer connection.
Pricing
Basic plan starts at $8 per employee per month, with add-ons available for an additional cost.
7. Reward Gateway
Reward Gateway is an employee engagement platform focused on rewards and recognition. As well as supporting peer-to-peer feedback, Reward Gateway allows managers to reward employees for great work. Employees can then choose from a wide range of e-gift cards, experiences, and even products on Amazon.
Pros
- Automated rewards for work anniversaries, birthdays, and custom events.
- Reward marketplace allows employees to choose rewards that are meaningful to them.
- Customizable survey templates and one-question pulse surveys make it easy to gather data on employee engagement.
- Engagement analytics allow HR to assess the impact of various initiatives.
Cons
- Since the platform is built on peer-to-peer and manager-level recognition, there’s limited possibility for strategic top-down communications.
- As a standalone program, it can be difficult to encourage managers and employees to engage with the software.
- Reward Gateway’s app requires a working email and two-factor authentication, which means it may not work for deskless employees without a work email address.
Pricing
For small companies, Reward Gateway is priced between $7–$11 per employee per month depending on plan structure. Prices for companies with 100+ employees are not advertised.
8. Workvivo
Workvivo is an enterprise social network (ESN) built for communication and engagement. Its primary aims are to help employees connect with each other and elevate user-generated content. Static content such as news and information are secondary functions. Recently acquired by Zoom, Workvivo is now an app within the Zoom Digital Workplace ecosystem.
Pros
- Social media-like experience that feels familiar to employees and could encourage adoption.
- Good solution for companies using Zoom Digital Workplace as their central collaboration hub.
- Sleek and modern interface provides a good user experience.
Cons
- As part of the Zoom Digital Workplace, Workvivo is reliant on Zoom’s strategic direction, which may shift focus from engagement to productivity in the future.
- Primarily designed for bottom-up engagement, meaning HR and internal comms have less control over content generation and delivery.
- Without guaranteed white-labeled products or the ability to download employee apps from public app stores, employee adoption can be a challenge.
Pricing
Workvivo has two core pricing tiers, and users can also purchase add-ons for an additional cost.
9. Headspace for Work
Headspace is an app designed to help users look after their mental health and well-being. The company’s corporate offering, Headspace for Work, provides guided meditation, sleep support, and other mindfulness tools. Employees can also access coaching, therapy, and psychiatry services directly through the app.
Pros
- Mindfulness, sleep, focus, and movement exercises available to all employees on demand.
- Personalized coaching, therapy, and psychiatry services to assist with more serious problems.
- Built-in concierge service ensures a seamless experience for employees.
Cons
- Headspace is totally focused on employee wellness and offers no functionality for engaging with company culture or connecting with colleagues.
- Limited capability to measure and improve employee engagement since this is not the core purpose of the software.
- No functionality for top-down or peer-to-peer communications, which can drive engagement.
Pricing
Headspace for Work has three pricing options with increasing functionality: Headspace Core, Headspace Care, and Headspace EAP. Note that chat-based coaching, therapy, and psychiatry services are only available in the top two packages.
10. Workday
Workday is a human capital management (HCM) system designed to help organizations manage payroll, benefits, and other core HR processes. Customers can also purchase additional modules for things like talent management, enterprise learning, and engagement. Workday’s employee engagement module, Peakon Employee Voice, offers features such as employee surveys and personalized dashboards for HR, with AI-driven analytics.
Pros
- AI-driven insights drawn from survey data can help admins to identify areas for improvement.
- Suggested conversation starters and confidential two-way conversations to facilitate manager feedback.
- Possibility to integrate employee sentiment data with HCM data for deeper workforce insights.
Cons
- Not designed for peer-to-peer engagement, and end-to-end user experience is clunky and overwhelming.
- No possibility to use your own branding for the employee app or platform.
- Communication features are rudimentary, and lack critical features like personalization and segmentation.
Pricing
Workday’s pricing is variable based on the needs of each customer. However, some users report that Workday starts at $99 per employee per month, making it significantly more expensive than other solutions in this space.
The importance of internal communication for employee engagement
Internal communications play a crucial role in fostering an engaged workforce. By keeping employees informed about the latest company updates, goals, and changes, internal communications professionals can ensure that every employee is engaged with the organization’s mission and strategy. Instead of feeling isolated or disconnected, employees will understand that they’re part of a cohesive team, who are ultimately working towards common goals.
Open and transparent communication with employees can also help you to build a culture of trust, where employees feel truly seen by their employer. Plus, internal communication channels provide opportunities for peer-to-peer and top-down recognition, feedback loops, and two-way dialogue. All of this helps to reinforce positive behaviors and drive performance while showing employees that they are valued.
If you want to improve employee engagement within your organization, creating a solid plan for both top-down and peer-to-peer communication is key. And backing up your strategy with the right employee engagement software can greatly amplify its impact.
Get a free Staffbase demo
Staffbase is an internal communications platform that can help you gather feedback, amplify employee voices, and deliver crucial messages from leadership to every employee, whether they’re behind a desk or out in the field. Want to learn more about how Staffbase could help drive employee engagement in your organization? Sign up for a platform demo to get started.
