Employee engagement software is crucial for any SMBs and startups. Today I shall teach you about the necessity of employee engagement in the workplace and give you my recommendations for the best employee engagement software for small businesses to help you make smarter decisions!
Let's begin!
What Is Employee Engagement?
"Employee Engagement" is a term used in human resources to describe how invested, inspired, and enthusiastic employees are about their job and organization. An effective strategy for boosting Employee Engagement depends on transparent communication and mutual understanding among employers and employees.
This is a prime concern for both HR professionals and C-suite executives. Generally speaking, fully motivated employees make significantly more efforts toward achieving success in their workplace.
Employee engagement indicates an employee's complete motivation and is not exclusively influenced by financial compensation. Any employee that is driven by and devoted to achieving the company's goal is an individual who is deeply invested in their profession.
These employees are aware of the company's goals and are determined to help the company reach those goals. They consequently have a favorable opinion of their position within the company and their profession.
Role of Employee Engagement in the Organization
Here are some instances of the impact of employee engagement in the workplace:
1. Employee Engagement, Customer Satisfaction, and Customer Retention
Employees who are actively involved in their occupations are significantly more satisfied than those who are detached. And satisfied employees result in satisfied consumers. These satisfied clients are more likely to remain loyal to the corporation.
Employees that are involved and engaged with their work love to take pride in the work that they do. When employees find pride in their jobs and find meaning in putting effort, they are able to serve consumers with care and attention and give exponentially better service.
When any employee feels valued and appreciated, it is highly likely that they will reflect that in their customer service. This results in a better customer experience and superior service quality scores.
Similarly, customer retention is related to employee satisfaction. It has been observed that more than 80 % of consumers were secured by businesses with higher levels of employee engagement.
Employees who deliver exceptional services undoubtedly increase client retention. Furthermore, it also creates brand loyalty for the customers. As the customers feel more appreciated and taken care of, they are more likely to become loyal to the brand itself, all because of the exceptional behavior of the employees.
2. Employee Engagement and Productivity
Productivity is essential to every organization, whether large or small because higher levels of productivity directly correlate to higher profit margins.
Studies have shown that individuals who are not involved in their work are about 18% less efficient when compared to employees that are actively engaged.
Employees who are invested in their work are typically driven by factors other than financial compensation. They remain devoted to achieving the goals of the organization and thus believe that they are contributing directly to the company's overall success and realizing its goals.
Because of this, engaged employees become inherently more productive. They develop deeper bonds with coworkers, which results in more efficient and effective collaborative efforts as employees as they are working to achieve the same targets. The outcomes of these endeavours and the feeling of belonging that results from them are both beneficial to the organization and necessary.
This not only boosts the overall productivity of a business but also helps employees become better at finding solutions to challenges.
3. Employee Engagement and Employee Retention
Employee engagement is one of the most reliable means of forecasting employee turnover rates. It helps to strategies and retains efficient employees for an extended period of time by making the environment more comfortable to work in.
Employee retention and engagement are linked by the fact that engaged employees are more likely to remain and not leave a company.
Participation has always been affected by almost every part of an individual's involvement in their work and workplace. Routinely measuring involvement and participation provides an organization with a good idea of the potential issues affecting employee retention. HR departments and business owners can then use this information and take necessary steps to solve and improve those points of concern.
The way that these two things are evaluated makes the said relation between retention and engagement even stronger. In the past, exit interviews have been one of the only instances in which organizations were able to know the reason why any individual left. Employee engagement similarly conducts surveys and takes in feedback from employees, and allows employees to speak up about their difficulties before they become unbearable.
This allows business owners to proactively respond and fix those issues before it comes to the point where employees decide to leave. Moreover, surveys, feedback, and the option to address their organizations about their problems and issues make employees feel cared for and appreciated.
The Connection Between Employee Engagement and Employee Retention
The establishment of a successful employee management policy is a primary requirement to achieve a company's long-term goals. However, successful employee retention and management plans take a lot of time to develop. Because it completely depends on feedback and surveys and how a team solves the issues in a timely manner.
Business owners can create their dream workforce full of employees that are consistently putting in their maximum effort without supervision. All this can be done by simply applying creative employee participation activities in the workplace. This will allow business owners to achieve their long-term goals.
This is where the employee engagement platforms come in, as they make this process easier. They speed up your existing methods by automating a lot of the processes. This not only boosts up speed but also frees up personnel because of the automated features they offer. That personnel can then focus their attention on solving any raised issue promptly.
The link lies in the correlation between these two things. Employee engagement analysis provides employers the ability to monitor all interactions and activities of employees. This gives teams and planners unparalleled insights into their employees and their actions and highlights areas that need improvement and their immediate attention. This becomes the difference between employees wanting to stay and employees wanting to leave.
What Features Must Employee Engagement Software Provide?
When making our list of the top 10, we focused on a few key features offered by the software. Those features are:
1. Data Storage and Management
Maintaining precise employee records is crucial for efficient administration. Employee information like names, residences, times of acquisition, responsibilities, wages, and other essential details needs to be stored. So automation of recording and managing paperwork becomes crucial in any organization as it not only increases efficiency but also makes things easily accessible.
2. Absence and leave tracking:
Accurately recording employees’ time worked can help cut down on unnecessary costs. To guarantee accurate compensation reports, effective attendance management is essential
Businesses are always looking for solutions to aid with absence planning and provide all the details required to process requests. After reviewing employee requests for absence against company policy and based on their records, decisions can be made much more quickly and easily.
3. Employee Management
Employee management includes and is not limited to:
4. Employee Engagement
Having a dedicated and hardworking team is impossible without motivated and enthusiastic personnel. That's why it's crucial to make staff feel like their opinions matter by regularly surveying them on everything related to the organization.
5. Employee Performance Monitoring:
Routine performance evaluations and adjustments are impossible without regular assessments and constructive criticism. All workforce data must be taken into account using the latest methods, which any decent software should provide.
How We Chose Our Top 10?
We chose our top 10 based on a few key factors:
1. Verified User Reviews
This includes both positive and negative reviews. As no software is perfect, every software has some sort of flaw or inconvenience. So we reviewed all reviews and considered the benefits and disadvantages they provide.
2. Functionality
Every platform must contain a minimum number of features that are irreplaceable for the job and actions those platforms are meant to perform. So we placed special focus on whether the platforms satisfied what users expected from them.
3. Flexibility and Convenience:
Another important factor to consider is the flexibility and convenience these platforms provide. These include factors like :
- Device compatibility
- Access
- Availability of support
- Integration with other platforms
- Cohesiveness
- Tools and plugins
Best Employee Engagement Software for 2022
Here are 10 of the best options for employee engagement software in 2022 (in no particular order).
1. 15Five
15Five makes HR and HR processes faster and more efficient by equipping HR departments with tools and features.
Features of 15Five include
- It has intuitive dashboards
- It allows customization
- It takes in feedback and conducts surveys
- It has KPI monitoring features
- It offers detailed analytics
- It sets individual employee goals
- It creates detailed reporting
- It has self-assessment features
15Five is an organization that takes a comprehensive and integrated approach to manage performance. 15Five provides human resource departments with a comprehensive platform solution that increases employee retention, improves management efficiency, and influences increased engagement and productivity.
The design of 15Five was done so to provide assistance to HR departments and all workforce personnel in just about any industry.
Users can also modify both the response and the management support so that they meet the requirements of all organizations. With 15Five's intuitive application and training for management staff, human resource professionals can consistently measure employees' productivity and participation and give managers the ability to make changes.
Why we suggest it
- It is cloud-based
- Works on PCs and mobile devices
- It has live support
- It is easy to use
- It has trial options
- It offers feedback options
- It offers surveys
Things to consider
- Poorly designed
- Some unintuitive features
- Too many notifications
2. Assembly
Assembly software was initially used to reward employees, but it quickly expanded to become an extensive system that assists in managing projects, performance, and employees.
Features of Assembly include
- It has dashboards
- It offers customization
- It offers feedback options
- It provides detailed analytics
- It allows detailed reporting
- It offers collaboration tools
- It has P2P recognition
- It offers performance management
Assembly makes Human resources and recruitment easier by providing templates for things and surveys like employee compensation, eNPS score, leaving interviews, satisfaction, time tracking, interview questionnaires, and referral programs.
With in-built templates for performance management for all sorts of activities, Assembly improves associations, progress, and professional progress. Again by offering means of effective one-on-one conversations, Assembly strengthens manager-employee interactions. Furthermore, the implementation of surveys and evaluations using the platform can help you monitor the growth and progress of the workforce with ease.
Why we suggest it
- It is cloud-based
- It has a free trial
- It has live support
- Easy to use
- Offers excellent customer support
- It works on desktops and mobile devices
Things to consider
- UI is somewhat lacking
- Per user price model
3. Bonusly
Bonusly's target is to facilitate effective connections between individuals both within the context of their employment and among them.
Features of Bonusly include
- It offers dashboards
- It has benchmarking features
- It allows and takes in feedback
- It has detailed analytics
- It allows planning and goal setting
- It creates detailed reports
- It has employee rewards options
- It has communication options
- It offers P2P recognition
- It has a performance management
Bonusly believes that any firm is capable of cultivating productive teams that are heavily involved. It utilizes its powerful employee feedback and incentives platform. Bonusly provides a system and implementations that make employee engagement effortless.
It also includes an international reward catalog that includes a wide range of payment options. The P2P recognition that Bonusly offers is both easy to use and convenient as it encompasses the company's core principles.
Why we suggest it
- It is cloud-based
- It has free trial options
- Works on desktop PCs
- It works on mobile platforms
- Offers live support
- Relatively cheap
Things to consider
- Less customization options
- Reward options are limited
- Per user price model
4. Empuls
Empuls allows SMBs to streamline their workforce using its tools and features.
Features of Empuls include
- It has dashboards
- It has employee rewarding features
- It offers employee engagement
- It has excellent reporting and analyzing features
- It has P2P recognition
- It offers customization
- It allows integration with other software
- It has sharing and communication features
Empuls is a platform that specializes in every aspect of workplace engagement. Organizations of all sizes can utilize Empuls to allow all employees to communicate and synchronize internally, assess opinions using proper evaluation, and encourage productivity using a variety of incentives and recognition tools.
Empuls enables HR and managers to easily recognize and incentivize employees for their efforts and important career milestones, encourage employees to participate in workplace activities, collect their feedback, and connect remuneration with said organization and its objectives.
Why we chose it
- It has free trial options
- It is cloud-based
- Works on mobile devices
- It offers 24/7 support
Things to consider
- No free version
- Long waiting time
- Clunky UI
- Per user price model
5. Fond
Fond serves as a one-stop solution for all employee rewards and recognition needs of any organization, regardless of their size.
Features of Fond include
- It offers benchmarking features
- It has employee engagement
- It has employee recognition functions
- It allows P2P recognition
- It offers detailed reporting and analysis
- It can perform training management
- It offers sharing and communication options
- It has performance metrics
Fond functions as a cloud-based platform which streamlines the employee recognition and rewarding process by combining everything into a unified solution. Being user-friendly, Fond enables HR teams to focus elsewhere by taking on everything related to the employee recognition and rewarding process, which includes redeeming rewards, allowing special corporate discounts, etc. Thus increasing efficiency.
Employees and administrators of a company are given the ability to choose workplace benefits from a wide range of categories, including health, recreation, or leisure, and to record the amount of times rewards have been redeemed using infographics. Furthermore, the staff is able to converse among themselves and remote teams and watch as well as contribute opinions via Fond's communication features.
Why we chose it
- It is cloud-based
- Works on mobile devices
- It offers live support
- Stellar reviews
- Satisfied users
Things to consider
- The point system can be somewhat difficult for some to understand
6. Kazoo or WorkTango
WorkTango is an easy-to-use system that combines several functions as one comprehensive package.
Features of WorkTango include
- It offers dashboards
- It has employee rewards features
- It has employee onboarding features
- It allows detailed reporting and analysis
- It has P2P recognition features
- It offers users customization
- It has training management functions
- It has advanced sharing and communication options
- It shows performance metrics
WorkTango is a robust system that helps organizations enhance individual worker satisfaction and the corporate environment by combining engagement surveys, regular productivity and employee performance monitoring, and a reward system into a single cohesive solution.
WorkTango functions include those for workplace participation awards, individual worker identification, and employee performance monitoring. Its three-pronged strategy makes it possible for employees to work with a single supplier who can exchange information smoothly throughout its three components.
Why we chose it
- It has free trial options
- It has free versions
- It is cloud-based
- Works on mobile devices
- It offers 24/7 support
- It is easy to use
Things to consider
- Disappointing analytics
- Less intuitive
- Flawed reward system
7. Kudos
Kudos serves to improve P2P recognition and the internal culture and behavior of employees in the workplace.
Features of Kudos include
- It offers performance management
- It has P2P recognition
- It has dashboards
- It offers communication options
- It has an employee reward system
- It creates detailed reports
- It provides insightful analytics
Kudos serves as analytics software that allows organizations to significantly improve their employees' engagement and turnover, improve the workplace culture, and increase productivity and employee performance
Kudos uses the power of P2P recognition and reinforces values. It also facilitates employees’ communication to achieve these goals, which also helps boost both productivity and regular performance.
Kudos is able to give reliable analytics on workplace culture, individual performance, fairness, and inclusivity because of its unique and patented techniques. As a result, Kudos provides businesses with a distinct comprehension of their personnel.
Why we chose it
- Easy to use
- It is cloud-based
- Works on mobile devices
- Works on PCs
- It offers 24/7 support
Things to consider
- Limited rewards
- No trial or free versions
- Management issues
8. Lattice
Lattice helps organizations build and develop an efficient and productive workforce. It increases efficiency by streamlining employee management in organizations of all sizes.
Features of Lattice include
- It offers dashboards
- It has employee management features
- It offers employee performance-tracking functions
- It allows integration with other platforms
- It has custom survey functions
- It has benchmarking performance and productivity functions
- It offers feedback options and peer appraisals
Lattice serves as a SaaS-based employee performance management system that covers every aspect from the beginning or the hiring process to the very end. It streamlines target planning and employee performance assessment. Lattice also makes it way easier to communicate with employees about their productivity on a routine basis.
It does this by leveraging its detailed system of statistical analysis and feedback options to generate insights that can be turned into action, which in turn may be utilized to improve productivity. In addition to this, it offers a variety of customizable possibilities, allowing customers to personalize the productivity management procedures to better meet the needs of the respective business.
Why we chose it
- It is cloud-based
- It is easy to use
- Offers live support
- It has a trial option
- Relatively cheap
Things to consider
- It does not offer much flexibility
- Somewhat limited features
9. Leapsome
Leapsome allows organizations to develop more customized and personalized methods of learning for their employees.
Features of Leapsome include
- It offers dashboards
- It has performance management features
- It has talent management features
- It offers training management
- It has an employee reward system
- It has employee self-service portals
- It offers feedback and review monitoring
- It has goal and target-setting features.
Leapsome serves as a management system software which tracks and records individual employees' performances and their participation in the workplace. It includes a comprehensive one-stop package for managing employees starting from the onboarding process.
Leapsome is primarily geared toward training fresh recruits with the necessary qualifications by utilizing programming during various stages of the company's onboarding. It also allows you to assess what they have learned. Leapsome also offers functions that can assess employees' performances and synchronize them with the organization's core principles.
Why we suggest it
- Easy to use
- It is cloud-based
- It has trial options
- It offers 24/7 support
Things to consider
- Some features are not always available
- Sometimes difficult to implement
10. Motivosity
Motivosity offers a streamlined solution to improve workplace culture by increasing performance and productivity.
Features of Motivosity include
- It offers dashboards
- It has employee management functions
- It allows performance tracking and assessment
- It has P2P recognition
- It has a detailed reporting system
- It offers feedback options
- It allows customization
Motivosity provides a cutting-edge solution for engaging employees. Its goal is to make individuals satisfied in their professional lives. This program emphasizes the most important factors that enhance worker fulfilment.
Motivosity platform has a 95% employee & user engagement rate and generates positive outcomes by integrating the practice of continuous employee recognition into any organization's work culture and highlighting employee accomplishments and efforts.
Why did we choose it?
- It has free trial options
- It is cloud-based
- Works on mobile devices
- It offers live support
- It is easy to use
Things to consider
- Has some UI issues
- It has upload problems
- Sometimes options do not work as intended.
To Conclude
Now that you have a better understanding of employee engagement software and also have our recommendations, I hope you'll be able to find software that suits your needs the best and save money as well as time and resources!
