According to Gallup, nearly 80% of employees worldwide are still not engaged despite organizations employing the best of engagement practices. 

This could be attributed to a variety of subjective factors influencing employee engagement. And we completely agree with you on how overwhelming the process of tracking and measuring employee experience and satisfaction can be.

So as a HR professional, you’ll need all the leverage you can get. More specifically, you’ll need a system to foster engagement from your employees and recognize their efforts.

That’s why we've compiled a great list of employee engagement tools for you to choose from and get the most out of the platform. 

We’ve done all the groundwork so you don’t have to spend time researching for the best employee engagement tools yourself.

An employee engagement tool is a platform designed to enhance the way organizations interact with their employees all with the focus of identifying and improving engagement using surveys and analytics.

These tools aim to bridge the gap between an organization's management and its staff, helping facilitate communication, recognize achievements, and gather feedback to improve overall engagement and job satisfaction.

A robust employee engagement platform should offer a comprehensive suite of features that cater to the multifaceted nature of employee engagement.

Here are key features to look for.

1. Surveys and Feedback Mechanisms‍

Pulse surveys, annual surveys, and continuous feedback channels allow for real-time insights into employee sentiment and workplace satisfaction, enabling management to address concerns proactively.

2. Recognition and Rewards System

A platform should facilitate easy recognition of employee achievements, both big and small, through public shout-outs, awards, and rewards. This not only boosts morale but also encourages a culture of appreciation.

3. Performance Management

Integrating performance reviews, goal tracking, and development plans within the engagement tool helps align individual achievements with organizational goals, promoting transparency and growth.

4. Analytics and Reporting‍

Comprehensive dashboards and reporting tools provide actionable insights into engagement levels, helping leaders make informed decisions to improve workplace culture.

5. Integration Capabilities

The ability to seamlessly integrate with existing HRIS, CRM, and productivity tools ensures a unified and efficient workflow, enhancing the user experience for both employees and HR professionals.

Employee engagement platforms play a pivotal role in fostering a dynamic and thriving workforce. Here's a curated a list of the 16 best employee engagement tools and platforms that can help you elevate your team's performance, satisfaction, and overall workplace experience.

• 14-Day Free Trial
• Demo Available
• Starts at $3/month/employee
• G2 Rating: 4.5

ThriveSparrow is an employee success platform designed for the unsung heroes of the workplace- HR professionals. The platform helps you revitalize workplace culture, and foster sustained employee satisfaction.

ThriveSparrow offers a robust platform featuring three key modules: Engage, Kudos, and Performance, where each module serves a unique purpose in improving workplace dynamics.

Engage: ThriveSparrow focuses on improving employee engagement by offering insights into insights into employees' needs and sentiments through Surveys, Manager Reports, and Heatmaps. This creates a workplace environment that nurtures motivation and enhances performance.

Kudos: This module promotes the celebration and recognition of employee achievements, fostering a culture of appreciation and teamwork that transforms each day into an opportunity to celebrate success.

Performance: Whether it's individual reports, or group reports, ThriveSparrow makes analysis of employee performance easier and more streamlined. Furthermore, the platform's AI-based PDP feature lets managers create personal development plans for each of their team members with minimal effort.

Together, these modules form a powerful combination that makes ThriveSparrow one of the best HR toolkits in the market.

Key Features

• Employee Engagement Surveys: Gain valuable insights into employee sentiment with research-backed survey templates and question banks that can be created and shared in under 2 minutes.
• Anonymous Feedback: Gather feedback and makes them anonymous, thus encouraging honest and candid feedback.
• Heatmaps: Visualize department-wise engagement patterns with interactive Heatmaps. Cross-reference engagement hotspots across departments, managers, and reporting factors.

• Manager Reports: Empower leaders with in-depth reports to assess and enhance employee engagement scores.
• Leaderboards: Discover your team’s top performers through robust leaderboards.
• Dynamic & Customizable Dashboards: Unlock powerful insights from employee individual scores and dynamic dashboards to inform strategic decisions.

Pricing

ThriveSparrow offers a 14-day free trial, and has 3 pricing plans.

Engage: $3/month/employee

Kudos: $2/month/employee

Performance: $5/month/employee

Get Started

• Demo Available
• Pricing Upon Request
• G2 Rating: 4.9

Workvivo is an employee experience platform that simplifies communication and drives engagement. The platform sports commenting, sharing, posting shout-outs, and giving Kudos allowing for a great user experience.

Key Features

• Public Shout-Outs: The shout-out feature helps recognize individual and team achievements, and celebrate them publicly.
• Collaborative Space: Employees can create spaces (or interest groups) to interact and collaborate with each other, across departments.
• Personalization: Personalized user fields can help increase engagement.
• Surveys: Polls and surveys help measure the pulse and engagement of the organization.

Pricing

The pricing isn't available currently, so you'll need to contact the Sales team.

• Demo Available
• Starts at $4/person/month
• G2 Rating: 4.7

Lattice is a people management platform that helps organizations invest in people and accelerate business results. This platform integrates performance and engagement metrics to provide deep insights and enhance employee experiences.

Also read: 10 best Lattice alternatives for enhanced engagement and feedback

Features

• Pulse surveys: Pulse surveys allow you to understand employee engagement in real-time.  
• Automated surveys: Automated surveys allow for quick feedback that leads to long-term employee retention.
• eNPS Survey: With eNPS (employee net promoter score), quickly gauge employee sentiment and identify areas for improvement..  
• The Engagement-Analytics module helps you identify, diagnose, and address problem areas before it affects performance. 

Pricing 

Engagement plan: +$4 person/month

Grow plan: +$4 person/month

Compensation plan: +$6 person/month

• Demo Available
• Starts at $2. Check out their pricing calculator.
• G2 Rating: 4.7

Motivosity is a platform that helps you understand every stage of the employee experience journey. The Thanks Matter Card is a revolutionary employee rewards tool that lets your employees have the freedom to choose a reward of their choice from a repository of gift-coupons and custom rewards.

Motivosity’s new generative AI tool assists managers with note-taking, meeting summaries, and management training assistance.

Most Prominent Features

• eNPS tools and custom surveys let you check on your employees regularly.
• Seamless integrations: Motivosity can make collaboration fun and interesting with its integration for day-to-day communication and productivity platforms like Slack, and Microsoft Teams.
• Science-backed MV6: Motivosity grants you exclusive access to MV6 (developed over the course of 10 years), a data-backed way to measure culture, connectedness, and relationships. 
• Social feed: Stay updated on people’s achievements with the help of social feed. 

Pricing

Pricing for this platform starts at $2. 

Recognition Rewards, Manager Development, and Employee Insights are all add-ons that are priced at $2 each as well. 

• Demo Available
• Pricing Upon Request
• G2 Rating: 4.6

Work Tango is a holistic employee experience platform that helps companies transform their culture and create highly engaged workforces. It’s an easy-to-use engagement tool that has 3 employee experience pillars each contributing to different stages of the employee experience lifecycle- Recognition & Rewards, Survey & Insights, and Goals & Feedback.

Work Tango ensures employee anonymity with their Employee Promise program.

The platform offers several customizable survey templates for onboarding, onboarding, development, engagement, and DE&I for diagnostic feedback across the entire employee lifecycle.

Key Features

• Customizable surveys: Send customizable surveys that can be completed on any device. (on-boarding, engagement, DE&I, and off-boarding surveys)
• Analysis: Leverage predictive and actionable insights to measure employee engagement, understand employee sentiment, and improve company culture.
• Social Recognition: Drive employee morale and engagement, and share meaningful recognition with peer-to-peer social recognition.
• Automated celebration reminders: Put birthday celebrations, anniversaries, and other important milestones on auto-pilot.

Pricing‍

You'll need to request Work Tango for the pricing.

• Demo Available
• Pricing Upon Request
• G2 Rating: 4.8

Leapsome is an intelligent people-enablement platform to drive engagement and equips managers with robust performance management tools. What makes Leapsome as a suitable engagement tool is that it offers a dedicated Customer Success Manager, poised to attentively listen to your needs and provide expert advice on customer experience.

Feature Highlights

• Engagement surveys: Measure employee satisfaction and overall culture with employee engagement surveys.
• Comprehensive insights: Make informed decisions with the help of people, performance, and goal completion insights. 
• Company-wide, leadership, and team surveys help you understand employee sentiment and improve engagement drivers that matter most to your culture.
• Leapsome AI helps enrich feedback and improve writing confidence. 
• Sentiment Analysis helps you decipher overall employee experience with NLP and ML assisted technology.

Pricing

You'll need to contact Leapsome for a pricing quote.

Check out other Leapsome alternatives.

• Demo Available
• Pricing Upon Request
• G2 Rating: 4.7

Vantage Circle is an all-in-one employee engagement platform that helps organizations drive holistic employee engagement through its suite of products namely- 

Vantage Rewards: Gives employees a seamless redemption experience with 1000+ redeemable brands and products in the Amazon store. Automates long service awards for loyal employees.
Vantage Fit: A gamified corporate wellness program for workforce fitness with contests, fitness guides, and personalized goals.
Vantage Pulse:  Measure current engagement levels with survey question templates, 360 degree feedback, and heatmaps.
Vantage Perks: Amplify employee satisfaction and engagement with exclusive deals, discounts, and extra cashback points.

You can generate measurable ROI from your R&R program with the AIRe framework consultation service.

Key Features

• Integrations: Smoothly integrates for productivity platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and HCM/HRIM with SSO ( single sign on).
• Dashboard and configurations: Simplify HR management using budget allocation tools, reward and badge configurations, and view detailed reports with an easy-to-use dashboard.
• Mobile app: The mobile application lets you award incentives and engage with your employees on the go.

Pricing

Contact Vantage Circle to know about the Grow, Transform, and Enterprise plans.

• Demo Available
• Pricing Upon Request
• G2 Rating: 4.5

Culture Amp is an employee experience platform that helps organizations understand and improve their workplace culture. By leveraging data-driven analytics, Culture Amp offers invaluable recommendations aimed at boosting engagement, productivity, performance, and employee retention for maximum organizational success.

Prominent Features

• Science-backed survey templates: 30+ science-backed and customizable survey templates allow you to quickly get the data you need to understand. 
• Comment analysis: Improve employee retention and engagement with intuitive dashboards and comment analysis. 
• Retentions insights: Get turnover warning signals and predict who’s at the risk of leaving with Retention Insights.
• Focus Agent: Pinpoint, and take action on high impact areas on employee survey results with Focus Agent.

Pricing

Book a demo to explore the Engage, Platform, and Develop plans.
To know its pricing, and for the Enterprise version, you'll need to contact Culture Amp.

• Demo Available
• Starts at $4/member/month for 'Engagement' Plan
• G2 Rating: 4.8

Assembly is a powerful employee engagement platform that helps organizations activate a high-performing workforce and foster holistic engagement.

Its recognition platform stands out with its user-friendly, budget-friendly approach, and an enjoyable aspect, all while offering tangible rewards. Assembly features a mobile app and has integration capabilities for Slack and Microsoft Teams, enhancing collaboration and productivity across your organization.

Key Features

• Announcements: Set the tone for company culture and enhance transparency by sharing important hires, strategic decisions, and milestones.
• Intranet: Efficiently manage documents and resources through a simplified intranet workplace search.
• Workflow templates: Access 40+ workflow templates such as 360 review, employee engagement, and self evaluation survey to add simplicity and increase productivity at work. Other important ones include Team Retrospective, General News Feed, and Standup Meeting, for various collaboration requirements.
• AI assistance: With Assembly’s AI assistant Dora, get insights into data without manual analysis. It easily identifies trends, patterns, and outliers, providing rapid answers to your queries.

Pricing

Billed annually, here are the pricing plans for Assembly.

Recognition: $2/member/month

Engagement: $4/member/month

Digital HQ: $6/member/month, and

Custom Plan

• Free Plan and Free Trial Available
• Demo Available
• Starts at $3.50/person/month
• G2 Rating: 4.3

Officevibe is an employee experience platform designed to empower managers with effective tools for cultivating enduring engagement and performance. These tools assist in identifying and addressing team blockers, enabling more informed and targeted actions.

Feature Highlights

• Anonymous feedback & messaging: Collect and measure honest feedback on performance drivers while ensuring anonymity.
• Custom employee surveys: Launch tailored surveys with custom employee surveys to address specific topics and create a safe space for team members to share.
• One-on-one templates: Deep dive into engagement metrics and sensitive subjects with one-on-one customizable templates.
• DEIB Surveys: Use feedback to develop and measure the impact of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives.

Pricing

14-day free trial available and billed annually

Free: $0/person/month

Essential: $3.50/person/month

Pro: $5/person/month

• Demo Available
• Starts at $9/member/month
• G2 Rating: 4.4

Engagedly is a talent management platform that empowers companies to cultivate a high-performance culture for all their employees. Anchored by a three-pillar people success model, it drives both employee and business success.

Engagedly personalized every employee's experience with custom rewards, adding a unique touch to recognition efforts. It's gamification features makes learning fun with points, badges, and leaderboards.

Most Prominent Features

• Marissa AI: Summarize 360-degree feedback reports, generate personalized milestones, and facilitate objective and accurate feedback.
• E10 Surveys: Simplify employee engagement measurement with E10 survey, developed by HR domain expert Edie Goldberg, ensuring precise insights.
• Team Pulse listening tool: Listen in and measure real-time employee engagement and sentiment with Team Pulse listening tool.
• Enhanced survey module: Create, deploy, and track your survey assignments easily with Engagedly’s enhanced survey module.

Pricing

Performance Suite: $9/member/month

Add ons

Rewards & Recognition: $5/member/month

Growth & Learning: $5/member/month

Mentoring Suite: $2/member/month

• 14-Day Free Trial Available
• Demo Available
• Starts at $4/user/month
• G2 Rating: 4.6

15Five is a robust performance management platform that facilitates weekly check-ins, 1-on-1 meetings, goal setting, career planning, and training for employee development and engagement. With expert guidance assistance from dedicated personnel, the platform enables proactive engagement enhancements, ultimately leading to higher retention rates and improved employee performance within the organization.

If 15Five isn't convincing enough, we've compiled a list of the best 15Five alternatives for you to look at and choose from.

Key Features

• Science-backed surveys: Easy to use and science-backed surveys can be deployed in two clicks and completed in 6 minutes. Measure engagement, DEI initiatives, and eNPS with a data-driven approach.
• Executive advisors & in-house coaches: 15five provides executive advisors and in-house coaches to help your team develop effective engagement strategies and empower managers to drive engagement and performance.
• The HR Outcomes Dashboard in conjunction with a comprehensive suite of tools, including 360° performance reviews, engagement surveys, and OKRs & goal-tracking, leads to enhanced performance, increased engagement, and improved retention across the organization.
• Dynamic heatmaps offer real-time insights into engagement and performance trends.

Pricing

Billed annually:

Engage: $4/user/month

Perform: $10/user/month

Total Platform: $16/user/month

• Demo Available
• Pricing Upon Request
• G2 Rating: 4.4

Qualtrics XM for People Teams, is a people experience platform that offers a comprehensive employee experience solution to enhance every aspect of your workforce’s journey. It enhances team performance, manager effectiveness, and data-driven decision-making.

Also read our blog on the best Qualtrics alternatives.

Feature Highlights

It offers three integrated products - People Engage, People Lifecycle, and People Analytics - seamlessly interwoven to enhance every stage of the employee journey, ultimately driving enterprise success.

• People Engage: Boost engagement and prompt action from HR teams to managers with a good understanding of employee dynamics
• People Lifecycle: Access insights into every employee and candidate interaction, from recruitment to departure.
• People Analytics: Harness advanced AI-powered analytics to merge experiences and data, providing actionable recommendations for smart decision-making.
• CrossXM Analytics: Discover impactful employee experiences by seamlessly integrating people's experiences with business data.

Pricing

Book a demo to try the product out and contact their Sales team to know the pricing.

• Demo Available
• Starts at $4/person/month

Mesh is a performance enablement platform that supplements your people strategy with data-driven inputs and continuous insights on employee sentiment. With Mesh, you can significantly improve your high performer density and drive continuous improvement in performance.

Key Features

• Contextual nudges promote timely check-ins, fostering the habit of timely peer, manager, and team check-ins without the need for extensive processes or guidelines.
• AI-based insights from aggregated data empower managers with foresight and trend identification.
• Research-backed survey templates: Choose from Mesh's research-backed survey templates or configure your own to match your organization's culture and needs.
• Customizable checklists: Mesh offers a quick and easy 6-point setup checklist that's tailored to your specific needs. This includes configuring the audience, templates, visibility, reminders, and data sharing, all done in about 10 minutes.

Pricing

Base: $4/person/month

Premium: $7/person/month

Enterprise: Custom quote

• Demo Available
• Starts at $2/person/month
• G2 Rating: 4.6

Xoxoday Empuls is a comprehensive employee engagement platform designed for effective workforce connection, communication, and recognition. It empowers you to celebrate employee achievements and foster a distinctive company culture. This unified platform promotes comprehensive employee engagement, enabling organizations to harness the full potential of their valuable assets.

Feature Highlights

• Social Intranet helps you centralize internal communication and make it fun and timely.
• Seamless Peer-to-Peer Recognition: Make employee appreciation visible and effortless.
• Employee rewards system: Delight employees with rewards for their outstanding performance with the employee rewards system.
• Maximize savings for your employees with the Perks and Rewards program.  

Employee engagement platforms are instrumental in helping organizations enhance the level of engagement among their employees. As engagement improves, numerous benefits emerge.

1. Boost Productivity

Employee engagement platforms provide HRs with a way to gauge and monitor engagement.

When they follow through with their employee engagement action plans and then bring in more engagement, employee productivity will naturally increase as they are more invested in their work and in the success of the organization.

2. Ensures Emotional Well-being

Through employee engagement platforms, HRs can run multiple surveys like pulse, engagement, and wellness surveys, anonymously, giving employees a safe space to express their concerns and feelings.

This proactive approach in addressing employee well-being helps in preventing burnout and fostering a supportive workplace environment.

3. Offers Valuable Insights through Analytics

By aggregating data from surveys and feedback, employee engagement platforms offer HR professionals insights into engagement levels across different departments, and competencies.

The analytical capabilities of these platforms offers leaders with detailed reports on engagement metrics, performance data, and feedback. This information is invaluable for making informed decisions that impact the organization's strategic direction and employee engagement initiatives.

4. Enhances the Onboarding Experience

Onboarding surveys helps HR find areas of improvement and make the new hires experience more better and engaging.

A positive onboarding experience sets the tone for employee engagement from day one, that can reduce turnover and build a strong foundation for new employees.

5. Facilitates Peer Recognition

Employee engagement platforms consist of a recognition space that allows employees to acknowledge their peers' accomplishments publicly.

This not only boosts the morale of the recognized employee but also encourages a culture of appreciation and teamwork, contributing to overall job satisfaction.

6. Provides Valuable Insights through Analytics

The analytical capabilities of these platforms offer leaders with detailed reports on engagement metrics, performance data, and feedback. This information is invaluable for making informed decisions that impact the organization's strategic direction and employee engagement initiatives.

7. Encourages Transparency and Trust

By promoting open dialogue and providing platforms for feedback, these tools break down barriers between management and employees, fostering a culture of transparency. Trust is built when employees feel their voices are heard and considered in decision-making processes.

Wrapping Up

The world of employee engagement and experience is continuously evolving, making it vital for enterprises to stay ahead in an ever-evolving landscape.

To foster a thriving work culture in such an environment, any of the above employee engagement tools can serve as a catalyst for your success.

By choosing from the options presented here, you'll be on the path to turning your organization into an outstanding workplace for both you and your employees!

However, always keep in mind that regardless of whether you opt for ThriveSparrow or any other platform, the real key to creating an exceptional work culture lies within 'you'. 😊

FAQs

1. How Do Employee Engagement Platforms Work?

Employee engagement platforms operate by providing a suite of tools designed to enhance interaction between the organization and its employees.

They facilitate real-time feedback, recognize achievements, monitor employee satisfaction, and offer insights for improvement. Through surveys, recognition systems, and analysis tools, these platforms collect data to analyze and improve engagement strategies, fostering a more motivated and connected workforce.

2. How Important Are Employee Engagement Platforms?

Employee engagement platforms are crucial for any organization looking to enhance engagement and improve its workplace culture.

1. They provide valuable insights into employee sentiment.

2. Enable the recognition of hard work.

3. Support effective communication strategies.

By prioritizing employee engagement, companies can enhance job satisfaction, reduce turnover rates, and drive business success.

3. Are These Platforms Suitable for Remote Teams?

Employee engagement platforms are particularly beneficial for remote teams.

Some platforms come with in-built recognition spaces where peer-recognition can be facilitated from anywhere. Moreover, wellness, pulse, and engagement surveys can be created and scheduled from anywhere without having the need to use traditional methods like paper.

Integrations for Slack and Google Workspace make communications easy on-the-go through community spaces.