15 best employee engagement software for healthcare

In healthcare, employee engagement isn’t just about job satisfaction — it’s about patient survival, staff retention, and operational resilience. When engagement drops, the risks rise: safety lapses increase, turnover accelerates, and care quality declines. A slight dip in nurse or physician engagement can echo across HCAHPS scores and staffing costs.

The challenge? Traditional engagement platforms were built for office workers — not for hospitals running 24/7, with rotating shifts, multilingual teams, and high compliance stakes. Healthcare needs tools that meet caregivers where they are: on the move, under pressure, and off email.

This guide ranks the 15 best employee engagement software solutions tailored for healthcare in 2025 — including frontline-friendly features like QR code surveys, burnout tracking, AI-powered insights, and HIPAA compliance.

Let’s help your teams feel heard, supported, and ready to deliver exceptional care.

ThriveSparrow is built for healthcare environments where frontline teams often lack desk access. It allows nurses, aides, and support staff to share input through QR-based or multilingual surveys in seconds. Leaders get AI-driven insights, heatmaps, and action plans, helping them reduce burnout, improve retention, and directly impact patient care quality.

ThriveSparrow Features:

1. Interactive Heatmaps – Visualize sentiment unit by unit, helping hospital administrators track engagement differences across wards or care teams.
2. eNPS & Pulse Surveys – Quickly capture staff morale, burnout risks, and patient-facing challenges in real-time.
3. AI-Powered Text Insights (Infer AI) – Analyze thousands of staff comments instantly to identify stress points like overtime, understaffing, or safety concerns.
4. 360° Feedback & Performance Reviews – Enable competency-based reviews for doctors, nurses, and non-medical staff to improve collaboration.
5. Kudos & Peer Recognition – Reinforce recognition aligned to hospital values (e.g., patient care, teamwork).
6. Action Plans – Convert survey findings into concrete steps, such as improving nurse-patient ratios or training programs.
7. QR Code Surveys – Make it easy for frontline and non-desk staff (nurses, technicians, contractors) to participate.
8. Multilingual Surveys – Reach diverse healthcare staff, especially in multinational hospital groups.

ThriveSparrow Pricing:

• Goals (OKRs): $3/user/month
• Performance: $5/user/month
• Kudos (Recognition): $2/user/month
• Engage (Surveys & eNPS): $3/user/month

Press Ganey is trusted across hospitals for aligning employee engagement with patient experience metrics like HCAHPS. It provides extensive benchmarks, allowing healthcare leaders to see how their workforce compares nationally. With its focus on safety culture and PX outcomes, it’s a strong choice for systems prioritizing both staff engagement and patient satisfaction.

Press Ganey Key Features:

1. PX + EX Integration: Links employee engagement metrics to patient satisfaction outcomes, like HCAHPS. ‍
2. Healthcare Benchmarking: Compares you against national data for staff experience.
3. Safety Culture Assessment: Dedicated tools for capturing feedback on safety practices.

Press Ganey Pricing :

• Custom enterprise pricing (available upon request)

Workday offers Peakon Employee Voice, a listening platform ideal for enterprise-level hospitals. It continuously collects staff sentiment and highlights trends that leadership can act on. For large healthcare systems already using Workday HCM, it integrates seamlessly into existing workflows, making it easier to track engagement across thousands of employees.

Workday Key Features:

1. Continuous Listening: Frequent pulse surveys to track staff sentiment over time. ‍
2. Health & Wellbeing Question Set: Tailored to stress, support, and organizational culture.
3. AI-Powered Benchmarks and Action Guidance: Machine learning recommends actions and benchmarks based on demographics.
4. Fast Deployment: Designed for quick adoption—up and running in weeks.

Workday Pricing:

• Enterprise-level pricing (~$20,000+/year typical)

Qualtrics is widely used by healthcare organizations for its advanced survey logic and analytics. Hospitals can run complex engagement surveys and benchmark results against industry peers. Its text analysis helps leaders uncover hidden workforce challenges, making it a fit for healthcare systems that need powerful, data-rich insights to guide retention strategies.

Qualtrics Key Features

1. ‍Healthcare XM Platform: Enables unified engagement experiences for both staff and patients.‍
2. Healthcare Workforce Pulse: Ready-made 1-minute mirco-check-ins and 5-minute assessments focused on safety, resilience, communication. ‍
3. Actionable Analytics: Integrated insights to help staff act on feedback quickly.

Qualtrics Pricing:

• Starts at ~$420/month for 1,000 responses
• Enterprise pricing: $6,500–$28,000/year

NRC Health specializes in healthcare experience, combining patient and employee engagement in one platform. Its real-time listening tools allow hospitals to monitor culture, safety, and staff well-being as they evolve. For organizations focused on fostering safety culture and reducing risk, NRC Health brings staff voice into the same conversation as patient care.

NRC Health Key Features:

1. Unified Listening: Real-time voice of staff and patients in one platform.
2. Safety Culture Tools: Custom surveys assess safety behaviors, reporting comfort, and supervision.
3. Customizable Dashboards: Tailored views for executives, HR, and unit leaders.
4. Actionable Reports: Coaches help translate data into targeted interventions.

NRC Health Pricing:

• Custom enterprise pricing only

Now part of Microsoft Viva, Glint delivers employee engagement insights directly in Teams. For healthcare organizations already relying on Microsoft 365, this provides an accessible way for staff to give feedback and for leaders to analyze it. With its AI-driven dashboards, managers can spot burnout trends and take timely action.

Glint Key Features:

1. Teams Integration: Engagement dashboards live inside Microsoft Teams—no new tool to learn.
2. AI-Powered Insights: Detects morale and engagement shifts that matter most in clinical settings.
3. Pulse + Lifecycle Surveys: Schedule check-ins after incidents, onboarding, shift changes.
4. Manager Nudges: Prompts frontline leaders when their teams’ engagement dips.

Glint Pricing:

• $2/user/month (annual billing, min. 100 users)

Perceptyx is designed to help healthcare organizations listen at scale while digging into safety culture and burnout. Its analytics platform surfaces actionable trends and pairs them with strategic consulting support. Hospitals use it to identify high-risk units, align leadership strategies, and strengthen workforce resilience through data-driven engagement initiatives.

Perceptyx Key Features:

1. Burnout & Culture Focus: Tools designed to measure stress, safety culture, and retention factors.
2. Custom Survey Design: Tailored questions for healthcare roles like CNAs, therapists, support staff.
3. Advanced Analytics: Drill downs by department, tenure, shift—highlighting high-risk areas.
4. Expert Consulting: Strategy support ensures insights turn into action plans.

Perceptyx Pricing:

Custom pricing, typically $100–$500/month for reports

Culture Amp combines engagement surveys with tools for DEI and organizational culture improvement. In healthcare, it helps leaders create inclusive workplaces that support staff diversity across clinical and non-clinical roles. With its easy-to-use dashboards, managers can track sentiment over time and address culture challenges that directly affect retention.

Culture Amp Key Features:

1. DEI Integration: Surveys include inclusivity, team climate, and equity measures critical in care teams.
2. Continuous Listening: Frequent pulse surveys capture morale across shift rotations.
3. Manager Resources: Coaching tools help nurse managers lead culture improvement.
4. Feedback Loop: Follow-up surveys measure success of action plans over time.

Culture Amp Pricing:

• $9–$14/user/month (basic)
• $118–$122/user/year (enterprise tier)
• Typical annual spend: $4,000–$6,000+

Bonusly helps hospitals build recognition-rich cultures by enabling peer-to-peer shoutouts. Nurses, doctors, and support staff can recognize each other for teamwork, compassion, or quick problem-solving. By tying recognition to hospital values, Bonusly lifts morale and reduces turnover, especially in high-stress clinical environments.

Bonusly Key Features:

Bonusly Pricing:

• Starting at $3/user/month (Core plan)
• Enterprise pricing available on inquiry

SurveyMonkey Enterprise is a flexible option for smaller healthcare groups that need fast, customizable surveys. Clinics can use it to check staff morale, gather input after schedule changes, or track engagement over time. While it lacks healthcare-specific depth, it’s cost-effective for organizations just starting out with employee engagement.

SurveyMonkey Features:

SurveyMonkey Pricing :

• Starting at ~$25/user/month (enterprise plan)

Final Thoughts

Employee engagement isn’t a one-off initiative—it’s a continuous, culturally embedded practice. In healthcare, where staff well-being directly impacts patient care, the right platform empowers real change: quick feedback, action-driven insights, and frontline inclusivity. Across the tools, ThriveSparrow stands out for its focus on accessibility, compliance, and real-time actionability. Whether you’re navigating shift-based teams, addressing burnout, or aligning engagement with patient outcomes, choosing software designed around the realities of healthcare—rather than adapting generic platforms—makes all the difference.

FAQs

1. What is the best employee engagement software for healthcare?

The best software depends on your hospital or clinic’s needs. Tools like ThriveSparrow, Qualtrics, and Lattice are popular for surveys, recognition, and analytics. Look for platforms that support frontline staff, are easy to use, and provide actionable insights.

2. How does employee engagement software benefit healthcare workers?

It helps healthcare staff feel heard, valued, and connected. By collecting real-time feedback, recognizing efforts, and improving communication, these tools reduce burnout, strengthen morale, and improve patient care outcomes.

3. Is employee engagement software secure for sensitive healthcare data?

Yes, leading platforms follow strict compliance like HIPAA, GDPR, or SOC 2. Always verify the vendor’s certifications and security practices before adopting, especially for healthcare environments handling sensitive employee and patient-related data.

4. Can small or mid-sized healthcare organizations afford this software?

Yes. Many vendors, including ThriveSparrow and others, offer affordable per-user pricing or scalable plans. Smaller clinics can start with pulse surveys or recognition modules and expand as their needs grow.

5. What features should healthcare providers look for in engagement software?

Key features include pulse surveys, eNPS, recognition, multilingual support, QR code access for frontline staff, and AI-powered insights. These ensure the software works across diverse roles—from nurses and doctors to non-medical staff.