19 Top Picks for Employee Engagement Software for 2024
Employee engagement is essential for a successful business, so you want to find the best employee engagement software that suits your particular needs.
Employers turning to technological solutions to manage their workforce is rapidly expanding.
Smart employers have realized the cost of having a disengaged workforce led to $1.9 trillion in lost productivity in the US in 2023.
Continue reading to see our meticulously curated selection of top employee engagement software.
What is Employee Engagement Software?
High employee engagement levels are associated with increased productivity, lower turnover rates, quality customer service, and overall better organizational performance.
Employee engagement software is designed to help you optimize for these outcomes.
These software solutions enable you to nurture your workforce to feel valued, content, and connected.
It empowers you to recognize and reward your employees’ efforts and achievements, foster open communication and collaboration, and support their growth and development.
These tools typically have features like recognition programs, performance management capabilities, and communication platforms.
They also include functionalities such as feedback mechanisms, surveys, and analytics dashboards that help you measure and analyze employee engagement levels.
Key Features of Employee Engagement Software
1. Performance Management
Evaluating employee performance can be disjointed and flawed without a system to streamline key activities.
Employee engagement software provides a platform where employees set personalized goals aligned with company objectives and track progress in real-time.
Managers can conduct performance reviews and provide constructive feedback in a structured manner.
2. Surveys & Feedback
The best employee engagement software allows you to craft targeted surveys, pulse checks, and anonymous feedback channels to capture employee feedback and sentiment on specific topics, team dynamics, or overall engagement.
You can then analyze the data to identify areas for improvement, address potential issues early, and demonstrate you value employee voices.
3. Analytics
Any employee engagement platform worth its salt will offer data analytics to help you understand trends, patterns, and correlations related to employee engagement.
Armed with insights into engagement survey responses, employee participation rates, and performance indicators, you can make informed decisions about your employee engagement strategies and initiatives.
4. Push Notifications
Push notifications are a valuable feature of employee engagement tools that allow organizations to communicate with employees in a timely and targeted manner.
They ensure that announcements, reminders, and deadlines are delivered to employees’ devices. This keeps everyone in the loop and in touch with the bigger picture.
5. Dashboard and Reports
Employee engagement software provides understandable dashboards that present key metrics such as engagement scores, participation rates, and feedback trends in clear visual formats.
That way, you can quickly grasp your organization's overall engagement health and identify areas for improvement.
6. Recognition & Rewards System
A recognition and rewards system is a fundamental feature of employee engagement software that helps organizations foster a culture of appreciation and recognition.
This feature enables managers and peers to publicly acknowledge and celebrate employee achievements, milestones, and contributions, motivating employees and reinforcing desired behaviors.
7. Communication Tools
One way to enhance employee engagement is to break down silos and foster collaboration and employee communication.
Employee engagement software facilitates this by providing internal social media platforms, group chat features, and discussion forums.
These features create a space for employees to connect, share ideas, and build meaningful relationships.
8. Well-being Programs
Employee engagement platforms often include features to support employee well-being and work-life balance.
These features allow you to create wellness challenges and offer educational content on mental health and stress management, amongst other things.
This demonstrates your commitment to employee well-being, directly impacting employee morale, engagement, productivity, and customer service.
Benefits of Employee Engagement Software
Increases employee retention
Engaged employees feel valued, connected, and purpose-driven within their organization.
This sense of belonging improves their job satisfaction and reduces the likelihood of them seeking job opportunities elsewhere.
Studies show engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their jobs, translating to extended employee lifecycle and significant cost savings in recruitment and onboarding.
Promotes company culture
A positive company culture fosters collaboration, innovation, and overall satisfaction.
An employee engagement platform facilitates this by enabling open communication, peer-to-peer recognition, and a shared sense of purpose by integrating company values and goals.
Building a strong company culture attracts top talent, improves your reputation, strengthens your competitive edge, and fosters excellent customer service.
Improves communication
Communication breakdown can lead to frustration, disengagement, and missed opportunities.
Engagement software plugs such holes with features like internal social media, chat functions, and surveys, creating a safe space for open communication and feedback.
This empowers employees to share their ideas and concerns and ensures everyone feels informed and involved.
Facilitates employee feedback
Gone are the days of relying on annual surveys or exit interviews to gather employee feedback.
Engagement software provides multiple channels for employees to consistently, openly, and anonymously share their voices.
This allows you to gather real-time feedback on specific topics, team dynamics, or overall engagement and make the necessary changes.
Boosts employee engagement
Motivation, satisfaction, and well-being are crucial for a truly engaged employee.
Engagement software provides tools and resources to support these aspects.
Recognition programs celebrate achievements and motivate desired behaviors. Well-being resources promote physical and mental health, and personalized goal-setting fosters ownership and growth.
Optimizes productivity
Engaged employees are more focused and efficient and deliver better results. They are less likely to experience burnout, absenteeism, or presenteeism, leading to increased employee productivity and overall organizational performance.
Engagement software facilitates this by streamlining tasks, reducing distractions, fostering collaboration, and helping you identify and remove obstacles to productivity.
Saves time
HR teams and managers are often stretched thin, but engagement software remedies this by automating time-consuming tasks like surveys, processing feedback, and creating reports.
This frees up time for more strategic and impactful initiatives and improves focus.
Analyzes engagement levels and trends
Imagine clearly understanding your organization's engagement health across departments, teams, and individual levels.
Engagement software provides this invaluable insight through data analytics.
You can track trends over time, identify areas for improvement, measure the impact of your initiatives, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your engagement strategy.
Facilitates peer recognition
Recognition is a powerful motivator. Engagement software empowers employees to publicly recognize and appreciate each other's contributions through peer-to-peer recognition features.
This builds stronger teams, boosts morale, and fosters a culture of collaboration and appreciation.
Top Picks for Employee Engagement Software
1. Engagify.io
Engagify.io is a unique employee engagement platform that utilizes gamification to encourage learners to enjoy the employee training experience.
Gamification in corporate trainingGamification in corporate training allows employees to gain new skills and improve morale and employee motivation, leading to more capable and confident employees.
Best For
- Employee training
Features
- 10 unique gamification elements such as points, badges, FOMO, and more
- Customizable certificate templates
- Quizzes, surveys, and feedback
- Automations and integrations
- Company branding
- Detailed reporting
Pricing
- Custom pricing
2. Mo
Mo encourages employees to celebrate achievements, recognize peers, and share important company milestones.
Employees can share exciting news and acknowledge another team member through social-style " Moments " posts visible to the entire team.
There are automated prompts to keep the recognition cycle going, a robust rewards system, and even a feedback collection mechanism.
Best For
- Employee recognition
Features
- Automated prompts for updates, celebratory and feedback posts
- Social posts
- Rewards: budgets, multi-currency support, a hub for issuing and redeeming rewards
- Automations: reminders about milestones and special occasions
- Team profiles
- Analytics
- Integrations: Slack, Microsoft Teams
Pricing
- Appreciate: £2/employee/month (£1.80 when billed annually)
- Engage: £4/employee/month (£3.60 when billed annually)
- Transform: Custom pricing
3. Quantum Workplace
Trusted by over 10,000 companies, including Getty Images and Domino’s, Quantum Workplace is an employee success platform that drives employee engagement, performance review, and retention.
It does this primarily by providing ongoing data-driven and actionable insights via various forms of surveys.
Best For
- Employee feedback
Features
- Surveys: engagement, lifecycle, and pulse surveys
- Analytics and reporting
- Benchmarking
- Recognition
- 1-on-1 meetings
- Goal setting
- Talent review
- Succession planning
- Integrations: Namely, ADP, Workday, Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc.
Pricing
- Provided on demand
4. Bonusly
Bonusly is another employee engagement solution that’s big on delivering employee recognition and rewards.
With Bonusly, you can motivate your workforce by placing a premium on feedback and offering them juicy rewards ranging from gift cards, cash, and custom rewards to company swag and charitable donations made on their behalf.
Best For
- Employee recognition and rewards
Features
- Peer-to-peer recognition
- Rewards
- Automated milestones
- Incentive programs
- Employee analytics
- Integrations
Pricing
- Free trial
- Core: $3/user/month (billed annually)
- Pro: $5/user/month (billed annually)
- Custom: custom pricing
5. Motivosity
Boasting a 95% user engagement rate recorded by the companies that use it, Motivosity drives employee engagement by offering a best-in-class employee recognition platform.
However, its features extend to three main areas: community and connection, manager development, and employee insights.
Best For
- Recognition and rewards
Features
- Social media-like platform
- Employee profiles, personality maps, and interest groups
- Feedback and 360-degree reviews
- Peer-to-peer appreciation
- Extensive reward options
- Custom awards and badges
- 1-on-1 meeting facilitator
- AI meeting assistant
- Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) and pulse surveys
- Dashboard, analytics, and reporting
Pricing
- Motivosity (community and connection): $2/user/month
- Optional add-ons: recognition and rewards (+$2/user/month), manager development (+$2/user/month), and employee insights (+$2/user/month)
6. Leapsome
Leapsome is a one-stop-shop for people enablement and HR team needs.
The platform’s extensive features cover performance reviews, engagement surveys, OKR creation and tracking, talent training, and HR software for task automation.
Best For
- HR management
Features
- Review builder: performance, project, and 360°
- Goals and OKR management
- Employee survey and pulse survey
- Employee development and learning management
- Compensation and promotion management
- Competency framework
- Employee feedback and praise system
- 1-on-1 and team meeting notes
Pricing
- Provided on demand
7. Fond
Fond’s mission is to “help companies build places where employees love to work.”
Its approach to achieving this is providing a platform for seamlessly managing employee rewards and recognition programs like Reward Getway.
It offers everything from thousands of gift and reward options to extensive reporting on reward redemption.
Best For
- Employee recognition
Features
- Social recognition: via public messages
- Service awards: recognition for key milestones such as work anniversaries
- Reward program analytics
- Corporate discounts
Pricing
- Pricing is provided on demand and is based on the number of employees
8. SurveySparrow
As its name suggests, SurveySparrow specializes in administering and analyzing surveys, especially to customers.
But it also has a robust employee experience solution that provides tools for gauging employee satisfaction, analyzing the workplace outlook, and enhancing employee engagement.
Best For
- Survey
Features
- Recruiting and pre-hire: video survey for showcasing company culture, recruitment forms
- Employee onboarding: resource provision and feedback collector
- Training and assessment: training scheduler, feedback collector, assessments, quizzes, auto-score responses, etc
- Employee engagement: pulse surveys
- Management surveys: employee requirements, leave request form, etc
- Employee exit surveys
- Integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot, Google, Slack, etc
Pricing
- 14-day free trial
- Custom pricing
9. Workvivo
Dubbed the world’s leading employee experience platform, Workvivo by Zoom combines high-level internal communication tools with engagement, intranet, and measurement capabilities.
The result is a robust platform that allows seamless and engaging workplace communication, drives productivity, facilitates employee recognition, and enhances employee engagement.
Best For
- Communication and engagement
Features
- Communication: activity feed, digital signage, live stream, podcast, chat, newsletter
- Engagement: social feed, events, shout-outs, community spaces, etc
- Digital workplace (intranet): documents, search, integrations, etc
- Analytics and insights: polls, surveys, onboarding insights, content engagement, etc
Pricing
- Provided on demand
10. VantageCircle
VantageCircle integrates several key products and services designed to foster employee engagement.
Whether yours is an SME or Fortune 500 company, Vantage Circle has the tools you need to cover everything from employee rewards and perks to wellness or feedback.
Best For
- Employee recognition
Features
- Rewards and recognition: peer-to-peer monetary and non-monetary recognition, awards and badges, social feed, global rewards catalog
- Employee survey tool: survey anonymity, survey reminders, multi-lingual support, real-time feedback collector, analytics, etc.
- Corporate employee discount: exclusive offers, discounts, cashback offers, etc.
- Vantage Fit: curated health content, wellness challenges
- Integrations: Microsoft Teams, Slack, Workday, Oracle, etc
Pricing
- Provided on demand
11. 15Five
When you think 15Five, think performance management.
It merges generative AI capabilities with custom analytics and more to deliver a full suite of features that will help you measure and manage performance, including 360° performance evaluations, actionable engagement surveys, and more.
Best For
- Performance management
Features
- HR Outcomes Flywheel: converting employee data to action items
- HR Outcomes Dashboard: tracking team metrics
- Manager effectiveness indicator
- AI assistant for performance reviews
- Weekly check-ins
- Real-time feedback
- Employee recognition
- OKR and goal tracker
- Engagement assessment
- Manager training and coaching hub
- Mobile app
- Integrations: Jira, Salesforce, Slack, BambooHR, Microsoft Teams, etc
Pricing
- Engage: $4/user/month (billed annually)
- Perform: $10/user/month (billed annually)
- Total platform: $16/user/month (billed annually)
- Transform: provided on demand
12. WorkTango
On its holistic employee experience management platform, WorkTango combines employee recognition and rewards, surveys, insights, goals, and feedback functionalities in one platform.
Each offering can be accessed individually or as an add-on to the holistic employee experience solution.
Best For
- Recognition and reward
Features
- Recognition and rewards: social recognition, 10M+ reward and incentive options, nominations and awards manager, rewards dashboard and analytics, etc
- Employee surveys and insights: customizable research-backed assessments, advanced analytics, dashboards, recommendations, manager training, etc
- Goals and feedback: 1-on-1s, agenda setting, OKR and goal setting, performance check-ins, feedback templates, etc.
Pricing
Minimum annual contract:
- Employee surveys and insights: $8,000
- Recognition and rewards: $8,000
- Full employee experience platform: $10,000
13. Officevibe
Officevibe by Workleap exists to help HR leaders manage the company’s human resources and boost employee retention and team performance by offering tools that focus on employee engagement, recognition, and performance management.
Best For
- Performance management
Features
- Performance reviews
- Automated continuous performance reviews
- Automated pulse surveys
- Goals and OKRs
- One-on-one meetings
- Recognition
- Reporting
- Recommendations: metrics, meeting talking points, review templates, etc
- Custom survey and meeting templates
- Anonymous feedback and messaging
Pricing
- 14-day free trial for all features
- Free plan (limited features)
- Essential: $5/person/month ($3.50 when billed annually)
- Pro: $8/person/month ($5/person/month when billed annually)
14. Kudos
Kudos is another employee engagement solution that specializes in employee recognition and rewards.
For businesses looking to create a more structured approach to recognition, implementing a Kudos program can help streamline and enhance how achievements and contributions are celebrated within the organization.
The award-winning cloud-based platform and mobile app boast key features that make rewarding and recognizing employees seamless, meaningful, and impactful by prioritizing peer-to-peer recognition, extensive insights about the workforce, and more.
Best For
- Employee recognition
Features
- Peer recognition
- Employee rewards
- Awards and nominations
- Employee milestones
- People analytics
- Pulse surveys
- Integrations: Teams, Outlook, Slack, Google Workspace, Okata, LinkedIn, Workday, etc
- Image galleries and multimedia content creator
Pricing
- Provided on demand
15. Deel
This powerhouse helps you tick all the boxes to manage an international workforce.
Deel deals with everything from culture, hiring globally, and onboarding to payroll and compliance. Its employee engagement solution, which features Slack plugins, is super neat.
Best For
- HR management
Features
- Payroll
- HR management
- Compliance
- Global hiring
- Employee engagement: time-off, onboarding, Connections by Deel (for sparking conversations), org charts, one-on-one meetings, pulse surveys, bulk announcements, employee and team recognition, etc.
Pricing
- EOR: starts at $599/month
- Contractors: starts at $49/month
- Global payroll: custom quote
- Deel HR: free for teams of up to 200 people
- Immigration: custom quote
16. Nectar
Nectar provides companies the tools they need to build a culture of appreciation that fosters employee engagement.
With this employee recognition software, building such a culture involves making everyone feel valued, rewarding employees meaningfully, and keeping the company’s core values top of mind.
Best For
- Employee recognition
Features
- Recognition: shoutouts, redeemable Nectar points, etc
- Rewards: Amazon product catalog, gift cards, company swag
- Celebrate milestones: work anniversaries and birthdays
- Challenges: wellness activities, feedback surveys, etc
- Analytics
- Integrations: BambooHR, ADP, Google Suite, Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc
Pricing (offers volume discounts)
Billed annually:
- Standard: $2.75/user/month
- Plus: $4.00/user/month
- Custom: quote-based
17. Assembly
As an AI-backed engagement hub, Assembly streamlines key tasks such as recognition, rewards, internal communication, and employee collaboration.
It empowers you to celebrate employee actions that align with the company’s core values, offer personalized rewards, and access actionable insights on employee engagement.
Best For
- Communication and collaboration
Features
- Employee engagement: celebratory posts, announcements, nominations, etc
- Workplace Search
- AI workplace assistant
- Recognition and rewards: gift cards, redeemable points, personalized rewards, etc
- Communication and collaboration tool
- Company intranet and knowledge hub
- Integrations: ADP, Deel, Office 365, Google Drive, etc
Pricing
- Recognition: $3/user/month ($2 when billed annually)
- Engagement: $5/user/month ($4 when billed annually)
- Digital HQ: $7/user/month ($6 when billed annually)
- Custom: quote-based
18. TINYpulse
Keeping your finger on employee sentiment is critical to maintaining an engaged and happy workforce.
TINYpulse helps you do this by making it easy to gather feedback, interpret data, identify actionable insights, and use them to launch initiatives to improve employee engagement and measure their impact. You can call it an employee listening tool.
Best For
- Survey and feedback
Features
- Employee engagement surveys: science-backed questions, advanced data visualizations, recommendations, respondent anonymity, etc
- Employee recognition: cheers, gift cards, recommendations on top performers, etc
- 1-on-1 coaching tool: employee progress report, real-time data, one-on-one agenda setting, etc
Pricing
- Provided on demand
19. Culture Amp
Regarding juggernauts in the employee experience and engagement space, Culture Amp is up there with the biggest and best employee engagement software.
It empowers companies to improve employee engagement, development, retention, and performance, which is why organizations like Canva, Etsy, and Intercom rely on it.
Best For
- HR and survey
Features
- Employee engagement: customizable surveys, analytics, employee retention insights, benchmarks, etc
- Performance management: goal tracking, 1-on-1s, performance reviews and calibrations, real-time feedback, 360-degree feedback, shoutouts, etc
- Employee development: role descriptions, individual growth plans and goals, learning and development data, etc
- Integrations: BambooHR, Workday, Slack, etc
Pricing
- Engage, Perform and Develop: All quote-based
Help Your Employees Thrive So Your Company Can
Globally, companies lose $3,400 for every $10,000 an average disengaged employee earns annually.
Conversely, businesses boasting the highest employee engagement rates are 21% more profitable than their counterparts.
The cost of having unfulfilled, unappreciated, and unmotivated employees is steep and unnecessary.
Why not invest in an employee engagement tool to give your company the driven employees and fighting chance it deserves?
Dozie Anyaegbunam is a B2B content writer and strategist. A Cannes Lions certified storyteller, Dozie has crafted compelling content for brands such as Mirasee, SmartBlogger, Growth Mentor, and more. He's also Dodo and Ronan's dad, a proud flâneur, and a Felix Baumgartner wannabe. Don't miss his podcast, The Newcomers, where he interviews immigrants about the struggles and lessons that come with starting life in a new country.