Top 10+ employee engagement software: Compare and choose

What is employee engagement software?

Employee engagement software is critical for organizations, especially as employee happiness hit a four-year low in May 2024, with scores consistently below 36 - a level Bamboo HR calls "alarming." This technology aims to reverse this trend by fostering involvement and enthusiasm in work and the workplace.

Employee engagement software goes beyond standard HR tools by boosting workforce morale and productivity. Key features include:

• Pulse surveys
• Real-time feedback mechanisms
• Recognition programs
• Analytics dashboards

Unlike general HR software, it emphasizes continuous communication, personalized goal-tracking, and data-driven insights to foster a more connected, motivated workforce. Look for platforms that offer customizable surveys, integration capabilities, and actionable reporting.

It typically includes features for conducting pulse surveys, recognizing employee efforts, and facilitating smoother work processes. By leveraging these tools, you can gain insights into employee satisfaction and take targeted actions to improve engagement, ultimately boosting productivity and retention.

Benefits of employee engagement software

It's crucial that we understand how these tools can help turn things around. Here are some of the key benefits.

• Accurate tracking: Engagement software quantifies engagement levels with real-time insights and survey tools, precisely measuring progress.
• Reduced turnover: All-in-one platforms help you spot engagement issues before they become big problems.
• Consistent culture building: Engagement software keeps you consistent with recognition programs and regular check-ins, embedding positive practices into daily operations.
• Manager empowerment: Engagement software equips managers with insights and resources to effectively coach their teams. It's like giving them a leadership superpower.
• Bias reduction: Engagement software helps minimize human error and bias, creating a fairer workplace. And you know what that means - happier employees who stick around longer.

10⁺ Best employee engagement software platforms

Best employee engagement software for recognition

Motivosity

Motivosity is an employee experience platform that helps employers keep workers happy at every step of their journey, from recruitment and hiring to post-exit. The software addresses three factors that affect employee engagement: feeling a sense of belonging, being recognized for one's work, and having a positive relationship with one's manager.

Founded in 2013, Motivosity has a client list that includes Bosch, Adobe Workfront, Toyota, and KPMG. Its playful brand stands out with a yeti as its mascot and responsive customer service.

Key features

Motivosity's core features can be broken down into the 4 categories it addresses:

Community and connection

• Connect on shared personalities and interests. Team members can tag their profiles with their interests and match with others who share those interests.
• Post announcements and highlights to a social feed.
• Org charts show your roles so you know exactly who to contact.

Recognition and rewards

• Peer-to-peer recognition where team members can praise coworkers for specific actions, tie it to a company value and reward them with either ‘giving’ or ‘spending’ money.
• Team members can redeem their ‘spending’ money for digital gift cards or other offerings from an online company store.
• Design custom awards and badges.
• Create milestone awards for birthdays and work anniversaries.

Manager development

• Receive preparation prompts for 1-on-1s, share meeting notes, and grant HR insights into team members' mentorship.
• After 1-1 conversations, managers are prompted to thank their direct reports to ensure a culture of appreciation.
• Receive AI suggestions on how to optimize meetings for more meaningful 1-1 conversations.

Employee insights

• Conduct pulse surveys that measure eNPS to help see the level of job satisfaction among employees.
• Customize your employee feedback survey.
• Create anonymous feedback surveys.
• Gain access to insights so you can take action on employee feedback.

Pricing details

Motivosity charges US$2 per month per user for its core product, Community and Connection, and US$2 per month per user for up to 3 add-ons, including Recognition and Rewards. There is no minimum number of users.

Bonusly

Bonusly is employee recognition software with four different feature categories: peer-to-peer recognition, rewards, automated milestones, and incentive programs.

More than 3,250 organizations use Bonusly, which claims that 70% of its users say the platform improves employee engagement.

One thing we liked about the Bonusly experience is that the platform allows you to tour its dashboard without signing up for an account or a live demo. This very quickly gives you a feel of how the tool works.

Key features

• Peer-to-peer recognition: Every team member receives an allowance of points they can share when praising a coworker. The recipients can then use those points to redeem rewards through Bonusly.
• Reward gateway: Includes experiences (like lunch with the CEO), gift cards (to places like Starbucks), or charitable donations.
• Automated milestones: Ensure you never miss a birthday or work anniversary.
• Incentive programs: Reward good behavior through employee-of-the-month programs, wellness challenges, or safety training.
• Employee analytics: See the impact of your recognition programs. The analytics dashboard shows the levels of participation, how team members are interacting and who's been recognized lately (so you never leave anyone out).

Pricing details

Bonusly's Core plan is US$3 per month per user, billed monthly, plus the cost of rewards redeemed by employees. If you upgrade to Pro ($5 per month per user), you get HRIS and SSO integrations, configurable admin permissions, centralized company incentives and awards, and advanced reporting.

Workhuman

Workhuman's social recognition makes it easy and fun to recognize team members for their hard work in a company-wide social feed. It helps you tie a meaningful reward to a specific behavior, thereby encouraging positive cultures on your teams. Workhuman is a unique employee engagement platform in that it helps promote DEI initiatives with its AI-powered Inclusion Advisor feature.

Key features

• Inclusion Advisor: An AI-powered text-based coach that helps you write more inclusive employee recognition messages.
• Integrations: Connect Workhuman to Microsoft Teams, Slack, Yammer, and more so you can create streamlined rewards by giving recognition without leaving the apps.
• Rewards: You can praise team members by writing messages or recording videos and then gifting them with points that can be redeemed for a wide range of rewards.

Pricing details

Workhuman does not publish its pricing plans on its website. You must sign up for a demo and speak to the company for custom pricing.

Effective employee engagement software for feedback

Culture Amp

Culture Amp is a powerful and popular employee experience platform with three distinct products: Engage, Perform, and Develop.

This review will focus on the Perform product, which is a performance management tool. For those who love evidence-based solutions, Culture Amp focuses heavily on science and has aggregated data from thousands of larger organizations and medium businesses that you can use to benchmark your company against.

Key features

• Real-time feedback: Culture Amp makes it easy for peers and leaders to provide instant and specific feedback so team members understand what they're doing well and what needs work.
• Skills coach: This tool gives managers daily exercises to strengthen leadership skills.
• Goal setting and goal management: Set goals and OKRs, and track progress.
• Performance evaluation: Culture Amp's Calibrations tool was built to reduce bias by providing templated review questions and reports that give a holistic view of performance.
• 1-on-1s: Culture Amp equips managers for more meaningful conversations during 1-on-1s and weekly check-ins by providing templates, reminders and shared agendas. Organizational psychologists designed the tool and provided tips that help managers become better coaches during 1-1 conversations.

Pricing details

Culture Amp bills annually but does not publish pricing plan options on its website. According to G2.com, Culture Amp's pricing ranges from US$4 per person per month to US$16 per person per month.

Qualtrics

Qualtrics is best known for its survey tools and actionable insights across the entire employee lifecycle. Easily gather employee feedback and see how to apply it to your team to improve employee performance.

Key Features

• Pulse surveys: Pulse surveys are shorter and more frequent employee surveys, usually done at regular intervals. They're a great way to measure employee engagement and track its changes over time.
• Optimize your employee experience programs with step-by-step setup guidance, access to pre-built methodologies, and a library of more than 300 survey questions. You can easily customize your employee engagement survey.
• Employee engagement analytics help you track metrics such as well-being and recognition. Plus, you'll get a real-time analysis to help you understand how your employee engagement programs are doing.

Pricing details

Qualtrics doesn't publish its pricing online. Contact the company to request pricing details.

Best employee engagement tools for performance and collaboration

Marlee

Despite incredible productivity tools, poor communication and team dynamics still make or break teams, and this is where Marlee comes in. Marlee is a collaboration and performance AI that uses an evidence-based assessment (a Motivational Analysis), powerful people analytics, and AI-powered coaching to bring out the best in your teams.

Marlee can quickly uncover weaknesses (which we call blind spots) and helps you leverage every team member's strengths, creating overall team success and harmony.

Key features

• Evidence-based Motivational Analysis: With Marlee, the first step to boosting employee engagement is to invite each team member to answer questions on what motivates them. It takes 30 minutes or less to complete and grants instant access to a detailed report of how you score on 48 traits affecting your work and communication.

👉 How to take the Marlee Motivational Analysis

• Personalized insights: Marlee provides a personalized ‘user manual’ for how to work together best. Your team will feel seen, connected, and accepted and you'll know precisely how to motivate yourself and others.

👉 How to ask Marlee a question about my team

• Teams: You don't just get the results that affect you; you'll also see how your results influence your team dynamics. Differences can be sources of friction—but they don't have to be! Marlee shows you how to harness the power of differences to collaborate better. After all, on a diverse team, one person's blind spot is another person's strength, and that means you can be stronger as a whole. With Marlee, you'll be able to anticipate conflicts before they arise and adjust your communication style to ensure more meaningful conversations with your teammates.

• Benchmarking: Once you have your results, benchmark them against our global samples of highly successful entrepreneurs and business builders. This helps you see where your team members possess XFactors, those special qualities that lead to business success, and where your team has blind spots. Don't worry! Marlee offers suggestions and coaching to help turn those areas into strengths and develop high-performing teams.
• Culture Maps: Stop guessing about your company culture and get a deep analysis of your Culture Map. Marlee will highlight your team's strengths and help you understand what's driving team behaviors at each of your offices.
• AI-powered coaching: Access research-backed coaching 24/7 at your own pace in the Marlee app. Programs coach to more than 1,000 different goals, and include; goal setting and team building.

Employee engagement software is nothing without understanding what motivates each individual.

See how Marlee (formerly Fingerprint For Success) complements engagement software

Pricing details

Access Marlee for free (forever) on our Starter plan. The Starter plan grants you access to our Motivational Analysis, selected personalized insights, one 8-week online coaching program, and team comparisons with up to three connections.

To improve team engagement, upgrade to the Team plan for US$15.99 per user per month. You'll gain access to unlimited AI coaching and personalized insights plus an analysis of team culture, affinities and differences. Visit our pricing page for more information.

Lattice

Lattice is a people management platform used by HR leaders to track and optimize performance, engagement, OKRs/goals, growth and compensation. More than 5,000 organizations, including Slack, Robinhood, Gusto, and HelloFresh use Lattice.

Key features

• Performance reviews: Lattice has a performance management product that helps you with annual performance reviews and project-based reviews by providing methods for peer feedback, goals, and OKR integration, and more.
• Feedback: To improve performance, employees need continuous feedback, and Lattice makes it easy. Share real-time feedback in the platform and grant people leaders visibility into the feedback being shared. Thanks to integrations with Slack, Teams and more, you can share your thoughts no matter which app you use.
• Updates: Updates keep everyone in the loop. Employees can share their status and any blockers so that their team members can step in and assist. Managers can check in regularly on their teams and get a sense of employee sentiment.

Pricing details

Lattice's Engagement, Grow, and Compensation products are each US$4 per user per month, while its Performance Management + OKRs & Goals can be bundled together at US$11 per user per month (or purchased separately for US$8 per user per month). Lattice has a minimum annual agreement of US$4,000, and all of its contracts are billed annually.

Best employee engagement solutions for collaboration

Slack

Slack is a well-loved app for internal communication that makes it easy to instant message team members, and set up video calls and away messages. Instead of messages getting lost in email, Slack keeps things organized and easy to access. It's especially useful for teams with remote employees and international workforces who want to stay in touch regardless of location.

Google communication tools

Google has a suite of internal communication tools that have become a staple for many workplaces. Drive creates a single repository for files. Docs makes it easy to collaborate on documents, and Google Calendar is a must-have business tool for scheduling meetings.

Trello

Trello is a project management and collaboration tool built on the Kanban method of organizing projects with boards, lists and cards that you move around depending on the stage of the process. With each card, you can assign a due date and team member, create checklists and easily check project status.

Best employee engagement tools for project management

Project management tools contribute to employee engagement by reducing friction in the workflow, boosting productivity, and making an employee’s job easier.

Here are our top picks for project management tools:

Asana

Asana is one of the most popular project management tools for a reason. It has a range of beneficial features and an easy-to-use interface that helps teams set up and track goals and tag the people responsible for bringing them to completion. It also has multiple ways of visualizing these projects: lists, timelines, boards, and calendars.

Monday

An alternative to Asana, Monday brands itself as a team management and collaboration tool but shares many of the same core features as Asana. Monday has more than 27 different views so you can visualize projects in the way that makes the most sense to you. It also contains templates for making action plans.

And that's the scoop on employee engagement software! It's not just another tech toy - it's your secret weapon for creating a workplace people love. Ready to boost happiness, fairness, and productivity? Your team's about to thank you big time!