Employee Engagement Software is All About Keeping Employees Motivated And Retaining Them In The Organization By Ritika Dixit, Technical Content Writer at SelectHub
Employees are foundational to any business. For a business to be successful as well as profitable, it is necessary that employees derive increased job satisfaction from their job, leading to improved retention of skilled workers. Employee engagement software, which is often a subset of HR software, plays a key role in motivating employees, which leads to better productivity and increased loyalty for the culture of the organization.
With multiple players in the field of employee engagement, picking out one that best suits your organization and the requirements of your employees might seem like a daunting task. To make your job easier, we’ve listed out and analyzed some of the top solutions so you can make a well-informed decision.
Executive Summary
- Employee engagement software offers a niche suite of capabilities to boost employee engagement, thus enhancing employee and customer experience.
- By deploying employee engagement software, companies can manage various human resource aspects like employee onboarding, ice-breakers, employee feedback, employee recognition and more.
- The main features of an employee engagement software include goal setting and tracking, performance management, collaborative spaces, peer recognition, employee surveys and others.
- Predetermined requirements and an understanding of the total cost of ownership, including maintenance costs, upgrade costs, implementation and others, are vital for comparing different employee engagement solutions available in the market.
What This Guide Covers What Is Employee Engagement Software?
Machines and technology may have become a crucial part of businesses in present times, but humans remain the most important asset your organization has. While machines can be fixed and updated to suit the changing industry needs, your workforce needs special attention to ensure their loyalty and highest productivity.
That’s the role of employee engagement software. It offers capabilities to ensure job satisfaction for employees while enabling their well-being. An employee engagement tool also encourages dialogue between management and employees on a regular basis in the form of surveys and feedback. Increasingly satisfied employees are a short term benefit of using this software. Long-term advantages include lower absenteeism and turnover while retaining a skilled workforce.
Deployment Methods
While a large segment of the employee engagement solutions market has shifted to cloud-based and software-as-a-service (SaaS) products, some vendors continue to offer on-premise solutions. Let’s understand how the distinction between these types of deployment can play out for your organization.
Along with incomparable security of sensitive information, on-premise solutions allow a higher degree of customizability. On-premise models need a greater investment during implementation; however, they can prove to be more cost-effective in the long run.
The most commonly used SaaS or cloud-based solutions take the technical aspects of the software off your hand. It requires companies to pay on a monthly or yearly subscription basis. SaaS deployment is comparatively more cost-effective with minimal financial investments. However, you may have to compromise on the scale of customizability in return for budget-friendliness.
Primary Benefits
Employee engagement is a consolidation of a wide range of factors that impact employees, managers and the overall working environment of your organization. Deploying a suitable employee engagement software in your business can ensure the following for your organization:
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Better Workplace Communication: Communication is the binding glue for any workplace. Especially with increasing virtual environments and remote employees, employee engagement software allows effortless communication and collaboration in a virtual workspace.
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Minimal Attrition: By enabling seamless communication, employee engagement software helps employees feel connected to their managers and workplace. It also reduces their chances of quitting or leaving over minor issues and further enhances their loyalty to the organization.
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Improved Recognition: Employee engagement software makes it easier for employers to recognize and reward high-performing employees for their efforts. Without disrupting daily-work, something as simple as a post of appreciation or sharing feedback with employees can go a long way.
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Higher Productivity: Given its focus on goal setting, continuous feedback, employee recognition and more, employee engagement software improves productivity.
Implementation Goals
| Goal 1 Motivating Employees | With tools like real-time rewards and feedback to recognize employee productivity and efforts, employee engagement software ensures that they stay motivated. Greater motivation leads to improved job satisfaction, thus retention of high-performing employees. |
| Goal 2 Better Employee-Manager Relationships | A strong employee and manager relationship is important for the smooth functioning of your organization. By facilitating streamlined communication, employee engagement software strengthens the company culture with transparency. |
| Goal 3
Improved Communication | One-on-one and group chats allow managers and employees to stay in touch constantly. From sharing success stories and rewarding employees to communicating personally, employee engagement software engages employees and connects them to the organization. Improved communications brings a positive impact on employee productivity and the overall working environment. |
Basic Features & Functionality
| Training Tools | Training tools are important for knowledge retention and skill development. Most employee engagement solutions offer learning content that is engaging and updated learning content, along with regular alerts to track an employee’s learning progress. |
| Employee Surveys | Employee surveys are crucial for measuring employee engagement. Employee engagement software lets you take surveys and collect feedback to support goal setting and monitor the progress of ongoing projects. Anonymous surveys allow employees to be more open in their feedback, thus enhancing the scope of improvement in organizational performance. |
| Employee Recognition | Recognizing and appreciating high-performing employees is essential to keep them motivated and connected to the organization. It also motivates other employees to improve their productivity and work harder. As a part of an employee engagement solution, employee recognition includes a social intranet feature to make announcements like rewards, promotions, transfers and retirements. It supports positive encouragement through shout-outs to top-rated employees within the team and across the organization. |
| Goal Setting | Clearly defined goals and expectations enable you to plan workflows and engage employees in their day-to-day tasks. You can set individual targets to achieve long-term business goals. |
| Performance Management | Performance management strengthens productivity and employee engagement. An effective employee engagement system offers capabilities like check-ins, talent assessments, coaching sessions, employee feedback and more. It allows employees and managers to connect better about employee performance, areas of improvement and challenges that employees face on a daily basis. |
| Collaborative Spaces | A comparatively rare but important capability offered by employee engagement solutions—collaborative spaces acts as the organization’s internal social media platform. It provides virtual meeting spaces for all employees to get together and foster common interests, improving collaboration between the team members. |
Advanced Features & Functionality
| Mobile | With a significant shift to a remote workforce, an accessible solution to enhance employee engagement has become necessary. For this purpose, most employee engagement systems now offer a mobile app that keeps employees connected and updated about work by allowing remote access to intranet information and features. |
| Analytics | Employee engagement is as quantitative in nature as it is qualitative. Therefore, analytics plays a vital role in measuring success metrics like work hours, session time, activity frequency, regularly visited web pages and more. Analysis of these metrics highlights the current state of employee engagement and emphasizes improvement areas. |
| Notifications System | When most of the workforce is operating remotely, keeping employees informed can be quite a task. Employee engagement software supports seamless conversations and tracks whether all workers have duly noted the information. You can send push notifications to keep the staff updated on urgent matters and share schedule updates, policy changes and safety notifications. |
Current & Upcoming Trends
Industries around the globe have witnessed a significant shift during the COVID-19 pandemic; the market for employee engagement software is no different. While the current scenario has been tedious for most, a report states that the employee engagement software market will grow at approximately 10.9% CAGR from 2021 to 2026. Following are some of the developments in the employee engagement solutions market:
Mental Health Benefits & Support
The COVID-19 pandemic has put the world through tumultuous times and taken a toll on the mental health of citizens. Therefore, companies are now investing in resources that assist employees in coping with loneliness and stress to boost overall productivity and improve employee welfare. The incorporation of employee assistance programs makes professional help more accessible and affordable. Another upcoming means of ensuring mental health wellness includes mental health services and a separate allowance.
Stipends for Home Office Expenses
With virtual workspaces and remote employees, businesses are ensuring that their staff is well-equipped for their jobs with optimum productivity. According to a survey conducted by Aon, one in five companies are committed to paying for remote workers’ home office expenses. Such a practice helps retain high-performing staff and attract fresh talent in these uncertain times.
Software Comparison Strategy
Now that you know the various advantages and features that come with deploying an employee engagement software in your organization, what should your next step in the selection process be? Once you have your requirements, you can begin comparing the various vendors offering employee engagement software. Our compilation of a detailed comparison between employee engagement software vendors will come in handy during this stage.
In the beginning, discuss the expectations and needs from employee engagement software within your organization. If you already have a solution deployed, assess and compare its pros and cons. Once your expectations are in order, shortlist some vendors which you think might stand up to your requirements. After eliminating competitors, assess the cost-benefit ratio of including shortlisted solutions in the daily functioning of your organization.
Lastly, schedule demos and make sure the vendor has answered all your questions before implementing the solution.
Cost & Pricing Considerations
There are multiple factors to keep in mind when choosing new software — and employee engagement systems are no different. One of these key factors is your budget and costs associated with implementing the solution of your choice.
For starters, it’s important to decide between a standalone and a comprehensive talent management suite that offers capabilities for enhancing employee engagement. A comprehensive system will cost more, but it will provide additional HR administration features—if that is your organization’s priority.
Most solutions in the market are available on a per employee, per month basis. This cost is the base plan for most solutions, and more advanced systems with additional features may be priced slightly higher.
While we’re at it, make sure you double-check with your potential vendors about additional charges related to implementation, customer service or employee training before making your final pick.
Questions To Ask Yourself
Use these questions as a starting point for internal conversations:
- What exactly are you hoping to improve through employee engagement in your organization?
- What’s your budget?
- What employee priorities and needs should you consider?
- What are some must-have and nice-to-have features for your specific requirements?
- Which deployment model will work best for your organization?
- Are you planning an expansion in the future?
- Which will work best in your interest—a comprehensive suite or a point solution?
- Will your employees work virtually or from the office?
Questions To Ask Vendors
Use these questions as a starting point for conversations with vendors:
About the Software
- How is the software implemented? How will it handle data migration in the case of a pre-existing system?
- Does it offer dashboards and reports to track performance metrics?
- How does the software automate and streamline mundane tasks to simplify processes?
- Is the software customizable to industry-best practices?
- Does it offer a mobile app? What features does the app include?
- How are updates rolled out? Are they automatic?
About the Vendor
- What is the size of the vendor? Are they stable and experienced?
- How well versed is the vendor with the practices and needs of your industry?
- What customer support avenues are available?
- What will the implementation process be? How long will it take? How much support can you expect from the vendor during this process?
In Conclusion
Employees are one of the most valuable assets of any organization. Having the right employee engagement software is beneficial to employees and the organization in the long run. Along with improving communication, most employee engagement solutions also provide actionable insights based on engagement metrics. With your requirements in order, budget in mind and careful comparison between various vendors, you can find the best employee engagement software for your business.
Additional Resources
