Employee Engagement Software: What are the Best Choices?

Employee engagement software, when used correctly, and with the right strategy behind it, can transform your staff into an informed, productive, and creative force. In this article, we’ll discuss the best software options to make it happen.

Employee engagement platforms have been around for some time now, and there are numerous options when it comes to finding an engagement solution.

But how do you know which is the best fit for your company? What are the pros and cons of each, and how can you tailor the employee engagement software to fit your business’s specific needs?

At Sociabble, employee engagement is our specialty, and we’re happy to share what we’ve learned about the options out there, and what to look for when selecting your employee engagement platform. The right fit can make a tremendous difference, and it pays to invest a bit of time in making the choice that works for your company.

Why employee engagement is key within companies for 2023

It’s no secret that the year ahead promises to be a challenging one for business. Many experts are predicting a potential recession for 2023, with most agreeing that things will be difficult at best. Under these circumstances, performance is more important than ever. Companies need to perform at their very best to optimize profits while expending fewer resources. And to accomplish this, an engaged workforce is critical.

The challenge? Employee engagement is also lower than ever. According to the 2022 Gallup State of the Global Workplace Report, only 21% of employees consider themselves to be engaged at work. Europe has the lowest percentage, with only 14%.

Why does this matter? Because there is a direct correlation between engagement and performance. According to Gallup, highly engaged teams are 21% more profitable than disengaged teams—the latter of which costs U.S. companies alone $550 billion per year.

So the mission is clear: to weather the storms ahead, companies need to get their workforce engaged.

What are the other benefits of engaged employees?

The data is unambiguous: one of the best investments an organization can make is in the general engagement and well-being of employees. When employees feel involved at their company, and when they feel that the company is in turn caring about them, that mutual sense of well-being boosts performance and productivity.

Engaged employees will do their best, and strive to add value where they work. Beyond mere productivity, companies with engaged employees will also benefit from:

A better-defined company culture.

Engaged employees create a firm sense of identity at a company, which will in turn create cohesion and help the company stand out from the competition.

Lower turnover across the board.

Engaged employees are more loyal and take more interest in their jobs. They feel a sense of belonging, and they want to stay and work for an organization where they are appreciated. This is key when a company wants to increase its employee retention rate.

More employee feedback that travels upward.

Bottom-up communication thrives at a company with high engagement, as employees feel secure enough to share their thoughts and opinions with managers.

Enhanced communication on every channel.

Engaged employees know what’s going on, within their team, their office, their sector, and their industry. They will communicate this knowledge better, and in turn, perform at their very best, thus helping the company’s performance.

What are the specific benefits of investing in employee engagement software?

We’ve covered why engagement matters. Frankly, it carries exactly the kind of benefits that companies in competitive markets need to get ahead—and in some cases, simply to survive. But what are the specific benefits of using employee engagement software as part of an overall engagement strategy?

Here, we’ll cover what exactly your company can get from using these kinds of tools. Or more specifically: what will this software give you that can help you achieve the positive benefits mentioned above?

Strategic Assistance:

Most employee engagement  tools come with a built-in roadmap that offers a play-by-play for companies that don’t have the size or resources to create their own complex strategy. This can take the shape of best practices around feedback, pulse survey templates, and even consulting to help you figure out the results and translate them into action.

This way, you can help ensure alignment, and solidify company culture around a strategy that’s understood and believed in by all.

An Enhanced Employee Experience:

An employee engagement platform empowers your HR team to connect directly with staff to determine their priorities and concerns, and work that into the corporate environment and company culture. Employees feel that their voice is heard, which in turn increases loyalty and employee retention, reduces turnover, and boosts efficiency and productivity.

This kicks in at the very beginning with the hiring process, right on into onboarding, and continues for as long as the employee is with the company. The right software will facilitate this, and in many cases, automate it.

Instantaneous Feedback:

Today, most employee engagement platforms collect data regarding corporate communications on an ongoing basis—gone are the days of the once-a-year employee survey with a hundred questions.

Instead, information is gathered regularly via pulse surveys that only ask the employee a few questions at a time, which increases the likelihood of a thoughtful response.

They can also offer real-time insights into what is going on with a specific team, department, office, region, or any type of users,in a way that a human observer might miss. This combination of insight and automation makes it simple and effective.

Actionable Insights:

A flaw with traditional employee surveys and questionnaires is that while you may have interesting data or valuable insights, it doesn’t necessarily come with ideas on how to address the problem.

If people don’t read the newsletter because it’s boring, or if they don’t use the collaboration tool because it’s not in their native language, that might be compelling information, but you might not inherently know what to do with it.

Employee engagement software today often has features built-in that are designed to offer specific, actionable insights on how to address a problem and get employees more involved.

How do you create an employee engagement program?

Thanks to the Digital Age, and the various digital tools that come with it, monitoring and improving employee engagement is now much easier than before. Employee engagement software can be a game changer, bringing in automatic analytics capabilities that will make you aware of problems you didn’t even know you had, and offering you solutions you didn’t even know existed.

But to be honest, it can be overwhelming. Which is why it helps to start by focusing on certain features that you know will benefit your workplace. Identify problems or weak points, and look fort features that will help you solve those.

For example: something as simple as an employee recognition module can make a huge difference when employees don’t feel visible. An anonymous survey feature can also give crucial insights when people have concerns and don’t feel heard.

Focusing on just a few useful features that will address specific pain points can give you a starting point when choosing the right employee engagement software for your company.

What are the best employee engagement programs?

So what specifically should you look for? Well, there are certain features common to many employee engagement software options that offer significant benefits. These are the capabilities you should look out for when examining your options.

Workforce surveys for feedback

Employee feedback is critical to maintaining morale and a sense of purpose, but so is collecting ideas. Ideally, you want a platform that allows you to do both, via quick pulse surveys, but also via tactical questionnaires. Targeting is also important—you need to be able to adjust and adapt surveys, and make sure they get to exactly the right people.

With the Sociabble platform, for example, admins can send both general or tactical surveys with just a few clicks, selecting the precise criteria to set parameters for audience targeting. Feedback can be anonymous, which encourages honesty, and results can be quickly analyzed.

Additionally, with Sociabble you can send quizzes, which is a great way to help ensure that a topic or message has been received and understood. And participation can be rewarded, with personalized badges, for example, that are automatically attributed.

Communications solutions

When information flows easily across organizations, employees are engaged. They can access the information they need to do their daily work and they are aware of what’s happening at the company. Communication is a key element of engagement, and the right engagement software should take that into consideration.

Sociabble, for example, allows admins to organize information flows according to specific channels—for instance, based on a relevant topic (HR news, for example), or dedicated to a brand, or an event.

Channels can be set up with specific parameters, so that content is automatically distributed to the right audience through the right channel, whether from social media, internet sites, ad hoc platform content, or content from employees (user generated content). Employees can interact with posted content as well, via comments, emojis, or reposts.

Additionally, Sociabble comes with a built-in newsletter feature complete with templates and dynamic content options that enhances communication, allowing for targeted, personalized newsletters that are relevant to every employee. And if language barriers are a hindrance, Sociabble addresses that as well, with a real-time automatic translation feature that allows for instant translations in more than 50 languages.

Team and personal recognition

One of the most important challenges in 2023 will be talent retention. We’ve already witnessed “The Great Resignation,” and the trend will probably continue. There are many reasons why an employee decides to leave an organization. However, there are very simple, straightforward ways to encourage them to stay. It’s important to make them feel appreciated, and that they’re actually making a difference.

When it comes to team spirit and being part of the organization, it’s important the company involves everybody from every area and department. And this especially applies to frontline workers and remote workers, who might often feel excluded. Having an engagement platform with a mobile app—like Sociabble’s—will keep everyone connected, regardless of having a desk station or a company email.

Beyond mobile capabilities, Sociabble provides many features to recognize individual employees and celebrate successes. One such feature is peer-to-peer recognition, allowing employees to nominate and celebrate their co-workers for a job well-done.

There is also the option to reward employees who have achieved success or important goals with badges, or via Sociabble Trees, a CSR-linked engagement feature that rewards employees with trees planted in their name, in reforestation initiatives around the world.

Features like these recognize employees for their talents and efforts, and help them to feel like they’re truly appreciated and making a difference.

Real-time analytics

Without analytics, there’s no way to know if your engagement efforts are working, and make tweaks to your strategy accordingly. With the data, you can discover open-rates for newsletters, reshares for posts, response rates to surveys—the list goes on. Essentially, you want solid numerical confirmation that your plan is actually working, and you want to be able to identify the weak spots where it is not.

Sociabble achieves this through a total analytics package that includes real-time data on almost every aspect of engagement. Beyond mere views, you can determine if a “deep read” occurred of a content piece, for example, and you can even use the AI capabilities to view if feedback was overwhelmingly positive or negative for a content piece, just based on the comments left.

What is the best way to measure employee engagement?

Obviously, the real-time analytics mentioned above are key—they’ll provide the insights you need to know if your engagement strategy is working. But what specifically should you look at?

How to choose the best employee engagement platform?

As discussed, there are a large number of employee engagement platforms and software options to choose from.

When looking them over, it’s important to take into consideration the specific needs of your company. For example, you may want employee engagement software that is:

Adapted to your employee needs.

Do you have a large number of remote workers, or employees in the field? Are you an international organization with offices across the globe? Then make sure your solution is mobile responsive and offers translation capabilities.

Adapted to your company’s goals.

Is employee retention your big goal for the year ahead? Employee satisfaction? Then make sure your employee engagement software assists with quick and efficient onboarding, and comes with employee recognition features and easy-to-send cultural alignment surveys.

Adapted to your time constraints.

If you don’t have a huge staff to manage the project, then ease of use and time-saving is essential. Look for an employee engagement platform with automated features, like content curation, newsletter drops, language translation, analytics reports, data exporting, etc.

Adapted to your size.

If your business is relatively small, you may not want or need many of the fancy features that come with some of the platforms. Maybe what you’re looking for is relatively simple. In that case, price may be a consideration, as well as versatility.

If all you really need is a little help sending out newsletters and posting on your various social media channels, look for the employee engagement software that will allow you to accomplish that.

Adapted for employee advocacy.

Internal communication is just one side of the coin. External communication, employee advocacy in particular, is important too. In fact, employee advocacy—when staff speak highly of their organization on public platforms—is the highest form of employee engagement there is. Having an all-in-one platform that enables employee advocacy is worth considering.

Sociabble for an all-in-one employee engagement solution

The most effective way to accomplish the various goals describe above is to have an all-in-one employee engagement software option. A platform with all the features you need to boost and monitor employee engagement, without having to constantly switch from one engagement app to another.

You want a one-stop shop, a centralized solution. Not only will this save time and resources for your organization, it will also lead to a more fluid and seamless integration, as well as user experience for admins and employees alike.

Sociabble is just such a solution. Beyond being an employee engagement platform, it is a total employee communication hub, designed to keep your workforce informed, engaged, and influential, both in the office and beyond. It’s already been used by dozens of global companies in more than 180 countries around the world, including industry leaders like Coca-Cola CCEP, L’Occitane, Primark, and the Renault Group.