2024’s best team engagement software: boost team morale fast

What is employee engagement software?

Gallup, the analytics and advice firm that has tracked employee engagement levels since 2000, defines employee engagement as ‘the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in both their work and workplace.’²

Employee engagement software helps to boost employees' enthusiasm and involvement in their work. It can be software that rewards employees' efforts and behavior or software that makes it easier to do their job.

Software review site G2.com identifies these additional requirements for products listed under the employee engagement software category:

• Enables users to conduct employee pulse surveys to gauge employee satisfaction
• Allows users to design and distribute custom pulse surveys
• Organizes and maintain data collected from pulse surveys for reporting purposes
• Promotes employee recognition through internal communication channels.

Benefits of employee engagement software

We know many organizations are dealing with shrinking budgets. So why invest in employee engagement software at all?

It's the most accurate way to track engagement levels and progress.

With real-time insights, advanced features and survey tools, team engagement software enables you to quantify employee engagement, which is the most accurate way of measuring progress.

In fact, an all-in-one employee engagement platform makes it easy to figure out your workforce's engagement levels and can reduce employee turnover.

It operationalizes employee engagement.

Creating an engaged workforce and positive company culture isn't a one-and-done deal. It requires consistent behaviors to truly bake it into the core of your culture. Team engagement software allows you to operationalize a culture of appreciation by creating formal recognition programs, seeking feedback from employees and making appreciation part of your organization's daily structure.

It empowers your managers.

The best employee engagement platforms equip your managers and leadership team with the insights and resources to help them coach employees.

It reduces human bias and error.

Everyone has unconscious bias, it's part of being human. Left unchecked, this bias can create inequities in the workplace. By using software, you can ensure a more fair and equitable workplace, which leads to a positive company culture, a boost in employee morale and better employee retention.

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 all the way through post-exit. The software addresses 3 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 you 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

The way Motivosity works is you pay for its core product, Community and Connection, for $2 per month per user, and then you can include up to 3 add-ons, including Recognition and Rewards for $2 per month per user each. There is no minimum number of users.

Bonusly

Bonusly is an employee recognition software that has 4 different feature categories: peer-to-peer recognition, rewards, automated milestones and incentive programs.

It's used by more than 3,250 organizations. Bonusly claims that 70% of its users say employee engagement improved when they started using the platform.

One thing we really 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 that they can share when they praise a coworker. Then, the recipients can use those points to redeem rewards through Bonusly.
• Reward gateway includes experiences (like lunch with the CEO), gift cards (to places like Starbucks), charitable donations or even cash.
• 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. In the analytics dashboard, you can see 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 $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 have to 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 that has three distinct products: Engage, Perform and Develop.

For this review, we'll focus on the Perform product, as it is their 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 as well as medium businesses that you can 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 provides managers with exercises on a daily basis to strengthen leadership skills.
• Goal setting and goal management: Set goals and OKRs, plus 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. The tool was designed by organizational psychologists and provides tips that help managers become better at coaching 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 $4 per person per month to $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 you can apply it to your team to improve employee performance.

Key Features

• Pulse surveys: Pulse surveys are employee surveys that are shorter and more frequent, usually done at regular intervals. They're a great way to take the ‘pulse’ of your employee engagement and track how it changes over time.
• Optimize your employee experience programs with step-by-step setup guidance plus access to pre-built methodologies and a library of more than 300 survey questions. You can easily customize your own employee engagement survey.
• Employee engagement analytics help you track metrics such as well-being and recognition. Plus, you'll get real-time analysis to assist you in gaining understanding of 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 & Collaboration

F4S

Fingerprint for Success (F4S) is a performance and collaboration platform that uses an evidence-based assessment, powerful people analytics and AI-powered coaching to bring out the best in your teams.

F4S is the perfect complement to any employee engagement software you choose because it's the only one that has the motivations assessment and AI Coach Marlee.

It can quickly uncover blind spots and help you leverage strengths in every individual, creating overall team success and harmony.

Key features

• Evidence-based F4S assessment: In F4S, the first step to boosting employee engagement is to have each team member take the free assessment. It takes 30 minutes or less to complete, and grants instant access to a detailed report of how you score on 48 different traits that affect the way you work and communicate. Each trait contains a score along a range that indicates how motivated you are in that specific area. We built the assessment after conducting 20+ years of research into human motivation, so we know it's highly accurate and effective.
• Personalized insights: F4S provides a detailed report for each individual, helping managers to level up their weekly check-ins because they'll have a deep understanding of the phrases and cues that motivate their direct reports versus demotivating them unintentionally.
• 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! F4S shows you how you can 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 actually be stronger as a whole. With F4S, 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! F4S 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. F4S 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 Coach Marlee app. We have several programs that target your unique needs, such as goal setting and team building.

Employee engagement software is nothing without understanding what motivates each individual. See what drives your team. Take the free assessment and gain instant insights into team dynamics.

See how F4S complements your engagement, business collaboration, and productivity tools

Think of F4S as a collaboration and performance technology to help you understand and bring out the best in your team. Achieve out-of-this-world results together!