Employee engagement is necessary for organizations. Unless employees are enthusiastically engaged, they can not perform well. Extracting productive results from employees who don’t feel connected with a team or the organization.
Therefore, many organizations prefer employee engagement platforms to build better and well-connected teams. Even organizations prioritize budget and resource allocation for employee engagement tools.
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Why Is Employee Engagement Necessary?
Employee engagement reflects employees’ involvement and enthusiasm for their work and workplace. Employees can become engaged when their basic needs are met, they have a sense of belonging, and they have opportunities to grow and learn.
Employees who are engaged are deeply involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace. They act as psychological “owners,” driving performance and innovation and propelling the organization forward.
Prior to the pandemic, global engagement was increasing, but progress had stalled.
According to Gallup, low engagement costs the global economy $7.8 trillion. Gallup found a strong link between engagement and performance outcomes, such as retention, productivity, safety, and profitability, in an analysis of various business units across 96 countries.
The challenge for most organizations, however, is developing a systematic, consistent process for identifying and implementing actions that increase employee engagement. This is where employee engagement tools can be invaluable in implementing engagement strategies.
What Is Employee Engagement Software?
Employee engagement software is a type of employee engagement platform used by businesses to increase employee job satisfaction and retain talented employees.
The goal is to help employees become absorbed in their organization’s mission and culture, allowing them to be more productive and effective. Most modern employee engagement software is managed by human resource (HR) departments.
Most employee engagement software is sold as SaaS (software as a service) via subscription models. This software is also referred to as workforce engagement software. The solution enables companies to collect and analyze employee feedback in real-time, allowing them to act on it to make necessary improvements.
These platforms can be standalone tools or components of a comprehensive solution package that integrates employee engagement, performance management, and employee development.
Employee Engagement Platforms: A Brief History
Employee engagement platforms emerged as a formal management concept in the 1990s. Back then, organizations experimented with various strategies to motivate employees and drive loyalty and productivity.
These tools quickly became a popular human resource management (HRM) tool for reducing attrition and stimulating innovation. They also helped businesses to increase their profitability.
The HR technology sector further grew rapidly in the 2000s. Most systems are now optimized for mobile applications. This helps to engage both permanent and contractual employees on the go. Managing freelance workers is also seamless with these mobile-friendly employee engagement tools. This makes it clear as to why employee engagement platforms are growing in popularity.
Employers may be considering purchasing employee engagement software to manage their workforce and keep them engaged with the company’s goals. But how to choose the software?
Here are some features of the best employee engagement platform that you must be aware of as a business owner or HR manager.
Features of Employee Engagement Platforms
Learning, Training, and Entertainment
Team engagement does not happen only during working hours. Stress-busting fun-packed activities are an important part of any team-building strategy. Employees, such as sales representatives, for example, can compete by accumulating points by completing quizzes and puzzles and exceeding certain key performance indicators. Some gamification platforms incorporate virtual or augmented reality elements into workplace training and learning.
Goals
Setting attainable goals is critical for individual and team success. However, when goals aren’t constantly thought about or prioritized, they often fall to the wayside. Employees can set, track, complete, and elevate goals for the entire organization using a streamlined goal-setting platform. This increases accountability and alignment in order to ensure that goals are met.
Specialized surveys
Employees typically understand what is and is not working. That is why it is critical to survey them and gather the information that will motivate organizational growth. You can gather employee perceptions at every stage of their tenure using specialized surveys to understand what’s going on and how to improve.
Recognizing and Rewarding Talent
Employee recognition is a standard feature. Recognizing individual team members for their accomplishments and rewarding them hugely boosts their confidence and morale.
Some platforms also have features to share internal news about employees’ achievements within the organization and promote corporate wellness.
Feedback Mechanism
Employee feedback tools enable employees to express their thoughts and feelings about leadership, peers, and workplace topics and policies. Major platforms have integrated feedback tools.
One-on-One Engagement
One-on-one meetings between leaders and employees are required to address roadblocks, celebrate victories, and build strong associations. Therefore, the best employee engagement software includes one-on-one meetings and conference tools to help you make the most of your relationship-building activities. By using such platforms, you can easily conduct and record your discussions seamlessly.
Online Benefits
Some tools also include online benefit programs. Employees can view and choose insurance and other benefits via the engagement tools. Some organizations incorporate Fitbit or Apple Watch fitness challenges, as well as other intra-organizational competitions to keep the employees active and fit.
Who Needs Employee Engagement Platforms?
Employee success is critical to the success of a business. After all, your employees influence business outcomes on a daily basis, both large and small. That is why, in order to achieve desired results, any organization requires an employee engagement tool.
The right platform will enhance the work environment by increasing employee morale, productivity, and company alignment. This assists you in prioritizing your most valuable business asset—talent.
Employee engagement software benefits all roles in your organization, from top to bottom, because your talent drives your overall business outcomes.
Benefits of Employee Engagement Platforms
1. Increased alignment
The software offers tools to improve communication and alignment throughout the organization. This is significant because aligned businesses are 72% more profitable than misaligned businesses.
Your employees will feel more connected and aligned with the organization if you implement a system that streamlines employee-manager conversations, elevates goals to the entire organization, and provides a platform for company-wide recognition.
2. Improved company culture
Leaders should prioritize their company culture when employee retention is an issue. Employees prefer to work in an environment that is positive, inclusive, and motivating, allowing them to reach their full potential. In fact, nearly 70% of American workers prioritize cultural aspects over pay.
You can take employee feedback and incorporate it into the workplace experience using tools that help you get a pulse on employee perceptions. Understanding your workforce as a whole and acting accordingly will improve your culture, making work better every day.
3. Greater productivity
Productivity is critical to the health of every company. When employees aren’t motivated, their productivity suffers, and your business metrics suffer as a result. Many organizations are experiencing this, as the average worker is only productive for about two and a half hours per day.
As a result, organizations should use tools such as goals, recognition, one-on-ones, and feedback to motivate employees toward business goals. To drive optimal performance, your platform should increase accountability, address roadblocks, coach performance, and boost morale.
4. Ability to make strategic decisions
Without the right tools, understanding your workforce as a whole is nearly impossible. And if your leaders are unable to visualize your talent across the entire organization, they will be unable to make sound personnel decisions.
You can intervene before it’s too late if you have tools that help you identify who is at risk of leaving or burnout. Furthermore, by identifying high performers, you can provide recognition where it is due in order to boost employees’ spirits.
5. Increased business success
Organizations that engage their employees provide a better customer experience, produce higher quality outcomes, have higher sales, and are more profitable. In fact, highly engaged organizations are 21 % more profitable than disengaged organizations.
Employees are highly motivated when their workplace listens to and meets their needs. Prioritizing the employee experience is a first-rate strategy for increasing business success.
6. Overcoming obstacles
The tools offer valuable insight into potential obstacles or opportunities to improve work. With a streamlined employee survey tool, you can identify what’s missing in the employee experience and gain insight to help you improve on those flaws.
Furthermore, employees typically understand how to improve big-picture business metrics to increase profitability and growth. Two-way feedback allows employees to share their perspectives, assisting leaders in determining where opportunities exist.
Five Major Steps to Choosing the Best Employee Engagement Software
It is important to make sure that one understands exactly what they need by considering the following:
- Features offered: Check the features offered by the employee engagement software provider. Does the solution provide the types of surveys required by your organization? How adaptable are the surveys? Is it possible to filter the results or use multiple-choice questions? Are users able to respond anonymously? Finally, what does the solution provides that its competitors do not?
- User-friendliness: Make certain that it has an intuitive design that is simple to install, learn, and operate for both the user (i.e., the HR manager) and the employees. For example, it should only take a few clicks to send a survey and start collecting data.
- Availability of training & technical support: Users require a crash course on how to use the software before they can deploy it, but they will also require troubleshooting assistance in the future. Look into support options both before and after the launch (i.e., the hours they are available and whether extra fees will be charged).
- Software deployment: From a logistical standpoint, the user will want to know how long it will take to set up your new engagement software. Also, information regarding the number of resource persons required to keep the system running is essential.
- Compatibility with existing infrastructure: If employee engagement software does not easily integrate with your current communication, login, and HRIS (human resources information system), it may pose reporting and analysis challenges. Confirm that any product you use will work seamlessly with your existing systems.
Cost of the Software
Pricing options for different solutions varies greatly, depending on a number of factors. Some solutions, for example, provide basic, free, or trial versions with limited capabilities and then begin charging as you upgrade your services. Furthermore, pricing is dependent on whether you add a workforce engagement solution to an existing HRIS or purchase an entirely new solution.
Prices can range from USD 1 to USD 15 per person. The billing cycle can be monthly or annually. Many providers offer customized billing cycles for larger enterprise needs.
Concluding Words
Significant changes in the social, economic, and business environments are fundamentally reshaping the workplace. These engagement tools are not only useful for HR departments but also helpful in elevating the work culture of an organization.
The best engagement tools enable employees to be heard and have a say in the organization’s culture. They also help in team building efforts and make team coordination better. As a result, employees feel enthusiastic about advancing the company’s mission–and everything in between.
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