Digital tools are helping organizations drive employee engagement. They’re improving communication and collaboration and amplifying company culture. But with a wide range of options available, it can be difficult to decide which tool is best.
Nonetheless, it’s important to identify the right tech for your organization. Delaying the implementation of employee engagement tools can be costly. That’s because businesses with highly engaged teams are more productive and experience 23% greater profitability.
To create a highly engaged team that produces these kinds of results, you need to take a holistic approach to engagement. That means looking at your company culture and the whole employee experience. And this is something that the best employee engagement tools help you to do.
Below, we list the best engagement solutions available for 2024. But before we dive into our list of software, let’s take a moment to explore the different categories of employee engagement tech available.
You can find employee engagement tools designed for specific groups of employees. For example:
- Tools for frontline workers
- Tools for remote, desk-based workers
- Tools for desk-based office workers
You’ll also find tools that specialize in one area of employee engagement. For example, there are tools that focus on:
- Communication and collaboration
- Rewards and recognition
- Continuous feedback
- Time management and productivity
Finding the right staff engagement tool for your organization depends on your industry, employees, and engagement needs. It requires careful consideration. Because the wrong technology won’t achieve the adoption rates or engagement levels you’re looking for. It simply won’t be worth your effort or investment.
For frontline organizations, an important point to consider is that most tools for employee engagement are built for desk-based workers. Only 10% of frontline workers say they have high access to the tools, tech, and opportunities they need to connect and advance in their workplace.
Unfortunately, this puts frontline workers — who make up 80% of the global workforce — at a disadvantage.
Without mobile access to standard resources like company comms, workplace tools, and critical updates, frontline workers become frustrated. They feel undervalued, disconnected from their co-workers, and disengaged from their work.
Therefore, any tech solution you implement has to meet the unique requirements of your frontline workforce, alongside those of your office-based team.
Here’s a quick summary of engagement tool requirements for different segments of the workforce:
- Frontline workers need tools that keep them connected to the company while on the move. They need tech that supports them to manage their time and communicate easily across departments. Because frontline workers don’t sit behind a desk — and often don't have access to a computer or even a company email — they need a mobile-first tool. These tools should be intuitive to use, offering easy sign-on and a friction-free experience.
- Remote workers have a different set of requirements. They need tools that support video conferencing and project management, helping them stay organized and connected to their team even when working from home. Tools that facilitate remote learning and development, along with remote recognition, are also important.
- Desk-based office workers require tools that allow them to collaborate on documents and tasks in real time. They need an easy, streamlined way to maintain communication while they're at their desks and a visual way to understand project progress. However, they may not get much use from video conferencing or mobile employee apps.
In this list of the best employee engagement tools, you’ll find software suited to all types of employees. There are modern intranets and intuitive employee apps in the mix. And there are tools that specialize in specific areas of employee engagement, including communication, employee wellbeing, recognition, and surveys.
Let’s take a closer look.
Best employee engagement software for frontline workers
Blink
When it comes to frontline employee engagement, nothing beats Blink's employee engagement app.
Blink’s frontline engagement app has been designed to support staff in a variety of industries, including hospitality, transit, construction, healthcare, logistics, and more.
It provides frontline workers with resources and tools that not only fit into their busy days but make them better, creating an environment which invites organic engagement.
With Blink, employees can easily communicate with each other and management. They can sign up for shifts, view their schedules, clock in and out, request time off, and stay up to date with company news.
Managers can use Blink to track employee performance and engagement, getting valuable insights into what’s happening on their frontline. They can also share company news, recognize hard work, and provide essential forms and documents via the Blink Hub.
Blink’s software combines all the digital tools you need in one place, allowing you to:
- Bring your organization together in groups and 1:1 chats
- Launch employee engagement surveys to get honest feedback
- Make your employees feel valued and appreciated using recognition tools
- Dig deep into what makes your organization tick with powerful analytics
- Make leadership visible to frontline workers
With a suite of powerful features and deep integrations, Blink is the perfect tool for boosting frontline employee engagement in your organization.
Capterra score: 4.6 (114 reviews)
Pricing: available upon request.
Best employee engagement software for desk-based remote workers
If you're looking for employee engagement software platforms suited to desk-based remote workers, here are some excellent options.
Google Chat
Google Chat is a communication platform that includes features like video and voice calls, and group chat. It's a great option for workplace communication and it's free to use.
As you’d expect, this tool integrates with the rest of the Google suite, including Google Calendar, Drive, Groups, and Gmail. But it lacks some of the advanced features you tend to get with paid tools.
Reviews from Capterra note that Google Chat is easy to use. It also provides good collaboration tools. However, the interface can be frustrating, message delivery can be an issue, and notifications can be challenging to navigate.
Capterra score: 4.5 (2,302 reviews)
Pricing: Monthly pricing for Google Chat for business starts at $6 per user.
Discord
Discord is a chat app designed for gamers. But it’s recently been used for workplace communication, too. It includes features like voice and video chat, so you can easily connect and communicate with colleagues.
You can use Discord for free, making it a basic but cost-effective tool for internal communications, especially in a remote working environment.
Capterra score: 4.7 (434 reviews)
Pricing: Many of Discord’s features are free to use. For businesses that want to invest in extra perks, Discord’s premium tier, “Nitro,” is available for $99 per year.
Asana
Asana is a popular project management tool that can also be used for employee engagement. With Asana, you can easily create and assign tasks, track task progress, and set team priorities. You can also use Asana to create custom projects for easy employee collaboration.
Asana makes a great option for remote teams, in part because it offers a mobile app for easy access to tasks and progress data. This helps to ensure that employees are working cohesively and effectively wherever they’re based.
Reviews from Capterra note that while Asana offers a clean, intuitive, and integrated interface, notifications are often missed, automatic opt-in to email notifications can be annoying, and the different projects and access features can be confusing.
Capterra score: 4.5 (12,648 reviews)
Pricing: Monthly pricing for Asana starts at a basic free plan. A business plan costs $24.99 per user per month when billed annually.
ClickUp
ClickUp is a cloud-based collaboration and project management tool and it’s a good option for those looking to improve remote employee engagement.
Key features include task assignments and statuses, alerts, and a task toolbar. But while ClickUp does well in terms of task management, it doesn’t offer a full range of employee engagement tools.
This platform lacks features relating to real-time communication, employee recognition, and social interaction. So you’re likely to need additional software.
Capterra score: 4.6 (4,135 reviews)
Pricing: ClickUp offers a free version. Monthly pricing for a Business plan costs $12 per user per month.
WorkTango
WorkTango is an employee experience platform with a number of solutions for employee engagement. It provides tools like employee surveys, real-time analytics, rewards, and recognition.
You can also see how your engagement scores rank against other WorkTango customers to get a better sense of how you’re doing.
On Capterra, users say that anonymous feedback and anonymous employee chat allow for truly honest conversations. Clients also praise recognition features. However, some users would like better reporting tools and easier platform navigation.
Capterra score: 4.9 (144 reviews)
Pricing: Pricing is available on request.
Leapsome
Leapsome is a good employee engagement tool for goal setting and employee development.
It’s designed to support organizations to create high-performing teams. You can use Leapsome to track and collaborate on goals, run 360-degree reviews, and create personalized learning pathways.
With lots of tools for remote teams, Leapsome helps maintain employee progress even when employees aren’t in the office. The software also offers video conferencing tools, which make it easy to collaborate on agendas and align action plans.
Capterra score: 4.7 (62 reviews)
Pricing: Pricing starts at $8 per user per month, with the option to add on the extra features you need.
Slack
Slack is a great productivity tool for remote office workers. It helps you to organize teams and their work, with the help of channels, huddles, and a workflow builder.
However, it's worth noting that Slack doesn't provide much in the way of scheduling, performance tracking, or survey features. If these tools are essential to your organization, you’ll need to use Slack plus another employee engagement platform.
Reviews from Capterra note that Slack’s user interface is easy to use. They like channel and plugin features. They also appreciate having all work conversations in one place.
However, reviews also note that it can be a confusing platform to use, with lots of channels across different teams. Adoption can also be difficult if people are not familiar with the software.
Capterra score: 4.7 (23,231 reviews)
Pricing: For multiple employees, monthly pricing for Slack starts at $6.67 per user.
Best employee engagement software for desk-based office workers
Now, let’s take a look at the tech tools best suited to office worker engagement.
OfficeVibe
OfficeVibe is a “people-first” employee experience platform, with a number of employee engagement features designed for the office.
It helps employers to assess and improve employee engagement levels with robust measurement tools. It also provides an app so you can track progress on the go if needed.
Reviews from Capterra note that OfficeVibe is an innovative tool that helps organizations better understand employee happiness. The company also provides strong customer service.
However, managers complain that survey questions can’t be customized and that insights don’t go deep enough. They also say that the Slack integration doesn’t work too well and that setup can be confusing.
Capterra score: 4.6 (51 reviews)
Pricing: Monthly pricing for OfficeVibe ranges from a free version to a $5 per user Pro Plan.
SurveyMonkey
By using employee satisfaction survey tools like SurveyMonkey, you can collect regular feedback from employees on their engagement levels. This real-time feedback can help you to identify problem areas and take steps to improve employee engagement in your organization.
As well as survey templates, SurveyMonkey offers reporting and analytics features that help you spot data trends and insights. It also uses AI to reveal employee sentiment.
Capterra score: 4.6 (9,991 reviews)
Pricing: For over three users, monthly pricing for SurveyMonkey starts at $31.83 per user.
Doodle
Employee polls are a quick and easy way to collect anonymous feedback from employees on a range of topics. You can use employee poll tools from Doodle to gather feedback on everything from engagement levels to job satisfaction.
But Doodle does more than polls. It also provides meeting, video conferencing, and scheduling tools. You can even poll meeting attendees to find a time that works for everyone and improve attendance.
Capterra score: 4.6 (1785 reviews)
Pricing: Monthly pricing for Doodle Professional starts at $6.95 per user.
Monday.com
Monday.com is a project management tool that can also be used for employee engagement.
With Monday.com, you can create and assign tasks, track progress, and more. You can also use it to create performance tracking templates for employees. This can help you to identify areas where employees need improvement and take steps to address them.
On Capterra, Monday.com users say that the platform’s project management tools are excellent. But others complain that the backend of the platform is complicated and involves a steep learning curve.
Capterra score: 4.6 (4,816 reviews)
Pricing: For more than two employees, monthly pricing for Monday.com starts at $8 per user per month.
Culture Amp
Culture Amp’s employee engagement platform provides over 40 science-backed survey templates. You can use these surveys to find out how employees feel about engagement, belonging, inclusion, and more.
The platform also uses AI-powered insights to summarize employee engagement findings, supporting your business to make data-backed decisions.
Reviews from Capterra say that Culture Amp has a user-friendly user interface. They also praise the platform’s ready-to-go survey templates.
But users don’t like having to rely on the Culture Amp support team to update some parts of the platform. They also say that — while survey features are strong — features like the objective and key results (OKR) module aren’t as well-developed.
Capterra score: 4.7 (137 reviews)
Pricing: Pricing is available on request.
A few more employee engagement software tools
The following tools specialize in one area of employee engagement. As such, they make a great add-on to your chosen staff engagement tool.
At Blink, our App Marketplace integrates all the tools you need to manage your employee engagement in one place. If we don't already integrate with your app, just ask!
Kudos
Kudos is an add-on app that allows employees to give and receive recognition in real time. With Kudos, you can create a culture of recognition where employees feel appreciated for their hard work.
Capterra score: 4.8 (1,084 reviews)
Pricing: Monthly pricing for Kudos starts at $3.25 per user.
Friday
Friday is an app that makes it easy to give employees recognition for a job well done. With Friday, you can give employees badges, points, and rewards to show your appreciation.
Capterra score: 5 (1 review)
Pricing: Friday has a free version. Monthly pricing goes up to $100+ for company plans.
Bonusly
Bonusly is another dedicated employee recognition tool. Bonusly supports peer recognition, allowing employees to give each other bonuses in the form of points that can be redeemed for rewards. By using Bonusly, you can create a culture of appreciation and recognition throughout your workforce.
Capterra score: 4.8 (1,586 reviews)
Pricing: Monthly pricing options for Bonusly starts at $2.70 per user.
Limeade Wellbeing
Employee wellbeing programs, like those on offer from Limeade, go hand in hand with employee engagement programs. Because when employees feel healthier, happier, and less stressed, they have the headspace they need to engage with their work.
Limeade provides customized employee wellness programs. These programs encourage participation and deliver essential wellbeing resources via one handy tool.
With this tool, you can also listen and respond to your workforce in real time through anonymous surveys, polls, and quizzes. All that’s really missing from this system is strong employee communication tools.
Capterra score: 0.0 (Zero reviews)
Pricing: Pricing is available on request.
WeThrive
WeThrive is an employee engagement tool designed to support the mental health of desk-based workers. With this platform, you can create surveys to assess employee wellbeing and then take action to improve it.
WeThrive analytics allow you to segment survey results by team, tenure, location, department, and manager. This makes it easy to identify the root causes of poor wellbeing and identify areas for improvement.
Capterra score: 4.7 (37 reviews)
Pricing: Pricing is available on request.
Reward Gateway
Reward Gateway is an employee engagement solution that offers employee discounts, employee rewards and recognition, and tools for employee communications.
This combined platform is a great tool for office-based employers looking to boost employee recognition, with features such as discounts and rewards accessible in one place.
Reviews from Capterra note that Reward Gateway is flexible and easy to use. But it can be glitchy, with reporting features sometimes not running properly and some features failing to run as smoothly as others.
Capterra score: 4.5 (319 reviews)
Pricing: Monthly pricing for Reward Gateway starts at $10.19 per user.
Weekdone
For structured goal setting, Weekdone is an excellent choice. It’s a top-rated OKR platform that allows you to track weekly plans and progress, provide feedback, and get everyone pulling in the same direction.
OKR software can also be used to ensure that remote employees have clear objectives, with performance reviews and goal tracking.
Capterra score: 4.5 (61 reviews)
Pricing: For more than three employees, monthly pricing for Weekdone is $8 per user.
Awardco
Awardco is another bonus tool that makes recognizing and rewarding people easier and more effective.
With Awardco, employers can set up reward and recognition programs that their employees can access from any device. You can tailor incentives to your teams, ensuring the prizes on offer act as real motivation.
This tool is a good option for office-based companies of all sizes looking to increase employee satisfaction and engage with their workforce to boost productivity.
Capterra score: 4.9 (4,560 reviews)
Pricing: Pricing for Awardco ranges from $2,500 to $4,000 per year.
QuizBreaker
QuizBreaker is a virtual team-building tool. It works well for both office-based and dispersed teams, bringing a bit of gamification to the work day.
Key features of QuizBreaker include:
- a scheduled icebreaker quiz that helps employees get to know each other better
- escape games and 1,000+ trivia quizzes for fun team-building events
- employee profiles that reveal work style, unique strengths, and fun facts
- pulse surveys to help you get regular feedback from employees
QuizBreaker isn’t an all-in-one employee engagement tool. But this platform helps teams to bond and brings a little fun to your workplace culture.
Capterra score: Not found in Capterra database.
Pricing: Monthly pricing for QuizBreaker starts at $3 per user.
Motivosity
Motivosity is employee recognition software that makes it easy for managers to give recognition and rewards.
Motivosity’s “Thanks Matters” card is an innovative way of rewarding employees. Like Bonusly, you assign points for great performance. These points directly translate into cash, which employees can access via a special Visa debit card.
They can choose from hundreds of reward options. You can even add your own gifts such as branded swag or lunch with the CEO. Employees can also choose to forgo cash rewards in order to make charitable donations.
Capterra score: 4.8 (1,053 reviews)
Pricing: Pricing is available on request.
Useful employee engagement software features to look out for
When choosing the right tool for your organization, you should consider the features on offer. You want features that will help you overcome the specific challenges you are facing with employee engagement. Key features to look out for and what they can be useful for include:
- Channels, chats: Communication is key to employee engagement. By offering employees a place to have real-time conversations, you can help to ensure that employees are always kept in the loop and can easily collaborate.
- Surveys, polls, content analytics: Employee engagement tools that offer polls and content analytics can help you to track employee engagement levels and take steps to address low engagement. This can be useful for ensuring your workers' voices are heard.
- Employee recognition: A tool that offers kudos and employee recognition can help to ensure that employees feel appreciated for their work. This is a key factor in maintaining strong employee engagement.
- Analytics: If you manage a deskless team, an analytics function can help you measure your employee engagement, retention, satisfaction and more, offering you valuable and actionable insights into your employees interactions with each other and with leadership. In turn, you can use this intelligence to improve employee experience and drive future engagement.
- A main feed and hub: One core feature of an employee engagement tool is a main feed or hub. This is where employees can go to find all the latest company news, videos, critical documents and more in one place. This can help to ensure that employees are always up-to-date and engaged with what is going on in the company.
At Blink, our frontline app provides all of this and more. We've got a wide variety of features that are designed specifically to help you overcome the challenges of employee engagement. Book a demo today to find out more.
The benefits of using digital tools for employee engagement
Staff engagement tools are an investment. There’s usually a monthly cost involved. And there’s a time investment, too. It takes a least a couple of weeks to get your teams up to speed with new software.
So why do it? What are the benefits of using digital tools — like the ones we’ve listed above — as part of employee engagement strategies?
Firstly, the best digital tools are intrinsically engaging. They encourage user adoption and get employees excited to take part in your engagement initiatives.
But it’s not just the draw of shiny new tech that makes digital tools effective. The right engagement software also helps you to achieve the following.
Reduce staff turnover and related costs
When you increase employee engagement, you reduce staff turnover. In fact, highly engaged business units achieve a 51% difference in staff turnover compared to companies with low engagement levels.
The fact is, engaged employees are less likely to leave their jobs, and this can save your company a lot of money in recruitment and training costs. SHRM reports that hiring a new employee can cost three to four times the position’s salary.
According to Gallup research, highly engaged organizations have also been found to benefit from 10% higher customer ratings and 17% higher sales, resulting in a 23% difference in profitability overall.
Digital tools support employee retention. By amplifying company culture and ensuring all employees can take part in it, workers experience more purpose and satisfaction at work. This encourages them to stay with your company for longer.
Build a strong company culture
In a competitive hiring market, remuneration is not the be all and end all.
In fact, on average, engaged employees will only consider taking a job with another organization if it comes with a 31% pay increase. To inspire this kind of loyalty and engagement among your employees, you need a strong company culture.
In its Global Culture Report for 2024, O.C. Tanner lists six core elements of positive company culture. These are:
- Employee sense of purpose
- Employee sense of opportunity
- Employee sense of success
- Employee sense of appreciation
- Employee sense of wellbeing
- Employee sense of leadership
When employees rate these elements highly, they feel more connected to company culture and more likely to stay working for your organization.
Digital tools can help you improve in all these areas. They allow leaders to communicate easily with all employees. They support growth and development. The right tools also help you to amplify company culture, building a sense of purpose, appreciation, and wellbeing.
Better internal communications
Digital tools provide the two-way communication channels you need to ensure the right messages reach the right people. They help you to build a culture of transparency and give a voice to people at all levels of your organization.
The best software also cuts unnecessary noise. It allows you to segment your audience so employees only receive comms relevant to them and their roles.
Going digital with your internal communications supports engagement in other ways, too. You can use content analytics to see how employees are interacting with your communications. With this knowledge, you can hone your messaging to make it even more effective and engaging.
Access valuable analytics on the people that matter to your organization
When it comes to employee engagement, feedback is essential. Without it, you have no way of knowing what's working well and what needs to be improved. This can lead to disengaged employees who feel their voices are not being heard.
Digital tools make it easy to collect employee feedback. With the help of reporting and analytics, you can then identify and address issues quickly and easily, showing employees that you value them and their opinions.
Blink’s employee app offers rich data on employee engagement, satisfaction, retention, and more. By providing you with key employee engagement analytics, you can learn about problems that your frontline workers are facing faster, meaning you can solve them faster, too.
Improve productivity
Searching for forgotten passwords. Trawling through paperwork. Logging in to different platforms and apps. These tasks are tiresome for staff. And they take up more time than you might think, impacting productivity.
Using the right employee engagement platform or tool can save employees a huge amount of time on tasks like these.
You can digitize paper processes, making them quicker and easier for staff to complete. Automation features reduce the admin burden for your HR team. And, by giving teams access to all your workplace software in one place, you make it easier for them to find and use the tools they need.
With digitized and streamlined processes, employees and your HR team become more productive and have more time to focus on value-add tasks.
Employee engagement software tool FAQs
What is an employee engagement tool?
An employee engagement tool is a digital platform that helps to engage employees in their work. It can offer features such as task management, employee recognition, surveys, and social-media-style communication channels.
What technology is used to engage employees?
There is a wide range of technology used to engage employees. For organizations with a frontline workforce, the Blink platform is your one-stop shop. For knowledge workers, digital tools such as Slack or Asana can be a great option. The employee engagement tool that is right for you will depend on the needs and goals of your organization.
Don’t let your frontline employees fall behind – book a demo with Blink today.
