The Best Employee Engagement Software & Tools - Oak Engage

Every business wants a highly engaged workforce.

It won’t happen overnight, though. Employee engagement is an ongoing strategy, requiring actions to be taken throughout the year

According to a study by Qualtrics, only 50% of workers in the UK are engaged in their day to day work.

Fortunately, there are plenty of employee engagement software options out there that can lead you to success.

What exactly is employee engagement software?

Put simply, employee engagement software helps businesses boost employee engagement while improving the employee and customer experience.

Employee engagement solutions are often software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms that are chosen by internal comms, HR and IT departments, and implemented for their workforce.

So what is the best employee engagement software? Let’s take a look.

The difference between employee engagement app & employee engagement software  

Employee engagement software encompasses a wide range of features and functionalities for enhancing overall employee engagement, including tools for surveys, performance management, recognition, feedback, and analytics. It offers a comprehensive approach to managing and improving engagement across the organisation. This software is typically accessible through web-based platforms and integrates with various HR systems, providing a centralised hub for engagement activities.

Employee engagement apps are more focused tools, often designed for mobile access and specific engagement tasks, such as recognition or communication for colleagues who are on the move and don’t have access to a desktop device. These apps offer a more streamlined and user-friendly experience but may lack the comprehensive features and integration capabilities of software. The choice between the two depends on an organisation’s specific engagement needs and objectives.

Oak Engage: Your all in one employee engagement software

Our software is regularly recognised for its ability to streamline employee communications and improve employee engagement for the world’s best and biggest brands including Natwest, Burger King, ScS and more. Our mission is to simplify comms for your organisation. With our platform, we empower internal communicators to effortlessly deliver the right message to the right employee at the right time via intelligent AI.

How we can help

With Oak Engage, your employees can connect on any device, from any location. Our intuitive employee engagement app helps our customers consistently achieve employee engagement rates of up to 95% and have reported huge increases in staff productivity, collaboration and efficiency.

Boasting a selection of tools to help your team stay focused, productive and engaged, Oak’s all-in-one employee engagement software is the ultimate solution in modern workplace technology.

Let’s take a look at some of the most common workplace challenges that Oak can solve:

1.  Improve employee engagement

Oak provides solutions that help sustain and encourage interaction from a highly engaged workforce. From social intranet capabilities to collaborative hubs and integrated analytics, our platform has been designed with employee engagement in mind. With our suite of features we provide every business the ability to support, recognise and listen to their employees.

Notable features: Pulse Survey, Recognition Software, Auto Translations, Curated Content

2.  Personalisation

Oak Engage utilises intuitive AI to make each employee’s experience completely bespoke and individual. Your intranet is tailored to your employee’s content preferences. Employees see exactly what they want and need to see. The content they digest is relevant to them and designed to maximise engagement. Whether employees have a language preference or only want to see content that’s relevant to them and their department, you can tailor your intranet to suit their requirements.

Notable Features: Auto translate, Newsletter

3. Employee recognition

The importance of employee recognition cannot be overstated. Recognising employees is pivotal to a business’ success. It is directly linked to engagement, retention, productivity and pretty much everything else.

That’s why customers love our employee recognition feature.

Having the intent to reward employees is all well and good but it can be difficult to implement an effective recognition process without the right tools. Without them it can become an irregular and confusing process.

Embedding employee recognition into your intranet enables your people to share quick notes of thanks and appreciation for their colleagues anytime, anywhere.

Notable features: Employee Recognition

4. Employee pulse survey

Our employee survey app plays a pivotal role in amplifying employee engagement efforts. This app empowers organisations to gather valuable insights from their workforce, drive positive changes, and nurture a thriving workplace culture.

Say goodbye to paper surveys and data entry hassles. Oak Engage’s employee survey app simplifies feedback gathering with a user-friendly digital platform. Employees can easily, and anonymously, share their thoughts and suggestions, encouraging higher participation rates and more accurate insights.

Waiting for survey results is a thing of the past. Oak Engage’s survey app provides real-time analytics, enabling HR professionals and managers to identify areas of concern, track improvements, and respond promptly to employee feedback, fostering agility and responsiveness. Collecting feedback is just the start; the survey app transforms data into actionable insights. With advanced analytics and reporting, Oak Engage helps identify trends and areas that need attention, empowering informed decisions to enhance employee engagement. Oak Engage’s survey app goes beyond data collection. It facilitates a feedback loop, allowing organisations to communicate actions taken in response to feedback. This demonstrates the organisation’s commitment to valuing employee input.

Recommended Reading: Choosing the Best Employee Engagement Software  

For enterprise, small & mid tier businesses

1. Oak Engage

We unite businesses and transform workplace culture. Oak Engage is the modern all-in-one intranet and employee engagement app that enables businesses to engage and connect with their people.

Unlike traditional intranets that fail due to complexity and poor user experience, Oak makes it easy to collaborate and share content, improving productivity. With our easy to maintain, fully personalised and intuitive platform, spend less time worrying about employee needs and  focus more on your wider business goals.

Core features

• Mobile App – Our mobile app gives employees an enjoyable experience and can access their company intranet wherever they are. This is ideal for organisations with deskless or remote workers – Oak mobile app gives companies the power to access their intranet solution at any time, from anywhere.
• Social Intranet – With social features integrated throughout, you can give your workforce an intranet they love and remove traditional workplace barriers with Oak.
• Hubs & Communities – Create communities and improve your culture. Hubs bring like minded people together through virtual groups where they can collaborate, strengthen bonds and grow together.
• Content Management – With a content and document management system with 3rd party app integration, your workforce can access content and complete tasks anywhere, any time.
• Pulse Surveys & Polls – Gather real, actionable insights that your business can use to improve employee engagement, communication, wellbeing and more.

Popular mentions

• “Oak makes it easy to understand all the features and settings, and they are there to help you with any issues.”
• “Oak is easy to use and continuously upgraded. It suits our workforce and all technical abilities. I LOVE the customer support – they are all so lovely and helpful! Bending over backwards so you get the experience you want and need.”
• “Simple and intuitive to use. Relatively easy to set up areas relating to a specific subject and to communicate to teams throughout the business.”

Unpopular mentions

• “There isn’t much! A lot of the niggles I have can be fixed at our business end with extra training and knowledge not with Oak.”
• “There are very few negatives about oak, and the help platform and idea sharing is brilliant.”
• “I think any pain points we have uncovered so far are related to how our site was structured years ago, not issues with Oak.”

Conclusion

Oak Engage is an all-in-one intranet software for the workforce of today. Designed to keep workforces engaged and productive, we’ve developed useful tools to help organisations from across the world.

2. Jive

Jive provides a gateway to everything employees need to get their jobs done. It’s a platform that provides company communication, team collaboration, employee engagement and more.

Jive provides an array of features in one secure and ready-to-launch package, available in the cloud and on-premises.

Core Features

• Customisation
• Internationalisation
• Mobility
• Reporting and Dashboards
• Peer Recognition

Popular Mentions

• “I like the way the interface helps you easily navigate to anything related to your workplace and connect with people very easily.”
• “It’s great that I can communicate from any device or phone.”
• “The fact that you can use it anywhere: a physical phone (purchasing the right LAN adapter) on an iPad or iPhone, and on the web in your computer.”

Unpopular Mentions

• “I think there should be more options for integration and availability of java stored on jive.”
• “We attempted to integrate Jive with Deltek Vision and OpenAsset and encountered some difficulty. Smoother integration would be great.”
• “Not extremely user friendly. Can be difficult maneuvering the program without basic training on how to use the program.”

Conclusion

Jive certainly has capabilities you’d expect from an intranet. There is room for customization by administrators and offers many collaborative tools.

However, based on reviews, integrations of other platforms is limited and the platform requires a lot of training. Compared to other platforms, the mobile app could be more user friendly and the search feature could be more updated.

3. Simpplr

Simpplr is a modern intranet software. They make it possible for businesses to connect and engage their entire workforce across the enterprise.

Core Features

• Mobile Application
• News Feed
• Employee Generated Content
• Notifications
• Integrations

Popular Mentions

• “Simpplr is exceptionally visually appealing. It makes it very easy for users to see and find what they are looking for.”
• “I love the streamlined, clean aesthetic of the brand that allows for simple customization and intranet management. I also really love how easy it is to “get in there” and figure it out yourself.”
• “Using Simpplr is a breeze. As a result, our worldwide team was able to implement it quickly and without incident.”

Unpopular Mentions

• “Unfortunately, users were not provided with any recognition items. This would make our staff feel appreciated and connected.”
• “The application is quite difficult to customize. Oftentimes thumbnails don’t look correct and cannot be easily adjusted.”
• “The thumbnail feature would love to have a few more options, either to add an additional photo that properly fits the header and the thumbnail, or some additional cropping/formatting abilities.”

Conclusion

Simpplr certainly has a clean and visually appealing aesthetic, as seen by many reviews. They also make it easy for their customers to use and make their site their own.

However, no recognition or reward features are provided with Simpplr, unlike so many other platforms that provide employee recognition. This is something that is missing and quite significant to what organisations are looking for.

4. Unily

Unily is an employee experience platform that connects, informs and engages employees.

Core Features

• Social
• Communications
• Analytics
• Mobile App
• Reward and Recognition

Popular Mentions

• “The only software on which we can rely for instant messaging professionally.”
• “When it comes to maintaining effective communication with the entire work team, Unily is the best option.”
• “Unily is really an easy-to-use tool and gives us very good tools that facilitate communication between all team members.”

Unpopular Mentions

• “The operation has been very good, however the notifications may have delays, some configuration is missing, the rest works perfectly.”
• “The system is prone to bugs and has many glitches that can slow down employees’ productivity.”
• “There are a lot of glitches and bugs while using it.”

Conclusion

Based on reviews, messaging and communication seem to be the most effective feature that Unily provides. They provide their customers with instant messaging in real time with very fast notifications and facilitate collaboration across teams.

The downside to Unily is that there are a lot of glitches and bugs which can slow down productivity, disrupt processes and provide unnecessary frustration within an organisation.

5. Staffbase

Staffbase is a platform centred around engaging employee communications. They provide internal communications tools and give employees a place to create and publish content, all from one single platform.

Core Features

• News Feed
• Notifications
• Employee Generated Content
• Comments
• Administrative Access

Popular Mentions

• “For an IC person, the platform is an exceptional product and user-friendly!!”
• “The platform is a real asset for quick and uncomplicated exchange with our employees.”
• “Staffbase allows us to bridge our communication gap in our company.”

Unpopular Mentions

• “Long waiting time for development of much needed and frequently suggested improvements”
• “Long waiting time for the development of urgently needed and frequently suggested improvements (idea portal), e.g. file manager.”
• “Just one little thing: more flexibility by technical recommendations for further improvement.”

Conclusion

As an all-in-one intranet platform, Staffbase provides an array of features for organisations to use all in one place. However, many customer reviews have said that the time for development is long. This is something that needs to be considered when you’re choosing employee engagement software.

6. First Up

First up is a platform built for employee experience. Their goal is to power the workforce of the future.

SocialChorus and Dynamic Signal have joined forces to become Firstup,  empowering companies to put employees first by reaching, connecting, and engaging every worker, everywhere.

Core Features

• Publishing
• Digital Employee Experience
• Analytics
• Integrations
• Security and Infrastructure

Conclusion

First Up certainly seems to have a wide range of features, however, an employee rewards or recognition system is missing from their tools set.

For small businesses

1. Lattice Performance Management

Lattice works with People teams to turn employees into high performers, managers into leaders and companies into the best places to work.

Their goal is to develop engaged and high-performing teams and make the hours that people spend at work better.

Core features

• User, Role and Access Management
• Mobility
• Dashboards
• Feedback
• Performance Benchmarking

Popular mentions

• “The best aspect of Lattice is the ease in scheduling 1:1 meetings with topics to be covered in the meeting.”
• “I can keep track of all my one-on-one points with my manager and my skip-level manager all in one place so nothing gets lost.”
• “We love that Lattice houses our Goals, 1:1 meetings, 360 degree reviews and feedback all in a single place connected together.”

Unpopular mentions

• “The tool can be complicated for new users, which makes it hard to get the teams to buy in to use the tool. I would like to see better integration into MS Teams.”
• “The UI can be a little confusing.”
• “The UI specifically around goals has been a bit trickier to navigate.”

Conclusion

Being a people management platform, Lattice does have many benefits around performance reviews, 1:1 meeting scheduling and feedback. However, it can fall short on other aspects such as integration, connectivity and collaboration.

2. Fond

Fond is a Saas platform that consolidates employee rewards and recognition processes into one solution.

Employees and managers can recognise each other, redeem rewards and measure success.

Core features

• Peer Recognition
• Rewards
• Employee Engagement
• Mobility
• Social Feedback Portal

Popular mentions

• “It’s easy to navigate, and you’re able to see details on what the recognition is for very easily, and you’re able to respond as well.”
• “This program is so user-friendly. The ease of being able to reward an employee and then let them pick their gift is terrific!”
• “Fond allows colleagues to give/receive monetary value rewards.”

Unpopular mentions

• “There could be more items at cheaper prices which would improve the user experience a lot and make it feel more fun and rewarding to earn points.”
• “Wish you could earn points more easily and could use cash to buy things that you don’t have enough points for.”
• “I liked this app, but there is always room for improvement, so the UI can be better.”

Conclusion

Fond is great for employees being able to send points to each other as a recognition system, which they can then redeem for rewards. However, it’s important to recognise that there are downsides to solely just having an employee recognition program. It fails to include other important features of an intranet.

3. 15Five

15Five is a performance management platform that supports effective managers and engaged employees. They provide surveys, 1-on-1 tools and performance reviews and it combines software, education and community to develop successful managers.

Core features

• Customisation
• Performance
• Mobility
• Goal and Challenge Creation
• Peer Recognition

Popular mentions

• “I like that I can report, once a week, how well my week went and what I got done.”
• “I can easily share my reflections with my boss and am notified when he reviews them each week.”
• “Every week, I’m able to submit a report that lets my supervisor know how that week went (the good, the bad, and everything else)”

Unpopular mentions

• “I cannot customise how I view my data. It would be great if I had more control over the dashboard experience, in order to make it more useful in my day-to-day planning.”
• “I find that action items from 1-on-1s can get lost too easily.”
• “Sometimes it might not save the current weekly report that you are working on. It may be a glitch or perhaps even user error, but there are times (especially when I first started using it) when it doesn’t save my current review.”

Conclusion

The benefits of 15Five include being able to report and share reflections with managers. The platform is also very analytical and data based which is a good thing but does miss out on things like social features which employees love.

4. Motivosity

Motivosity intends to make people happier at work.

An employee engagement ad recognition software which drives results by making visible all the great work of team members Motivosity place an emphasis on 3 key drivers:

• Being recognised and appreciated
• Feeling connected to your manager
• Having a strong sense of community in the workplace

Core features

• Employee Segmentation
• Performance Benchmarking
• Employee Engagement
• Automation
• Dashboard

Popular mentions

• “It prompts people to recognize others for the good things that they do.”
• “Just easy ways to appreciate the people I work with!”
• “The flexibility and ease of use are so much fun! We love shouting each other out, giving out awards, and sharing highlights!”

Unpopular mentions

• “Sometimes I get a little frustrated with the user friendliness of the app and website.”
• “It would be helpful if you could see a summary on your home page of the recognition you’ve provided through your entire organization rather than just your direct reports.”
• “The leaderboard is a fun feature, but it is not as helpful since it only shows 10 people at a time; in our large company, this sometimes requires a lot of scrolling if you’re looking through the board.”

Conclusion

Motivosity is great at valuing employees, especially those within smaller businesses. It allows people to give peer-to-peer recognition that helps your employees feel appreciated. However, as your company grows, the software can become limited.

5. Kudos

Kudos in an employee recognition software. It empowers employees to recognise teammates and achievements that make their companies great places to work.

Core features

• Customisation
• Integrations
• Performance
• Employee Pulse Surveys
• Peer Recognition

Popular mentions

• “The best thing about Kudos is their effect on the work environment and team morale. It helps reinforce the sense of belonging and improves everyone’s mood by seeing someone being publicly recognised and rewarded for their work.”
• “It’s an excellent way to acknowledge when the staff is performing well.”
• “Kudos is a great way to appreciate your support roles and teams in projects they have helped you with. It helps recognize those leaders and improve morale.”

Unpopular mentions

• “I do not get enough Kudos to give out each month, and I wish they would roll over from previous months, so when we have extra, we would like to give we can.”
• ” I don’t like not being able to set your amount of Kudos to give out.”
• “I wish that there was more detail when someone posts Kudos rewards.”

Conclusion

Like other platforms, Kudos focusses their features on employee recognition and rewards, this is great but can miss out on other features that are vital for keeping your workforce engaged.

For mid-market businesses

1. Culture Amp

Culture Amp is a people and culture platform that helps companies to improve employee engagement, retention and performance.

It provides feedback and development tools to deliver insights needed to make decisions and prioritise resources.

Core features

• Reporting and Dashboards
• Mobility
• Employee Pulse Surveys
• Goal and Challenge Creation
• Employee Segmentation

Popular mentions

• “I love being able to set up surveys, demographics and reporting then use them over multiple years to gain longitudinal insight into how business is doing in the eyes of our people.”
• “We have seen progress and improvement in our Engagement and commitment from the Team Members with regards to our surveys and other company-wide activities that involve the voice and participation of our Team Members.”
• “It has a very detailed reporting feature for your reviews/surveys that gives you a breakdown of your most important areas and areas of focus. The end-user can see a very detailed analysis of the organisation-wide survey.”

Unpopular mentions

• “They could integrate with more platforms for interoperability.”
• “Better & wider integration with other tools and enable automation processes with third-party apps.”
• “We can not customise the tool, and we don’t have the flexibility to adapt the platform to our needs.”

Conclusion

With a lot of focus on feedback and performance, Culture Amp is good for turnover prediction and reports. Again, it lacks certain features that employees need for productivity, collaboration and engagement.

2. Kazoo

The Kazoo Employee Experience Platform brings together tools you need to create a high-performing, connected culture regardless of where your employees work or what device they use.

They combine Goals & OKRs, Recognition, Feedback, Conversations, and Incentives within one platform.

Core features

• Performance
• Mobility
• Integrations
• Reporting
• Feedback
• Popular mentions
• “I like the concept and how user friendly Kazoo is.”
• “Kazoo is very easy to use.”
• “By far, my favourite thing about Kazoo is its flexibility. You can truly make it a unique experience for your employees, as well as offer rewards to fit all needs.”

Unpopular mentions

• “I wish some reports had more customisation capability.”
• “If you could customise the website appearance a little more, that would be the only thing I would like to see change.”
• “The reporting is very lacking! Unable to reconcile escrow account unless requested reports each month from Kazoo Support.”

3. Workvivo

Workvivo is an employee communication platform designed to build natural, meaningful bonds between teams, allowing companies to reach and engage their employees.

Core features

• News Feed
• Notifications
• Multi-channel Sharing
• Employee Generated Content
• Surveys

Popular mentions

• “Workvivo is such an easy and good app to use.”
• “The UI is very user-friendly, and it has many valuable tools.”
• “It’s been remarkable, super user-friendly.”

Unpopular mentions

• “There is no way to chat with people through Workvivo.”
• “For communication purposes, it would be great to push posts back to the top of the feed.”
• “Including URLs in some of the posts can be a bit frustrating.”

Conclusion

Workvivo combines its intranet into a social experience for its customers. It includes an array of different tools and features that massively improve employee engagement. According to reviews, their app is easy to use and super user friendly.

However, the downside to this platform is that employees are not able to chat with each other. Messenger is vital for team-to-team communication.

Best employee engagement software for surveys

1. Survey Sparrow

SurveySparrow is an end-to-end omnichannel experience management platform that bundles Customer Experience and Employee Experience tools such as NPS, Offline, Chat, Classic, and 360° Surveys which are mobile-first and user-friendly.

Core Features

• Chat-like surveys
• Classic Surveys
• Offline Surveys
• Survey App
• NPS Surveys

2. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey gives millions of people around the world a way to turn feedback into action that drives growth and innovation.

Core Features

• Survey Builder
• Survey Customisation
• Survey Insights
• Reporting and Analytics
• Templates

3. Quantum Workplace

Quantum Workplace offers a full suite of employee engagement and performance solutions that help organizations drive employee, team, and business success. Quantum Workplace helps leaders connect the dots between engagement and performance with intuitive and user-friendly tools.

Core Features

• Tracking
• Peer-to-peer Recognition
• Real-time Feedback
• Analytics
• Employee Surveys

4. GetFeedback

GetFeedback is a customer experience solution that companies use to capture feedback across all channels, analyse it for trends, and act on it quickly to improve the customer experience.

Core Features

• Employee Pulse Surveys
• Survey Customisation
• MPS Scoring
• Reporting & Dashboards
• Performance

5. TINYpulse Engage

TINYpulse invented real-time publishing for employee feedback. It is a single platform for engagement, social recognition and flexible surveys.

Core Features

• Social Feedback Portal
• Customisation
• Pulse Surveys
• Goal & Challenge Creation
• Peer Recognition

Best employee engagement software for project management

1. Monday.com

Monday.com is a resource management software for executing and planning projects. What’s great about this software is the visibility into workflows and analytics for key projects.

Core Features

• Timeline Views
• Integrations
• Time Tracking
• Automated Notifications
• Creation & Assignment

2. Proofhub

Proofhub is a web-based project management software that helps to manage, discuss and communicate work with team members and clients in one place.

Core Features

• To-Do Lists
• Drag & Drop
• Task Prioritization
• Planning
• Mass Updates

3. Teamwork

Teamwork is a project management platform made specifically for teams that need to manage multiple clients and projects all in one place.

Core Features

• Scheduling
• Dashboards
• Due Dates
• To-Do Lists
• Project Map

4. Trello

Trello is a flexible work management tool where teams can ideate plans, collaborate on projects, organise workflows and track progress.

From brainstorm to planning and execution, Trello manages big milestones and the day-to-day tasks of working together as a team.

Core Features

• Creation & Assignment
• To-Do Lists
• Recurring Tasks
• Task Prioritisation
• Planning

5. Weekdone

Weekdone is a tool for managers and leaders who want to get more insights into their teams and organisations and improve team collaboration and focus.

Core Features

• Analytics
• Dashboards
• Planning
• OKR Coaching

Best employee engagement software for recognition

1. Nectar

Nectar is an employee engagement and recognition platform that helps drive connections across a team. Streamlined rewards include digital gift cards and more.

Core Features

• Rewards
• Employee Engagement
• Mobility
• Dashboard
• Performance

2. Bonusly

Bonusly is a fun way to keep employees on their toes and improve retention and productivity throughout your company. This peer-to-peer recognition platform allows everyone in the company to reward each other. Over time, the small bonuses on this reward gateway add up into meaningful, connection-forming rewards, actionable insights, and employee communication.

Core Features

• Data & Analytics
• Rewards Catalogue
• Hashtags

If you would like to find out more about how Oak could work for you, book a demo today.

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