Crafting a Connected Workplace: Insights into Employee Engagement Platforms

Disengaged employees hurt an organization’s overall productivity and  revenue figures. An employee engagement platform helps HR professionals and internal communicators enhance employee engagement. In this article, we look at what an employee engagement platform is and how companies can use it. 

“Highly engaged employees make the customer experience. Disengaged employees break it.” 

- Timothy R. Clark

Employee disengagement is a widespread concern in today’s business world. Data suggests active employee disengagement has increased from 14% in 2020 to 18% in 2022. Considering the shift towards remote and hybrid work, the situation will likely worsen, stemming from reduced social interactions. 

Addressing this engagement gap is necessary for enhancing employee experience and nurturing a productive and motivated workforce. That’s because disengaged employees impact overall productivity, increase attrition rates, and ultimately hurt a company’s bottom line. Statistically, disengaged employees cause a 15% drop in profit for companies in the long term. They also hurt team morale and productivity. A simple way to address this situation is by using the right technology such as employee engagement platforms. This blog explores employee engagement platforms, their features, and the best practices one should follow while using them. 

What are employee engagement platforms?

An employee engagement platform is a software tool designed to optimize employee experience. It’s built with features and functionalities to foster employee engagement, communication, collaboration, and recognition, thereby boosting overall workplace satisfaction. These tools help organizations streamline communication campaigns and social interactions easily. They also make it possible to track and measure engagement metrics and improve campaigns based on performance.

Understanding the why behind using employee engagement platforms

Employee engagement platforms today are more than good to have. Safe to say, they’re a strategic imperative to success. Here’s just a few reasons why:

• According to G2, company culture and employee engagement are closely linked. Statistically, 86% of job seekers today actively avoid companies with bad reputations. In addition, G2 emphasizes that building a strong work culture that respects employee autonomy is helpful for companies too. Maintaining this helps to attract and retain top talent - a key differentiator between successful and less successful companies. Employee engagement platforms help maintain such engagement..
• People Managing People urges using employee engagement platforms to address the disconnect between company culture and employee disengagement. Some of their technology recommendations for collecting employee feedback and analyzing different survey results include applications like Trakstar, Workleap Officevibe, and Lattice.
• Snack Nation takes a more theoretical approach to answering why employee engagement is necessary and how to ensure it. They talk about recognizing the nine pillars of employee engagement. These include addressing:
  • Values and purpose (the why)
  • Communication
  • Health and wellness
  • Workspace and environment
  • Well-defined roles that do not blur boundaries
  • Positive relationships with colleagues
  • Recognition and incentives
  • Amazing managers
  • Personal growth and development. 

An employee engagement platform brings these pillars together on a single interface. It makes automating, managing, and tracking the success of internal communication and employee engagement campaigns easier. 

Exploring Employee Engagement Software - Types, Features and Deployment

Types of employee engagement software

In terms of type, employee engagement solutions can be broadly classified as solutions for:

• Communication-focused - These focus on helping employees and their managers communicate with each other.
• Feedback generation focused- These have a greater emphasis on providing performance reviews, feedback to employees, and other top-down communication patterns. 
• Listening focused - These tools work to collect opinions, and suggestions, and assess the overall mood of the employees through surveys and interviews. 
• All purpose - These tools combine all the above functionalities with an overall goal to enhance engagement in every domain. 

Common features of employe engagement software

Coming to features, eLearningIndustry highlights some essential ones to look for. According to them, desirable features in employee engagement software include abilities for:

• Employee recognition to acknowledge employees’ work-related contributions and make them feel included if they belong to underrepresented minorities.
• Performance management to support data-driven employee performance assessment and monitoring.
• Cultural alignment using AI and gamification features

Other features include feedback management, conducting surveys and assessments, and calculating the Employee Net Promoter Score (ENPS). 

Employee engagement software deployment 

Alongside picking the right features, choosing proper deployment based on a company's requirements is also essential.

Main deployment types include on-premise, cloud-based delivery, and hybrid deployment. However, the most essential consideration is to choose between desktop and mobile apps or a combination of both. While a desktop-only approach works well for companies that emphasize security, most companies will need a mobile app to enhance employee engagement levels. Push notifications, alerts, social engagement, etc., are all possible among both in-house and frontline workers when mobile employee engagement platforms are used.   

With that, let’s move on to the benefits of using employee engagement platforms.

The benefits of using employee engagement software

According to leading industry bodies and companies like Capterra, Technology Advice, and Select Software Reviews, using an employee engagement platform unfolds several benefits for organizations. Some of the prominent ones include:

• Raising employee satisfaction, made possible by a data-driven approach that allows HR teams to pinpoint employee dissatisfaction
• Encouraging a communicative culture by keeping employees well-informed, sharing knowledge, and seeking feedback. 
• Aligning business goals with individual aspirations with the help of goal tracking, performance analytics, and performance discussions. 
• Helping HR departments identify, measure, and track employee disengagement and take proactive corrective measures.
• Uncovering critical opportunities that drive business growth and help create a workplace culture that enhances business success. 
• Helping implement DEI  policies better by enhancing the ability to listen to employees actively, champion shared missions, and encourage employees’ career growth
• Incentivize engagement and building engagement in one’s workspace.

According to eLearningIndustry employee engagement platforms empower HR teams and internal communicators to implement a data-driven engagement policy. This helps to improve workforce communication, reduce employee burnout, and enhance personalized communication. This culminates in improved organizational performance. 

The benefits can be witnessed in multiple real-world examples. Let’s explore a few.

Real-world case studies of successful employee engagement platform usage

• Whatfix found it challenging to drive engagement among its globally spread and culturally disparate teams. The company used an employee engagement app to provide in-app guidance and real-time employee support. The result was a significant increase in engagement across disparate cultures.
• Employees at HAYS found it challenging to use their CRM, which was coming in the way of their marketing and sales team productivity. Whatfix implemented an employee engagement app for HAYS. This led to improved conversations and support-related discussions, ultimately resulting in better adoption of the CRM tool. It’s straightforward to understand how this directly impacted their bottom line.
• Stansell Electric digitally transformed its people processes with Lattice’s employee engagement platform. The digital transformation was remarkable, from storing people’s data in Excel documents to using Lattice’s conversational employee engagement platform.

While the benefits are aplenty, practically using employee engagement platforms unfolds particular challenges. The good part is that these can be addressed by choosing the right platform and following best practices. Let’s explore what they are.

Best practices for implementing employee engagement platforms

What to consider before implementing an employee engagement platform

1. Estimate your budget and assess what your organization needs to prioritize 
2. Communicate internally and justify the need and budget for investing in an employee engagement tool. 
3. Scout for vendors who offer free trials in that budget or have good testimonials and reviews. This can help you assess how they respond to your queries and also be aware of how their other customers feel about them.
4. Your employee engagement needs may be restricted or fluctuate with time. To address this challenge, choose a modular and scalable solution. 
5. Take time to tinker around with the different solutions and assess if they meet your current requirements and can meet future ones. 

How to introduce employee engagement software to your workforce

After implementation, it’s essential to get your staff to use the employee engagement platform. Here’s what you can do:

• Introduce the application and implement gamification and self-service measures to increase adoption.
• Incentivize the use of the application and appreciate those who engage well in kind. 
• Always ensure your staff can access training modules and contact support when necessary.

Overcoming challenges and ensuring successful platform adoption

You may come across challenges along the way. Here’s how to tackle them:

• Maintain security and confidentiality by picking a vendor that offers regular updates, bug fixes, and training and provides 24/7 customer service. 
• Measure and track identified KPIs so that your employee engagement tool will help you quantify engagement rates and change existing communication campaigns to address disengagement. 
• Continue to listen to employees and make changes to the platform if necessary.

Finally, let’s move over to how to measure impact.

Measuring and evaluating employee engagement platform performance

There’s no single holy grail when it comes to measuring impact. Let’s go over some popular ways to measure engagement on employee engagement apps:

Key metrics for assessing the impact of employee engagement platforms

The most commonly used key performance indicators to track and measure employee engagement include:

• Employee Engagement Score or Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
• Employee retention rates 
• Mood indicators assessed by in-app surveys 
• Absence rates
• Breaks taken
• Frequency of use of employee engagement app
• Productivity metrics 

Tracking the progress across these is a tangible way to get an idea. Next comes, feedback. 

The role of employee engagement platforms when it comes to employee feedback

One of the primary goals of using an employee engagement platform is to understand employees and listen to what they are thinking and saying. To do this, it’s good to conduct surveys to assess employee mood, engagement, grievances, needs, and motivations. You could also plan for large-scale employee engagement surveys that evaluate key drivers of engagement, such as openness, autonomy, communication, company culture, and well-being. In addition to surveys, conducting interviews can be helpful, too. You may conduct both one-to-one and group interviews on applications with text/audio/video features. Finally, do not forget to conduct exit interviews for employees who resign or leave to understand the employee's experience. 

Integrating employee engagement platforms with an existing HR tech stack

If you plan on integrating your employee engagement platform with your HR stack,

• Enquire about software integrations, customizations, and API compatibility. 
• Cleanse and structure your data before making integrations.
• Ensure that all employee data are stored on secure and encrypted servers if you go the cloud or SaaS delivered way. 

Read about Nouryon, an Amsterdam-based company with 10,000 employees worldwide, which built an HR tool with employee engagement features to solve problems related to disengagement. 

Bottom line: Don’t ignore the power of employee engagement applications

Employee engagement platforms are among the most accessible strategic interventions you can introduce for organizational success. They’re handy for enhancing your company's positive vibes, ensuring everyone feels valued, heard, and motivated to contribute their best. These engagement benefits are aplenty, directly impacting productivity, reduced attrition, and bottom-line growth. 

Achieving the plethora of benefits is possible by using the right employee engagement tools to streamline. Modern-day employee engagement applications are equipped with AI, machine learning, and predictive analytics capabilities that can be integrated with your other software systems and help you take proactive measures to prevent disengagement.