Best Employee Engagement Tools We've Tested (November 2025)

For teams that run on Slack or Teams and need engagement tools that don’t break the flow of conversation, Matter feels right at home. During testing, we liked how surveys appeared directly in chat, no extra logins or forgotten links. Employees responded faster, helped along by “Matter coins” that reward participation and can be redeemed for gift cards or donations. The rotation of 100 prewritten culture questions kept things fresh, though we wished we could edit them ourselves. Still, for distributed teams that prefer engagement to happen quietly in the background, Matter makes it almost effortless.

Companies that see engagement as something you can touch, not just measure, will appreciate C.A. Short Company. Everything about it feels personal, from the custom gift boxes we received (complete with handwritten notes) to the way milestone celebrations are planned down to the ribbon. There aren’t pulse surveys or analytics here, but there is a tangible sense of care that many digital-first tools miss. For organizations that believe recognition drives morale more than dashboards do, C.A. Short delivers old-school warmth with modern reliability.

Profit.co works best for data-driven teams that want engagement to live alongside goals. When we paired its pulse surveys with our quarterly OKRs, we could see engagement scores rise and fall with progress in real time. The surveys are easy to launch, anonymous by default, and surprisingly detailed, while the built-in dashboards surface the right metrics without feeling heavy. The learning curve is mild, but once we got rolling, the connection between engagement and performance felt unusually seamless.

Large organizations that need validated, statistically sound engagement data should look at Quantum Workplace. We liked its research-backed question library and benchmarking against 10,000+ other companies, which gave our survey results real context. The AI-driven comment analysis picked up tone accurately, even when feedback was mixed. Navigation took a few tries to master, and the recognition feed felt dated, but the payoff is in the insight depth. For companies that treat engagement as a science, Quantum Workplace sets a high bar.

Smaller teams hoping to build culture through recognition will probably have the most fun with Bonusly. During our trial, employees immediately took to giving GIF-filled shoutouts, and the feed turned into a running highlight reel of small wins. The public praise loop made engagement feel contagious, and we saw participation spike within a week. Reward redemptions were smooth, though international users had fewer choices. It’s not a tool for deep analytics, but Bonusly nails the everyday side of engagement.

For HR leaders who want one system to both measure and motivate, Reward Gateway feels surprisingly complete. We ran its four-question Engaged Index and watched how the results pinpointed turnover risks we hadn’t seen elsewhere. The data connected neatly to retention metrics, which made follow-up conversations easy. Reporting takes a few extra clicks, and smaller teams outside the UK, Australia, or Ireland can’t use the light version, but for enterprise users, it’s a dependable, all-in-one engagement hub.

We’ve tried nearly every enterprise engagement suite out there, and Culture Amp still feels like the one designed by people who understand how humans work. Its 40+ templates, built with organizational psychologists, gave us clean, benchmarked insights almost instantly. The heatmaps and Retention Insights report were especially useful in spotting flight-risk teams. It took a week of poking around to get comfortable, but once we did, it turned survey results into next steps better than almost anything else we’ve used.

When culture and recognition need to work hand in hand, Kudos strikes a strong balance. In testing, we found that employees responded more to its peer-to-peer recognition cards than to traditional emails or shoutouts. The Culture Accelerator campaigns let HR reinforce core values through real activity, not slogans. The only drawbacks were occasional lag when redeeming rewards and monthly point caps that felt tight. Still, Kudos makes engagement feel celebratory instead of obligatory.

Empuls is ideal for companies that want to keep feedback, recognition, and communication in one place. We liked being able to send a quick pulse survey, post results, and follow up with shoutouts, all without switching tools. The analytics tied engagement scores neatly to performance data, helping us see which departments needed attention. The mobile app handled surveys well, though reports took longer to load. For growing teams that want structure without rigidity, Empuls offers a balanced, people-first approach.

Smaller organizations that want automation without enterprise bloat will like Assembly. We set up an engagement workflow in minutes, complete with automated milestone reminders and lightweight surveys. Customizing the templates was simple, and the free plan was surprisingly generous. Points expire monthly (we nearly lost ours once), and notifications can stack up, but Assembly’s flexibility makes it easy to keep engagement running on autopilot.

‍Motivosity feels more like a social space than a survey tool, and that’s part of its charm. In our trial, the feed filled up with real-time praise and dollar-based rewards, a simple, transparent system that made gratitude contagious. Employees liked seeing recognition flow freely, though we noticed cliques forming around certain teams if left unchecked. The built-in eNPS tracking gave managers quick reads on sentiment. It’s informal, imperfect, and undeniably human, which might be exactly why it works.

For organizations that care as much about interpreting data as collecting it, WorkTango delivers. We ran two engagement surveys and were impressed by how its NLP-powered word clouds captured nuance we might have missed. The Anonymous Conversations feature made follow-up easy without breaking trust. It’s a dense platform, so expect to spend time learning its dashboards, and the annual pricing will be steep for smaller firms. But once in rhythm, it turns feedback into action with precision.

ThriveSparrow is a newer entrant, but it already feels polished. We set up automated pulse surveys and watched its AI sort feedback into themes like leadership or workload within minutes. The heatmaps made it easy to spot dips by department, and the Action Plans board kept follow-up organized. Integrations cost extra, and the mobile view for admins isn’t ready yet, but it’s fast, focused, and genuinely enjoyable to use.

For mid-sized companies that want engagement to feel individualized, Eletive offers something different. Its AI adjusts survey questions based on each person’s previous responses, which made our follow-up surveys feel unexpectedly personal. The insights were rich and actionable, and we appreciated the nudge suggestions rooted in behavioral science. The limitation is that its AI only analyzes English text, and extra features like 360 feedback come at a premium. Still, Eletive’s mix of empathy and analytics feels rare.‍

Terryberry is what we turn to when we want engagement, recognition, and wellness all under one roof. Over the course of a month-long trial, we saw how pulse survey scores improved when paired with its wellness challenges, as employees seemed to like seeing their progress reflected in both steps and sentiment. The analytics dashboard connected recognition activity to retention data more clearly than most. The interface isn’t flashy, but the system works beautifully for mid-market organizations ready to consolidate tools.

We found AdvantageClub.ai to be the most futuristic of the bunch. Its Mood-O-Meter tracked real-time sentiment accurately, and the AI-personalized surveys adjusted mid-stream depending on how people answered, something we hadn’t seen before. The mobile app bundled engagement, wellness, and local perks neatly in one place. Pricing is undisclosed and customization often needs vendor help, but for global enterprises that want sophistication and scale, AdvantageClub.ai feels like a glimpse of where engagement tech is heading.

Employee engagement software can benefit organizations in several ways: it provides employees with a safe space to share feedback, simplifies the launch of expert-backed surveys, delivers real-time sentiment insights, enables ongoing culture monitoring, and integrates tools for recognition and performance.

• Give Employees a Voice with Anonymous Feedback Tools: Employee engagement software provides an outlet for employees to anonymously share their honest opinions, voice out any concerns about the workplace and work culture, and propose suggestions for improvement. When employees feel heard and their feedback is taken into account, it leads to less turnover and higher productivity.
• Launch Expert-Designed Engagement Surveys in Minutes: There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. The best employee engagement platforms are built on solid research, which often includes input from industrial-organizational (IO) psychology experts. They also often come with a host of ready-made survey templates you can deploy in minutes, with recommendations on what to ask, when to ask it, and how often.
• Turn Feedback into Insights with Real-Time Sentiment Analysis: One problem with traditional employee engagement surveys is that they can take a long time to analyze all the feedback gathered. A lot of what is uncovered relates broadly to the employee experience but lacks actionable next steps. The best employee engagement tools can analyze feedback as it comes and give you a comprehensive understanding of employee sentiments, preferences, and areas for improvement.
• Monitor Workplace Culture Health with Continuous Pulse Checks: Most employee engagement platforms use pulse surveys to gather small amounts of data in frequent intervals. These surveys ask only one or two questions, keeping the pressure low and the response rate high. By establishing a consistent feedback loop, you can identify trends, address concerns before they grow into systemic problems, and adapt strategies to maintain a psychologically safe working environment.‍‍
• Go Beyond Feedback: Oftentimes, employee engagement platforms bundle up their offerings with other solutions in the employee experience tech space, such as employee recognition and performance management software. Having all of these tools integrated into one platform reduces tech fatigue for your team and is easy on your budget, too.

When buying and using employee engagement tools, common mistakes include believing the software alone will resolve deep-seated cultural issues, expecting immediate acceptance from employees, underestimating the necessary setup time, and rushing the overall implementation process.

• Expecting Software to Solve Cultural Problems: To be effective, the platform must work alongside a distinctive, authentic, and appreciative work culture. The software can supplement your efforts, but it won't “fix” company-wide problems with engagement. Employee engagement experts Mallory Herrin and Tracie Marie agree here, and Marie's experience has borne this out. She reminds us in no uncertain terms that engagement software cannot replace the power of a human connection.
• Assuming Quick Employee Buy-In: Affecting a company-wide change will take time. Simply put, inspiring behavioral change is difficult. After working in an environment that could have been more attentive to their engagement, employees are sometimes distrustful of initiatives that promise brighter days. The process of winning over the skeptics can’t happen overnight, but it can happen. The right time to start, whether with engagement software or other means, is now.
• Overlooking Integration and Setup Time: Like the plodding, uphill struggle of behavior change, implementing a new HR tool can also be painfully sluggish. To make it as easy as possible, choose a platform with an open API and/or partnerships with tools you already use. Consider your HR tech stack and daily communication tools: Both must be seamlessly connected to your new tool to ensure a seamless transition.‍‍
• Rolling Out Too Much Too Soon: Be conservative and methodical about your rollout game plan. Some vendors offer assistance with this process, but if yours doesn't (or you choose not to follow it), you can orchestrate a successful rollout with good planning and reasonable expectations. From our experience, creating a schedule with a regular cadence that introduces features slowly is best. We’ve also found it helpful to take feedback from departments across the organization about the rollout order: the insight of your leadership and individual contributors is a massive asset.

Employee engagement apps provide organizations with measurable visibility into employee sentiment, cultural health, and areas that need improvement, enabling proactive decision-making. For HR and People teams, the return is clear: higher productivity, lower attrition costs, and a workplace culture that retains top talent.

• Identify Problems Before They Escalate: Engagement tools allow you to continuously monitor employee sentiment through pulse surveys, feedback loops, and trend analysis. This early visibility enables HR leaders to identify issues such as burnout, team misalignment, or poor management practices before they turn into resignations or disengagement.
• Improve Productivity Through Data-Driven Action: When employees feel heard and supported, performance improves. Platforms that connect feedback with initiatives, such as recognition or development programs, create a loop where insights directly inform action, leading to higher engagement and improved outcomes.

We’ve designed this Excel-based calculator to help you calculate the basic return on investment (ROI) from using the best employee engagement solutions. Also, check out our HR Tech ROI calculators page for deeper analysis and benchmarking tools.

Key employee engagement software features include employee surveys and feedback, recognition and daily engagement, goals and performance, communication and collaboration, and analystics and reporting.

• Surveys and Feedback: Employee surveys are a fundamental capability of employee engagement software. These include pulse surveys for regular sentiment check-ins, eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) surveys to measure loyalty and satisfaction, and more in-depth annual or quarterly surveys. Good survey builders make it easy for HR teams to craft customized question sets while choosing from preset expert-validated templates. They often come with automation to ensure surveys reach the right employees at the right time and reminders to increase completion rates. Anonymity settings, in most cases, if not all, are included to protect respondent identity while helping teams gather more honest feedback.
• Recognition and Daily Engagement: These features make it easy for peers and managers to acknowledge contributions in real time, whether through quick shout-outs, points-based systems, or rewards programs. Beyond recognition, many employee engagement tools incorporate activity feeds and dashboards that display updates, milestones, and upcoming check-ins. These daily touchpoints are particularly helpful in reinforcing connection and engagement across remote teams.
• Goals and Performance: Employee engagement software often includes goal setting, one-on-one meeting support, coaching tools, and performance reviews. By tracking progress against defined objectives, organizations can align individual contributions with company strategy while giving employees clarity on expectations. Continuous performance feedback also helps identify disengagement early and ensures recognition or support is delivered when it’s most impactful.
• Communication and Collaboration: Many platforms also provide built-in spaces for collaboration. These can range from chat boards and community groups to virtual hubs that encourage connection around both work and shared interests. By giving employees clear channels for updates, discussions, and social interaction, the software helps build organizational culture and transparency. In hybrid and remote workplaces, these tools replicate the informal connections of in-office environments and strengthen team cohesion.
• Analytics and Reporting: Real-time analytics track metrics like eNPS, satisfaction, and participation rates, allowing HR teams to spot issues quickly. Advanced reporting lets administrators segment results by team, location, or demographic group to identify trends and areas for improvement. Many platforms also allow automated report generation and easy export to PDF or CSV, making it simple to share findings with leadership and track progress over time.

Most engagement platforms use a per-user, per-month model, with pricing that typically ranges from $2 to $20 per employee. A handful of vendors also offer flat annual packages, usually starting around $4,500 to $8,000 per year.

At the low end, entry-level subscriptions provided by vendors like Mo, Assembly, ThriveSparrow, or Matter fall in the $2-$5 per employee per month (PEPM) range. Mid-tier offerings such as Leapsome, Workleap, Profit.co, or Reward Gateway average around $6-$8 PEPM. For more advanced capabilities, enterprise solutions like Quantum Workplace, WorkTango, or Culture Amp often require annual billing that can be around $7,500 on average. Additionally, many providers offer 14-30 day free trials, and some, such as Matter or Connecteam for under 10 users, include a free plan.

Apart from subscription fees, however, you should also be aware of minimum commitments. For example, Lattice applies a $4,000 annual minimum, Kudos requires at least 500 users, and Culture Amp starts at $4,500 annually with yearly billing only.

To give you an idea, a 250-person company should expect to spend $15,000-$20,000 annually for a solid mid-tier tool, while organizations with over 1,000 employees often cross $60,000-$100,000 annually unless they choose a flat-fee vendor. Small teams can still start for just a few hundred dollars per year, but growing companies should budget in the low five figures, and enterprises should plan for a six-figure annual investment if they want advanced analytics and global features.

• How does your platform measure and track employee engagement? What metrics and analytics does it provide?
• How customizable are the surveys and feedback tools? Can I tailor questions and flows to my organization's specific needs?
• What methods does the platform use to gather employee feedback (e.g., surveys, pulse polls, open text, etc.)?
• Does your system integrate with our current HRIS, payroll, or other platforms?
• What types of participation tracking does it offer (e.g., survey response rates, event attendance, etc.)?
• What kinds of real-time feedback capabilities does it have? Can employees provide input anytime?
• What types of employee segmentation and filtering options are available? Can I analyze data by role, team, location, etc.?
• How are the results and data visualized? What dashboards, reports, and insights can I access as an administrator?
• Does your platform provide employee engagement action plan templates and tools and follow-up workflows based on feedback results?
• How do you ensure data security and compliance with regulations? What is your security and privacy protocol?
• What type of support, training, and account management do you provide?
• Can you explain the implementation process? How long does rollout typically take?
• What are the pricing models available? Are there options to scale up or down as needed?
• Can I see a demo tailored to our specific use cases and needs?

What is employee engagement software?

Employee engagement software is a digital platform that helps organizations measure, track, and improve how employees feel about their work. These tools often include surveys, recognition features, communication hubs, and analytics dashboards to improve satisfaction, retention, and performance.

‍What is the difference between employee engagement and employee recognition?

Employee engagement describes the overall motivation, commitment, and connection employees feel toward their work and organization. Employee recognition refers to programs or tools that acknowledge and reward contributions, which is one of the ways companies build stronger engagement.

What is the leading employee engagement tool?

The leading employee engagement platforms include Motivosity, Bonusly, ThriveSparrow, and Leapsome. Each platform specializes in different areas, such as surveys, recognition, or communication, and the best choice depends on the company's size, budget, and goals.

Which employee engagement software is best for small businesses?

Matter, Assembly, and Connecteam are some of the employee engagement platforms designed with small businesses in mind.

How much does employee engagement software cost?

Employee engagement software pricing usually ranges from $2 to $5 per employee per month for smaller tools. Enterprise platforms often have annual minimums starting at around $4,000 to $5,000 or require a minimum of a few hundred users. Most vendors follow a per-employee pricing model and provide custom quotes based on company size and features.

What features should I look for in employee engagement software?

The best employee engagement software offers an easy-to-use interface, activity feeds or dashboards for daily interaction, employee surveys for feedback, goal and performance tracking, peer recognition, and collaborative spaces. It’s also recommended to look for platforms that provide analytics, customization, and integrations to fit your workflows.

How do companies use employee engagement software?

Companies use employee engagement software to collect employee feedback, monitor engagement levels, and identify problem areas. HR teams use it for surveys and retention strategies, while managers use it for recognition, coaching, and team check-ins.

‍When is the best time to use employee engagement software?

The best time to implement employee engagement software is when an organization sees early signs of disengagement, such as declining productivity or rising turnover. Companies also adopt these tools during periods of growth or change to strengthen communication and support employee experience. As our community expert, Christina Moran, advises, it’s less about company size and more about need: “The right time is when the software can clearly enhance performance, simplify HR efforts, and improve the employee experience.”

What is a good measure of employee engagement?

A good measure of employee engagement combines survey feedback, participation rates, turnover data, and productivity trends. High engagement is reflected in strong morale, alignment with company goals, and consistent discretionary effort from employees.

There are no silver bullets when it comes to tackling disengaged employees and understanding what's really happening in your business. However, having an employee engagement platform in place can help you engage your remote workers as well as your in-office ones.

Given that companies using employee engagement gamification are seven times more profitable than those that don't, you may also want to figure out ways to add gamification to your employee engagement programs.

Last but not least, providing proper training for your managers and teams is crucial for creating a culture of appreciation in your workplace. This list of the best employee engagement training courses can be a great starting point.