According to Harvard Business Review, happy team members increase organizational productivity by 30%. In the last couple of years, businesses have realized the significance of workforce engagement, starting to view it as continuous work rather than another goal to cross off their to-do lists. Employee engagement technologies help companies in this case, making sure both employees and their leaders have a rewarding experience at their workplace.
JatApp wants to share some personal experience in employee engagement solutions development. With this read, you’ll learn more about the problems these tools can solve, their main types, as well as some unique features you can add to make your product more competitive on the market.
Problems that an employee engagement software solves
A negative company culture can take its toll even on the most productive and diligent employees. The lack of communication between workers and upper managers’ recognition may eventually lead to reduced productivity, increased turnover rate, and workers’ absenteeism. Employee engagement tools are designed to change that by improving staff motivation and commitment to common business goals. We’re going to take a look at an employee engagement solution that JatApp helped to develop.
Communication gaps between team members
If staff members neither know what’s going on in their organization nor have a chance to interact with their colleagues, they lack a sense of belonging, motivation, and commitment to business goals. Engagement software can help to keep everyone on the same page, boosting collaboration between employees. More specifically, it allows employers to communicate updates regularly on how their organization is currently performing.
Besides, such software allows team members to ask questions and share their feelings towards organizational initiatives. This, as a result, creates a dialogue between the personnel and management, making teamwork a breeze. The JatApp team helped to build an application for employee engagement that lets managers connect with their staff. With this solution, they understand what impacts employees’ mood and request feedback if the company introduces any organizational changes.
Employee engagement app functionality
Lack of leader’s support
If you take a look at the main reasons why employees are quitting their jobs, you’ll see that this hardly ever happens because of low salaries. In fact, people are more likely to leave their positions due to the lack of leader’s support and recognition rather than financial concerns.
One of employee engagement software benefits is its ability to connect upper management with the staff. Notably, it’s an effective tool for providing the recognition and feedback that these workers crave. Such solutions enable team members to better understand their role in alignment with the broader company’s goals.
Decreased productivity
Many engagement tools offer anonymous employee surveys for their bosses to know the underlying causes of organization’s low productivity. The data analytics reports aim at highlighting specific organizational processes or work culture issues that disengage and demoralize the workforce.
Based on these findings, companies can create an effective action plan, making employees’ voices heard and taken seriously. Organizations can conduct such surveys on a regular basis in order to spot changes in employee productivity before they actually miss a performance benchmark. As an example, our employee engagement tool automatically requests team members to complete a survey, so that managers are always aware of their blockers and challenges.
An employee engagement app with the feedback feature
Employees’ absenteeism
One of the main reasons for workers’ absenteeism is the lack of engagement. Employees may be reluctant to go to work simply because they don’t have enough motivation to deal with their daily tasks and responsibilities. Public transportation and bad weather can increase an employee’s desire to stay home, as they may think it’s not worth the trouble to commute to work today.
With the right employee feedback and goal tracking tools, team members are more likely to feel responsible for their work. Apparently, employees will become more committed to an organization, in which they clearly understand their personal contributions and feel valued and appreciated. When workers see that their opinions matter in decision-making, they’ll naturally be more satisfied with their company and want to come back to their workplace. What’s more, these engagement tools help to figure out what exactly makes a worker unwilling to work, so that leaders can quickly respond to the root causes.
High turnover rate
Who would want to leave an organization that takes care of its personnel? Companies that are able to support employees’ morale and ensure a positive work environment generally have lower turnover rates. Meanwhile, those businesses that aren’t able to listen to their workers’ needs and fail to keep the lines of communication open may struggle to retain their staff.
Introducing employee engagement software can work magic, making the staff loyal to their workplace and committed to the growth within an organization. These technologies can offer a variety of benefits to them, from wellness promotion to awards for good performance.
Types of employee engagement software
Once we know the main challenges that an employee engagement program helps to address, let’s get to the list of its common types. Engagement solutions can be roughly divided into the following categories: employee pulse surveys, awards and recognition, goal tracking, and wellness promotion.
Employee pulse surveys
According to recent findings, 77% of staff members don’t mind extended workday if their boss is compassionate, while 60% would agree to work for lower salaries if the employer is supportive. Ensuring constant communication and requesting feedback are some of the effective ways to show an empathetic attitude towards the workforce. Luckily, leaders don’t have to spend much time conducting engagement surveys on a regular basis, as there are many successful solutions available today.
Employee survey software helps to get to know what’s actually important to the staff. Surveys offer an understanding of teams’ engagement levels as well as help to establish two-way communication with them. Employers and managers can automate workers’ feedback and timely respond to it before any serious problems pop up.
Our employee engagement application allows to conduct customizable surveys. Managers can set up the frequency of these surveys via the administration panel. Also, they can see survey results on the dashboard, while moodfactors scoring panel shows the percentage of negative and positive workers’ responses. It’s worth noting that this panel displays the reasons why employees are satisfied or distressed, helping employers to introduce necessary organizational changes, when necessary.
Moodfactors scoring panel
Awards and recognition
It’s through awards that workers perceive themselves as important members of an organization. Such employee recognition makes them believe that their input is necessary for business success, motivating them to work even harder.
A research involving 1,700 participants has shown that employee retention and recognition are interconnected and interdependent. The research results suggest that 55% of respondents view the lack of recognition as a sufficient reason for quitting a job. It’s no wonder that businesses actively adopt software solutions that make it easier for employers to notice hard-working employees and reward them for their efforts.
Cherry is one of such employee engagement tools. The technology allows employees to personalize the perks they get from their organization. Instead of taking another mug with the company’s logo, team members can choose a Spotify Premium yearly subscription gift card they would really enjoy. Cherry lets bosses pay for workers’ benefits via gift codes.
An example of Cherry’s available perks
Goal tracking
For a company to succeed, it’s essential for employees to work towards common goals. However, in today’s ever-changing business environment, it’s never been easier for staff members to lose their focus. This may not only affect the organizational health but also hurt workers’ engagement level. Modern software can help companies set goals, communicate them to teams, and monitor progress in real time.
A good case to discuss here is Quantum Workplace. The digital solution allows the personnel to see the company’s big picture goals as well as to set their personal career objectives. Users can set reminders to make sure they stay on track with their key performance indicators (KPIs). What’s more, employees can always view how their colleagues are progressing, which drives the spirit of competition.
Quantum Workplace app functionality
Wellness promotion
Employee engagement heavily depends on staff wellness. Needless to say, if workers aren’t feeling well, they cannot perform to the best of their abilities. Mental health concerns also present a serious issue, especially now when the world is recovering after the global pandemic.
Even though employers can’t improve all aspects of their workers’ lives, they can implement small changes in their organization that can make a difference in the employees’ well-being. For example, leaders can introduce such wellness tools as Vantage Fit into their workplace. This artificial-intelligence powered solution helps the staff adopt a healthier lifestyle. Users can participate in a wide range of wellness challenges and contests as well as receive fitness monetary and non-monetary awards.
Vantage Fit with its team-building activities not only leads to employees’ better productivity, but also encourages teamwork and sense of community.
Vantage Fit app functionality
Valuable employee engagement software features
Understanding what features are trending these days is extremely important. By adding them to your product, you will not only appeal to your target audience and win competition, but also increase your brand awareness.
Peer recognition
Statistically, three out of four workers believe that their mental health would improve if bosses and peers appreciated them more for their efforts. Meanwhile, peer-to-peer recognition is more effective than employer-only recognition. The research evidence suggests that it’s 36% more likely that peer-to-peer recognition will result in better financial outcomes for the organization. Since the top-down approach appears to be less effective, many businesses have started to give their team members the power to express their appreciation to each other year-round.
Bonusly is a digital platform that lets employees celebrate each other’s little wins as well as brings hidden information to the surface about who was cooperating with whom and what contributions they were bringing to the organization. The following feature enables employees to give each other points, which are later translated into monetary benefits. Workers can retrieve these perks either through PayPal or provider’s partners, such as Cadooz, Tango Card, and Amazon.
Bonusly app functionality
Workday rating
Continuous communication helps to increase employee engagement levels. The recent survey shows that 97% of the staff believe that communication affects their performance on a daily basis. A simple question like “How is your day?” can mean a world to an employee, making them feel respected and valued. With the hybrid work model being popular these days, digital tools that help to understand employees’ emotional state are becoming vital.
One of the prominent features of the employee engagement application we’ve developed is the workday rating. The app sends employees regular notifications to rate how they feel using a scale from one to five. More importantly, workers can choose specific factors that impact their mood.
Workday rating feature
Video feedback
Business owners should always think of ways to engage their employees, especially those who are working from home. The video feedback feature allows leaders and managers to communicate with workers in a more personalized way. Instead of sending emails that could get lost in the spam folder, employers or managers can record a short engaging video giving a review on employee performance.
Coming back to our employee engagement application, we developed a video recording feature to let managers timely respond to the staff’s emotional state. Instead of texting their employees, managers can use this functionality to express their thoughts more clearly and avoid possible misunderstandings associated with the written communication.
Video feedback feature
Final thoughts
Employee engagement is one of the most important initiatives a company can take to improve personnel’s productivity and work culture. Modern employee engagement platforms help to close the communication gaps between team members, recognize them for their work, support their emotional and physical well-being, as well as keep them on track with organizational goals.
If you’re looking to build such a digital tool, you should turn to a vetted software agency for technical assistance. JatApp has been developing human resource technologies for six years now and has gained enough experience in building products that help businesses retain their employees. Our solutions hit 99% clients’ satisfaction rate and our company is recognized as one of the top 1,000 B2B software vendors in the world.
If you want our help in employee engagement app development, don’t hesitate to contact us and we will be glad to discuss project details with you.
