How to choose the right employee engagement platform for your company

Employee engagement platforms are designed to improve employee happiness, gain and track feedback from employees, show appreciation for and reward achievements, increase productivity and boost physical, mental, financial and social wellbeing.

As retention, loyalty, engagement and wellbeing are all huge issues for HR managers today, it’s important that they have the tools they need to cover each part of the employee experience and support employees in a number of different ways.

Digital platforms have helped to transform the way employee/employer relationships are developed and maintained. Using a single platform allows you to manage the different elements contributing to employee engagement in one place and build stronger relationships with employees.

This means that choosing the right platform for your employees and your company is vital. You need a digital platform that is easy to use, accessible and enhances the community feel of your company.

What is an employee engagement platform?

An employee engagement platform is a digital space where relationships can be developed between the employer and employee, but also between employees. This platform can help to develop and maintain feelings of trust, value and community that are essential for engaged employees and strong workplace culture.

Employee engagement platforms are designed to support your company in building relationships and culture, including employee recognition and reward, benefits, employee feedback and internal communications, etc. This helps to improve on retention, performance, wellbeing and happiness.

An employee engagement platform can also help employees to share interactions with employees, managers and the wider company, outside of work-related channels. This boosts relationships further, which helps build company loyalty and improves company culture.

Put simply, an employee engagement platform helps to address a number of challenges that HR teams are facing:

• Increase employee engagement and productivity
• Retain employees
• Create a strong company culture which supports employee wellbeing
• Enhances the employee brand to boost attraction to potential employees

What you should be looking for in an employee engagement platform?

Choosing the tool that you will use to drive and develop your employees towards personal and company goals is a decision that you need to get right.

When deciding on the platform for you, you need to consider what’s most important for you and your employees.

There are a number of important factors to consider:

User friendly interface

You need all of your employees to feel comfortable using your platform, and they should feel empowered in using this tool.

Having a simple, user friendly interface is essential to ensuring widespread use. No matter who your employee is, they should quickly and easily be able to navigate and use the tool to its full potential. Tools that don’t perform well, are over-complicated or don’t accommodate for certain needs can result in frustration and dissatisfaction – and may have the opposite effect to the one you were intending.

Customisable

For your employee engagement platform to really boost your company culture, you should be able to make it clear that your tool belongs to your organisation.

Customisation is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, individual users should be able to add some basic information about themselves during their onboarding to make their experience with the tool more personalised. This should include touchpoints such as the tool greeting employees upon opening the application, celebration on their birthday or simply making their favourite benefits easily accessible.

You should also be able to customise your platform on a company-wide level in a number of different ways. Look for a tool which allows you to add your company values so these can be assigned when giving reward or recognition to help drive towards your company goals or allow you to share exciting and relevant announcements or features for your workforce.

A social feel

Traditional HR software can have an outdated and formal feel. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t always seem welcoming or approachable to employees.

Today, employees want to use software that looks and feels like the tools they use outside of work. No one wants to spend any more time on platforms that have a corporate feel than they need to.

You should be able to use your platform to keep employees informed and up to date on matters which affect them but you also want to create a social experience within the giving and receiving of recognition. Employees and managers should be able to interact with each other in a social manner while sharing recognitions, and these should also be displayed on a company-wide feed which brings the extra ability for others to see and comment on these recognitions too. This creates a highly social platform and builds a stronger sense of community throughout the business.

Adaptable to your working environment

Many workplaces contain employees working in different ways, and your employee engagement platform needs to be adaptable to all these needs.

Nowadays, having a mobile app almost seems like it shouldn’t be a question, but it’s definitely worth thinking about. Your employees should be able to access your platform across all devices, whether that is desktop, mobile or tablet – and have the same experience across all.

An individual employee might also work across different departments and functions – this means your employee experience platform needs to be adaptable for this too.

How to choose between different providers

The best way to find out more about a potential employee experience platform provider is through a demo. You’ll want to use this time to find out more about the product and service delivered, and ask any questions that you might have.

1. Keep a list of key features that each provider supplies and compare these against the key features you’re looking for.
2. Find out what are the main focuses of each provider and do these align with your company goals? Some providers may prioritise some elements of the employee experience more than others. Find a provider whose goals and focus aligns with your own and find out more about the solutions they cater too.
3. Customer service matters and it can make or break your experience with a provider. Find out what level of service you will be given and what’s included.
4. Learn about other businesses that use their services. Find out who else uses this provider's services and request to see case studies, this way you can find out what other businesses think of the platform.
5. Find out how the provider helps you to launch and roll out the service amongst your employees. You should find a platform which provides communications to onboard your employees easily and efficiently.
6. Learn how you will be able to see insights and reports from the platform – this will not only be important for HR teams, but also important for feeding this information back to your wider company.
7. Take a look at their press on major HR sites or Google news and find out what’s being said about the providers you’re looking at.

Employee engagement software is designed to help HR and company managers create the perfect workplace and maximise productivity. Choosing the right platform for you is vital.

Employee engagement tools should help to improve the working environment – if they aren’t making your life easier or improving your organisation, then you need to change them.

Find out more about how Perkbox can help your business, book a demo today.