No matter how large or small your business, your employees are your most valuable asset. Overworked and stressed employees may lead to more costly mistakes, which only causes everyone to suffer in the long term. Therefore, quantifying employee engagement is useful for businesses across all industries and you can find more info here.
Through quantification, businesses may better understand how to increase employee satisfaction, resulting in less turnover and more productivity. Today, employee engagement software assists businesses with this issue. Here is how it works.
Desired Characteristics
Not all software is created equally. Employee engagement software is a growing market expected to reach $350 million in the next five years. No matter what functionalities the software may offer, the overall goal is to increase engagement and commitment through feedback, professional development, data collection and employee recognition. There is a correlation between employees’ increased ownership of their company’s vision and a company’s profits and productivity levels. The best employee engagement software offers some of these key characteristics.
- Pulse surveys are sent to employees with questions designed to measure their engagement. Surveys can be set up on regularly scheduled intervals and compile the data from all employees’ responses. The ability to analyze and define trends in employee satisfaction is how businesses increase retention and lower dissatisfaction.
- Survey customization and segmentation is a useful feature that gives businesses flexibility in their pulse surveys. Employees can answer surveys either using a Likert scale-type response or an open-ended custom response. Segmentation of surveys offers the option to send to all employees at once or split up by departments. Segmentation makes the program fit different sized businesses’ needs.
- An achievement function allows employees to mark goals either complete or incomplete, with the ability to offer comments that explain any complications or shifting in priorities. Software with this ability adds qualitative value and organization to all the data collected.
- Recognition and gratitude features give employees affirming statements, awards, badges, certification, recognition of birthdays and work anniversaries, etc. This characteristic grants gratitude, recognition and personability employees need in order to increase their workplace satisfaction. Psychology Today reported in 2015 how gratitude could increase people’s mood and health, the very two things businesses need for their employees.
- Survey templates help businesses create worthwhile and quantifiable questions. Generating new questions constantly and formatting them in a way that doesn’t skew your data is hard. This characteristic of employee engagement software provides libraries of templates created by professionals in human behavior and data analysis that streamline the survey process.
- Long term progress tracking capabilities identify progress and employee trends towards long term goals. Short term goals are easier to monitor, but the best software helps businesses identify and relate to employees regarding how they align with the bigger picture down the road. This characteristic is a great tool when selecting professional development for employees.
- Report generation allows employers to see the numbers for themselves. Once businesses collect all their data, having the ability to synthesize it and identify trends is invaluable.
- Notifications in the software allow employees instant gratification that reinforces positive behaviors, making employees more likely to improve over time.
Bottom line: Watch Employee Performance Rise with Employee Engagement Software
Engaged employees are productive employees who contribute to the growth of the business. With the right employee engagement software, you will not only be able to assess your employees’ performance and how engaged they are but also watch for trends over time.