10 Best Employee Engagement Platforms for 2024

Highly engaged employees are the key ingredient in high-performing organizations. But they don’t appear simply because your organization declares they’re a priority — human resources teams and leaders need to invest in employee engagement tools and platforms that measurably increase employee engagement and well-being.

However, finding the right platform to boost employee engagement can be challenging. There are plenty of options on the market, but which ones perform the best? And how do they stack up against each other across a variety of benchmarks?

Well, we’ve got the ultimate guide to the top employee engagement programs and platforms right here, with the pros and cons you need to know about each one plus reviews from real customers. Let’s dive in!

1. Cooleaf

Cooleaf is an employee engagement solution that helps you create a company culture based on your core values, one where employees love to come to work every day because they’re recognized and rewarded for their hard work. With great employee rewards, an intuitive user-friendly platform, and pulse survey capabilities, you can start creating a better employee experience today using Cooleaf. 

It offers many engagement initiatives designed to create a stronger workplace community, and enables celebrations of milestones like work anniversaries, birthdays, and more. Cooleaf also offers an easy-to-use mobile app, which makes recognizing and rewarding on the go effortless. 

Cooleaf stands out from its competitors with a partnership approach to engagement — they work with your company to make progress towards your unique goals with a customized approach. They are committed to developing an ongoing engagement strategy that goes beyond rewards with ongoing programs and incentives. 

Pros: 

• Very intuitive and easy-to-use interface makes it fun and easy for employees to use regularly
• Gamified and fun activities and challenges for employees to encourage them to use it often
• New hire onboarding tool integrated into the platform

Cons:

• Doesn't include performance management tools
• An all-in-one engagement solution might not be best for small teams (<100 employees)
  

“My favorite thing about Cooleaf is the interaction from everyone. I like how you can meet new co-workers, and recognize your current ones. I also like how you can earn rewards from being yourself and learning more about others. I think it makes everything feel more like a community, than just a "job". It is also easy to use because of how the website is set up.” - Customer review

‍2. Lattice 

Lattice is a people management platform that helps companies create a more engaged and satisfying company culture for employees by connecting performance and engagement. It combines performance management, compensation management, employee engagement surveys, and career development tools into one easy-to-use solution for HR teams. 

Pros: 

• Excellent customer support 
• Regularly adding new features based on customer feedback

Cons: 

• Doesn’t have a very user-friendly interface 
• Lacking AI features that can pull performance data into one place 

“Lattice is extremely user-friendly and easy to navigate. Our team has been using Lattice's products for years and are very satisfied with our experience. I also love their customer service- any time I need help or have a suggestion for product improvements, they are happy to help and implement.” - Customer review 

3. Culture Amp 

Culture Amp is an all-in-one employee experience platform that enables companies to reward and recognize employees, manage employee performance, and drive employee development. It’s suitable for companies of all sizes, from small startups to enterprises. 

Pros: 

• Supports a huge variety of language options other than English, so great for global teams
• Very comprehensive platform with a lot of features

Cons: 

• Not as customizable as other options
• Doesn’t send enough notifications about upcoming tasks

“CultureAmp has a super clean and easy to use interface. Personally, I use it a few times each half, and I've found it works really well for setting and tracking my biz and PD goals. It's a simple product that just works and I love it.” - Customer review 

4. Bonusly 

Bonusly is an employee recognition and rewards program that helps organizations create a genuine culture of recognition and appreciation. It focuses on peer-to-peer recognition and social recognition, and offers a large catalog of rewards for employees to choose from. 

Pros: 

• Very robust people analytics capabilities so you can access actionable data easily 
• Great rewards options, including the option for charitable donations 

Cons: 

• Can be challenging to customize the platform for your company 
• Sometimes popular rewards go out of stock

“Bonusly has encouraged our company to recognize each other not just for the big accomplishments but the little things, like just brightening someone's day with cookies. It's fun to be able to see the things my teammates are achieving that I might not otherwise see.” - Customer review

5. Workvivo 

Workvivo is an employee experience platform that focuses specifically on internal communication and helping employees to make their voices heard through employee feedback mechanisms. 

Pros: 

• The interface is very user-friendly and intuitive, which encourages employees to use it more frequently
• Very seamless integrations with a large number of systems 

Cons: 

• Sends a lot of email notifications, which can be distracting 
• Mobile app doesn’t have as many features as the desktop one

“The best thing about work vivo is the one place solution. We can connect with our peers for fun connects or team discussions without the hassle of using separate tools for things like document sharing and saving or surveys.” - Customer review  

6. Qualtrics EmployeeXM

Qualtrics EmployeeXM is an employee experience technology platform that helps companies collect, organize, and act on employee experience data. It has especially robust employee survey tools and allows organizations to measure employee engagement in real-time. 

Pros: 

• Excellent privacy options for survey users, allowing employees to give truly confidential and anonymous feedback 
• Great educational resources available for users 

Cons: 

• Limited integrations, and those integrations can be quite complex 
• Not friendly for inexperienced users 

“I appreciate the flexibility and comprehensive features of Qualtrics Employee Experience most. It serves various purposes on a single platform, such as enabling registration for programs/events, conducting work environment surveys and soliciting employee feedback; it also helps with strategic planning initiatives by providing valuable insights from employees based on surveys or polls.” - Customer review  

7. Achievers 

Achievers is an employee recognition solution that is cloud-based and built for global businesses. They offer advanced technology along with a high level of customer support and service to help their users increase employee retention, engagement, and recognition. 

Pros: 

• Very intuitive user interface — feels like a social media platform 
• Great onboarding resources to get users up to speed right away 

Cons: 

• Launching it from an admin perspective can be challenging 
• Reporting tools could be more sophisticated 

“Achievers is a great recognition platform for businesses. Our teams are able to give instant peer-to-peer feedback with the option for our managers to add monetary values to their recognition as well. It has helped us continue our great culture and the marketplace of rewards is so varied there is something for everyone.” - Customer review

8. Kudos 

Kudos is an employee engagement, culture, and analytics platform that enables companies to recognize and reward employees, and those employees to recognize their peers and colleagues as well. It also offers deep analytical capabilities to help measure employee satisfaction and engagement. 

Pros: 

• Has an easy-to-use mobile app so recognition is always at an employee’s fingertips
• Encourages employees to recognize team members with easy peer-to-peer recognition capabilities

Cons: 

• There’s a learning curve for how to redeem points 
• Log-in functionality is sometimes glitchy 

“Kudos is a great way to shout out colleagues in the organization for all to see. That way everybody can see how great a job they are doing including upper management. It's always a nice way to show appreciation for someone's hard work.” - Customer review 

9. WorkTango

WorkTango is an employee engagement platform that helps companies build a better workplace culture and improve their employee experience. It also offers goal-setting and performance management capabilities as well as a rewards and recognition function. 

Pros: 

• Excellent way to connect remote employees to each other and build community 
• Good gamification features make it fun to give and receive recognition 

Cons: 

• User interface could be more streamlined and intuitive 
• Has some back-end admin technical issues occasionally 

“As a leader I love being able to both see the shout-outs and praise others give to my team as well as my ability to give praise myself. This increases my visibility to some work or assistance my team may give to others and it's a great way to gather external feedback about people on my team in a natural way.” - Customer review 

10. Motivosity

Motivosity is an employee experience platform that helps companies improve the entire employee lifecycle with recognition, rewards, and actionable insights on the employee experience. It also helps managers connect with their direct reports with more intention. 

Pros: 

• Easy-to-use interface that encourages employees to recognize their peers regularly 
• Can use automation to schedule recognition for work anniversaries and birthdays so they’re always celebrated on time

Cons: 

• Visibility of recognition inside and across teams isn’t great
• Can be challenging to look at past rewards easily
• Lacks an engagement strategy to maintain platform adoption

“Ease of use! It's easy to jump in and make a team members day. I love being able to send a smile, recognize a good move or an awesome sale. It makes being a thankful manager easier!” - Customer review

How to Choose the Best Employee Engagement Software for Your Company

When you’re shopping for the right employee engagement or employee experience platform for your company, there’s no one-size-fits-all software solution that works for everyone. You need to consider your organization’s needs, goals, and culture to find the right fit. 

Also, be sure to consider: 

Pricing 

Depending on the size of your organization, costs for these platforms can vary widely. Determine your budget ahead of time to see what you can afford to invest in, and you’ll narrow down your shopping options quickly.  

Integrations 

Taking stock of your existing systems, like your HRIS and internal communications channels like Slack and Microsoft Teams, is an essential step before investing in engagement and recognition programs. You want to be sure your new platform will integrate seamlessly with your current ones to increase adoption and usage. 

User-Friendliness 

You also want to consider how user-friendly a platform is, because if employees and managers struggle to use the software, adoption rates will be low and your investment will have a lower return. 

Ultimately, the right choice is up to you — but whatever platform you choose, it’s a terrific investment in your employees and your employee engagement strategy.