Best Employee Engagement Software To Manage Remote Teams

Table of Contents

What is Employee Engagement Software?

To understand employee engagement software, an understanding of the phenomenon of employee engagement is necessary.

SHRM defines employee engagement as:

“The term employee engagement relates to the level of an employee’s commitment and connection to an organization.”

By this very definition, the engagement of the employees can be understood as the amount of dedication, passion, and enthusiasm one has towards their job or organization.

Forbes agrees with most of this definition. However, it adds that when employees are engaged, their performance, productivity, and engagement will less likely be affected by the extrinsic rewards, including the salary.

Your workforce is said to be engaged if it goes above and beyond their line of duty/ supposed role/ routine tasks. Also, their work is least impacted by the amount of salary or benefit they receive, as far as they are not disproportionate to their work.

Considering that, employee engagement software is the one that helps make your employees engaged or enhances their current dedication levels.

What makes a good employee engagement software?

There certainly has been a boom in need and, so, launch and use of the employee engagement apps considering the increasing importance of employee dedication. But what makes employee engagement tools good is their relevant usability and functionality in regard to employee engagement.

In addition, a good engagement software is capable of acting as an employee engagement platform at the same time, since rewarding the employees helps keep them engaged with the organization.

Employee recognition goes a long way when it comes to developing a highly engaged workforce. The reason is that when employees get due credit for their efforts and achievements, it gives them much motivation for their next tasks and in achieving their next endeavor. A good employee engagement software, for this reason, should come with the capability to act as an employee recognition software.

To be precise, employee engagement goes hand in hand with analytics and feedback. It is because, with the insights into the employee behavior, a company is better able to achieve desired engagement level.

Similarly, the feedback of the employees is crucial to enhancing employee dedication towards their role. So, learning the view of the employees with respect to the development taking place at the workplace can also play a pivotal role in making them more engaged towards the organization.

Keeping in view the necessity of acknowledging employees, of all the available employee engagement tools, the one that you can leverage as an employee recognition software can be considered as better.

Top 10 employee engagement software to manage remote teams

1. Bravo

We’re proud to claim that the best software for remote teams so far is BRAVO. It is one of the best employee engagement platforms for the reason it provides simultaneous help regarding making employees engaged, management, and recognition.

It’s a great tool for boosting the efficiency and performance of remote teams by helping a company perform constructive recognition which makes it an ideal choice for most businesses.

Its usefulness for performing better employee engagement for developing a passionate workforce is second to none. Moreover, its work model is also based on overseeing the teams (especially the remote ones) so as to make the most of their presence, potential, and skill.

A quick outlet of its working model: As part of its recognition, Bravo enables sharing of the worthy results/ achievements of the employees. After that, the employees are then provided rewards depending on the very recognition. This leads to making and keeping employees motivated for their following tasks/ assignments/ work.

What’s more, using Bravo as an employee engagement software is possible for different industries. It means that its use is not limited to businesses of particular nature, rather a company with, regardless of work, nature can make use of it.

Bravo has the following notable features for its users:

A ‘monthly allowance’ feature of Bravo allows a company to recognize the efforts of its hard work employees by rewarding them at the start of each month in return for their exemplary work for the previous month.
Bravo also comes with a feature’ employee referral program. It allows a company to reward their employees every time they help it acquire talented individuals.
Bravo also comes with the ability to reward the employees besides their performances and achievements. You can also reward your employees for their special events such as work anniversaries, birthdays, marriage anniversaries, etc. Also, this type of recognition from Bravo takes place automatically.
To manage the remote teams better and improve their engagement, Bravo enables an organization to integrate its rewards and resignation platform with the communication channels such as Slack, Microsoft teams, etc. It helps improve recognition and, so, engagement.
Its ‘International rewards’ feature lets you acknowledge the contributions of your overseas employees along with the ones coming from culturally diverse backgrounds. This feature is available for the users of Bravo in more than 25 countries, from India to Spain and UAE to the United Kingdom.

An (amongst many) satisfied customer of Bravo has this to say in regard to using it:

“BRAVO has been the best choice for our company in creating the fun and excitement that we were missing desperately. The recognition and reward system is awesome and gives a smooth flow to our goal achievements and following our company values. BRAVO is a recommended tool for every HR and Team.”

Read: Employee Engagement Software: Impact Of Learning And Development

2. Nectar

Nectar is an all-around software. Therefore, besides using it as employee engagement software, it can also provide help in performing employee recognition.

This software allows employees to provide feedback in regard to the other employees. However, importantly, this feedback exchange takes place without the concern of the workplace hierarchies. Thus, it helps make employees more engaged by making them feel more belonged and connected with the organization.

This software comes with the following prominent features to help you manage the engagement of your remote team:

Users can have their accounts on Microsoft teams and Slack connected with the Nector, so to ensure better employee productivity and performance, and of course, engagement. Moreover, it has the capability to be integrated with HCM (Human Capital Management) software.
It comes with an employee health feature with the name “wellness initiative.” It is an interesting feature that helps make employees overall healthier who are or have been working remotely since maximum employee engagement can only be possible with a workforce being mentally and physically sound.

One of the reviews from the user of this employee engagement software:

“Not only does Nectar encourage employees to do better, but it also encourages employees to show their gratitude, creating a team-based culture where hard work is noticed. It also is a way to get some insight into who is working together and what hard work is being done throughout departments that I didn’t know much about before.”

3. Bonusly

Bonusly is a well-known employee recognition platform. However, it also has a great utility in managing the remote teams concerning their engagement. Thus, to keep your teams, who are working remotely, engaged, it rewards and recognizes them for their achievements and efforts.

It has a lesser-known use in peer recognition. However, it can also be leveraged for appreciating the dedicated employees and enables the lesser-ranked employees to acknowledge their higher-ranked peers.

This employee engagement software comes with the following important functionality:

An extensive list of social features makes it possible to make things fun. Also, you can reward and recognize your team, which leads to keeping them engaged and performing well.
This software comes with the ability to provide insights relating to the performance of the employees. And the feature that makes it possible is “analytics,” which lets you have a better picture of strong and weak areas of your workforce.
Employee engagement is made possible with rewards and recognition. So, as an employee recognition platform, it provides automated help to appreciate employees. Precisely, it comes with the feature to help you celebrate the work anniversaries, however, automatically.
Another prominent feature of this platform is the awarding of customized rewards to employees. However, they may be limited to the list of rewards available/ offered by the company.

A user on the internet writes about the functionality of this software with respect to employee engagement in these words:

“The opportunities that employees have to recognize their peers for various ways that they have gone above and beyond has been invaluable to the morale of the company! Morale and camaraderie have increased significantly.”

4. Blueboard

Blueboard is yet another employee engagement software. It can be used as per the organizational needs and requirements.

It assists in managing the remote teams by letting you perform employee recognition and provide rewards by leveraging its rewards and recognition functionality. And so, you can use it as an employee recognition software for making the efforts of the employees for the company fruitful, which helps keep them engaged.

In addition, to acknowledge your worthwhile employees, companies using it can give performance incentives, referral bonuses, etc. Moreover, employees can also be rewarded for completing a year with the company. And all of this leads to better employee engagement.

As for the significant features of this software:

A feature that is dedicated to determining employee performance in regard to customer satisfaction. It is a helpful and also a one-off feature.
One of its features includes motivating the employees. It helps employees to work beyond the limits set by their constant comfort zones. And this may also result in elevating their workplace engagement.
Like some of its competitors, it also comes with a feature concerning the health of the employees working remotely. It thus makes certain that your employees are physically active and healthy, so you could have an overall healthier workforce with maximum performance.
Another useful feature of Blueboard is the “Story Capture” feature. It helps to make recognition attractive and therefore meaningful, which leads to having a more productive and efficient workspace.

One of the users of this employee engagement software in these words:

“Great customer service. Fast, friendly account managers. Makes it very easy. We simply send the reward and Blueboard takes care of everything else. If you’re doing a big batch of rewards at the same time, Blueboard can help with a bulk import.”

5. Fond

Fond helps to recognize and subsequently reward the dedicated employees of an organization. However, when used as an employee engagement software, it brings desired results for a company.

As for maximizing employee engagement, it comes with the “social feed” feature. This feature can be made to use by users on any device and at any place and time.

This software understands the importance of keeping engaged the teams that are working virtually, especially the ones that belong to diverse cultural backgrounds. Thus, its employee recognition tool offers its users an extended list of rewards, which makes it easier to recognize/ reward the remotely working (and also the cross-cultural) employees.

Fond, when used for keeping employees engaged, offers the following features:

It helps out the companies looking to appreciate and engage the remote teams along with the ones who are trans-national and trans-cultural. So, using it, you can provide benefits such as living costs, language translations, etc., for the international/ global employees.
It comes with such a useful functionality that keeps prompting employees about the actions that would earn them rewards.
As with the case of any relevant software, it provides insights into the employees’ behavior. But, in addition to this, it comes with a capability to give you an idea about the financial state of the employees, so to help and support them better. And this likely results in increased engagement.

One of its users write concerning its usability:

“For a small company, this is simply a great way to streamline recognition and rewards. But for a larger company, Fond would be hugely beneficial. It allows management to spotlight accomplishments and thank employees for the whole company to see.”

6. Kazoo

Kazoo is also one of the best employee engagement software. While, technically, it is an employee recognition software, it, nevertheless, smartly links recognition and rewards with engagement. Therefore, it improves employee commitment by using employee rewards.

It is one such software that not only ensures the growth of the company but of its breadwinners as well. It does so by integrating feedback, goals, recognition, and incentives.

Needless to state that with the organizational success leading to the success of the employees too, their engagement reaches close to the ideal level, if not equal, or beyond, to the ideal level.

Now, since organizational success also means the employees’ success, it tends to increase the engagement of the workforce, not to mention their dedication and motivation.

Some of its distinguished features are below:

The feature of this software that helps to manage the remote teams and enhances their engagement is the one that allows a company to perform employee recognition in real-time. And this helps to keep the remote teams on track.
It also comes with the feature of ‘Global reward’ for a company to efficiently recognize its inter-cultural workforce.
Another important part of its functionality is that it enables an organization to track its goals, which helps to determine whether or not the employee recognition has been successful.
Kazoo allows you to align the team goals with those of the company. And so, you can better decide if your team has been contributing toward achieving your goals.

A customer of Kazoo has described their experience with this tool in the following words:

“I enjoy the conversations that are started by recognizing fellow employees. It’s nice to be able to bring to light that you appreciate them, but also to show to their Supervisors, as well!”

7. Kudos

Kudos is one of the best employee recognition software, but it can also be best utilized concerning the management and, therefore, engagement of the employees working remotely.

It helps to build an overall positive work culture in a workplace. Besides, it also helps to create positive workplace relations. And all this leads to an elevated level of engagement of employees, along with their fruitful acknowledgment. So, it is a very comprehensive tool that you can use for employee engagement and appreciation at the same time.

The interactions between the remotely working employees usually remain relatively unclear and inefficient. However, when used as an employee engagement software, Kudos brings the desired results by improving the communications between the remote teams, which leads to making the working of the virtual teams better.

As for its prominent features, they are as under:

Kudos helps you appreciate your remote employees both publicly and privately, thus helping you elevate their engagement levels.
One of the best features of this employee recognition platform remains the ability that it provides its users in the form of video recognition. Essentially, you can appreciate your employees by creating a video based on how the company acknowledges and appreciates the efforts and hard work of an employee.
Another important feature of this software comes in the form of Kudos TV, which allows you to live-stream your employee recognition events. However, you can also record such events for later use.

How useful this tool is for its users can be learned with one of its following reviews:

“Kudos is an amazing tool that brings coworkers together. By giving someone Kudos I acknowledge the impact they made, whether it be to a customer, another coworker, or myself. Kudos facilitates having a great working environment by giving people an easy way to show appreciation between coworkers. Getting rewards for the Kudos I have earned is delightful, and only further entices me to earn more Kudos, and thus be a better coworker.”

8. Motivosity

Motivosty is, primarily, an employee recognition platform. But you can leverage its functionality for managing the engagement of your virtual teams by performing employee acknowledgment with respect to the team goals.

The approach of this software to relate the team performance with the desired goals can prove extremely helpful in making the employees’ effort more fruitful, which helps develop an efficient and productive workforce.

Employees remain on the desired course of action by having their tasks and goals aligned, which is bound to increase the engagement of all teams working remotely or not.

Some of the distinguished features of Motivosity are following:

Motivosity can prove quite handy in improving the work culture of your company since it comes with the feature’ culture coach.’ This feature helps improve the existing culture at your workplace by guiding you throughout the process of improvement.

More to its cultural improvement endeavor, Motivosity provides necessary training to the respective teams remotely. Thus, it helps ensure that your teams can better build a positive working culture, so it could result in better engagement and, so, better performance of employees.

This software also comes with a ‘feedback request’ feature. It empowers employees to have their say on different organizational issues, which helps make employees feel they belong to the company and, thus, makes them more productive and engaging.

One of its users has reviewed this software in these words:

“Motivosity allows the people in my department to give and receive thanks/recognition for individual and group contributions. It’s a versatile tool. I like how my organization has been able to tweak the user interface so that we can offer kudos according to our six company values (Service, Professionalism, Leadership, Innovation, Community, and Excellence). I like the Badges capability, although we don’t use it as much as we could. The Interests and Personality widgets add even more usefulness. I also appreciate the option to send the recognition in a public or private message.”

9. Reward Gateway

Reward Gateway, as its name implies, too, is used to reward the employees. Nevertheless, it comes with such usability that it can be utilized as an employee engagement software in addition to its rewards and recognition functionality.

It helps manage and make employees working remotely more engaged by incentivizing the ideal behaviors. And this enables a company to have the employees display the desired actions more often.

In addition, it also helps develop such a culture that leads to accomplishing the business goals eventually. And it aids a company in achieving this by placing rewards against the required actions and behaviors, which results in the improvement of the overall functioning of the employees.

Using this employee engagement platform, when a company links the required behaviors with the reward behaviors, it reaps the results in the form of a better-managed team (whether remote or non-remote). Needless to state, a well-managed team involves more levels of engagement.

As for the features of this software, they are as under:

It helps develop a culture of healthy competition amongst the workforce. In order to achieve this, it comes with a feature that allows a company to conduct competitions, where all employees are required to achieve the same task. And the one with the best results emerges as the winner. Nonetheless, the best work can also be used by the company later.

A feature that may give this software an edge over other employee engagement software is that of machine learning. This feature makes it possible for an organization to learn the relevant actions, behaviors, needs, etc., as recommended by the intelligent system of Reward Gateway.

Following is an online review for Reward Gateway:

“We are really enjoying using this (the recognition tool). With multiple locations and staff so spread out, it’s difficult to help them feel like they are a part of our organization. This has helped our staff become more unified.”

10. WeGift

WeGift is another virtual employee engagement platform. For the purpose of managing teams working remotely and increasing their dedication and passion towards their respective jobs, it allows a company to provide their employees with the gifts of their preference.

While, with this software, employees can choose a reward of their choice, it, however, comes with a catch: the employees have to select from the rewards inventory of their company.

This employee recognition platform is leveraged as an employee engagement software by enabling the remote teams to opt for a gift virtually and have it received soon after they make a choice.

The employees who work remotely may have become relatively more exhausted from the routine work than those who work non-remotely. And, so, giving them exciting gifts can help keep them sufficiently dedicated to the company.

It is important to mention that this software also enables the employees to exchange gifts. Furthermore, this gift exchange can take place between the employees of contrasting hierarchies. That is, a lesser-ranked employee can give a gift to the higher-ranked employee and vice versa. And this goes a long way in establishing harmony at the workplace, leading to a more engaged workforce.

The features of WeGift that stand out the most are:

Employees can be recognized in real-time. It makes them more dedicated and ultimately to work hard.

This software has the ability to reward the employees automatically. So, for a company, the manual and tedious tasks related to rewards and recognition are reduced significantly.

WeGift helps determine how much of use rewarding the employees have been for making them more engaged. In this regard, it associates ROI (return on investment) against different rewards.

In concern to its utility, a user has reviewed this tool as follows:

“I have used WeGift on several occasions through employee offers. It is a simple process and of great value. It is easy to buy gift cards and to exchange for goods or give as a present. It is delivered by email. I have also had to contact the customer services department for an error on my part. They resolved the issue quickly and efficiently. Highly recommended.”

Conclusion: What is the best employee engagement software?

Each employee engagement software we have discussed in this article brings benefits to its users in its own way. Also, the end goal of each such software is the same: to manage the remote teams for an improved engagement of employees.

Employee engagement and employee recognition are found to be greatly related. So, an effect on the latter impacts the former and vice versa.

To consider an employee engagement software as the best, it should be able to couple employee engagement with employee appreciation. Furthermore, it should also make it easier for its users to perform employee acknowledgment.

You can learn how crediting your employees for their due work can manifoldly help you in their engagement by booking a demo here.