How to Maximize the ROI of Your Employee Engagement Platform

You’ve had it with working out of spreadsheets and forms. You’re ready for a change, but you don’t know how to make sure you pick an employee management platform that’s the best bang for your buck.

Or maybe you’ve already deployed a tool and aren’t seeing the ROI you were promised.

Either way, here’s your guide to getting more out of your employee engagement platform—and making sure you have the right one.

Why do employee engagement platforms matter?

First, because employee engagement matters. According to Bain & Co., engaged employees are 44% more productive than workers who only describe themselves as “satisfied,” and inspired employees are 125% more productive. Gallup research also shows that highly engaged teams see a 43% reduction in turnover. Employee engagement helps teams get more done and organizations keep their high performers.

Second, employee engagement platforms like 15Five automate and centralize just about every task involved in these essential processes. For HR teams who want to spend less time collecting data and more time acting on it, employee engagement software is essential.

Now let’s dive into how you can get the most out of yours.

4 key features and tools your employee engagement platform should have

Like any tool your teams depend on, employee engagement platforms aren’t all created equal. If you want to ensure the tool you’re using (or looking to acquire) will give you the best ROI, make sure it has the following features:

• Deep metrics and analytics: With the right employee engagement platform, collecting employee engagement data manually is rightfully a thing of the past.
• Built-in performance reviews: Your HR team shouldn’t have to build a performance review process from scratch. Ensure that your employee engagement platform has robust, built-in performance review features.
• OKRs, goals, and growth: Nothing is more frustrating for an employee than not having a clear growth trajectory. Your employee engagement platform should help you retain your top performers by having features that help employees set clear goals and get an accurate view of their roles and responsibilities.
• Manager empowerment: Having an effective, empathetic manager is a crucial part of feeling engaged as an employee. Your employee engagement platform shouldn’t focus exclusively on employee performance, it should help you turn all your managers into top performers, too.

Want to see a platform that has it all? Check out what 15Five can do for your teams.

5 ways to maximize ROI for employee engagement platforms

No matter which employee engagement tool you pick, here are some reliable ways to get more out of it.

Set clear objectives from the start

No matter how powerful your tool is, it can only do so much if you don’t have clear goals in place before it’s deployed. Are you particularly worried about turnover? Do you want the words “top performer” to apply to more of your workforce? Whatever you’re trying to achieve, find metrics that will allow you to quantify progress, track them meticulously, and review your achievements regularly.

Get stakeholders involved

Stakeholder involvement doesn’t begin and end with budget approvals. Employee engagement is such an important aspect of team building, retention, and achieving overall organizational goals that everyone should be involved. Remember that the C-Suite aren’t the only stakeholders involved in this process. You should also include:

• Managers, since most of your employee engagement initiatives will pass through them in one way or another.
• Employees, because, by definition, every employee engagement initiative involves them (and they’re the best people to get feedback from).
• VPs, who will likely have insights about their departments that’ll unlock better ways to use your tools.

Explore every feature (not just the one you bought the tool for)

Many HR teams deploy an employee engagement platform in response to a very specific need. Maybe a stakeholder from higher up the chain requested a better performance review process, or the CEO wanted a better way to track employee engagement metrics. 

No matter what need drives you to first acquire that tool, don’t let it artificially limit how you use the platform. During your onboarding process, set time aside specifically for exploring new features, testing them out in small initiatives that’ll give you just enough data to determine which ones are most useful for your organization.

Invest in training and support

Continual learning is crucial, especially in the early stages of adopting a new tool. To make your employee engagement platform the most valuable investment it can be, seek out dedicated training and support. 15Five, for example, offers on-demand courses through 15Five’s Academy that help admins, managers, and employees get the most out of the platform.

Whichever tool you use, proactively seek out these resources to get the most out of it.

Measure, iterate, and improve

Everything you do in your employee engagement platform should be measurable. That gives you data you can use to track the effectiveness of all your initiatives, projects, and plans. Then, you can use those results to decide which initiatives to keep, which ones need some improvement, and which ones aren’t a good fit for your teams.

Don’t settle

Your employee engagement platform should be the nuclear reactor at the center of everything your HR team does. It gives you the data you need to inform important initiatives, empower managers to grow along their teams, and help employees know exactly what they need to do to grow.

If you’re still on the fence, or unsure about how an employee engagement platform can make a difference at your organization, book a demo with the 15Five team. We’ll show you how to get the best ROI for your HR dollar.