If you want to work strategically with your employee engagement, the choice of your employee engagement platform provider is very important. To make a choice of provider that you do not regret afterward, we recommend you follow these 5 steps when choosing a provider for your employee engagement platform.
What is an employee engagement platform?
An employee engagement platform is a human resource management tool that helps the organization structure and track feedback from the employees – a super helpful tool for many organizations.
Most commonly, an employee engagement platform is administered by the HR department in the organization. Many employee engagement platforms are sold with a subscription and are described as “Software as a Service.” At Ennova, we prefer the term “Software with a Service,” because we recognize that software itself never can be the solution and that software with a human touch is a perfect match to make the right improvements in your employee engagement.
The main purpose of using an employee engagement platform is to improve the employee engagement and overall employee satisfaction. By structuring the employee feedback in a simple and concise way in the platform, HR and management get a quick and dynamic overview of employee feedback. That makes an employee engagement platform a huge asset for the organization when trying to better connect with the employees and work with the employee engagement.
5 steps to choosing your platform provider
It is important that the employee engagement platform you choose is valuable to you and makes things easier for you and does not cause any frustrations because it is difficult to use, not flexible, etc. Therefore, you should be thorough with the vendor that you choose to provide you with your next employee engagement platform.
Here are 5 things you should consider when selecting a vendor:
1. Flexibility
Flexibility is important both when it comes to the platform, but also when it comes to the people you are about to cooperate with from the vendor organization.
Is the platform adjustable to your wants and needs or not? How are the level of and opportunities for support when you have questions, and how accommodating are the vendor employees when you have special wishes to fulfill?
2. Do you want “Software as a Service” or “Software with a Service?”
There are some big differences between choosing a platform provider with either Software as a Service (SaaS) or Software with a Service (SwaS). Which one you choose should depend on your in-house resources, competencies, time, and dedication.
If you choose SaaS, we recommend that you have a very high level of data competencies and employee engagement insight in-house, because a SaaS platform does not give you much assistance and support in the process of getting your employee feedback. Therefore, this choice requires that you have a qualified team (or at least two persons) in-house who are dedicated to owning the employee experience area in your organization.
If you choose a SwaS platform provider you get a much higher level of support and sparring from the provider. The provider will probably invest their own human resources in giving you their best support and help. It also means that the provider will accommodate your questions and uncertainties during the process. With this platform solution, you will probably get a smoother survey process, because you are assisted during the process in a way that a SaaS solution will not do.
3. Bridge the gap between insights and action
If, for some reason, you are only interested in getting hardcore data and nothing more, you should choose a platform that just gives you the data and no more than that. But if you want the data to lead to positive changes and improvements in your organization, you will have to focus on the follow-up process and act on the data and employee feedback – because data by itself does not create value.
To create the most value based on your employee feedback, you should consider choosing an employee engagement platform that also helps you bridge the gap between insight and action. The follow-up process is of very high importance for your outcome, but it can be challenging to define the right actions to take in the organization. An employee engagement platform that helps you connect insights to concrete actions will be a very helpful tool for all organizations that want to work strategically and dedicated to improving employee engagement.
4. Intuitive and simple to use
Most people do not like the process of getting to know a new technology. Most people want to use the same tools and do as they have always done because it takes energy to learn new things.
Therefore, you should consider the level of intuitiveness of the platform. How easy is the platform to use and understand for the employees? If it is not intuitive, the platform will cause frustration and the employees will be opposed to it. That situation is to be avoided.
5. Customization and extra fees
Is the platform totally standardized or is there room for customization? It is important that the platform helps you and gives you the insights that you need, and if it can’t be customized to your needs, it will probably not be valuable to you.
One thing that is always annoying is extra, hidden fees. Make sure that you know what you get for the money, what exactly is included in the price, and how many extra fees can you expect to receive.
Download our quick guide to satisfied employees
With this guide, you will learn how to create employee experiences that will make you stand out from your competitors. The guide will help you break down this huge EX field into 8 steps that you can start practicing starting today if that is what you want.
