8 tools to increase employee retention & satisfaction
A team member who’s motivated to stay in their role expects more than just a paycheck: 78% of employees think their company owes them more than just compensation.*
And you can give them more by using employee retention software. These tools help you engage your people and make your organization a place where staff feels valued, supported, and listened to.
Because employee retention software varies so much by use case, we’ve identified the best platforms for each purpose. Our picks range from comprehensive employee engagement solutions to team communication software.
Here’s a list of the best tools to increase employee retention and satisfaction.**
*UKG, 2022
**The information below is based on our research in January 2023. All user feedback referenced in the text has been sourced from independent software review platforms such as G2 and Capterra in January 2023.
Basic free plan available; paid plans start at US$20 per user per month.
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Why use employee retention software?
Keeping your staff around for the long haul takes work, but employee retention software can ease your burden. And whichever engagement model you follow, specialized tools support you in ensuring each of your team members feels valued.
Software solutions can help you engage employees with features like surveys, recognition, and performance tracking. In turn, your staff feels more connected to and appreciated by you and will want to stay with your organization for longer.
Use employee retention software to make it easier to reward your team, foster better communication, collect actionable feedback, and build a workplace where your people are happy to show up every day.
Praise features
360° feedback should be part of a broader feedback culture that normalizes exchanging perspectives and praise, encouraging teams to be open with each other.
Instant feedback and praise
82% of professionals say it’s important for their organization to see them as individuals and not just employees, but only 45% feel their employers do so. Feedback tools can help close this gap by allowing managers to foster better interpersonal relationships with their reports, even outside of the review process.
User-friendliness
Is the software intuitive and responsive? If the solution you choose is easy to use, employees will be able to slot reviews into their work schedules more comfortably.
Create a work environment where people want to stay
Leapsome helps you boost employee retention with tools like progress tracking, engagement surveys, and custom rewards.
1. Leapsome
If there’s one tool you need to maximize staff retention, it’s the people enablement and engagement software, Leapsome. Our solution helps you manage all aspects of maintaining a motivated and satisfied team.
Leapsome offers five products:
- Reviews
- Surveys
- Goals
- Learning
- Compensation
Each can be used on its own or in any combination with the others, meaning the platform is fully customizable, depending on your team’s needs.
With Leapsome, you can track employee performance and progress, empower their growth and development, run compensation reviews, optimize team meetings, keep everyone aligned on goals, send out engagement surveys, and make feedback and praise key elements of your culture.
The platform also helps with onboarding and ongoing employee training and makes it easy to build scalable promotion processes and reward your people when they excel.
Because so many elements go into retaining staff — from communication to engagement to compensation — it’s important to have a comprehensive tool like Leapsome that can serve as your one-stop shop for employee satisfaction.
Main features
- Performance reviews
- Compentency framework
- Goal and OKR-setting features
- Tools and templates for better team meetings
- Engagement surveys
- Feedback and praise tools
- Personalized onboarding plans
- Custom skills development and learning paths
- Scalable compensation management
- Streamlined promotion management
- Easy-to-use, intuitive user interface (UI)
- Available in 13 languages
- Holistic retention tool
- Highly scalable
- Excellent customer service
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- Continuous iteration can lead to occasional bugs
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“With Leapsome, we’ve seen some amazing improvements. The initiatives we identified from the survey results decreased our turnover by 12,2%, increased our survey participation rate to 82%, and it made people more productive and excited to come to the office.
Listening and transparency is a part of our culture, and Leapsome is a tool that gives our people a voice. The results are visible to the team members, so they can openly discuss with their managers during their retros.”
2. Confetti
It can be hard for employees to feel connected on a fully remote team. Confetti organizes and hosts virtual events that can bring colleagues closer, from diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training to remote coworking sessions.
This tool takes the stress and time out of planning activities that help staff feel supported, involved, and engaged. Experienced coordinators are always available to help you choose and plan events.
Main features
- Carefully selected event vendors
- Dedicated coordinators
- Event briefings and invites
- Virtual team-building sessions
- Professional development events
- Employee onboarding activities
- Excellent customer service
- Enjoyable, engaging events
- User-friendly platform
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- Events aren’t very customizable
- Some events aren’t a good fit for international teams
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3. Empuls
Empuls is a multi-purpose employee engagement platform that supports team communication and feedback. The tool allows you to send out surveys to gauge engagement and satisfaction. On top of that, it has staff rewards, benefits, and perks features.
Plus, it integrates with popular human resource management systems (HRMS), as well as Microsoft Teams and Slack, so you can use your existing tech stack for your employee engagement initiatives.
Main features
- Staff communication tools
- Employee engagement surveys
- Peer recognition
- Team rewards
- Employee perks and benefits
- People analytics
- Helpful customer support
- Makes team communication easier
- Customizable rewards and gifts
- list item
- UI falls short in some areas
- Rewards options are sometimes limited
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4. monday.com
Better organization means less stress for employees, and less stress means higher retention rates. Project management software like monday.com helps you centralize your processes and operations, easing your team’s workload and enabling them to do their best work in an agile environment.
The tool supports leaders and employees in coordinating project management, marketing initiatives, operations, finance requests, creative planning, and even sales.
Just note that monday.com won’t replace a people enablement or engagement platform, so it’s best used alongside other employee retention software.
Main features
- Wide range of use cases
- Task management
- Automated workflows
- Customizable solutions
- Ready-made templates
- Dozens of integrations
- Distinct access levels for different roles
- Time-saving automation
- Intuitive and easy to use
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- Onboarding can be overwhelming
- Initial setup can be time-consuming
- Higher price point
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5. Nectar
Employees who feel appreciated and rewarded for their hard work are more likely to stick around. Nectar helps you shout people out and recognize them for all they do.
The tool lets you incentivize progress with “Nectar points,” share shoutouts, send out custom rewards, celebrate success and milestones, and create challenges to keep your team engaged.
Main features
- Personalized shoutouts
- Access to hundreds of gift cards
- Customizable rewards
- Milestone tracking and automation
- Custom challenges
- Very user-friendly
- Helps employees feel connected
- Compliments company culture
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- Leaderboard view can be discouraging
- Some issues with integrations
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6. PerformYard
PerformYard helps organize all aspects of employee development and performance, from reviews and check-ins to goal management.
It enables team members to review personal goals and keep track of their development while helping leaders manage appraisals and monitor staff progress. And you can turn your goal and review data into useful reports and visualizations to make the most of your performance tracking.
Main features
- Custom review forms and cycles
- Progress tracking
- Results analytics
- Goal management with progress tracking and performance insights
- Team recognition
- Feedback capabilities
- Great customer service
- Intuitive design layout
- Integrates with popular human resource information systems (HRIS)
- list item
- Forms have limited formatting options
- Limited built-in reporting capabilities
- Steep learning curve for employees
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7. Slack
You’re probably already familiar with Slack, but you might not know it can be an important component of your employee retention software toolkit. That’s because better team communication means people feel connected and more motivated to stick around.
Slack lets you create custom channels to house all your internal communications, making remote collaboration easy and enjoyable. And with Huddles, employees can talk face-to-face without having to plan a meeting ahead of time, making it easy for people to engage and connect with each other.
Like monday.com, Slack is a tool that goes hand-in-hand with other retention software, but it shouldn’t replace a dedicated employee engagement tool. Leapsome, for example, offers a convenient Slack integration, so you can make both platforms key parts of your dynamic internal culture.
Main features
- Channels to centralize conversations
- Huddles for impromptu virtual meetings
- Accessibility features
- Automated workflows
- Numerous integrations and Slack Apps
- Interface is easy to use
- Facilitates both written conversations and audio/video calls
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- Huddles can’t be recorded
- Can become a distraction if left unchecked
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8. Zoho People
Zoho People helps human resources teams manage and maintain their employee database and take care of staff management tasks effectively. So, the platform can both ease your HR workload and engage employees.
This software solution makes it simpler to take care of the everyday tasks that tend to get in the way of smooth business operations, like time off management and payroll. At the same time, it gives your team the feedback, reviews, and rewards they need to perform at their best.
Main features
- Customized onboarding
- Employee management
- Time off management
- Payroll
- Case management
- Performance management
- HR chatbot
- UI is user-friendly and easy to navigate
- Integrates well with other Zoho products
- Very customizable
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- Some features can be confusing
- Setup can be a challenge
- Customer support is sometimes lacking
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Why customers love us
“We've been using Leapsome for over a year, and we love it”
Susie P.
HR manager
AI software (10-100 employees)
“I love how easy Leapsome is to set up and explore as a manager and user”
Sarah S.
Chief operational officer
B2B agency (10-100 emp.)
“Leapsome has provided more ways to keep our employees engaged”
Katy S.
Exec. Administrator & Comms. Manager
Research Services (500-1000 emp.)
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Get started with performance reviews, goals & OKRs, engagement surveys, promotion
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Frequently Asked Questions
Provides clarity on work expectations by providing a centralized location for answers;Gives employees a place to provide open and constructive feedback on the workplace;Cuts down on the amount of physical paperwork employees need to sign and keep track of.
Provides clarity on work expectations by providing a centralized location for answers;Gives employees a place to provide open and constructive feedback on the workplace;Cuts down on the amount of physical paperwork employees need to sign and keep track of.
Provides clarity on work expectations by providing a centralized location for answers;Gives employees a place to provide open and constructive feedback on the workplace;Cuts down on the amount of physical paperwork employees need to sign and keep track of.
Provides clarity on work expectations by providing a centralized location for answers;Gives employees a place to provide open and constructive feedback on the workplace;Cuts down on the amount of physical paperwork employees need to sign and keep track of.
Common Pricing questions
Our Customer Success team will help you get up and running and guide you to customize Leapsome to your organization’s needs. To learn more about the services we offer, head to our customer experience page.
Please note: Our customer success team’s services are only available to customers who implement Leapsome with an annual contract of €6,000 (or US$6,000) or more. However, ongoing email support and our Success Center of articles, videos, and best-practice resources are always available for all customers.
Yes, absolutely! You can test out Leapsome free of charge for a full 14 days — no credit card required.
Pricing depends on the number of employees, modules used, and contract length. You can use the calculator above to see an estimate of the price per employee per month by selecting the modules that you are interested in but please reach out to get a quote.
Continuous feedback is essential for employee development. To facilitate this, the Competency Framework, Instant Feedback, and Meetings modules are included in all plans, for all customers, at no extra cost.
These features are tightly integrated with the other parts of the platform. You can think of these as the glue that binds your processes together, giving your employees the tools to establish a culture of regular feedback and recognition.
The security of your data is our top priority. Learn more about our data protection policies.
Thanks to our best practice frameworks, Leapsome is ready to use from day 1. The setup is made easy with integrations with major HRIS platforms. Full implementation is usually done in 1–4 weeks.
There’s no setup fee and no additional or hidden costs!
The Leapsome platform — including all email notifications — is available in 13 languages: Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Our sales team, customer support team, and our Success Center are available in English and German.
Our Customer Success team will help you get up and running and guide you to customize Leapsome to your organization’s needs. To learn more about the services we offer, head to our customer experience page.
Please note: Our customer success team’s services are only available to customers who implement Leapsome with an annual contract of €6,000 (or US$6,000) or more. However, ongoing email support and our Success Center of articles, videos, and best-practice resources are always available for all customers.
Yes, absolutely! You can test out Leapsome free of charge for a full 14 days — no credit card required.
Pricing depends on the number of employees, modules used, and contract length. You can use the calculator above to see an estimate of the price per employee per month by selecting the modules that you are interested in but please reach out to get a quote.
Continuous feedback is essential for employee development. To facilitate this, the Competency Framework, Instant Feedback, and Meetings modules are included in all plans, for all customers, at no extra cost.
These features are tightly integrated with the other parts of the platform. You can think of these as the glue that binds your processes together, giving your employees the tools to establish a culture of regular feedback and recognition.
The security of your data is our top priority. Learn more about our data protection policies.
Thanks to our best practice frameworks, Leapsome is ready to use from day 1. The setup is made easy with integrations with major HRIS platforms. Full implementation is usually done in 1–4 weeks.
There’s no setup fee and no additional or hidden costs!
The Leapsome platform — including all email notifications — is available in 13 languages: Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Our sales team, customer support team, and our Success Center are available in English and German.
To measure the effectiveness of retention software, closely track key employee retention metrics, such as retention rate, satisfaction rate, and turnover rate. Also, measure data on adoption and usage to ensure your team is making the most of your retention tools.
The most popular employee retention platforms on the market include:
- Leapsome — for all-around employee retention and engagement
- Zoho People — for HR management and employee engagement
- Nectar — for employee rewards and recognition
- Confetti — for remote team engagement and collaboration
- Empuls — for surveys, feedback, and engagement
- PerformYard — for performance management
- monday.com — for team alignment and efficiency
- Slack — for optimal team communication
Because employee retention software encompasses such a wide range of solutions, pricing can fluctuate a lot depending on the type of tool you’re interested in. Most platforms require you to pay per user, typically costing between US$1-15 per employee per month.
Retention software improves employee engagement by helping people feel more connected with their jobs and teams, which reduces turnover. Retention tools accomplish this in different ways, like:
- Sending surveys
- Exchanging feedback
- Sharing employee rewards
- Managing performance bonuses
- Enabling remote collaboration
All of the above can deepen staff engagement with their team and company.