Best solution for employee engagement

COMPARISON OF SOLUTIONS

Best solution for employee engagement

Why we need to take a critical look into employee engagement approaches

All recent research points to a state of affairs whereby employees don't feel heard or valued, and management remains overwhelmed.



  • Evidenced Experience

    “Only 22% of companies obtain meaningful results from their employee engagement surveys.” (Enodo Global, 2022)

    Read more
  • Positive Vision

    Multiple research initiatives and experiential stories told by thought leaders prove that:

  • How to Know What You Need

    Consider these principles when navigating through options for boosting effectiveness and culture:

The landscape of approaches and solution options

25 Employee Engagement Solutions Compared to Neelix Live Pulse System

01

HRIS Systems

HR operations matters are the core purpose. Surveys are non-specific and solicit little trust from employees.

02

Analytics & Surveys

Core focus is on research-based methodologies and out of the box templates. Surveys always become latent and even a chore.

03

Kudos Systems

Core focus is celebrations. Data has no or very little  impact on efforts to improve environment.

04

Live Pulse

Live Pulse is democratised method architected to reduce reliance on surveys, whilst still being data-driven, impactful for effectiveness and culture.

List of all solutions compared via relative scoring matrix:

Neelix, Elmo, Lattice, HiBob, Humanforce, BambooHR, Lanteria, Teamflect, EmploymentHero, CultureAmp, Survey Monkey, Prosperex, Qualtrics, Perceptyx, Quantum Workplace, Surveysparrow, DecisionWise, Microsoft Forms, Google Forms, Happily.ai, OneModel, Kudos, Kudoboard , Nectar HR, Motivosity, Augeomarketing

Core requirements for comparing employee engagement solutions

Data Quality

Data has to be something that people actively want to share, something that can improve effectiveness and culture. Lag has to be minimal and overheads very low.

Democratisation

People have to trust that they are not being gamed. It is not a performance management process but an exercise in collective intelligence. In this process everyone is an equal participant (leaders, managers and grassroots). No hidden corners and mutation of data points allowed. Real-time and immutable nature of feedback are key.

Inclusivity

Given that the primary purpose of feedback loops is to build bridges between perspectives in joint pursuit of excellence, it is important to involve all stakeholders in the loop. The approach should be simple and smart to ensure useful exchange without oversharing across teams, departments, with customers and partners.

The Status Quo

  • Saturation

    The market is oversaturated with employee engagement solutions. Most of solutions double-down on engagement via surveys.

  • Unintentional Self-Serving

    Most products double-down on research-based methodologies and ready-made templates. The criteria are not wrong if the request is to extract information from employees as a form of sociological measurement.

  • Avoidable Tensions

    Business units, teams, and HR must rethink how they collaborate to create value.

Comparison Criteria

In order to challenge the status quo and deliver real benefits to the business, we believe that employees deserve to be heard in own words. With such overarching criteria. Rating of solutions is structured around two key focus lenses:

  1. Potency of information - data must be measurable, contextual, specific, and yet easy to aggregate into a big picture
  2. Democratisation of data points - data must be authentic, transparent, guard against group think, and empower psychological safety

Comparison of Employee Engagement Solutions

25 solutions compared to Live Pulse model implemented by Neelix.IO

Comparison between employee engagement solutions - 25 products compared against Live Pulse method

Normalised scores that reflect how solutions meet requirements outlined below. Survey-based solutions scored lower because their primary purpose is to validate a research-backed hypothesis.  Neelix (Live Pulse model) elevates reflective dialogue, whilst still being data-driven and structured.

Comparison of 25 employee engagements solutions - ability to affect change

Least suitable system for soliciting the voice of employees are HRIS systems. Greatest benefits are offered by the Live Pulse model because it is highly democratised and is capable of reducing surveys fatigue.

Key Finding

Traditional Solutions and Tools

Traditional HR software does exactly what it is designed to do: it meets the needs of HR departments in terms of data collection and operational efficiency.

Neelix Live Pulse

The focus is on a democratized, measurable and contextual information flow that is also psychologically safe. The Neelix platform is designed for every person in the organization so that their perspective can enrich the collective intelligence.

Book a chat and demo to learn more about the key differences.


The gap between the results may surprise many. We are open to being roasted on our findings. Some of causes are explained in this blog talking about escaping the survey trap.

Data Potency Requirements

Relative comparison between self-assessment of Live Pulse model capabilities vs the min / max score for alternative solutions.
Criteria Neelix.IO (Live Pulse) Survey and Analytics Systems HRIS Systems Gamification and Kudos
Ability to measure specifics - effectiveness and experience within each team and business units 10 3 - 7 2 - 4 1 - 1
Ability to use same feebackloop on business line projects and activities without a dependency on HR. Ability for teams to setup own context. 10 1 - 1 1- 1 0 - 0
Ablitity to leverage existing team processes. The ability to minimize overhead and interruptions while encouraging innovation and experimentation 9** 3 - 4 3 - 3 3 - 4
Ability to maintain immutable history of data whilst also explaining the story behind data. 10 0 - 9 4 - 5 0 - 4
Ability to reduce fatigue caused by surveys 10 0 - 2 0 - 0 3 - 3
Currency of data that impacts decision-making 10 1 - 1 1 - 1 2 - 2
Capability to include multiple external partners, customers and internal departments within the feeback loop of a team or a project 10 0 - 5 0 - 0 0 - 0
Reputation Management (inward and external transparency of employee buy-in and culture) 8** 0 - 5 0 - 0 0 - 0
Ease of configuration management 7** 3 - 8 7 - 7 8 - 10
Ease of finding "my feedback" and tracking what organization is doing about it 10 0 - 3 1 - 1 0 - 0
Capability for Leadership to feed clarity and context directly into feedback loop process 10 0 - 0 2 - 2 2 - 2
Capability for employee activists or team leaders to provide input into narrative linked to benchmarks 10 0 - 0 0 - 0 0 - 0
Positive use of Ai capabilities 10 0 - 7 0 - 2 0 - 0
Availability of information on-demand for decision-making 10 1 - 1 1 - 1 0 - 0
Details >>

Democratization and Inclusiveness Requirements

Relative comparison between self-assessment of Live Pulse model capabilities vs the min / max score for alternative solutions.
Criteria Neelix.IO (Live Pulse) Survey and Analytics Systems HRIS Systems Gamification and Kudos
Trust in feedback loop and perception of its intent 10 3 - 7 2 - 2 4 - 4
Immediate access to the latest feedback and critical thinking reflections from my team and other teams 10 0 - 10 0 - 0 10 - 10
Self-service ability to navigate history - overall and specific themes 10 0 - 9 4 - 5 0 - 4
Assurance that everyone sees the same data, and that outliers were not normalised away 10 0 - 9 0 - 0 10 - 10
Ability to foster discourse 10 5 - 5 1 - 1 0 - 0
Psychological Safety options for submitting feedback and ability to measure in real-time 9** 5 - 5 1 - 1 0 - 0
Capability for Leadership to participate in the feedback loop on terms equal with employees 10 0 - 3 0 - 0 10 - 10
Transparency when onboarding new people into compamy culture. Exit interviews. Internal and external transparency (counterbalance to GlassDoor). 10 3 - 3 0 - 0 0 - 0
Ability to combat lobbying by narrow interests or agenda hijacking 9** 0 - 5 0 - 0 0 - 0
Details >>

Features Comparison

Capability Neelix.IO (Live Pulse) Agile Ritual Tools Survey Solutions Gamification and Kudos
Real-time, context-aware feedback - smart transparency stream assisted by psychological safety ✔️ Kudos only
Real-time psychological safety report ✔️
Real-time team journal ✔️
Real-time future sentiment capture and measurement ✔️
Confidence Voting and Health Checks ✔️ Spot Surveys
Retrospectives at scale ✔️ ✔️
Complete picture analytics that cover ongoing experiences, retrospective feedback and future sentiment ✔️ Lagging Data
Big picture dashboard with drilldown by teams and themes ✔️
Maturity curve tracker ✔️
Always-on organizational behavior insights ✔️ Survey Results Processing Effort
Hearts and Minds talent retention strength tracker ✔️ Surveys
Self-driven peer feedback ✔️ Surveys
Integration with Slack and Microsoft Teams ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
Interactive Ai With focus on What People Say ✔️ Generative Predictions

** Never stop innovating

The employee engagement solutions comparison above has some scores for the Neelix.IO platform that are below 10. This is recognition of areas where we are committed to improving. Our story and the DNA of the Neelix.IO platform is continuous innovation. We never rest on our laurels and are excited to reinvent ourselves in ways that deliver real value to our customers.


Neelix.IO platform is more than a service. It is brought to you by practitioners who eat own humble pie every day. We dare to think outside the box - read more in our blog.

Disclaimer:

  • This comparison is done by Neelix.IO platform; Naturally, it is fair for reader to expect some bias
  • Our assessment reflects specific personas and their needs - see solutions for more background
  • Comparison criteria is the list of requirements that Neelix.IO team recognised before platform development commenced in 2017
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