Employee Retention Software: 9 Best Tools to Use

Want to combat employee retention in your organization? Wondering what tools and software to use?

There really is no point in sugarcoating this: We’re in trouble. 

Just look at this data: One in two of your employees is looking for a different job right now.

What’s even worse, this trend is on the rise… again.

(data source)

But the problem goes even further…

70% of employers admit to having staff leaving within their first year of employment.

In the past, employees cited pay and benefits as the primary reason for leaving the company. 

Granted, this is still the main reason, but the impact of pay or benefits on retention is also decreasing. In the recent Gallup report, only 16% of employees cited pay and benefits to explain their leaving. 

Something else pushed the other 84% to leave.

And here lies the problem: To boost retention, you must uncover what those other reasons are and implement strategies to combat them.

Luckily, there are tools and software that can help. 

In this guide, you’ll find nine of the best employee retention tools on the market, each focusing on streamlining a different aspect of the process. 

But let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

How can software help boost employee retention?

It’s a valid question. Retention is a major challenge for organizations, after all. 

The data paints a scary picture about it, too. 

For example:

Between July and November 2022, more than 4 million Americans quit their jobs each month. (Yes, you read it right… each month!)

Another data point, this one from Gartner, shows that turnover rates might soon reach 24%.

It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?

What about employee retention software, then? 

Well, to understand the impact of having the right tools on retention, we must first understand that the term – employee retention software – doesn’t relate to one type of software tool. 

Instead, when we use this term, we usually refer to various tools that help implement, streamline, and manage different strategies that can positively contribute to keeping employees engaged.

These tools:

• Help collect employee feedback and make employees feel heard and appreciated
• Streamline and improve how you conduct performance reviews
• Offer various ways to recognize employee’s efforts and reward them for their hard work
• Introduce various team-building activities
• Connect employees together, something many might lack in remote-first workplaces, and more. 

Or, to put it simply, these tools help you make each team member feel valued, respected, and appreciated. They also help improve the way work happens in your organization and eliminate many of the reasons that make employees decide to leave. 

Before I show you those tools, let me share a bit more data on why employees leave jobs. I’m doing this to illustrate further what impact employee retention tools can have on overcoming the challenge.

Various research studies have proven that their reasons aren’t always straightforward; for example:

In her recent research study, Dr. Jennifer Stine, a Harvard Instructor, discovered:

When deciding to change jobs, employees often consider their values and how to make an impact. 

As one study respondent said, ” I want work that gives me the opportunity to express myself in my work and be an asset to the company.“

However, when it comes to actually choosing a new job, higher pay and better benefits still remain a strong driving factor. Other factors for choosing a new organization include:

• The desire to move to a different area or industry,
• More flexibility,
• More time off.
• Promotion opportunities.
• Better manager or team.

How does this information help you? 

For one, understanding that employees seek impact and the ability to express themselves through their work might suggest different strategies for retaining them for longer. You can run surveys to make their voices heard, implement rewards and recognition programs, improve project management processes, and more. 

Here are some best tools to help with that. 

9 Best Tools to Boost Employee Retention

#1. Suggestion Ox

Best for: Collecting anonymous employee feedback 

Suggestion Ox (disclaimer – this is my tool) is an employee feedback platform that uses the power of anonymity to help leaders and managers get truly candid information from employees, whether that is ideas, concerns, or questions.

It’s easy to think of Suggestion Ox as a “suggestion box,” but there is more to our platform than this. 

For one, Suggestion Ox also empowers anonymous two-way communication so employees don’t just feel that they’re shouting into a void. Using our Direct Replies feature, leaders can respond to employees while protecting anonymity. 

Therefore, I prefer to describe Suggestion Ox as a “candid conversation platform.”

Here’s a closer look at what Suggestion Ox offers:

• The most powerful way to collect 100% anonymous feedback and reply anonymously to employees.
• Delivery through several channels, such as shareable links and QR codes, or use Slack or MS Teams integrations, and your employees can post suggestions on both the web and their mobile devices.
• Case management capabilities that allow you to assign and track issues, from intake to investigation to resolution.
• AI assistant helps you write more thoughtful responses.
• Data and analytics dashboards to evaluate responses quickly and more.

In short, with Suggestion Ox, employees feel empowered to share their ideas or suggestions without fearing ridicule, and they never feel like they’re just shouting in the void.

#2. Leapsome

Best for: Performance reviews

Leapsome is an employee engagement platform with a robust feature set ranging from surveys, goal setting, compensation to performance reviews. And it’s that last capability that helps organizations assist with retaining staff for longer. 

With Leapsome, you can track and monitor employee performance, deliver impactful 360 reviews, use data to empower their growth, keep everyone aligned on their goals, run agile product reviews, measure performance across key skills and competencies, and more. 

What’s more, Leapsome features best-practice templates and frameworks so that you can get started with performance reviews immediately. However, you can also create customized reviews and align the process with your company’s operations. 

Key features:

• Robust performance review platform
• Competency framework
• Goal setting features
• Templates for team meetings
• Feedback and praise tools, and more.

#3. Confetti

Best for: Running virtual events

We’ve already discussed how employees often feel uninvolved or isolated from the organization. Often, the reason behind that isn’t anybody’s fault. We have moved to working remotely more and more, after all. On the one side, we’re saving time on commuting, and we can work more comfortably. However, we also lose that important personal connection with others at work. 

Confetti’s employee retention software aims to bridge that gap by helping companies organize and host virtual events – from training to remote coworking sessions that bring everyone together, almost as if they worked side by side. 

But Confetti goes beyond just being an online event platform. With the tool, you can choose an event you want to run—be it a team-building quiz, an escape quest, a co-worker feud, etc. You can then book the event, and Confetti will do the rest. 

Key features:

• A large library of events and experiences to choose from
• Pre-approved vendors
• Dedicated coordinators to help organize and deliver an experience and more.

#4. Nectar

Best for: Employee recognition programs

It’s a known fact that the more appreciated employees are, the more likely they are to continue working for a company. And what’s a better way to make them feel appreciated than by recognizing and rewarding their efforts?

Nectar is a platform designed to help organizations recognize employees for their effort, run rewards programs, incentivize employees, share shoutouts, celebrate employee successes and milestones, and more. 

Key features:

• Rewards and recognition programs
• Shoutouts
• Ability to reward employees with gift cards
• Milestone tracking and automation

#5. Perform Yard

Best for: Employee development

Perform Yard is a little bit similar to Leapsome. Both tools focus on helping manage employee performance management and development, after all. But while Leapsome includes other tools, Performance Yard is all about employee retention, performance management, and employee development.

And so, with Performance Yard, you can conduct employee appraisals, 360 reviews, project-based reviews, check-ins. The platform offers tools to set and manage goals, provide continuous feedback, and monitor the overall performance of your teams. 

Key features:

• Employee reviews
• Performance management 
• Goal management
• Reports and analytics

#6. Bonusly

Best for: Employee recognition and rewards

Bonusly’s name might suggest that the platform helps with performance bonuses but that’s actually not the case. Bonusly is a powerful employee retention software focusing on recognition and rewards that will help your organization instill a culture of appreciation, and in turn, convince more people to continue working at your business. 

With Bonusly, you can create a culture where both employees and managers can express their gratitude to others, recognize their efforts, and celebrate and recognize milestones together. 

Key features:

• Peer-to-peer recognition
• Rewards
• Automated milestones
• Incentive programs

#7. Guusto

Best for: Employee recognition and rewards

I’m deliberately including more than one employee recognition tool on this list. After all, recognition is, by far, the most effective strategy for employee retention. And Guusto offers quite a number of amazing features and capabilities to help you recognize and reward employees for their efforts – peer-to-peer recognition, milestones, rewards, etc. 

But Guusto also offers the option to reward employees with a Guusto gift card that they can redeem for swag, custom rewards, or donate the card’s value to charity. 

Key features:

• Peer-to-peer recognition
• Rewards
• Automated milestones
• Incentive programs
• Gusto gift cards

#8. BambooHR

Best for: Complete employee management and retention

All tools on my list so far focused on helping with one particular aspect of employee retention and engagement – collecting anonymous feedback, running online events, employee recognition, etc. 

BambooHR is different in a way that it offers (almost) all of it under one roof. BambooHR is basically an all-in-one platform for everything HR-related, and that includes various employee retention strategies. 

With BambooHR, you can manage performance, run review sessions, run eNPS surveys, offer rewards, and more. But the platform also offers a way to manage employee database, run payroll, track employee time, and even manage hiring and onboarding processes.

Key features:

• Employee records
• Workflows and approvals
• Payroll
• Time-tracking
• Applicant tracking system
• New hire onboarding
• Offboarding
• Employee experience, and more.

#9. QuizBreaker

Best for: Team building and engagement 

The last tool I want to show you is QuizBreaker, a tool that helps connect and engage teams. This employee retention tool offers the ability to get everyone engaged and connected, whether they work together in the office, or remotely, and connect online only. 

With QuizBreaker, you can run team building activities, quizzes, trivia, create employee profiles, and so much more, all with the aim to keep everyone engaged and connected. 

Key features:

• Team building quizzes
• Short quizzes and trivia
• Psychometrics
• Employee profiles
• Employee rewards
• Pulse surveys

And that’s it…

These are the nine employee retention software tools I recommend you consider to implement strategies for retaining more employees in your organization. 

Good luck!