How many people are you looking to roll this out to?

I would caution against trying to automate what should be handled in person during the early days of your business.

Talk to people. If they don't feel like you care (because you're automating the process), they won't give you valuable feedback.

Agree with Shaun's answer: Infrastructure and KPI's are not necessary until your organisation gets to a size, where the management team does not know everyone.

If you want to measure engagement, build a process, that ensures that managers regularly interact with all employees once a week, month, quarter - depending on your needs for dialogue. And have the managers report back to CEO how things are. I think you will learn more instead of just measuring. Measuring is easy - changing processes based on feedback is hard, because it is about culture. If you ask, be prepared to change based on the feedback.

Employee retention is easy to measure by comparing your staff month on month on some ID-key (employee number, social security number or similar). If you are there in one month, and not in the next, you are gone. Reverse means you are new.

Let me just finish this by commending you on your focus on the softer side of things. I think it is good, and I am sure by focusing on it, you can create an environment, where people are happy to work and will be engaged.

If you want to talk more about this, keep in touch - call or mail.

Best regards
Kenneth Wolstrup

I do not know if your team is virtual or office based but I highly recommend http://www.teamphoria.com/
Thier offering means that you can send out surveys or use peer to peer kudos. It is also a great help during performance reviews
Their customer service is great and the grow with you.
Let me know if you need further information or would like to talk further about employee engagement.

Show a genuine interest in your people's career paths, and provide development opportunities to increase engagement and lower turnover. I like the concept of "Training Tuesdays" where 30 minutes each week is dedicated to a presentation on a topic. It can be anything from the benefits plan, to using salesforce, to how to increase sleep quality, etc. If your people feel like they are growing and valued, they will stay.

Here's a blog I put together that covers 17 of the world's top companies and examples of how they engage their employees: http://www.fieldboom.com/blog/employee-engagement-activities/.

Examples include how Zappos has built such a high level of engagement. Zappos created several ways to engage its employees, including Zappos Zollars. Employees can earn the company currency by going above and beyond in their work and the Zollars can be used for branded goodies, charitable donations or in raffles for bigger prizes.

Their employees can also participate in their Grant-a-Wish program, which allows them to suggest and grant wishes for their team members. It’s a great way for employees to express gratitude to other people in the company and give them a fun experience – whether that’s dance lessons, riding in a hot air balloon or taking a mini vacation.

The company’s emphasis on engagement starts from the moment someone is hired. After their initial training, they participate in a scavenger hunt that helps them get to know other employees.

For example, they may be tasked with finding someone wearing a Zappos hat and asking them about their job, so they can get to know them. Simple but mighty effective.

Employee retention strategies can be as follows:
1. Hiring the Right People
80% of employee turnover is due to bad hiring decisions. First of all, hire the right people. People who meet the organization’s expectations and whose expectations you can fulfil. One way to do this is to go beyond the textbook interview questions.
2. Shaping their Growth and Development
Helping employees achieve their short-term and long-term goals is one of the most crucial employee retention strategies.
Therefore, designing in-house training programs for employees can advance their professional development. Other methods include paying them to attend conferences, industry events, etc.
3. Encouraging Open Communication
You can create a workplace where employees aren’t afraid to express their opinions. In other words, a workplace where they can freely question their leaders and voice their concerns.
An “open door policy” is an effective way to establish a culture of open communication. It shows that you’re always available to listen to their opinions and concerns.
4. Providing out-of-the-box Benefits
50% of adults would leave their job for better benefits. Catering to the needs of your employees is important. Employers should provide benefits apart from the usual vacation leaves, sick leaves.
Moreover, employees favor benefits like financial incentives, retirement savings plan. Other benefits are sabbaticals, incentive stock options, life insurance, etc.
5. Appreciating your Employees
Every employee wants acknowledgement and recognition for their work. Appreciating your employees for their efforts and achievements goes a long way.
Some meaningful ways are through handwritten thank you notes, social recognition programs, etc. These things motivate and encourage an employee to contribute and excel.
6. Balancing their Workload
57% of employees feel less productive and disengaged due to work stress. Tower Watson says stressing your employees can be unfavorable.Thus, encouraging team members to share the workload and take time off can be effective.
7. Developing Orientation Programs
Good managers always keep their employees informed. They clearly explain the policies, expectations of the employee from the beginning. Furthermore, orientation programs help employees to understand how they can contribute and excel.
8. Rewarding & Recognizing Employees
Sometimes, your employees expect more than a thank you or a pat on the back. When they fulfill their goals, rewarding them to congratulate their efforts is important. Corporate gifts, point-based reward system, performance awards, are some ways.
9. Maintaining Work and Life
11% of workers have refused a new job due to lack of good work-life balance opportunities. Another factor associated with overburdening is maintaining the work-life balance. To take pressure off employees, share the workload, allow work from home, practice flextime.
10. Initiating a Mentor/Buddy Culture
Assigning a mentor or a buddy to a new employee is a great onboarding idea. The newcomer can learn about their work and the existing techniques from his mentor. Moreover, a new employee can offer a fresh take on things. As a result, this will help generate creative and innovative ideas.
11. Encouraging Teamwork
People working as a team produce more successful results. When people work as a team, they produce more and are more successful. Creating a culture of collaboration where employees work in their own way but as a team helps. You can assign tasks to all team members, clarify job responsibilities and encourage them to contribute.
Related: 50 Inspiring Teamwork Quotes To Motivate Employees
12. Bonding with Employees
A good manager works continuously to nurture his relationship with his employees. Above all, bonding with employees outside work is as important as inside the office.You can do this by celebrating your employees’ major milestones.
Team lunches, group treks, excursions are some methods to celebrate employees. Celebrating even their personal achievements- a new house, marriage- will deepen your bond.
13. Living up to their Expectations
Many employees feel that they don’t get the growth and exposure promised to them during hiring. Develop innovative and challenging tasks to keep your top performers engaged.
14. Providing Monetary Benefits
Employees quit their jobs due to lack of compensation. One of the major reasons that make employees quit is lack of compensation. And hiring someone new can be quite costly. To avoid this, you can give fair and just appraisal to every deserving candidate. A salary hike is another way to retain top performers.
Gamification is another way. This includes rewarding employees for coming early, zero absenteeism, excellent performance.
15. Practicing a Feedback Culture
Regular feedback can reduce employee turnover. Feedbacks make it easier for employees to understand and track their goals, responsibilities.
Phelps says, “There’s feedback on the work, there’s feedback on the individual’s performance and there’s feedback on how the individual’s doing in their career.”
16. Conducting Exit interviews
Sometimes letting go of an employee is inevitable. Hence, conducting exit interviews just before an employee is about to leave is very crucial. An exit interview is asking a departing employee about his experience at the company. This process can help throw light into things like toxic management practices, departmental conflicts, etc.
17. Building Health and Wellness Programs
60% of companies offer wellness programs to stay competitive when attracting and retaining employees. You can give your employees more than just sick leaves and free health check-ups. Having a comprehensive health plan which takes care of the overall wellness of your employees is important. Your health plan can include meal tracking, fitness tracking activities, etc. Providing health insurance is another great way to take care of their wellness.
18. Providing Leadership Opportunities. Many employees feel they can contribute a lot more than their current job roles. Assigning them with the right tasks, opportunities and responsibilities can increase employee satisfaction. Consequently, you will see an increase in the level of your employee retention.
19. Altering Work Responsibilities
Doing the same work becomes boring and tedious. In that case, do not make employees stick to their laid down responsibilities. Involve them in various tasks and a chance to work with other departments. This will help generate better ideas, improve co-worker relationships. It will also make them more skilled and advance their professional development.
20. Generating Peer-to-Peer Recognition
To reduce employee turnover, your employees should trust and believe in each other. When they will value each other, they will help each other and work as a team. This will lessen internal conflicts, and create a culture of peer-to-peer recognition.
For employee engagement you can use the following tools:
1. Connecteam:
Reach each team member with engaging, targeted, and measurable communication. In a tap, you can reflect your company’s culture and solidify your employer branding with Connecteam’s employee engagement software.
a. Surveys, Suggestion Box, and Live Polls: ensure every employee’s voice is heard and make decisions based on organizational surveys and live-polls, launch a suggestion box to gather feedback, and send structured channels to query or approach HR and senior management.
b. Announcements, Newsletters, and Updates: communicate with an individual, a group, or the entire organization, Connecteam makes it easy to distribute visual, rich, and engaging content and to measure its reach and impact in a click. Advanced features include pre-scheduled updates, social engagement support for likes, comments, etc. and automated follow-up capabilities.
c. Employee Recognition and Acknowledgment: recognize star employees, share employee ‘spotlights’, and allow team members to nominate peers for awards. Celebrate with your team by sharing birthday wishes, anniversaries, personal milestones, and organizational achievements. Let your team take part by engaging with every recognition and appreciation celebration, and improve the sense of belonging.
Price: Connecteam is incredibly affordable as it is the only employee engagement software that offers a fixed monthly price for up to 200 users, plans start at just $29. And we’ll repeat, you don’t pay per user! You pay a fixed monthly plan which is easy on the back pocket. Plus, you can sign up for the free for life plan to test its robust features.
2. Officevibe:
Officevibe says it best on their website, “Officevibe allows you to follow key trends and patterns across your company through current, honest employee feedback. Know exactly where and when you’ll have the greatest impact, and which managers and teams need your support.” Essentially, Officevibe sends a weekly survey to all your employees with questions based on their 10 Key Metrics and 26 Sub-metrics, they offer a bank of 120 scientifically-validated questions so you can gauge the pulse of your company.
Price: Sign up for free or pay $4/per user/month. Get a Custom plan for Enterprise if needed.
3. ContactMonkey: ContactMonkey allows businesses to create, send, and track their internal communications all from within Outlook. Design responsive employee newsletters using the drag-and-drop email template builder. Engage employees with emoji reactions, comments, eNPS surveys, and more. Track engagement metrics like Open Rate, Click-through Rate, and Read Time from your Campaign Analytics Dashboard. ContactMonkey makes it easier than ever to track and improve your organization’s employee engagement.
Price: Speak to a representative about receiving a quote for your company.
4. Lattice Performance Management:
Choose individual performance reviews, share feedback, hold 1-on-1’s, set goals, send praise, and share updates – these are the features you get with Lattice Performance Management. All of this will help to boost engagement and Lattice integrates with other software, like Slack or Google Suite.
Price: There are three plans to choose from: Performance – $9/user/month, Performance and Engagement – $12/user/month, or Enterprise with custom pricing.
5. Peakon
If you have more than 100 employees, Peakon is for you. In real-time, Peakon collects employee feedback, analyzes it and sends you insights. Employees can submit their feedback via the web, mobile, SMS, kiosk or app. Peakon also features Cultural Alignment, Employee Alignment, Employee Awards, Feedback Management, Performance Management, and Surveys.
Price: Choose from three pricing plans: Essential – $3.5 /user/mo, Business – $7 /user/mo, or Premier – $12 /user/mo. Book a free demo with a sales representative.
6. BambooHR
BambooHR Employee Satisfaction with eNPS allows for easy onboarding tools and tracking. When it comes to employee engagement, recruiting, hiring, and new-hire transitioning, you are covered. BambooHR features E-signature, time-off tracking, performance management, and reporting – all from desktop or mobile.
Price: Get a price quote from a representative about a designed package for your company.
7. Gtmhub
Gtmhub’s People module allows for collaborative, team-centric work so that you can learn, align goals, manage performance, and support employee success – integrate the software with Slack, Jira, Facebook Workplace, and more. Use features to further your employee engagement: recognition badges, 1-on-1, 360-degree feedback and conversations. All users can request or give feedback on an existing topic, or a topic they choose.
Price: Start a free trial or chat with a representative to learn more about pricing.
8. Impraise
If you’re an Enterprise or have a young workforce, Impraise is the choice for you. Impraise, The People Enablement Platform, helps boost performance and professional growth through reviews, goal management, real-time feedback, and check-ins. Use engagement surveys to discover how connected, valued, and involved your employees feel at every level.
Price: Get a price quote from a representative.
9. Engagedly
Engagedly is perfect for services organizations with an employee size of 50-1000+. Their Employee Engagement platform has built-in gamification for employee social collaboration, a pulse survey, idea generation, and employee rewards. Add features like 360 feedback, goal setting, performance management, and eLearning.
Price: There is a free trial, otherwise it costs $5.00/month/user.
10. Staffbase
Straight off their website, Staffbase explains it best, “From onboarding surveys to company-wide engagement, the Staffbase interaction plugins make it easy to collect, understand, and act on employee feedback.” Staffbase makes it easy to reach all your employees as they are an internal communications app for small and large-sized companies.
Price: Get a price quote from a representative.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath