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Top employee survey vendors for CHROs to research
Employee survey tools can help companies improve employee experience. Learn about some of the major vendors in the market and requirements to look for.
Measuring employee engagement remains a top priority for leaders, including chief HR officers. HR vendors have developed a variety of survey tools to capture employee feedback, and CHROs, along with others involved in selecting employee survey tools, should learn about the features offered by top vendors to determine which is best for their organization.
The feedback that's gathered using employee survey tools can lead to initiatives that positively affect employee experience, employee retention and a company's long-term success. Employee survey tools might be part of an existing HR management system (HRMS), an enterprise survey tool or a specialized application. Most, if not all, employee engagement tools today offer some level of AI support, including AI capabilities for building new surveys, summarizing data and conducting sentiment analysis.
Evaluating various survey tools should include consideration of the company's needs, culture, size and budget. While enterprise tools may offer advanced features, the tools might not be a good fit financially for small businesses. Also, a certain vendor might be a good fit for a company because of the vendor's additional functionality. For example, an employee survey tool that also includes performance management capabilities might be a good fit for a company that needs both. For some companies, acquiring a survey module for an existing HRMS might be a better choice than selecting a third-party system.
The following list of vendors is broken down into three categories, based on the target market and system offered. Vendors were chosen based on information from G2, Gartner, Forrester, vendor websites and the writer's personal experience with employee engagement tools.
Enterprise platforms
Enterprise survey platforms typically include features that extend beyond employee engagement surveys. For example, these systems could also be used to survey customers, new hires and employees who have left the company, in addition to conducting research.
Forsta
Forsta is a full-service survey tool that encompasses employee experience, customer experience and market research.
Medallia
Medallia also offers a full-service survey tool that extends beyond measuring employee engagement by including functionality for surveying customers and conducting market research.
Pisano
Survey options from this vendor include employee surveys, customer surveys, B2B surveys, user experience surveys and market research.
Qualtrics
Similar to Medallia, Qualtrics' offering includes surveys for other use cases besides surveying employees.
QuestionPro
QuestionPro can be used to measure employee experience and customer experience as well as conduct research and build custom surveys for any use, with many question types available.
SurveySparrow
The SurveySparrow survey tool can be used to measure employee satisfaction and customer experience, among other metrics.
HRMS engagement survey module
Many contemporary HRMSes offer an optional module for conducting employee engagement surveys. Using a company’s current HR system for employee surveys can be helpful in a couple of different ways: Employees won't have to use a separate tool to complete the survey, and employee data will be housed in the same system.
Vendor partners can often integrate their employee engagement survey tool with the HRMS.
ADP
ADP is an HRMS that offers a variety of modules to support employees throughout their employment lifecycle. The ADP Voice of the Employee module captures and analyzes employee feedback.
Dayforce
As with ADP, Dayforce enables the HR team to conduct surveys to continuously gather employee feedback.
Oracle HCM Cloud
Oracle's engagement survey tool is an extension of its HCM system. AI can assist HR team members -- or whoever is creating the survey -- with survey building and employee response analysis.
SAP SuccessFactors
SAP relies on partners to provide in-depth employee engagement survey creation capabilities. Qualtrics is one of the many vendors that are certified to work with SAP SuccessFactors.
UKG
UKG enables users to conduct different types of employee surveys, such as quick pulse surveys or more in-depth ones.
Workday
Workday's employee engagement tool includes an AI listening tool to capture real-time feedback and provide managers with actionable insight on a regular basis. For example, managers could receive feedback on a weekly schedule.
Specialized and midmarket tools
Vendors in this segment are focused on employee experience instead of surveying various segments, including customers.
Culture Amp
Culture Amp is an employee experience platform that can be used to survey employees, provide performance feedback and track career progression options.
Gallup
Gallup offers surveys and advisory services to help HR teams excel. Organizations can use the company's two decades' worth of data to address employee concerns and implement change.
Lattice
Employee engagement surveys are part of Lattice's talent suite. Other Lattice features include performance management and compensation management tools.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is one of the more frequently used survey tools on the market, in part because of their free version. A paid subscription is required for access to SurveyMonkey’s more advanced features, such as templates for quizzes and reporting features.
TINYpulse
TINYpulse was created by WebMD Health Services. The employee engagement survey tool can help leaders understand what employees value most. The application also includes tools such as Coach, Onboard and Suggestions that can help leaders create action plans after receiving survey results.
Workleap Officevibe
Workleap Officevibe enables users to create quick pulse surveys or launch full surveys with custom questions. AI can analyze the results and deliver the conclusions to users.
What to include in a requirements document for employee survey software
CHROS should ensure that the software selection team creates a list of predefined criteria to use when rating each employee survey vendor. Referring to these criteria will help ensure that the team evaluates each vendor consistently and doesn’t overlook any must-have features.
The team should also consider checking whether tools include features that are not critical but could potentially simplify other processes. For example, the ability to survey new hires and terminated employees could be helpful for some companies.
Here are some features to consider including when building a requirements document for an employee survey tool.
Integration capabilities
The software selection team should determine how data from the company’s existing HR information system can be pushed to the survey tool so that employee data stays up to date.
For example, the vendor may offer an API or Secure FTP integration. If the module is part of an existing HR system, then the data should flow from one module to the next.
Real‑time dashboards
The survey tool should include dashboards that provide real-time data. These dashboards enable those in charge of the survey to view participation rates and high-level results while the survey is still live.
Analytics
A survey tool should provide default dashboards and reports as well as the ability to create new ones. System users should also be able to filter data based on different parameters, such as department, manager and employee years of service.
AI
An employee survey tool should provide AI features such as sentiment analysis measurement and action recommendations based on survey results.
Self-serve options for people leaders
Survey results should be shareable with managers so that they can see a summary of their team members' responses and potentially take action. For example, if a manager's team members gave some of the lowest ratings of the survey responses, then the manager could create a special plan for how to address the employees' negative sentiments.
Export charts and graphs
The survey tool should enable users to export charts and graphs so that users can include the charts and graphs in presentations. For example, a CHRO may want to include, as part of their presentation, a graph demonstrating that 73% of users approve of a new initiative.
Anonymity
A survey tool should enable users to create anonymous surveys.
Often, the threshold to see survey results for a team is four or more responses, so users should be aware of that before sending out a survey.
Hybrid and remote employee response options
An employee survey tool should enable all types of employees to participate, including remote workers and employees who lack a dedicated workspace, such as factory and warehouse workers. The survey should also be available in different languages so that all employees can participate.
Benchmarking and future planning
An employee survey tool should include the ability to compare survey results against the data from other companies of the same size and industry. Ideally, the tool would also include the ability to create an action plan to address the survey findings.
Segment and lock participants
A system administrator might want to limit who can participate in a survey. For example, the administrator might only want employees who have worked for the company for more than 60 days to participate in an employee engagement survey. An administrator might also want to bar temporary workers from participating.
Eric St-Jean is an independent consultant with a particular focus on HR technology, project management and Microsoft Excel training and automation. He writes about numerous business and technology areas.
