The 6 best tools for tracking employee morale

If your team is habitually late to work, revising their LinkedIn profiles, infighting or just seem to be walking under their own personal rainclouds, you’ve got a morale problem on your hands.

You’re not alone. Low employee engagement troubles teams across the globe in companies of every size and industry. It’s no surprise that employers are struggling to do it right. It’s hard work, but on top of that we have the uptick in remote workers and distributed teams as well as the rise of the gig economy. Fragmented workplaces make getting a good read on employee morale more complicated.

Fortunately for employers, the mobile and cloud-based tech that’s disrupting the workplace is also transforming the way they get feedback from staff. Tech tools offer easy and instant mood-tracking, enabling leaders to address issues before they snowball into toxic work environments and employee churn. They also provide data, which is great for two reasons. First, knowing the problem areas helps you make better, more informed people management decisions. Second, data is a quantifiable means of showing off a thriving and happy team to job candidates.

Here are six of the best tools we’ve seen for tracking employee morale:

1. Culture Amp gets that high morale is the byproduct of a healthy company culture. Their suite of employee feedback tools covers the entire employment life cycle: new hire surveys, onboarding, employee engagement surveys, single-question polls and exit interviews. It’s a holistic, flexible approach to building and scaling culture. Employees can respond via web or mobile app, making it a great option for today’s multigenerational workforce.
2. RoundPegg, like Culture Amp, has a culture-first approach. Companies start by creating a “CultureDNA” profile. Then, they hire employees based on how well they fit the profile. To see how they feel about life at their new company, leadership runs periodic custom surveys. Surveys can be rolled out to the entire organization, or can target a specific area or team.
3. OfficeVibe’s employee engagement tool boasts beautiful design, advanced reporting (including geographic reporting, for those distributed teams), and quick pulse surveys. They’ve got some fun features, like the “PraiseGame”, for giving recognition to peers. Integrations with popular tools like Slack put them ahead of the curve.
4. TINYPulse helps leaders take the pulse of their company atmosphere by sending one survey question, once a week to employees. The team can respond instantly and anonymously via their mobile app. TINYPulse also provides “Virtual Suggestions” feature, which enables employees to voice their ideas and solutions and “Cheers of Peers,” a way for them to acknowledge their colleagues’ good work.
5. Niko Niko is a quick way for agile software teams to track emotional responses to specific projects and objectives. It’s the mobile app evolution of a paper-based system involving calendars and smileys (nikoniko is the Japanese ideophone for smiling). In the middle of a sprint right now? You’ll want to address bad mood data, indicating obstacles, ASAP. That process of removing blockers, as you know, leads to a smoother and more productive next sprint.
6. MercuryApp is micro-journaling with analytics. Like Niko Niko, this app is a good fit for agile practitioners. The language on their site–“time box,” “retros”–will tell you as much. MercuryApp sends team members a daily reminder to log their opinions on how a project is going. This health check takes less than 30 seconds and provides managers with regular and valuable input.

It’s easier to monitor and nurture high morale than it is to fix low employee morale, so put these systems in place early. Don’t forget that any employee engagement or candidate feedback surveys you do must be tied to actions. Employees will disengage if they don’t perceive changes or improvements after they’ve taken the time to give feedback. Finally, the most effective way to build a connected, committed team is to hire the right people; people who know what you’re trying to achieve and are the most equipped to help you do it.