Top EX platforms alternatives

Alternative to Qualtrics - Comparison 2024

 

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In the dynamic business world, employee engagement strategies have gained more significance than ever. Engaged employees keep your organization healthy and thriving, giving it a competitive edge. Consequently, choosing the perfect employee engagement tool is even more crucial to keep them motivated and engaged. 

Qualtrics is one of the renowned employee engagement tools. However, your organization could have specific needs when choosing the ideal employee engagement tool, whether it's customization, feature-rich interface, or intuitiveness.

So, exploring alternatives that could better fit your organization is a good idea.This article blog highlights vital factors for choosing an effective employee engagement tool and explores an alternative to Qualtrics that can improve and refine your strategies to new heights.

Employee Engagement Tool: How to Choose Your Platform?

Choosing the right employee engagement tool is crucial for effective workforce engagement. This section discusses significant factors to evaluate when selecting an employee engagement platform. 

1. Meeting Stakeholder Needs 

When you pick a tool to engage your employees, make sure it satisfies the needs of all stakeholders involved. For example:

 

3-roles-HRHR Teams are at the frontline of implementing these tools. For them, reliability is key. They need a system that doesn't falter, is adaptable to the changing needs of the organization, and is backed by prompt support. Additionally, a rigorous quality control mechanism is essential to ensure that the tool remains effective over time.

 

drive-performanceC-suite Leaders: The top management often looks at the bigger picture. For them, a tool isn't just about gathering feedback—it's about deriving actionable insights that can drive business growth. They prefer a tool that can offer tailored recommendations directly linked to critical business metrics and provides trend analysis to anticipate future needs or challenges

 

drive-performanceManagers: Often acting as the bridge between the workforce and the leadership, managers need tools that are straightforward to use. Essential to their workflow is the ability for the solution to integrate seamlessly with platforms they're already familiar with, such as Teams, Slack, and other collaboration tools. They require access to essential data that can help them understand their team's sentiment and dynamics. Beyond just raw data, they benefit from conversation guides that can help navigate sensitive topics. Actionable suggestions provided by the tool can be invaluable for managers, enabling them to take immediate steps to enhance engagement within their teams.

 

3-roles-employeeEmployees: Their trust and buy-in are essential for the success of any tool. As such, the tool needs to guarantee confidentiality, ensuring their feedback or data isn't misused. Furthermore, an intuitive and user-friendly interface will make it easier for them to interact with the system, ensuring higher participation rates.


Before settling on any solution, conduct thorough discussions with each stakeholder group to gather their specific requirements. Only by understanding and addressing everyone's needs can you choose a tool that truly drives employee engagement across the board.

2. Transparency in Partnership

In a great partnership, transparency involves a commitment to open communication, developing trust, and setting clear expectations. When you prioritize transparency while choosing an employee engagement tool, you can collaborate effectively with the provider. An open and honest dialogue ensures that your organization and the employee engagement tool provider are on the same page. This can lead to more productive and tailored engagement strategies. 

3. Ability to Customize Dashboards

Customizability gives power to HR managers to tweak the employee engagement platform as per their unique needs, preferences, and goals. With customizable dashboards, you can design them as per your organization's branding, workflow, and goals, echoing your organization’s structure and need for minimal disruption. You'll notice that it improves usability and relevance. 
Plus, your teams can see the specific insights and data points that matter most to them. This customized setup helps you focus on particular actions because you have the right data.

 

4. Strong Customer Support

These experts have an intimate understanding of the tool's intricacies. So, if you ever run into problems or questions about how to use the tool, these experts can help you quickly. They can fix issues, give you advice, and help make your engagement efforts better. It's also crucial to check the Service Level Agreement (SLA) with the provider. Their timely support can reduce downtime and amplify the advantages you reap from the tool.

 

5. Project Management and Responsiveness

Your chosen employee engagement tool should excel in project management and responsiveness. A tool with effective project-tracking features will let your teams stay organized. Whether you have to change survey questions or solve other issues, a responsive tool ensures that your employee engagement efforts stay adaptable, impactful, and on track so that they meet your goals.

Qualtrics

Let's talk about Qualtrics. This popular employee engagement tool collects, organizes, and understands vital employee data. In this section, we'll explore the advantages and disadvantages of Qualtrics to find out how much it suits your employee engagement needs.

 

1. Advantages of Qualtrics 

Qualtrics offers deep insights into employee experiences through advanced analytics. It identifies experience gaps in real-time. This allows organizations to prioritize areas needing improvement. 

Candidate experience

  • Multi-touch programs: drill deeper into any stage of the candidate journey to see what went well and the actions you need to take to improve the experience for your candidates.
  • Contact frequency: you’ll get the data you need for every stage of the candidate’s experience while making sure you’re not over-surveying. You’ll have total control over how often, when, and how your candidates are contacted based on your preferences.

 

360 Development 

  • Access aggregated 360 results in a centralized and flexible dashboard
  • Quickly understand development opportunities across scaled groups such as functional teams or by role or level.
  • Identify, track, and measure employee development programs over time using real-time analytics and powerful data visualization
  • Connect employee development outcomes with critical business metrics to prove ROI and development impact

 

Employee Pulse

  • Launch new pulse survey programs with both speed and confidence using a guided step-by-step set up

  • Access pre-built methodologies, and a library of survey questions with built-in benchmarks

  • Keep employee data and metadata safe and up to date via seamless integration with your existing HR systems

 

2. Qualtrics pricing

Qualtrics pricing works on a subscription-based model requiring annual renewal. The pricing is based on what features you require, how many features you require, how many active team members will be utilizing the software, and the size of your business. 

3. Disadvantages of Qualtrics 

🚩 Support and project management

For many of their customers, Qualtrics relies heavily on external support (Professional Services/Consultants). This dependence on outsourced services can lead to certain challenges. There's often a disjointedness in follow-up, stemming from potential misalignments between internal objectives and external priorities. Responsiveness might be compromised, as the external teams might be spread thin over multiple projects. Additionally, this model can result in lower Service Level Agreements (SLA) adherence, as external support might not always have the same urgency or in-depth understanding of Qualtrics-specific challenges. The indirect nature of such an arrangement can sometimes dilute the quality and immediacy of support provided to end users. G2 rating report Qualtrics' support scoring is 8.5, behind the average score of 9.1, behind EngageRocket's scoring of 9.4.

🚩 Holistic action plans 


While departmental action planning can be effective for addressing specific challenges, the absence of entity-wide strategy can lead to a lack of focus on overarching priorities - especially for large organisations with multiple entities. When actions are planned and executed at a departmental level, consolidating reports and deriving insights can become cumbersome. It makes it difficult for higher management to get a clear picture of overall progress.

🚩 Ease of setup 

While Qualtrics boasts a range of robust features, its setup process has been a point of contention for some users. The configuration can be complex and time-intensive, sometimes lacking the intuitiveness and seamlessness that users expect from such platforms. Additionally, businesses transitioning to Qualtrics have occasionally faced challenges, making the migration less smooth than desired. This sentiment is echoed in G2 ratings, where Qualtrics' ease of setup has scored 7.5, trailing behind the average score of 8.9 for similar platforms

4. Comparative table 

Qualtrics x EngageRocket

Why EngageRocket is a stronger alternative to Qualtrics

EngageRocket enables organizations to continuously listen to their employees, and helps managers tap into the true potential of their teams. With its science-backed analytics and action suggestions, EngageRocket helps build powerful engagement programs.

 

1. Why upgrading to EngageRocket can be best for your organization?

EngageRocket's solution has been built on strong science-backed research and data. The People Science team behind EngageRocket leverages data derived from months-long research to deliver engagement solutions that work real-time.

 

BELONG offers employee pulse and lifecycle surveys, and continuous listening with deep-dive surveys.

EngageRocket's Belong Heatmap
  • Access a science-backed question library to easily use in your surveys at every stage of the employee milestone; from onboarding to exit
  • Encourage participation through web or mobile. Support for multiple languages and multiple devices is available.

  • Set up communication plans and automated reminders to ensure high participation rate

  • Designed with respondents' confidentiality in mind, so employees can feel safe in voicing their opinions

  • Assess employee engagement with real-time analytics. Use AI-run Topic and Sentiment Analysis for unbiased assessments. Compare engagement levels across segments and teams. Select from a collection of reporting formats for a convenient review.

  • Identify “the most” and “the least” engagement factors driving retention and attrition.

  • Prioritize actions based on an Impact Analysis on engagement drivers.

  • Enable managers to track their team’s engagement quotient with specialized metrics.

  • Use science-backed action suggestions for powerful impact with ACT

    EngageRocket promotes engagement by equipping managers with tools that enable them to take actions that result in immediate impact. With these tools, managers understand their teams and their strengths and challenges, better.

    • Individualized dashboards for every manager. The progress each manager has achieved with his/ her team is projected. Dashboard scores engagement drivers so that managers can take appropriate action.

    • Managers get access to expert-built scientifically-proven action suggestions.

    • An Action Library that houses scientifically-backed resources for leadership guidance

 

GROW enables automated performance reviews and feedback, 360-degree feedback, competency evaluations & culture-fit assessment capabilities

EngageRocket's Grow Dashboard
  • Easy to use with almost no learning curve. Simply assign reviewers, and reviews and launch the process. Support for multiple languages and multiple devices is available. Web and mobile-compatible.

  • A multi-purpose-use platform is customizable to objectives, individuals and teams. You can customize questions or use expert-built templates.

  • Personalize dashboards to individual reviewees. Obtain clear insights on strengths and improvable areas with visual data representations such as Spider Charts and Johari Window. 

  • Let employees plan their careers and self-develop more efficiently with in-app planners, goals and task creations, and notifications

  • AI-Assisted feedback: Generate genuine, human-like feedback in 5 clicks or less. Answer a few questions about the feedback recipient, and let generative AI write the feedback for you. 

 

Why EngageRocket?

✅ A science-backed and research-driven solution, developed together with People Scientists

✅ Facility for internal and external benchmarking

✅ In-house and responsive customer service (92% customer satisfaction)

✅ EngageRocket has highly customized dashboards. This way, organizations can tailor the platform according to their goals. 

The platform offers multilingual capability, supporting surveys and dashboards in over 70 languages.

 

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Making the Switch – A Seamless Change Management Approach

When considering a shift to a different platform, EngageRocket is at the forefront of facilitating the transition, supporting you from data transfer to managing the team's change adaptation. Our goal is to ensure a fluid and efficient transition in four steps. 


1. Thorough Evaluation

We dive deep into your existing solution, performing a comprehensive audit of your present analytics and functionalities.

2. Dedicated Support
Understanding the nuances and challenges of shifting platforms, EngageRocket provides specialized customer success squads. They are your beacon during the shift from your previous employee engagement tool, guiding you at every juncture, clarifying queries, and guaranteeing unwavering support throughout.

3. Minimise disruption and optimize change management 
One of the standout features of EngageRocket is its adaptability. As you transition from your prior employee engagement platform, you're empowered to modify your dashboards to reflect your unique needs. This not only ensures a seamless experience but also reduces the inevitable learning curve that comes with adopting a new system. Your teams can maintain their familiar workflow, ensuring minimal disruption.

4. Efficient Data Transition
Employee records - be it personal details, performance metrics, or feedback history - form the bedrock of devising effective engagement strategies. EngageRocket recognizes this importance and offers meticulous yet swift data migration support. We take paramount care to transfer all your essential data and insights, ensuring you have continuous access to your historical records without any compromise on data integrity.

With EngageRocket, transition isn't just about switching platforms; it's about enhancing and optimizing your engagement experience. By partnering with us, you're not merely adopting a new tool but setting your organization and team up for heightened success and efficiency.

FAQ

To create an elite organization, you need a well-planned strategy to keep your employees engaged and happy, majorly focused on the following three aspects:

Continuous listening

Sustainable action

Advanced analytics

These three pillars work together to create a workplace with a culture of engagement, adaptability, and alignment with organizational goals. Let’s explore them in detail.

Continuous Listening

The foundation of an effective engagement strategy, continuous listening, involves actively gathering feedback from employees through various channels

Now, why is this so important? Well, when you listen continuously, you gain valuable insights into what drives employee engagement and satisfaction. This way, you know what they need and how they feel about working in your organization. Consequently, your organization can identify areas of concern, see new trends coming up, and fix issues before they turn into huge problems.

Note that this information evolves as the organization grows and faces new challenges. So, continuous listening keeps you agile, which is crucial these days as businesses are changing rapidly. 


Sustainable Action


Pairing the potency of continuous listening with sustainable action elevates its impact.. It needs a commitment to follow through on the feedback received. As a sustainable action, you must let your managers take ownership of team engagement. 

Equipped with the right tools, knowledge, and autonomy, managers can effectively address employee feedback. With automated action plans based on employee experience data, managers become instrumental in catalyzing changes, recognizing commendable efforts, and fostering a milieu where employees are perennially motivated to excel.
When significantly empowered, managers can set clear goals, implement changes, and regularly assess progress. They can also tweak employee engagement strategies that fit the company's needs to create a culture where employees constantly strive to improve.

Advanced Analytics

Connecting employee engagement to business results is key. Using advanced analytics, including predictive and impact analysis, lets us see how engagement affects key performance indicators (KPIs).

For instance, we can see which initiatives improve productivity or reduce turnover. With this data, HR can refine engagement strategies.

Plus, by predicting future engagement trends, organizations can act early to keep their workforce motivated and efficient. .

Employee Engagement (EE) has been a well-studied motivational concept since 1990, when William Kahn1 first introduced it. Employee Engagement can be defined as a mix of psychological state, attitudes and behavior towards one’s job and organisation. It encompasses the feeling of dedication, energy and absorption in work (i.e., work engagement), desire to make the best effort at work (i.e., work motivation), emotional attachment, loyalty and dedication towards organisation (i.e., commitment), as well as feeling of belonging and oneness with organisation (i.e., identification). In a systematic literature review of research between EE and business performance, it was found that EE supports organisational development and leads to improved business performance2. In addition, EE also impacts valued attitudes such as active learning, innovation, knowledge sharing and adaptability.

On the other hand, Employee Experience (EX) is a holistic view of how people interact with and perceive their work. Similar to the way companies approach the Consumer Experience (CX), the end-user’s motivations, wants and needs are at the core of EX, and the critical objective is to find the intersection between those elements for each organisation. By deeply understanding the human aspects of working in the organisation, employers can design a tailored experience that demonstrates empathy towards employees, in turn building employee engagement, loyalty and performance. This is based on the belief that ‘your employees are your brand. 

EX takes into account the drivers of engagement all along the employment journey, with engagement being an outcome of EX. By focusing on the physical, cultural, digital, and work dimensions of the organisation, a positive EX drives engaged employees. 

 

Employee Experience vs Employee Engagement

Building a positive EX is important not only for driving employee engagement, but also for boosting company performance. Creating an environment for people to feel engaged at work contributes to the bottom line through building stronger productivity, job satisfaction and well-being, while lowering absenteeism and turnover.