7 Top Employee Communication Software to Improve Engagement & Productivity

As a manager, I was always thinking about methods to improve communication with my team, keep them engaged, and increase productivity. 

Are you also on the same ship? 

Do you struggle to keep your team motivated and on the same page as you as they strive to achieve a shared objective? Look nowhere else! 

We’ve compiled the best 7 employee communication software tools in this article to help you increase team engagement and productivity. These software options have all the tools you need to simplify contact and collaboration, from messaging apps to video conferencing tools. 

In one of the Gallup studies on 1 million managers, it was found that there is 6 times more employee engagement, 3 times more quality of life and 6 times better work, when managers communicate well with their employees. 

Let’s get started and discover the solution that will work best for your team’s communication needs!

What Is Employee Communication Software?

Employee communication software are the platforms that help management and leaders plan, organize, and manage the information flow with employees and vice versa to foster effective internal communications. This is essential if you want a structured organizational communication flow with better connections and teamwork.

Let’s take a look at what the tools are that can help you improve collaboration in the workplace.

Prevent information silos, and develop clear & concise message with ProofHub. Try it yourself for 14 days totally free. 

Best 7 employee communication software for managers & leaders

• ProofHub – Project management & team collaboration software
• Staffbase – Mobile intranet communication
• Slack – A team messaging app 
• Zoom – Easy video conferencing 
• Bonusly – Recognize and rewards your employees
• Vantage Circle – Best for pulse surveys
• Storyboard Podcast – Train & motivate your employees privately

An overview of 7 employee communication software for managers & leaders

To communicate effectively with your employees, you need the tools through which you can do seamless conversations, and discussions, appreciate them, and deliver them the right information. To do so, I am here sharing the top 7 employee communication software that is best for their own functioning. Let’s explore:

1. ProofHub – Project management & team collaboration software

Are you still hovering around emails and Google Docs to communicate and share work with your employees? Then you need to revive your communication strategy.

ProofHub is a centralized software that allows you to improve communication with your colleagues while also managing all projects and workflow in real time. Start with ProofHub to solve the problem of using multiple platforms, rather than just a communication tool.

With ProofHub, you can manage multiple tasks, assign multiple employees to a project, keep a bird’s eye view on project progress, and keep consistent along with maintaining effective internal communication with your employees simultaneously.

You can easily share notes, ideas, and even files with your colleagues to get feedback and better plan your project. Along with this, keep track of where your time and resources are going, which tasks are on priorities, and all the dependencies in one place.

Let’s see how ProofHub enhances your communication when working with a team:

Best communication features of ProofHub

• Connect to share ideas & notes on tasks

Need to discuss a new project or changes in a project? 

Then you can easily do that with ProofHub discussions. The best part is that you can add the associated team members and even clients to it, so that information can be sent to everyone who is important. This will help to prevent information silos, and employees will have a better understanding of the work they are going to do, resulting in better outcomes and meeting deadlines.

• Quick & direct conversations with team members

If you want to only connect with one employee rather than all employees or else only with a team, then ProofHub Chat communication is there to help you out. 

The chat option is private, and without disturbing any other employees, you can have conversations with employees you want and share files or ideas if you want. So, collaborate and work at the same time and from the same place.

• Seamlessly share ideas & project related details

Sharing ideas, images, notes, and all types of documents is one of the essential aspects when we look for collaboration apps. 

It helps to keep your employees clear about your idea of work and what you actually want from them. With ProofHub, you can not only have conversations but also share your thought process.

• Improve feedback & approval process

Are you still using emails to send documents for proofreading & approvals?

But what if you could do this from the same tool you use to manage work and collaborate? It makes your job easy, saves you time, and improves your performance. With ProofHub, you can upload files, mark changes using annotation tools, and also give one-click approvals. 

• Get employees attention straight away

You can directly ask your doubts or send your message to the person you want, even in a group discussion or while assigning the task with ProofHub. 

By mentioning the concerned person in the comments, it is very easy to get their attention right away.

• Working together in real-time

Effective communication entails more than just having a good communication or discussion; it also includes how well you understand your task dependencies and where your work is going. 

With ProofHub, you can keep track of where your work has progressed, whether it is dependent on someone else, and check the work on priority in real-time.

Pricing

• You can book a free demo, or have a free trial for 14 days.
• The essential plan costs you a flat $45 per month billed annually, and the ultimate plan costs you a flat $89 per month billed annually, with no per-user fee in either of the plans.

Sign up for a free trial of ProofHub today ( No credit card required, cancel anytime) View ProofHub Pricing See why customers love ProofHub ProofHub Overview Request a demo

2. Staffbase – Mobile intranet communication

Staffbase is software that supports both desktop and mobile modes of communication with your employees. It has a user-friendly interface, and its mobile app easily integrates with the company intranet for better team coordination and more detailed insights.

Best communication features of Staffbase

Get data-driven reports

With Staffbase, you can get the activity reports of your engaging employees. The measured impact can be easily visualized on the sleek dashboard, and you can plan and organize your work and resources in a better way.

Mobile supportive

The best part for which Staffbase is used is its mobile support feature. You can easily be in contact with your employees, who are not able to access the laptop at the same time. This can be easily downloaded from the app store.

The intranet is customizable

The Staffbase intranet is customizable; you can plan and organize as per your requirements. Manage event information, knowledge base articles, and other business-related information as per your needs on the app.

Pricing 

• Request a quote on pricing by visiting their website.

3. Slack: A team messaging app 

It is a messaging app that makes the communication experience easier at the workplace. With Slack, you can easily share your thoughts, ideas, and even files with your colleagues and give them clear instructions and guidelines on how work can be done. 

Best communication features of Slack

Channels Privatization

With Slack, you can create project channels to have discussions on different projects, and the best part is you can make them private. This way, the employees who are not involved with the project will not be able to see your conversation. This helps to focus your collaboration in the workplace.

Video and voice calling

With Slack, hybrid and remote working is much easier, as you can tell your colleagues urgent updates, new ideas, or feedback by using its calling feature. Not only employees, but you can also conduct a call to your clients and update them on the project’s progress.

Integrations

Slack is integrated with many applications like HubSpot, Zoho, Office 365, Todoist, and many more to make your communication and working experience more easy and organized. 

Pricing

• Get access to some of its features via its free version.
• The advanced plan starts at Rs. 218 per month.

4. Zoom – Easy video conferencing 

Zoom is one of the best solutions for video conferencing with your remote or hybrid team. You need no special account to login to the Zoom and with its free version you can add up to 100 participants. So, discussion on a project, an event with all your distant team has become very easy. 

Best communication features of Zoom

Set powerpoint as background

With Zoom’s new features, the best is you can set your powerpoint as your background and present your PPT in a better way. It is more visible and clear for others to see your slides. 

Live captions

While talking in the video calls, it is sometimes difficult to understand what other people are saying. This problem can be easily managed by switching on the live captions in Zoom calls. You will get better clarity and you can also note down the points. 

Less background noise

Video conferencing while working from home sometimes lets you not be able to concentrate, simply due to background noise. Zoom provides you with settings with which you can easily decrease the noise in your background and better your sound quality. 

Pricing

• Get access to the free calling service and add up to 100 attendees via its free version.
• The advanced plan starts at Rs. 13,200 per year per user.

5. Bonusly – Recognize and rewards your employees

Bonusly is a platform where you can recognize and reward your employees. It helps team leaders, HR professionals, and managers build an engaging environment and a sense of communication within the team by celebrating victories and achievements together.

Best communication features of Bonusly

Peer recognition

With Bonusly, managers can recognize, nominate, acknowledge, and reward their employees in the form of appreciative messages, digital badges, awards, and points.

Point-based system

A point-based system in Bonusly allows employees to redeem their points as per their choice. This will encourage employees to do better, achieve more points, and use them for their own use. 

Benchmarking

With Bonusly, you can set the benchmarks, targets, and standards for employees, for which they will get points and rewards to encourage them to improve their performance.

Pricing

• The basic plan starts at $2.70 per user per month, billed annually.

6. Vantage Circle – Best for pulse surveys

Vantage Circle is an employee engagement platform that conducts effective pulse surveys to better understand their thought process and working style. Not only this, but this software also provides other AI-enabled solutions to build constructive work culture. 

Best communication features of Vantage Circle

Vantage pulse 

This feature of Vantage Circle helps you get clear feedback from specific teams and departments. You can run an eNPS survey to get insights into how your employees are feeling about the company, their guidelines, or specific things to do to make the working culture more organized and better.

Engage your employees

With Vantage Circle, you can better engage your employees as you can conduct real-time interactive social feeds or appreciate them for their work and also give them redeemable points.

Vantage fit

Not only engagement and feedback surveys, with this app, you can also take one step ahead for employee wellbeing and productivity. This feature tracks your daily steps, daily calorie burn, and much more to nurture a healthy working environment through healthy employees.

Pricing

• You can visit the Vintage Circle website to learn about their plans.

7. Storyboard Podcast – Train & motivate your employees privately

Storyboard is a podcasting platform for dedicated employees where companies can record and share company updates, insights, and motivational stories privately with the employees so they can listen and engage with them.

Best communication features of Storyboard Podcast

Employee engagement

You can create public groups, else limit them to specific teams or employees and share with them podcasts related to training, company updates, or any other kind of content you want to. 

Share and promote

Meet your employees in a new way. The Storyboard interactive mobile app assists you in sending notifications to your employees when a new podcast is airing. 

Valuable insights

You can also gain valuable insights from your team about the podcast and related topic. Also, you can note the employee activity on the podcast. This whole thing can be a different way to encourage your employees to work better and in an interesting way. 

Pricing

• You can use Storyboard totally free for up to 50 users.
• Its advanced plan starts at $1 per user per month, billed monthly.

These are the best 7 communication tools through which you can keep your employees engaged and generate their interest in working. Some of the above-mentioned tools might be different, but they can be an effective way to better collaborate with your team and colleagues. Let’s take a look at their summary to know which tool fits you best.

Best 7 employee communication software summary

Communication Tool	Best Communication Feature	Free trial	Direct Website Link
ProofHub	Best real-time team communication software, including group discussion, one-to-one chat, instant comment, proofing along with a complete project management solution.	Free trial is available for 14 days and you can also schedule a demo for free.	https://www.proofhub.com/
StaffBase	Best mobile intranet for a team who can’t access the laptop all the time.	No free trial, but you can schedule a demo.	https://staffbase.com/en/
Slack	Best team messaging app to share ideas, files, thoughts and can also do private group discussions.	Get the basic plan for free.	https://slack.com/intl/en-in
Zoom	Best app for video conferencing while working from home.	Get the basic plan for free.	https://zoom.us/
Bonusly	Best online app to collaborate for employee recognition and rewards.	Free trial is available for 14 days and you can also schedule a demo.
Vantage Circle	Best app for pulse surveys and keeping employees’ health updated.	Free trial is available for 15 days.	https://www.vantagecircle.com/
Storyboard	Best app to keep employees engaged in a new way, that is through podcasts.	Use free up to 50 users.	https://new.trystoryboard.com/

Along with tools, how you strategize communication is also important. Know 6 Best Practices for Managers to Strategize Effective Internal Communication.

How to Choose Employee Communications Software?

Now we have an idea of what tools we can try, but are they really worth what you are looking for? How can you get that? You can simply evaluate those tools based on some questions. 

• How better do they connect with their team?

The foremost step that you need to find is how well the tool connects you with your team. To find this, you can evaluate the tool based on the following criteria:

Real-time collaboration: Find out if you are able to communicate with your employees in real-time or not. Real-time tools help you message or contact your team anytime for better work efficiency.
One-to-one conversation: To foster better two-way communication and to get seamless communication in times when you need to only talk to an employee, this feature can be really helpful.
All communication in one place: Find out if you are able to do group discussions, direct chat, and feedback on the same platform or not. This actually saves you time and also prevents information silos.

Streamline all your project communications at one place. Create project discussions topics to share ideas, files, and comments with your team in real-time with ProofHub.

• Are they able to work on the same page?

We evaluate the tool for its real-time feature but also find out: are you capable of being on the same page and at the same pace after using that tool?

The ultimate goal of using such tools is to enhance communication to better the workload and work efficiency. Transparency in work cultures builds better connections and increases productivity. So,

• Find out if you are able to keep track of projects and tasks in real time.
• Look if you can keep a bird’s eye view on all projects progress and contact your team members anytime to discuss roadblocks.
• Is the problem of top-bottom information silos resolved?

The third point you need to verify is whether your problem of top-to-bottom information silos is resolved with these tools or not.

If you need to give any important update on an event, an essential rule, or any other announcement, how will you do it? You can’t give that information amidst the task assignments or project group discussions. Then how? You need to find out which tool provides a separate room for such purposes. This actually can help you to better your understanding and relation with your employees.

Keep all your employees in a loop with ProofHub announcements and share necessary official updates, celebrate achievements together at the right time.

What are examples of communication software?

We are finding employee communication platforms but don’t know the basics of them. This question is just to resolve your query about how communication software actually works. Let’s understand these along with their examples.

There are basically three types of communication software:

• Contact Center as a Service

It involves omni channel messaging, workflow automation, and call center software.

• Unified Communications as a Service

This type involves team messaging, video conferencing, and VoIP phone service.

• Communications Platform as a Service

This type of service is used by developers to build apps. This majorly involves APIs and one-off PBX functionality.

Which is the best free communication software?

Free communication software is for those who just want to keep in touch with their team on a basic level. For those, a free version of Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Slack can be useful. However, if you want to keep track of every single task, maintain transparency within your work, and get a real-time collaboration tool, you can go for tools like ProofHub.

Getting started with ProofHub

Employee engagement and satisfaction are two important factors in completing tasks on time and fostering a productive work environment. It is impossible to keep in constant contact with employees and resolve their issues in real time without effective software. Also, when you start using one tool for communication and another for project management, you have a new problem to deal with.

Don’t be concerned! ProofHub is a complete project management and employee communication software that allows you to not only communicate with your team in real-time but also manage your workflow, discuss project-related ideas, share thoughts, notes, and files, and much more along the way. It solves your problem of having multiple apps and allows you to focus on your work while saving you time and improving your relationship with your employees.

It is safe to say that, of all the tools mentioned above, ProofHub is the best fit for you if you are looking for a tool that will help you keep your team in the loop, centralize your broken information flow, and improve internal employee communication.

Foster better communication with employees along with managing your whole workflow in real-time with ProofHub. Book a free demo today!

FAQs

How do big companies communicate internally?

Big organizations try different methods, including town halls, quarterly magazines, intranet platforms, or communication tools, to communicate internally with their employees.

What are the benefits of internal communications tools?

Improved flow of information, reduced information silos, better two-way communication, enhanced employee morale and performance, and reduced employee retention rates are some of the top benefits of using internal communications tools.

What types of internal communication are there?

There are majorly 6 types of internal communication—management to employee, employee-up, peer-to-peer, crisis, change, and culture—that you need to excel at for better teamwork.

What is the best way to communicate with employees?

The best way to communicate with employees is undoubtedly face-to-face, but this can affect your working schedule. So, communicating via a real-time employee communication tool can be very beneficial.