If you're in HR, you've probably noticed a surprising trend: employees are no longer as engaged as they used to be. Gallup recently did a survey on this and found out that employee engagement fell so low in 2024 that only about 31% of US employees were engaged.

The message couldn't be clearer. Employees are no longer just coming to work because of a paycheck. They now want to feel connected, heard, and valued. Are these expectations being met? Not exactly. What's the fix? HR technology that puts the human first.

Businesses need HR platforms that are not just about payroll and performance, but also about the employee experience (EX). These are systems that are designed to actually improve how people feel about coming to work. And guess what? There are lots of them, and they work, too.

Below are the six platforms doing this really well, along with the features that actually make a difference.

Paylocity

Paylocity was founded in 1997 as an HR and payroll platform servicing midmarket customers. Today, it has grown into one of the top employee experience platforms, blending HR and payroll with features that help people feel connected.

The backbone of this is the Paylocity Community feature, which almost feels like a private social network. Companies use it for team updates, photos from the field, or quick check-ins. As of 2024, up to 95% of Paylocity clients have activated their community feature, which says a lot about how useful it is for engagement.

A big part of Paylocity’s Community is the Recognition and Rewards feature, which helps people feel appreciated in real time. Instead of waiting for annual reviews, managers drop a quick “thank you” or celebrate a small win. You might not think much of this, but according to studies, recognition at work can lead to increased productivity, better job satisfaction, and stronger engagement.

Paylocity also offers Employee Voice. This unique feature helps HR understand how people feel, spot patterns, and get real-time recommendations on what to do with the feedback.

And this matters more than many HR realize. According to HR.com’s State of Employee Productivity and Engagement 2025, 43% of organizations measure employee engagement once a year.

The problem with this approach is that most HR leaders are making decisions with outdated or incomplete insights. Paylocity’s Employee Voice solves that gap by giving you real-time sentiment data instead of once-a-year snapshots. The result? You know when something is wrong immediately and can act on it quickly.

These features (there are others) clearly show how Payocity has evolved from just handling HR and payroll tasks to building a culture of engagement in workplaces.

15Five

15Five was founded in 2011 with a very simple goal: improve employee engagement and performance through regular check-ins. Today, that goal has evolved into becoming an all-in-one performance management suite for HR leaders.

And the way it achieves this goal is classic: weekly check-ins, pulse surveys, OKRs, 1-on-1s, quarterly reviews, and, more importantly, accomplishments recognition. These features help managers and HR teams keep the conversation flowing. They also create a cyclical habit of success.

Another standout feature of the 15Five platform is how it integrates seamlessly with your existing HRIS. You can handle payroll and benefits with seamless access to the employee insights that matter.

Bottom line, 15Five isn’t just a performance tool anymore. It’s a full employee experience platform that helps teams stay aligned, seen, and motivated, exactly what companies need in 2026.

Workday

Workday has been a major player in HR tech since 2005, but in the last few years, it’s pushed hard into employee experience.

Workday Journeys is their standout feature. Journeys provide personalized guidance to employees at different career stages. So, instead of everyone getting the same onboarding or offboarding experience, the system adapts to each person’s path.

Assistant AI is another Workday feature that supports engagement. This is a conversational AI that helps employees find answers fast. Does someone need to check their pay? Request time off? Look up a benefit? Submit an expense? They can do all of that in seconds without jumping through menus or emailing HR.

Workday Peakon Employee Voice is another vital feature in Workday's employee experience–focused HR platform. This uses artificial intelligence to pick up on sentiment patterns in employee feedback so that HR can identify issues before they escalate.

For enterprises managing employees across multiple locations, this kind of visibility makes it easier to manage engagement.

Workhuman

Workhuman is a SaaS HR and EX platform designed with a single goal in mind: reduce employee turnover and increase satisfaction.

At the core of Workhuman's EX platform is Workhuman iQ, a unique tool that uses AI-powered "Human Intelligence" to analyze data and give HR insights related to employee engagement, skills, potential biases, and turnover risks.

Social Recognition is a key part of Workhuman's EX toolkit. This peer-to-peer recognition tool provides a platform for employees to congratulate one another via company-wide social feeds. HR can also award recognition points to deserving employees. Interestingly, these points can be redeemed at any of Workhuman’s global network of retailers.

Conversations is another feature of Workhuman's employee experience platform. It allows employees to ask for and receive feedback from anyone in the company at any time.

Workhuman also boasts a slew of other EX features, such as Life Events, to celebrate with employees who are celebrating, Service Milestones, to mark workplace achievements, and lots more.

If you want to build a culture where appreciation is part of the everyday routine, Workhuman is it.

WorkTango

WorkTango started back in 2012 and rebranded in 2022. Today, it’s a cloud-based employee experience platform that helps organizations improve employee engagement and performance.

WorkTango achieves this by giving HR teams the tools they need for recognition and rewards, continuous feedback, and performance check-ins.

One of WorkTango’s strongest features is its recognition system. This system supports peer-to-peer and manager recognition in real time. It also allows HR to automate service awards and milestones, so recognition stays consistent no matter how fast the company grows.

WorkTango's Surveys and Insights powers your continuous feedback system. You can conduct unlimited surveys across the entire employee lifecycle and get the insights you need to boost engagement and performance. More importantly, these surveys give everyone a sense of value as they know their voices are always heard.

The platform also supports simple 1-on-1s and performance check-ins, so managers don’t lose touch with how their team is doing. Gallup reports that 45% of employees who quit in the past few years did so because no one came to discuss job satisfaction, performance, or growth with them. Regular 1-on-1s can fix this.

If you love a culture of steady, open communication, WorkTango is worth a close look.

Leapsome

Leapsome is an AI-powered HR software, popularly known as a "people enablement" platform. It combines HRIS features (like time tracking, absences, payroll) with performance management, engagement, learning, and goal setting in one ecosystem, so you don't have to hop from one application to another.

One key feature of this people enablement platform is the Leapy AI. This AI tool helps employees perform a wide range of engagement-related functions, including drafting feedback, completing surveys, setting goals, and even answering questions from HR.

Leapsome also boasts learning and development features. This is a real nice-to-have, because today's employees value personalized learning paths.

Leapsome also helps HR leaders keep a tab on employee performance and engagement via OKRs, 360-degree feedback, 1-on-1 meeting tools, automated review cycles, surveys, and more.

Unlike many of the employee experience–focused HR platforms on the market today, Leapsome also comes bundled with Core HRIS features. Think employee data management, time tracking, payroll management, and more.

What makes Leapsome interesting is how interconnected everything is. You don't need a different tool to handle payroll and another one for employee sentiments. It's all in one place.

Wrapping Up

There you have it. 6 best employee experience–focused HR platforms that can improve employee engagement for you in 2026. But which one is right for you?

Unfortunately, there's no universal "best" choice. It all boils down to what you’re trying to achieve.

Not sure how to proceed? Take a good look at your company culture, your growth stage, and the feedback you’re currently getting from your employees. Then, review the platforms we’ve covered and see which one best aligns with those metrics.

It’s also a good idea to involve your HR team in this decision. They can help identify gaps you might miss.

Remember, though. The goal isn’t just to pick a software. The goal is to choose a platform that helps your people feel connected, valued, and supported every day.