Workday’s purchase of Peakon in 2021 has enabled the addition of a powerful tool to their HCM platform. The tool provides a way to gather and digest employee sentiment, which has been shown to increase engagement and boost productivity in the workplace.

However, many users have found the platform unwieldy, its interface unintuitive, and the tool’s learning curve steep. For these reasons they’re looking for Workday alternatives to better meet their needs.

Such common problems with the Workday HCM software have spread to Peakon Employee Voice. The platform isn’t easy to navigate, and packing the interface with so much functionality has made it hard to get your head around. The complexity of the tool makes it hard to pull any actionable data.

For something that is supposed to make life and team management easier, it seems to be having the opposite effect.

So, here we’ll give you an overview of some Peakon alternatives, including two options that come as part of larger Workday HCM alternatives.

Workday Peakon Employee Voice alternatives

• Friday Pulse
• Officevibe
• Culture Amp
• Tiny Pulse
• Lattice
• Oracle: My Experience
• Paycor: Employee Experience

#1: Friday Pulse - Best overall

Friday Pulse is an employee engagement platform based on the work of award-winning statistician and happiness expert Nic Marks.

Designed for progressive companies who want to improve company culture, the platform uses proprietary research to deliver increased personal well-being and productivity, lower staff turnover, and enable better communication within teams. All this makes it stand out amongst Workday alternatives.

Based on short weekly check-ins and quarterly deep dives, you can ask your employees strategic questions to determine their Happiness KPI(™). Actionable reports help managers identify roadblocks, measure progress, and make improvements.

Friday Pulse features

• Surveys: weekly flows give managers real-time information on how their teams are doing, enabling them to take quick action on any issues. While quarterly surveys ask 15 psychometric questions to gather deeper information.
• Team-building opportunities: weekly questions to help leaders facilitate productive team meetings.
• Happiness KPI ™ : A benchmark measurement for members of your team based on proprietary research.
• Expert Support: Clients on the Expert plan can access their own dedicated Client Success Coach to help them maximise their data by taking focused action
• Impact Report: Based on a proprietary methodology, algorithms measure your survey responses and identify how teams can make the most progress in employee experience.

Measure against a consistent outcome

Rather than trying to gather and measure as many metrics as possible, Friday Pulse focuses on the consistent and meaningful outcome of whether your team is having a good or a bad week. Having this set point gives you a guide against which to compare and improve consistently.

Ask meaningful questions

Combining Nic’s extensive understanding of mental health and psychology with his statistical expertise, Friday Pulse is able to ask questions that mean something to your employees and your organisation. These repeated questions are statistically robust and human-centered, providing you with invaluable insight into the state of your team’s well-being.

Unlike other Peakon alternatives, Friday Pulse only measures what you can take specific action on, helping you keep your finger on the pulse of your organisation rather than making you drown in pages of pointless data.

Take focused action

All the information in the world is useless if you can’t act on it. And that’s something that sets Friday Pulse apart from other employee engagement platforms. It’s also a significant reason why we think it’s an impressive alternative to Workday and Peakon Employee Voice.

Friday Pulse doesn’t just show you what’s not working in your organisation; it makes suggestions on how you can fix it.

Algorithms analyse the data from your weekly and quarterly surveys, pinpointing the top 3 areas of culture you can take action on over the quarter to have the biggest impact on key ROI areas (productivity, lower stress, and better creativity).

Science-backed methodology

Friday Pulse’s secret sauce is its dynamic measurement rhythm, which distinguishes it from other feedback tools. This approach combines quick check-ins and real-time feedback with a deeper dive into incremental action. By providing a regular pulse check, this rhythm enables teams to quickly identify areas for improvement and take timely action. This methodology ensures that any issues are addressed early on, before they escalate and hinder progress. Through its powerful methodology, the Friday Pulse empowers teams to achieve success by making continuous improvement a part of their routine.

Friday Pulse pricing

Friday Pulse has three pricing levels to meet the needs of any size organisation.

For smaller teams of 3-11 people, the Free plan provides all you need to begin building a Happiness culture in your organisation. You get access to weekly and quarterly surveys, team-building tools, and reports to monitor happiness trends and cultural progress.

If you’re operating multiple teams, and need more segmentation possibilities, then the Essential plan is designed to suit you. Priced at $7, £5.50, or $6 per user per month. Heatmaps will help you visualise progress across your organisation, and you can integrate the tool with Slack or MS Teams to encourage engagement.

The Expert plan is perfect for organisations with over 100 people. Here you’ll gain access to your own dedicated Client Success Manager, as well as the opportunity to create custom surveys. Pricing is provided on request.

#2: Officevibe

Officevibe by GSoft aims to help dispersed workforces communicate their needs to managers easily. Users can access and send out pre-built surveys, with anonymous responses turned into reports.

Officevibe features

• Anonymous surveys: Collect real-time information from your team members wherever they are.
• One-on-one tools: prep for your one-on-one easily by tracking your goals and next steps.
• Reporting functions: Monitor trends in employee performance and well-being over time.
• Simple UX: Easy-to-answer surveys increase engagement.
• Diversify topics: Ask the questions you need answers to, so you can monitor the impact of organisational change.

Officevibe Pricing

With three pricing plans, smaller teams can enjoy the basic capabilities for free. Organisations with a larger headcount can choose from the Essential plan at $3.50 per person, per month, or the Pro plan at $5 per person per month. The latter offers more personalised support, including onboarding.

Officevibe is a solid cheaper option for smaller teams.

The range of surveys available makes it a good choice for fast-growing businesses that need to monitor a high speed of organisational change.

#3: Culture Amp

An employee engagement and project management platform, Culture Amp does offer the well-being functionalities that Officevibe lacks. When compared to other Workday alternatives, this platform also delivers the interesting function of gathering feedback on an individual from multiple sources.

Culture Amp features

• Turnover predictions: Look ahead in your business and plan accordingly.
• A range of ready-to-use surveys: Ask questions about employee experience and employee effectiveness.
• Multi-source feedback: Get feedback from managers, peers, and via self-reflection
• Employee development: Personalised development plans help your team members keep track of their goals.

Combining project management with employee engagement offers useful insights into your organisation’s culture and performance without being as overwhelming as some other alternatives to Workday software. Culture Amp’s global support team also makes it a good choice if you’re based outside of US time zones.

But if your team is smaller than 25 people, you may find it too complex for your needs. Also, a lack of reporting options has frustrated many users. And by not measuring weekly and quarterly experiences, opportunities for positive change are missed.

Culture Amp pricing

Culture Amp has three pricing levels, although actual pricing is only available on request. Self-Starter is aimed at organisations of 25-200 people, Standard is designed for organisations of between 201-999 employees, and Enterprise serves those with 1000+ employees.

Alternative #4: Tiny Pulse

Another Peakon alternative, Tiny Pulse by Limeade is an employee survey tool that helps organisations gather feedback and act on the results. The platform uses quick surveys, employee recognition programs, and individual conversations.

The anonymous nature of the surveys enables organisations to gain valuable and honest insights into their employee well-being on a consistent basis. And the rewards program is popular with users.

Tiny Pulse features

• Anonymous Surveys: Gather honest feedback from your employees on their well-being.
• Recognition and Rewards: Incentivise employees by rewarding productivity and achievement with gift cards, and peer celebrations.
• Coach one-on-one support: Help your managers build agendas, track goals, and watch individual performance improve.
• Integration options: Link with Slack, email, and MS Teams so your employees can give feedback on the tools they use.

Tiny Pulse pricing

Tiny Pulse pricing is only available on request.

#5: Oracle: My Experience

Those looking for an alternative to Workday might consider a whole HCM platform with an employee experience capability. Oracle’s My Experience tool is designed to streamline communications, increase productivity, and improve employee retention.

My Experience adds six new modules to the Oracle platform, each addressing a different element of employee experience.

Oracle ME features

• Touchpoints: A listening solution that tracks employee well-being. HCM Communicate: Enables the design and delivery of communications and also tracks its success.
• Connections: An interactive workforce directory.
• HR Help Desk and Digital Assistant: Designed to answer employee questions quickly and effectively.

Buying into an HCM platform involves a large investment, so this option would best suit organisations of over 500 employees.

Oracle ME pricing

A basic Oracle HCM subscription starts at $13 per user per month, with My Experience available to add on at an additional price.

#3: Paycor: Employee Experience

Another whole HCM platform with an integrated employee engagement tool is Paycor. Their Employee Experience uses pulse surveys to monitor employee satisfaction and well-being. And their analysis tools help you create agile action plans to fix any issues.

It’s worth noting that, like Workday, the size of the HCM platform makes it challenging to navigate. Users have also reported that it is difficult to find answers to support questions within Paycor’s online knowledge base. Less comprehensive Workday alternatives may result in more actionable data.

Paycore features

• Executive Insights: Share results, feedback, and analysis with your leadership teams.
• Response Analysis: Uncover concerns and variances in responses with NLP.
• Pulse Surveys: Regularly give employees the opportunity to provide feedback and voice concerns.
• Customisable filters: Filter your survey results by demographics and location to create focused action plans.

Paycore pricing

Employee Experience is only available in Paycor’s HCM plan. This is priced at $199 per month, plus $12 per employee per month.

What is the best Workday alternative?

As with many tools, the best alternative to Workday Peakon Employee Voice depends on the size of your organisation and the capabilities you’re looking for.

Larger organisations may benefit from looking at a Workday HCM alternative that includes the capability to monitor employee engagement, such as Paycor or Oracle. Whereas smaller companies may find a whole HCM over complicated and prefer Friday Pulse’s simple interface.

To help you measure the tools we’ve featured against your business needs we’ve put together this comprehensive table, scoring each tool against specific criteria.

Feature	Workday	Friday Pulse	Officevibe	Culture Amp	Tiny Pulse	Oracle ME	Paycor EE
Pricing	3.5	4.3	3.7	3.5	4.0	3.7	4.2
UI/UX	3.5	4.5	4.2	3.5	4.2	3.7	4.3
Customer Support	4.2	4.3	3.0	4.0	3.8	3.6	4.3
Product Features	4.6	4.2	3.7	4.6	4.6	3.9	4.1
Final Score	3.9	4.3	3.6	3.9	4.1	3.7	4.2

Starting with Friday Pulse

While Workday is a popular platform, and Peakon Employee Voice is a useful addition to their HCM, its clunky interface and overcomplicated dashboard frustrate many users. While collecting lots of information may seem desirable, we prefer quality over quantity.

For scientifically backed questions, actionable data, and an intuitive interface, we think Friday Pulse is the best option for organisations actually looking to make positive changes in employee well-being and team performance.

If you’re looking to harness the power of psychological insight and statistically robust reporting, then Friday Pulse is the employee engagement tool for you.

Its price point also makes it an affordable option for any size organisation.

To find out how Friday Pulse could help you measure, analyse, and act upon employee well-being, sign up for a free demo today.