Software as a benefit? Discover how good tech stack can make your employees happy

Employee satisfaction is a key factor in their productivity. Companies try to care for them by offering many non-wage benefits, such as the Multisport card or private medical care. However, it is worth remembering that good software has an equally significant impact on employee satisfaction. Check how good software can be an employee benefit.

Table of content:

• Employee satisfaction with business software
• What is “good software”
• Tools-benefits that will improve the quality of work and employee satisfaction
• Company messenger
• Attendance tracking software
• Leave management software
• Project management software
• Knowledge base
• File storage and sharing service
• Advantages of a good tech stack

The report State of Software Happiness showed that one in eight employees quit their jobs due to bad software.

Good software facilitates employees' daily work, making them perform faster and less tiring. It has a direct impact on the well-being of employees.

When deciding to implement a new tool in the company, you should pay attention not only to the possibilities of the solution but also to the experience of using it. Making the right decision can be of great importance for the future of the entire organization, especially if it is one of the tools that everyone in the company uses, such as a program for attendance tracking or [absence management]https://calamari.io/leave-management).

So if an organization wants to scale and develop, it should ensure that the tech stack used by employees facilitates their work and increases their satisfaction. Otherwise, the company runs the risk of losing specialists.

Employee satisfaction with business software

The G2 report showed that 95% of respondents said they would be happier if they had access to better tools at work. This result clearly shows the correlation between software and employee satisfaction.

When employees are satisfied, their efficiency increases and good quality tools additionally accelerate and facilitate work. 95% of respondents believe tools make them more productive.

To reach their full potential, employees need the right tools tailored to their needs. 62% of respondents admitted that they cannot reach their full potential due to the software they use.

56% of respondents stated that thanks to appropriate programs, they can do their work faster and have more private time - which positively affects their work-life balance.

However, employees notice a problem with the tools they use every day. In a study conducted by monday.com 86% of respondents admitted that they felt the need to change the existing software.

The same study showed that 64% of respondents planned to increase their software budget in 2023. In companies from the IT sector, *84%** of cases use more than 3 tools in their daily work.

Considering that the tech stack of developing organizations is constantly growing, decisions should be made carefully and consider how software can affect employees. Sometimes it is worth investing in a more expensive solution, knowing how many benefits it can bring.

What is "good software"

To select the right software, you must first answer the question of what a good program actually is. What is it characterized by, and how will it affect employees?

A good program is characterized by:

• easy operation and intuitiveness,
• efficiency,
• no errors preventing work,
• constant availability,
• transparent UI,
• integrations with the tech stack used in the organization,
• excellent customer support.

Which tools to avoid:

• difficult to use,
• complicated, with many options you don't need,
• full of errors,
• unreliable,
• slow,
• not offering integration,
• with unresponsive customer support.

When checking different solutions, it is also worth using popular software evaluation portals, such as Capterra or Trustpilot, where you can compare many products simultaneously.

These portals have an additional advantage: they allow you to publish verified opinions about the software from customers who have used it. Thanks to them, you can check how a given tool works in practice and what types of companies use them most often. On this basis, you can determine if a given solution suits your organization.

Good Software:

• responds to the problems of the organization,
• speed up work and improve its quality,
• will enable employees to use their full potential,
• will increase employee satisfaction thanks to its usability and reliability.

Tools-benefits that will improve the quality of work and employee satisfaction

Among the programs that will improve the employee experience the fastest, there are primarily those that everyone in the organization uses, and they do it daily. In addition, the tools used by specific departments or teams are also of great importance and are necessary for them to perform their duties properly.

Company messenger

The tool through which employees communicate with each other every day is of great importance for employee satisfaction. The program used for this purpose should therefore be reliable, easy to use, and should also have all the necessary functions for employees to exchange information conveniently.

In the case of the communicator, it is worth paying attention to the following:

• the ability to create separate channels,
• ability to set statuses,
• integrations with other tools,
• the ability to upload files,
• the ability to conduct voice chat,
• the ability to create secret channels,
• data security.

Communicator plays a significant role in asynchronous work and communication in organizations employing remote or hybrid employees. Therefore, it must be constantly available and secure to ensure no data leakage from the company.

The most popular business communicators include: Slack and Microsoft Teams, but on the market, there are also many other alternatives.

Attendance tracking software

Recording working time is the employer's duty, and failure to comply may result in penalties. That is why every company should have a tool to document hours worked. Thanks to such a program, employees spend much less time signing up for attendance lists and filling out a report on the day because they can do everything conveniently using the application.

This solution also works perfectly in companies employing remote employees who do not have the opportunity to sign on the lists physically. It is also facilitation for the HR department, whose duty is to create working time reports.

The tool facilitates and accelerates the work of HR specialists, allowing them to focus on acquiring new talents. Other employees also save time and are less distracted, so they work more efficiently.

What a timesheet program should have:

• automatic entry and exit time recorder,
• the ability to record breaks,
• recording work on projects,
• adding a description of the working day,
• the ability to edit the working day,
• convenient methods of working time registration (web, mobile app),
• integrations with popular business software,
• excellent support.

Do you want reliable time and attendance software? Try Calamari for free!

Leave management software

Software for requesting and managing leave requests is another tool all employees use, so it should be very efficient and, above all, intuitive and easy to use. It is important that employees do not take a long time to understand how it works.

Thanks to the automation of the leave request management process, employees can conveniently request absence with a few clicks in the system, thanks to which they save time. They also do not have to contact the HR department because in the program they can see how much and what kind of leave they have left to use.

Electronic leave requests are also processed faster, and information about their acceptance appears on the employee's account or in the form of notifications on the selected channel, thanks to which the employee receives information faster and is less stressed.

Thanks to the absence calendar, everyone knows when their co-workers are unavailable, allowing them to better plan their working hours and know when to request an absence.

The leave management program should include the ability to:

• creating different types of leaves tailored to the needs of the organization,
• requests for absence,
• check your holiday limits,
• add files and provide the reason for absence,
• choose your deputy,
• creating multi-stage acceptance processes,
• the ability to manage absences using the web and mobile applications,
• integration with popular business software,
• receiving prompt support.

You can find these and many more useful options in Calamari! Check it out and start your 14-day free trial today

Project management software

Satisfied employees are those who know what to do, and their work is not accompanied by constant chaos. To control many different tasks for different people within different projects, you need a tool that will help ensure order and good organization of work.

Project management, both in IT and in other departments, is demanding and absorbing for managers. The introduction of a tool that will allow them to manage their teams' tasks over time and control the progress of their performance facilitates their work, allows them to understand better the capabilities of the entire team and individual people, and consequently adjust activities and time for their implementation to use employees' time effectively.

The teams themselves also benefit greatly from this solution. They are better aware of the progress of their teammates, find it easier to collaborate on one project and plan their work day based on the progress of others' work and their availability.

Project management tools have their most important native functions, but they often add new functionalities not strictly related to their primary purpose, which, although they seem attractive, are often underdeveloped. Therefore, before choosing such a tool, it is worth comparing tools with each other and reading reviews about them.

For project management software to become a benefit for employees and increase their work comfort, it should:

• be easy to use,
• be intuitive,
• ensure good communication,
• enable adding people responsible for tasks,
• make it possible to specify the project stage of a given task,
• be transparent,
• be flexible in configuration,
• enable the automation of repetitive processes,
• have excellent support.

The most popular project management tools include Trello, Jira or Basecamp.

Knowledge base

Each company and department has its own rules of operation, which it is good to write down so that employees can return to them when they have doubts about how to behave. However, rules are not everything.

Over the years of work, the organization collects a lot of information about customers, how the market works, how tools are used, how tasks are performed, and useful materials that help deepen knowledge. All this information should be collected somewhere to provide employees with easy access to it.

Thanks to this, all relevant information and instructions are in one organized place, thanks to which employees become independent, while at the same time saving time looking for the information they need in different places or asking colleagues questions.

What a good knowledge base should contain:

• the ability to create different types of files (text, tables, graphics, kanban boards, etc.),
• the ability to create folders for files and limit access to them,
• the ability to grant the right to edit documents to selected people,
• notifications about changes made to documents,
• possibility of group work on one document,
• the ability to tag people and comment on documents,
• intuitive interface and simple operation.

The knowledge base can be organized in different places. You can create a dedicated solution or use popular tools used for this purpose, such as Notion or Slite.

File storage and sharing service

Company files often circulate between departments, so to make it easier for employees to transfer them safely, it is good to take care of a dedicated space where various types of files can be stored and shared.

This way all files are in one place and everyone can easily find what they need. This is especially useful for cooperation between departments - accelerates the communication process and project implementation.

Features that good file storage and sharing service has:

• high standard of security,
• the ability to store files of various types of extensions,
• the ability to create catalogues and limit their visibility,
• the ability to restrict access to folders,
• the ability to give different rights to folders (administrator, normal user),
• fast transfer data transfer.

Advantages of a good tech stack

The entire company tech stack is also an employee benefit. If the selected tools integrate well with each other, they ensure good flow of information in the organization. Thanks to this, employees do not waste time looking for information in different places and can focus better on their duties.

When everything is organized correctly, employees do not stress about understatements, lack of information or misunderstandings because they occur very rarely. If necessary, you can verify the moment of conflict and eliminate it for the future. All this gives a sense of calm that promotes deep focus, during which we work most effectively and tire less.

Employees who don't get annoyed with ill-fitting or faulty software are more likely to come to work and leave in a better mood, which positively affects their work and personal lives.

Summary

Employee benefits are more than fruit Thursdays and integration meetings. It is also software that improves work and makes it more comfortable. Satisfied employees become more productive and are more likely to stay with a company that offers them tools that enable them to reach their full potential.

If you want to ensure the satisfaction of your employees, choose Calamari, try them for 14 days for free today and check how positively it will affect your mood and the efficiency of your employees.