Examining Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for Workforce Engagement Management

Source: Gartner

The analyst house, Gartner Inc., has released their 2018 Magic Quadrant for Workforce Engagement Management. This vendor evaluation report aims to help application leaders make the right choice when it comes to adjusting the mindset and technologies to manage agents’ day-to-day roles. The Magic Quadrant report is vendor agnostic and Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service in its publication.

Gartner describes Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) solutions as expansions on the already mature Workforce Optimization (WFO) market by accommodating technologies that help drive employee engagement with the customer engagement center.

In layman’s terms, WEM can be defined as the science of creating the workplace conditions so that employees can give their best each day; committed to their organization’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organizational success, and enjoy an enhanced sense of well-being.

In this report, Gartner evaluates the strengths and weakness of 7 workforce engagement management vendors. The Magic Quadrant graphic plots the vendors based on completeness of their vision and ability to execute. From here, the vendors can end up in four different categories: Niche Players, Visionaries, Challengers, and Leaders.

Vendors include: NICE, Verint, Aspect, Calabrio, Genesys, OpenText and ZOOM.

Why WEM?

Employee engagement isn’t just about keeping employees focused on their day-to-day work activities. 21st-century engagement is a sense of organizational connection and relevance, it’s an understanding of purpose and the opportunity to learn and progress.

Gartner recommends that WEM solutions be considered strategically within customer engagement centers, as they elevate employee engagement as well as help improve operational performance. Organizations should assess the potential needs, expectations and aspirations of the next generation of employees within their centers – as the impact a motivated and engaged employee can have on operational performance and customer experience can be huge.

When implemented correctly, WEM solutions will cover the entire lifecycle of the employee (similar to talent management software); from recruitment to onboarding, coaching to e-learning, team communications to interactions, task assignments to performance targets.

In return, organizations will see a dramatic increase in the motivation and aspirations of the workforce, which will lead directly to improvements across virtually every area of organisational performance and functionality.

Market Overview

The Magic Quadrant report reveals WEM is a concept that most WFO vendors are only just coming to terms with. The majority of end-user organizations still view investment in these platforms as a means to drive operational performance.

The need to drive employee engagement will become an increasingly important factor and a key means of innovation and differentiation for the vendors in this market during the next few years. Gartner predicts analytics will be at the heart of much of this new functionality.

According to the report, adoption of WFO software has increased steadily during the past three years, with more than 2,000 purchases of integrated solutions. Although not yet mainstream, adoption of WEM as a service is accelerating rapidly.

Download the full  2018 Magic Quadrant for Workforce Engagement Management report here.

Looking for more? Download our Talent Management Buyer’s Guide for free to compare the top 24 Talent Management and HR Tech vendors head to head. The guide also includes 4 key capabilities to consider while selecting a new solution and 10 questions to ask yourself and the vendor before purchasing.

And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for all the latest in Work Tech!