Employee experience is moving up the technology agenda, and the numbers are hard to ignore.
Techtelligence data shows that interest in benefits administration rises by roughly 15 to 20 percent across the last month. Meanwhile, research into employee incentives has spiked by about a third.
The business intelligence division also found that interest in workplace engagement tech and employee recognition tools remains consistently high in volume week after week.
This is not a short-lived spike. It is sustained buying behavior. And crucially, this research is happening alongside core unified communications categories.
Rob Scott, Publisher of Techtelligence, highlighted:
“What surprised us wasn’t just the volume. It was the company.”
“Benefits management and employee recognition tools are being researched in the same breath as collaboration platforms and communications infrastructure. That tells you something fundamental is changing.”
Read More From Techtelligence:
Employee Experience Is Now Part of the UC Conversation
When employee experience shows up in the same research cycles as messaging and meetings platforms, it signals convergence.
These tools are different from your traditional UC tools as they focus more on how employees interact with work. This includes workplace engagement, feedback, benefits, communication, and wellbeing.
Despite their differences, organizations are no longer viewing communication and engagement as separate investments.
They are both being seen as delivering genuine ROI as part of an integrated stack.
Industry research supports this direction. A core strategy to boost enterprise performance is addressing “culture atrophy” in the workplace, according to Gartner ‘s advice for HR leaders in 2026.
Workplace Engagement Tech Is Becoming Infrastructure
Workplace engagement tech increasingly touches core enterprise systems. Connecting to identity providers – it feeds data into analytics dashboards. It integrates directly with collaboration hubs that employees use every day.
Rob explains:
“When engagement tech starts touching identity, analytics, and workflow, it stops being a bolt-on afterthought. It becomes part of the infrastructure”
However, it’s important to remember that this deep integration of engagement tools comes with its own considerations. For example:
- Identity and access management across HR and UC systems
- Data security and compliance obligations
- API depth and integration maturity
- Reporting alignment between engagement and productivity metrics
The implication for buyers is practical. Investing in workplace engagement tech can drive measurable workforce impact, but only if integration and governance are designed in from the outset.
Aligning HR With the IT Team For the Hybrid Workplace
One reason for the rising interest in employee recognition tools is the push for better workplace experiences across distributed locations. Rob says:
“Recognition isn’t a feel good extra anymore. It’s a core part of how teams coordinate and stay motivated in hybrid environments”
Among hybrid or fully remote teams, recognition tools in the UC stack can reinforce visibility and culture. They also generate data that leaders increasingly want to analyse alongside productivity and retention metrics.
For IT teams, this means another layer of enterprise tech that they must operationalize. The key questions they’ll need to answer are:
- Where is recognition data stored and who governs it?
- How tightly does the employee recognition tool integrate with unified communications analytics?
- Can the platform scale across regions and business units?
- What is the exit strategy if collaboration vendors change?
When communication and workplace engagement tech are assessed together, governance and budget conversations shift. Rob warns:
“If IT ignores this shift, they’ll inherit it later”
“And it’s much harder to retrofit governance onto engagement tech than to design it in from the start.”
This reinforces the need for a diverse buying committee, where IT and HR should collaborate to find an employee experience tool that won’t become shelfware.
Employee Experience as a Modernization Bundle
The broader pattern suggests bundling. Organizations are not issuing isolated RFPs for employee experience and separate ones for unified communications. Research timelines overlap. Evaluation cycles align. Stakeholders intersect. Rob summarizes:
“This isn’t HR shopping in isolation”
“It’s employee experience modernization. Communication, engagement, retention, all wrapped into one strategic conversation.”
For CIOs and digital workplace leaders, the opportunity is to engage early and shape the architecture before complexity multiplies.
Unified communications once focused on connecting people. Now it increasingly shapes how people experience work itself.
To find more data-informed insights from Techtelligence, check out its LinkedIn page, where it will be sharing more market intelligence.
