Starting a business is hard work, from getting your product right to finding the right investors--Bootstrapping can be tough-- but then again not everyone gets along with their VCs. There is so much to do but the part that often gets overlooked is managing employees, especially in the earliest of days to make sure everyone is happy and performing. In all the craziest of building a company, employees can get overlooked.

Employees are everything to any business and are actually the most valuable asset. If you haven't considered employees as the first true investors in a company look again, many businesses can survive catastrophic snafus like a late tax bill or major capital detriments, but if there is no one manning the ship per se nothing is survivable.

Assuming you survive the hurdles of small businesses growing up, got a grip on your investors relations and know what your customers want, here are five tools to help ensure your employees are at their happiest.

1. Employee Feedback and "Vibes"

One way to be sure if employees are happy is to ask them! Old fashioned surveys simply don't cut it anymore but several programs offer ways to get to the nitty gritty about how employees feel. There's several apps out there including one that can not only get the information about how employees feel but provide metrics on how much this could be costing your organization. An interesting blend of "vibes" and ROI.

2. Employee Goals and Metrics

Happiness has often been claimed to be usefulness and having purpose. Giving employees ways to engage and track their own goals is another way to provide purpose and power. Badgeville and Betterworks are two programs designed to allow employees visibility and control over their goals while employers can track progress as well.

3. Employee Advocacy

Seemingly a new topic, advocacy can be seen as one of the most American ideals out there, to advocate. One software program used for brand management across various social channels, Dynamic Signal, is a communication and employee advocacy platform, allowing enterprise organizations to inform and engage employees with timely, relevant content across channels and devices. Dynamic Signal can help measure what the "employee voice" has to say while also managing the conversation.

4. Employee Benefits

Seemingly the battle of an employer is to offer perks but even then there reaches another issue which is allowing employees to understand and manage them. Some programs like Justworks and Gusto handle payroll, compensation and insurance while others like Perkhub manage additional perks and services.

5. App to Find Apps for Your Company

In case there's other opportunities that arise with growing companies and growing teams, the odds are that there is an "app for that" which is an app to help you find apps called Siftery. Siftery is the ProductHunt of apps for companies looking for the right solution-fit.

While technology continues to change, the art of keeping employees happy and satisfied is about as old as it gets. These players will surely make a complicated job more simple.