99%
adoption
97%
active every month
8 years
on Blink, since 2018
- Industry: IT and network services
- Location: London, United Kingdom
- Size: ~176 people
- On Blink since: 2018
- Interviewed: Pelin Komur, Business Administrator and Abigail Covill, Operations and HR Manager
One team, across every client site
Opticore IT designs and runs networks, connectivity, cloud, and automation for clients across the UK. Much of the team is out on client sites or working hybrid, rarely all under one roof. Blink has been the company's home base since 2018, woven into how the business runs from a new starter's first day, and it's the only internal comms tool Opticore IT has ever used. Today almost everyone is on it, chat is the part they reach for most, and the feed is where the company still feels like one team.
The challenge
When your engineers spend their days on client sites, often logged into a client's own email and systems, it's easy for them to feel cut off from the company they actually work for. Add hybrid working, and then the pandemic on top of that, and keeping everyone feeling like one team became the whole challenge.
"We have quite a few engineers working on different client sites, and it's always been that way. We needed a tool that connects everyone. Add hybrid working to that, and especially during COVID when everyone was away, we needed something that keeps everyone as one unit."
— Abigail Covill, Operations and HR Manager
"The engineers have a client-site email and a client-site login, so they're not connected day to day with our teams and our emails. Blink gives them one way to stay in contact with OpticoreIT specifically."
The results
99% adoption, and 97% active every month. It starts on day one and never lets up.
"I onboard any new starter and the first thing I say is Blink, Blink, Blink. Check it every single day, there's always something new. I actively try to put something new into the feed every day."
Chat, the everyday backbone. Chat is Opticore IT's most-used part of Blink, with 94% of the team messaging on it every month. For an engineer logged into a client's systems all day, it's the quickest line back to their own colleagues.
Email, replaced for the moments that matter. The big, important messages that used to sit in an inbox now live in one place everyone actually checks.
"We've even stopped emailing as much. The big, important stuff all goes on Blink. It's not Blink for fun and email for formal, it's all going through Blink."
Recognition at the heart of it. With a team that rarely shares an office, celebrating people is how Opticore IT stays one unit.
"The recognition piece is massive, being able to share feed posts that everyone can see of how well someone's doing on a client. We use it for social recognition too. If someone gets married, we put up a nice post to say congratulations. It's a lovely way to keep us joined as one team when we don't all see each other every day."
Eight years on, Blink isn't a tool Opticore IT rolled out. It's simply how the company works.
