How St.Amant is building connection across frontline teams

Meet St.Amant

St.Amant is a Manitoba-based non-profit that has been serving their local community since 1959. Their mission is to support individuals with developmental disabilities, autism, and acquired brain injuries — as well as their families.

With more than 2,000 staff working across the province, the organization’s frontline teams form the heart of its services. These include direct support professionals, teachers, nurses, behavioural specialists, autism tutors, and multi-disciplinary therapists. Their work ranges from helping individuals communicate through assistive technology to providing in-home support or guiding children through new learning skills.

For these teams — spread across programs, shifts, and worksites — connection is critical. St.Amant needed a way to ensure every employee felt informed, valued, and engaged.

The challenge: Replacing their outdated, disconnected intranet

A few years ago, a cyberattack exposed the limitations of St.Amant’s internal communication systems. If email went down, leaders realized they had no reliable way to reach every staff member.

In addition to that immediate pain point, the existing intranet was beginning to show its age. It was functional but uninspiring — a place to simply read news stories, download pay stubs, sign up for training, or look up policies. Interaction was limited, discoverability was poor, and the  content creation was mainly limited to the communications team. For many employees, the intranet was a box to check when they needed something rather than a community to be part of.

When St.Amant invited staff to dream big about what they wanted from a new platform, the wish list was long:

• Mobile access
• The ability for anyone to share photos and updates
• Chat features to replace informal WhatsApp groups
• Better onboarding integration
• Accessibility and PHIA compliance
• A one-stop shop for resources, forms, and updates

It was clear that the organization needed a modern, mobile-first solution that could connect everyone, everywhere.

Why Blink: Familiar, secure, and built for frontline

After comparing several platforms, Blink stood out for its familiar social media-style interface, robust security and compliance features, and integration with active directory for seamless staff management.

Key decision factors included:

• Ease of use: Staff at all levels could pick it up without a steep learning curve
• Mobile-first design: Perfect for frontline teams who rarely check email
• Engagement tools: Feeds, polls, surveys, and mandatory reads supported two-way communication
• Customer support: Blink’s team provided hands-on guidance, working closely with IT and leadership throughout the evaluation

While cost is always a consideration for a non-profit, leadership approved the investment because it aligned with St.Amant’s strategic goal of building a comprehensive, effective internal communication process. Plus, Blink’s non-profit program — Blink for Everyone — ensures the organizations who take care of our communities can invest in an internal communications tool for low or no dollars.

Unlocked: Stronger culture, connection, and internal champions

A model rollout

St.Amant’s Blink implementation is now held up internally as a gold standard for change management. With support from one of Blink’s dedicated implementation manager, the organization:

• Recruited 140+ Blink champions across departments to advocate and troubleshoot locally
• Ran focus groups and early access testing to refine the rollout
• Hosted an in-person launch event complete with swag, snacks, and one-on-one support
• Ensured ongoing adoption through executive sponsorship and clear communication

The results speak for themselves:

• 97% activation among more than 2,000 registered users
• 86% monthly active users across a highly dispersed, frontline-heavy workforce

A cultural shift

Blink quickly became more than a tool — it became part of daily culture. Now, staff regularly say things like, “Just post it on Blink.”

Some highlights:

• More celebrations, shout-outs, and staff recognition in the feed, helping build community
• Secure chat has replaced informal texting, keeping comms compliant and efficient
• Organizational updates, town hall announcements, and policy rollouts drive higher attendance and awareness than before
• Employee Resource Groups, committees, and even fun spaces like an NHL playoffs community now thrive within Blink

Leadership visibility has also grown. The CEO’s monthly message and director newsletters give staff consistent, transparent updates that reinforce strategic priorities.

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Looking ahead: Building on momentum

St.Amant isn’t slowing down. Next steps include experimenting with Blink Stories and Journeys, integrating more video content, and launching a staff podcast to showcase voices from across the organization.

Features like Events will help surface important activities in a workplace where information often gets lost in the shuffle. And with ongoing analytics from BlinkIQ, the Communications team will keep fine-tuning how they connect staff to each other and the mission.

Blink has helped to transform St.Amant’s intranet into a bustling digital home designed for connection and culture.

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“Having a workforce connected to information and to each other has such an important impact on workplace culture. If you’re exploring tools, look closely at how accessible they are to frontline staff and how intuitive they feel. For us, Blink has been a practical, effective solution — and the results speak for themselves.”
_{Marcel Fisette - Communications Manager at St.Amant}