A new dawn for digital employee experience

Jessica is a customer assistant in a retail store. She started the job six months ago, enjoys supporting customers, and has been consistently meeting her monthly targets.

But Jessica doesn’t get acknowledgment from her manager or other staff members. Not just that. The store recently hired another person in the exact same role as Jessica and — according to the grapevine — at a higher salary than her.

Jessica’s co-worker, Marco, has been working at the store for a couple of years. He knows the job like the back of his hand and is feeling bored and underutilized. But, as far as he knows, the organization doesn’t have progression or training pathways suited to him. So he’s started looking for a job elsewhere. 

Jessica and Marco came into the organization with high levels of morale — and they’ve been putting in the work. But they aren’t getting what they need from their employer. So their morale dips. Customer service and productivity suffer. Employee turnover ticks upward. 

This makes it harder for the organization to achieve its goals. And it’s why every company should be working to build and sustain employee morale.

Here, we look at how to boost employee morale and motivation in 2025.

What is employee morale and why is it important?

Employee morale is how employees feel about their jobs and work environment. It’s linked to employee engagement, job satisfaction, and staff retention.

What does low team morale look like?

In a workplace with low morale, employees do the bare minimum to ensure their paycheck while keeping one eye firmly on the job boards.

And unfortunately for employers, low morale is contagious. If one demoralized employee fails to pull their weight — or badmouths leadership — they hurt the morale of co-workers, making it increasingly difficult for an employer to reset the tone.

What does high team morale look like?

In contrast, in a workplace with high morale, employees are loyal, happy, and engaged in their work. They’re productive and more likely to go above and beyond their prescribed duties. These workers also tend to pitch in during times of crisis.

Employees with high morale are happy with the employee experience at their organization — and they help to set the mood. They create a wave of positivity that inspires improved morale and performance among their peers.

What’s the situation in 2025?

When we look at the current state of employee morale, the news isn’t great.

According to recent Glassdoor research, almost 2 in 3 employees feel stuck in their current roles. They might not be heading for the door just yet, but these “quiet quitters” are feeling dissatisfied and unmotivated — and they’re having a negative impact on the morale of co-workers.

It seems there’s never been a better time to boost staff morale in the workplace. Let’s find out some strategies you can use at your organization.

How to boost employee morale in 2025

Whether morale has been slowly declining or has taken a hit due to workplace changes, here are some employee morale boosters to use in your organization.  

Master change management

In today’s workplace, change can feel like the only constant. But that doesn’t mean employees are used to it. If change isn’t managed and communicated sensitively, it can damage workplace culture and employee morale.

For example, imagine you’ve just announced a hiring freeze. Existing workers may assume that a downsizing initiative is on the way and start worrying that their jobs are at risk. Workforce morale suffers.

You can avoid this dip in morale by clearly communicating with employees. It could be that the hiring freeze is helping to ensure the safety of existing roles. Or that budgets are being diverted to training and development.

When implementing change, consider what employees need to know, demonstrate empathy, and follow change communication best practices to give employees the information and assurances they need.

Challenge your team

When a job is too easy, employees become bored. But a job that is too difficult causes problems, too. Employees can become discouraged.

To build staff morale, you need to strike a balance. Give employees the tools, training, and support they need to fulfill their roles. And challenge them with new tasks that push at their limits, so they develop new skills and grow their confidence.

Recognize hard work

Imagine you put a ton of effort into a project. Or you go out of your way to give a co-worker the support they need. Or you ace a presentation you’d been feeling really nervous about.

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You probably (deservedly) feel really proud of yourself. But what if your actions don’t prompt any praise from leaders, managers, or peers? You may end up feeling deflated and demoralized.

Employees who don’t feel recognized for their hard work, are two times more likely to say they’ll quit within the next year. But those who receive regular, authentic, and meaningful recognition are more likely to bring their A-game.

So, to raise employee morale, bring recognition into the mix. Take a look at these employee appreciation ideas for inspiration.

Invest in training and development

Progression is a key driver of employee engagement. You can raise engagement and morale by helping employees to progress in their roles and careers.

When employees get the training they need — through thorough onboarding, ongoing professional development, mentoring, and coaching — they feel more confident and less stressed. They feel valued by the organization and their performance improves.

Lay out career progression opportunities at your organization and there’s even more incentive for employees to do their best. When they can see a future with your company, they become more committed and less likely to look for a job elsewhere.

Create a sense of community

A positive and connected workplace culture is an effective employee morale booster. 83% of employees want their workplace to provide a sense of community, with more than a third willing to trade a bigger pay packet for stronger friendships and social enrichment at work.

When thinking about workplace connection, it’s worth spending a little extra time thinking about remote and frontline employees. These workers can be hard-to-reach and often end up feeling isolated from company culture.

So how do you create a sense of community for workers who don’t spend a lot of time together IRL? An employee app is an increasingly popular solution.

An app acts as a digital water cooler. With an engaging news feed and instant messaging tools, it gives employees access to conversation and company culture via their smartphones. You can also encourage workers to find their tribe, connecting with like-minded colleagues via digital Communities.

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Give health and wellbeing a boost

Show concern for employee health and wellbeing and you’re more likely to achieve high levels of morale. Workers see that you care about them as people — not just as employees — which makes them feel valued.

Here are a few ideas for how to support employee health and wellbeing:

• Create a volunteering program, so it’s easy for employees to give back to the local community
• Encourage employees to take a full lunch break and use their full PTO allowance
• Offer flexible work options and shift swap tools to support employee work-life balance
• Keep fit with exercise challenges and fitness subscriptions
• Talk openly about mental health and ensure employees know who to turn to if they need to talk

Initiatives like these help prevent stress and burnout while improving employee motivation and productivity.

Communicate, communicate, communicate

Having and communicating an inspiring vision is crucial for employee morale. In many organizations, workers don’t know the “why” behind business objectives. Nor are they aware of how their own work ties in with those goals.

Poor communication leads to increased stress, lower productivity, and strained relationships. It also harms the trust employees have in their leaders. Hardly a recipe for workplace motivation.

To keep employees motivated and on the same page, open communication is essential. And with the right internal communication tools, you can share consistent and engaging messages with all employees.

You can keep employees up to date with company updates via a multi-media news feed. You can store essential documents relating to policies and mission in an easy-access content hub. Across all internal communication channels you can amplify company culture and the values that guide it.  

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Improve internal communication and you make everyone aware of company goals and the latest company news. Everyone understands what is expected of them — and they pull in the same direction — increasing employee morale in the process.

Give employees a voice

When employees feel heard, they feel valued and are more likely to do their best work. Gathering employee feedback helps in other ways too.

You can use employee surveys, listening tours, and one-to-one chats to find out what helps and harms the morale of your workforce. Let employees have their say and you’ll find meaningful ways to improve the employee experience.

As part of a well-executed employee voice strategy, you then close the feedback loop. You share your findings and your plan of action with employees. This builds trust in the feedback process and means your workforce is more likely to engage with future surveys and listening events.

Measure employee morale

You can supplement the qualitative data you gain from employee listening with quantitative data gained from analytics tools. Employee morale metrics include:

• Absenteeism rates
• Employee turnover rates
• Productivity
• Employee net promoter score (eNPS)

Benchmark and track these KPIs over time and you’ll build a better picture of employee morale. Keep your finger on the pulse and you’ll also be able to spot and address issues in real-time before demoralized employees impact their teammates.

The secret to sustained staff morale?

Building and sustaining employee morale is essential — to attracting and retaining top talent, and to getting the most out of your teams.

When employees feel valued, informed, and connected to the wider company, they’re more likely to feel motivated and engaged.

And when you understand the needs of employees and the state of morale in your organization, you’re better able to make meaningful changes to the employee experience.

With remote or frontline employees in the mix, you may need the help of morale-boosting tech tools. The right software allows you to reach all employees — giving them a voice, connecting them to co-workers and company culture, and recognizing the work they do.

Blink. And watch morale soar with the help of smarter workplace tech.

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The best employee experience tools support HR objectives.

They improve employee productivity, engagement, and retention. They streamline HR processes and they help you demonstrate measurable ROI.

So how do you find an employee experience tool that does all the above?

By understanding the platform features that really drive HR impact — and knowing what to do to ensure platform success.

Let’s take a look.

What is employee experience?

Employee experience is the combined impact of every interaction an employee has within your company — from their first day to their last, and everything in between.

It’s shaped by company culture, the quality of workplace communication, learning and development opportunities, compensation, and well-being support.

It’s also shaped by the software and resources employees use to do their jobs — whether that’s a dedicated employee experience platform like Blink or tools that support your operations. 

Ultimately, employee experience is not one thing. It’s the accumulation of small, daily moments that determine how employees feel, how hard they work, and how long they stay at your organization. And it has a direct impact on the metrics that matter most to HR.

Why employee experience matters for HR

A positive employee experience improves employee engagement, productivity, retention, and performance — core HR goals.

It helps HR teams to hit their hiring targets. When you’re known as a great place to work, you attract better candidates. It also reduces HR workload because employees can access the resources they need when they need them, and there are fewer avoidable queries.

The organizations that understand this don’t treat employee experience as a culture initiative. They treat it as a business strategy.

Let’s look at some examples.

• Cisco has built an onboarding experience that 90% of employees say exceeds their expectations. Beyond this initial training, the company is committed to helping employees do their best work and progress in their careers.
  
  
• Hilton, named the #1 World’s Best Workplace in 2025, has made employee well-being central to its employee value proposition (EVP). With sabbaticals, benefits for caregivers, and mental health support, Hilton has ensured that 85% of its staff feel balanced and healthy at work.
  
  
• Elara Caring — a provider of personal care, home health, and hospice services with over 32,000 caregivers — has prioritized internal communication and co-worker connection. After implementing a frontline app, 95% of employees say they feel more connected to the company.

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Employee experience in frontline organizations: Key considerations

With over 2.7 billion deskless workers globally, the employee experience gap between frontline and desk-based staff is one of the most significant — and most costly — challenges HR leaders face.

Frontline workers are often disconnected from leadership, colleagues, and company culture. They have limited access to desktop-based tools. And they miss out on development opportunities and workplace perks that desk-based employees take for granted.

When their experience is poor, they leave — at rates that consistently outpace desk-based worker attrition.

Closing this gap requires intentional effort — and in most cases, it requires digital tools that every employee can actually access.

10 employee experience platform features that drive HR success

The right employee experience platform gives you the tools to hit your most important HR targets — whether that’s improving retention, driving engagement, streamlining onboarding, or building a culture that people genuinely want to be part of.

But not all platforms are built equal. And for organizations with a large frontline workforce, you need tools that meet staff where they are — serving customers, transporting goods, and keeping your operations on track.

Here are the features that matter most, and how each one connects to your HR goals.

1. Frontline-friendly features

For organizations with a significant frontline workforce, these frontline-friendly features are a baseline. Every other feature on this list only delivers value if frontline employees can actually access and use your platform.

To ensure your EX platform meets the needs of frontline workers, look for:

• Mobile-first design. Platforms that are built for smartphones from the ground up. Not a desktop platform with a mobile app bolted on.
• Offline capabilities. So employees in low-connectivity environments aren’t cut off from the information they need.
• Intuitive, consumer-grade interfaces. Frontline workers won’t adopt tools that feel clunky or slow. The bar is set by the apps they already use in their personal lives.
• No corporate email required. Access is granted via a phone number or employee ID, so every worker can use your systems from day one.

How will this help me meet my goals?

• Ensure your employee experience investment reaches all employees — not just those who sit at a desk.
• Reduce the friction that causes low platform adoption rates and poor ROI.
• Close the experience gap between frontline and desk-based employees that drives disproportionately high frontline attrition.

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2. Two-way communication tools

Effective internal communication requires two-way channels that give employees access to leadership updates, co-worker conversations, and company news — and give leadership real visibility into what employees are thinking.

Look for platforms that support instant messaging, a dynamic news feed, live streaming, voice and video calling, and pinned updates.

You also need structured channels for different types of communication, so the right messages reach the right people without everything competing for attention in the same feed.

For frontline organizations specifically, those comms channels need to be available on smartphones. Push notifications and mandatory reads also come in very useful. 

How will this help me meet my goals?

• Easily communicate company updates, initiatives, and events to your entire team or specific departments.
• Work toward employee engagement goals by gathering valuable employee feedback through direct one-on-one or group chats.
• Build trust and transparency because employees feel they have a direct line to leaders.

3. Surveys, polls, and real-time feedback

Annual surveys tell you how employees felt twelve months ago. But by the time the results land, the moment to act has usually passed.

Real-time feedback tools — pulse surveys, quick polls, employee sentiment analysis, and manager check-ins — give HR a live picture of how employees are feeling, what’s working, and where action is needed.

This can make the difference between responding to a retention crisis and preventing one.

The best platforms make surveys easy to launch and feedback easy to send. Short, targeted surveys take seconds to complete and get higher response rates — particularly from time-poor frontline workers. 

You should also look for analytics and reports that help you make sense of your findings. That way, you can create a plan of action and employees get to see visible change in response to their feedback. 

How will this help me meet my goals?

• Surface issues before they impact engagement and retention.
• Get the data to make evidence-based decisions on HR initiatives, rather than relying on instinct.
• Demonstrate to employees that their voice matters, driving engagement and belonging in the process.

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4. Audience segmentation tools

While 75% of workplace communicators say tailored messaging is critical, only 20% segment their audiences regularly.

This is a problem. Because a retail associate doesn’t need the same updates as a warehouse operative. A new starter needs different content than a ten-year employee. 

When every employee sees everything, the platform becomes noisy — and people stop paying attention.

Audience targeting allows HR and comms teams to deliver the right content to the right people, based on their role, location, department, and tenure. It helps you reduce overwhelm and land messages more effectively.

What’s more, when staff are confident of finding personalized content on your employee experience platform, they keep logging in. So you reach more employees through the same streamlined channels. 

When choosing employee experience software, look for tools that allow you to create and manage employee groups, and tools that let you customize dashboards on an employee-by-employee basis.

How will this help me meet my goals?

• Improve message cut-through by ensuring employees only receive content that’s relevant to them.
• Enable more targeted feedback collection — surveying specific teams or locations rather than the whole organization at once.
• Reduce the noise that causes employees to disengage from internal comms and EX platforms entirely.

5. Automated employee journeys

Onboarding is one of the highest-stakes communication challenges in any organization. 

When it's inconsistent — when new hires receive different information depending on which manager onboards them or which shift they start on — it shows up in slower ramp-up times, more HR queries, and higher early attrition.

Automated employee journeys solve this by delivering the right content to every employee at the right moment — consistently, regardless of role, location, or manager.

Pre-boarding information before day one. Essential policies and system guides on arrival. Role-specific training in a logical sequence. Check-ins at 30, 60, and 90 days to identify and address early disengagement.

The same logic applies beyond onboarding — to role transitions, promotions, returns from leave — any other moment in the employee lifecycle where timely, consistent communication makes a meaningful difference.

Pick an employee platform that supports content automation — and connects with your HRIS — and staff get a more consistent and comprehensive experience. 

How does this help me meet my HR goals?

• Reduce the volume of repetitive onboarding queries that consume HR capacity.
• Ensure every new hire gets the same high-quality experience regardless of manager or location.
• Improve early retention by giving new starters the confidence and information they need to succeed from day one.

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6. Recognition and rewards

Employees who feel recognized perform better and stay longer. But only 61% of desk-based workers feel seen and appreciated at work. And this figure drops to 43% for desk-based teams.

A mobile-first platform with built-in recognition tools changes that. It enables peer-to-peer recognition, manager shoutouts, and company-wide celebrations of employee achievement — visible to everyone, not just the people who happen to be in the office.

The most effective recognition tools fit seamlessly into the work day.

If giving recognition means logging into a separate system and filling out a form, it won't happen consistently. If it takes two taps from the same app employees use for everything else, you embed recognition in company culture.

How does this help me meet my HR goals?

• Drive engagement, belonging, and retention by ensuring every employee — frontline included — feels seen and valued.
• Motivate employees to do their best work, improving performance and productivity. 
• Improve the employer brand, making your organization a more appealing place to work.

7. Digital forms and workflows

HR processes are often still paper-based or scattered across disconnected systems — particularly in frontline organizations. 

Leave requests, incident reports, onboarding paperwork, equipment sign-offs — each of these small administrative tasks consumes significant HR time when multiplied across a large workforce.

Digital forms, accessible from a smartphone, remove that friction. Employees complete forms in the moment they're needed, on the device they're already using. Submissions are tracked, data is captured cleanly, and HR spends less time chasing paper and more time on work that requires their expertise.

The best platforms let you build, customize, and update forms without IT involvement — so HR can respond to changing processes quickly without adding (another) ticket to the queue.

How does this help me meet my HR goals?

• Reduce HR admin burden by digitizing manual, paper-based processes.
• Improve data quality and compliance by capturing information consistently and in real time.
• Free HR capacity for strategic work by eliminating the time spent chasing, collating, and correcting paper-based submissions.

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8. Enterprise-wide search

When employees can’t find what they need, their first port of call is often HR. The people team spends a lot of time answering questions that are already answered elsewhere.

The issue? Information is hard to find — because it’s hidden away in an intranet folder, in an outdated handbook, or in a lengthy chat thread. In the case of frontline employees, it’s often because they can’t access company resources from their smartphones.

A searchable, centralized, mobile-first knowledge hub — with user-friendly content management tools — reduces unnecessary queries. It also empowers workers, because all the information they need to do their jobs well is right at their fingertips.

With the right EX platform, you put policies, procedures, FAQs, a people directory, and training materials within easy reach — across all devices — so your HR team spends less time fielding questions.

How will this help me meet my goals?

• Reduce the volume of routine process and policy queries that consume HR team time.
• Improve employee productivity by reducing time spent searching for important documents or information.
• Support compliance by ensuring every employee is working from the same, up-to-date version of every document.

9. Integrations with your HRIS

An employee experience platform that doesn't connect to your core HR systems creates more work, not less. Employees end up juggling multiple logins. Data lives in silos. HR spends time manually reconciling information across systems.

The right employee experience platform supports deep HRIS integration. It syncs with your HR system — pulling in employee data, org structures, and role information automatically.

Onboarding journeys trigger on the right day. Audience targeting reflects current team structures. Employees can access payroll, shift swap tools, benefits, learning systems, and leave information without leaving the platform. 

Single sign-on (SSO) is essential. But the strongest integrations go further. They provide two-way data sync and automated user provisioning, so you can turn your platform into a digital front door for your entire HR tech stack.

How does this help me meet my HR goals?

• Reduce the manual admin burden of maintaining employee data across multiple systems.
• Give employees a single, trusted place to access HR information and complete HR tasks — reducing queries and improving self-service.
• Improve the ROI of your existing HR tech by increasing adoption through a single, accessible front door.

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10. Reporting & analytics tools

It’s hard to make meaningful improvements to employee experience — or to make the case for HR investment — without reliable data.

An EX tool with strong analytics capabilities gives you real-time visibility into how the platform is being used — who’s engaging, what content is landing, which locations or teams are disengaged, and where communication is falling short.

That data informs better decisions: smarter content strategies, targeted interventions, and a clearer line between HR activity and business outcomes — like retention and productivity.  

Look for tools that track a wide range of KPIs and provide customizable dashboards and metrics. AI-powered data insights and data segmentation tools will also prove useful. 

How will this help me meet my goals?

• Gain valuable insights into employee experience.
• Inform HR initiatives and decision-making by tracking progress and identifying areas for improvement.
• Demonstrate the ROI of HR and communications investment to leadership and finance.

How to choose the right employee experience tool for your business

Choosing an employee experience platform is a big decision. The right tool can reduce turnover, improve operational performance, and give every employee — including those on the frontline — a reliable connection to the information and culture that keeps them engaged.

The wrong one? Well, it adds to tool sprawl, sits unused, and creates more HR problems than it solves.

We’ve explored the features you should be looking for when choosing an employee experience platform that helps you meet HR goals. But what does the process of finding and implementing a new EX tool really look like?

Here’s a rundown of all the steps involved.

Start with your workforce, not your wishlist

Before evaluating any platform, get clear on what your end users need from a new tool. That means talking to people from across your organization — leadership, different departments, office-based workers, frontline employees.

Ask what bugbears they have with the tech tools you currently use — and what features and functionality they’d be looking for if they were picking a new platform. Quiz them on existing workflows and the places where bottlenecks occur.

Get input from your workforce and you’ll find it easier to draw up a list of platform must-haves. Employee buy-in also helps to ensure adoption and usage once your new tech tool goes live.

Define your HR outcomes

Another task to complete before you sit down to a demo? Establish the two or three key outcomes that matter most to your organization right now.

Is the priority reducing frontline attrition? Fixing onboarding consistency? Getting recognition to employees who currently receive none?

These priorities should drive your evaluation. So if a vendor can’t clearly explain how their platform moves the metrics you care about most — with evidence from organizations similar to yours — proceed with caution.

Assess integrations

Before committing, audit your current tech stack and ask vendors specific integration questions:

• Does it integrate with our HRIS — and how deep does that integration go?
• Does it support single sign-on, so employees don't need another set of credentials?
• Can employees access payroll, scheduling, and benefits tools through the platform — or does it just link out to them?
• What happens when one of our existing systems updates — who manages the integration maintenance?

Deep, maintained integrations are what turn a communication tool into a genuine digital front door and help your organization to avoid tool sprawl.

Don't underestimate the adoption challenge

The most common reason employee experience platforms fail to deliver ROI isn't a bad product choice. It's poor adoption — particularly among frontline workers who’ve learned to be skeptical of tools that promise to make their working lives easier…and then don't.

When evaluating platforms, ask vendors:

• What does a typical frontline rollout look like?
• What adoption rates do your existing customers achieve, and over what timeframe?
• How do you support manager activation — since managers are often the critical link between a platform launch and frontline engagement?
• What onboarding resources and tutorials are available to keep adoption momentum high?
• What other support do you provide during platform launch?

A vendor who can point to concrete adoption data is a vendor worth keeping on your shortlist.

Watch for these red flags

Not every platform that markets itself as an employee experience tool is built for the realities of your organization. Watch for:

• Desktop-first design presented as mobile-ready. There's a significant difference between a platform built with a mobile-first mindset and a desktop platform with a mobile app bolted on. Ask to test the mobile experience before making any decisions.
  
  
• Weak or templated analytics. If you can't measure adoption by role, location, and department — and connect communication activity to business outcomes — you can't demonstrate ROI or identify where the platform is falling short.
  
  
• Shallow integrations. A platform that integrates with your HRIS in name only, without real data sync or SSO, won't reduce the friction that drives employees to workarounds.
  
  
• Rigid workflows. Platforms that can’t adapt to your organization’s culture and processes will slow managers and teams down, instead of helping them. Look for platforms that can be customized and personalized to organization and employee needs.

Pilot before you scale

A full-scale rollout might feel efficient. In practice, it simply hides problems until they're really expensive to fix.

Different employee groups — frontline workers, managers, desk-based staff, new starters — have different needs, habits, and access patterns. What works well for one group may not work for another.

Run a structured pilot with a representative group before rolling out to the full workforce. Track adoption rates, ease of use, and qualitative feedback. Use what you learn to refine your onboarding approach, notification settings, content strategy, and governance before scaling.

A phased rollout reveals friction points early, when they’re still cheap to address.

Measure continuously, not just at launch

Implementation isn’t the finish line. The needs of employees change over time. Business priorities shift. Communication strategies that work well at 500 employees may need adjusting at 2,000.

Build regular platform reviews into your HR calendar. Use analytics to track adoption trends, content engagement, survey participation, and the correlation between communication activity and business metrics like attrition and productivity.

The organizations that get the most from their employee experience platforms are the ones that treat them as living infrastructure — not a one-time rollout.

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Next-level employee experience and HR impact

Choosing the right employee experience platform means finding one that works for your people, your processes, and your HR goals.

From frontline-friendly design to analytics, integrations to recognition features, the best platforms make work easier, while improving employee engagement and HR outcomes.

But even the perfect platform won’t deliver ROI on its own. Success comes from understanding your workforce, defining the outcomes that matter most, piloting thoughtfully, and measuring continuously.

Treat your EX tool as living infrastructure, and you’ll see engagement, retention, and productivity rise — making your organization a place employees genuinely want to work.

For comms leaders who want to bring their teams together, employee engagement is a critical element in creating a sense of belonging in frontline organizations. There are a number of different employee engagement frameworks available.

Therefore, it’s important to understand their respective strengths and weaknesses to make the right decisions for your teams.

How can you know which one is right for your organization?

The answer lies in understanding the goals that you want to achieve through engagement, and how the different frameworks can help you do so.

At Blink, we believe in the importance of employee engagement, which is why we've carefully evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of key frameworks on the market, to help you find the one that aligns with your organizational goals.

Whether you're an SME looking to create a fast-growing startup culture, or a large enterprise looking to make your employees feel more empowered and innovative, this guide will help you understand what an employee engagement framework is and find the right model for the job.

What Is An Employee Engagement Framework or Model?

An employee engagement framework or model is a strategic structure created to help you understand and measure the factors that drive employee engagement within your organization. 

These models work to identify the specific factors that are most important to creating an engaged employee workforce, and provide a strategic framework for improving these factors as part of your wider employee engagement strategy.

But why does this even matter? Why bother? Well, studies have shown that engaged employees see increased customer satisfaction, boosted job satisfaction and improved turnover (43%) compared to their competitors, amongst a range of other competitive benefits. We know, we've told you before! But that's because it's true.

As for the framework, it provides a core structure to your communications and engagement efforts and helps you to focus on the elements that are most important. So whether you're looking to drive innovation, retention, or productivity within your organization, there's bound to be an engagement framework or model out there that can help you achieve these goals.

Before we dive into how to choose the best employee framework for you, let's take a look at some of the main employee engagement models.

Employee Engagement Framework Examples

When it comes to employee engagement theories, specifically frameworks, the sector is dominated by a few major players. In this section we'll outline the key focus and aims of each employee framework example, hopefully providing you with some insight into which model might be best for improving employee engagement in your organization. 

1. The Zinger Model

The Zinger model of employee engagement consists of 14 employee engagement elements, with key symbols for each element. Together, these elements make up a symbolic framework for measuring employee engagement, with each element representing a specific part of the engagement process. These 14 elements include:

• Achieve results
• Craft strategy
• CARE (Connect, Authentic, Recognition, Engage)
• Enliven work roles
• Excel at performance
• Esteem organization
• Foster community
• Serve customers
• Develop career
• Leverage energies
• Experience wellbeing

The model is designed to help organizations evaluate and monitor the factors that impact employee engagement over time, and track progress towards their organizational goals.

While this theoretical model lacks depth in terms of human resource management theory, it does provide a useful visualization of different engagement factors and mechanisms, making it a great choice for comms leaders looking to map out their employee engagement strategy in a visually appealing way.

2. The Deloitte Model

The Deloitte model of employee engagement was created after two years of discussions and research with clients, revealing five major elements and 20 underlying strategies that work together to make an organization truly “irresistible.” The 5 major elements included in this framework are:

• Meaningful work
• Hands-on management
• Positive work environment
• Growth opportunity
• Trust in leadership

All of these factors work together to form a core system of engagement within an organization (See Figure 1 below) that maintains itself through strong company culture. And while the model is aimed at maximizing employee satisfaction, it also works to improve productivity and profitability.

This framework has been used by hundreds of organizations around the world and boasts a high success rate in improving organization-wide employee engagement and company performance. If you’re looking for an evidence-based approach to employee engagement that can help you achieve results across the board, this might be a good fit for you.

3. The JD-R model

The Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) theory of employee engagement is a model that explains how the organizational environment impacts employee well-being and performance.

One central idea in the JD-R theory is that although workers may be based in various sectors–think transport, manufacturing, or finance–their job characteristics can be classified into two categories: job demands and job resources.

• Job demands are job aspects that require continuous effort and usually come with physical and mental costs. Some examples could include a heavy or unmanageable workload, conflicting demands from managers and customers, and workplace bullying.
• Job resources help workers progress in their careers, make their jobs less demanding, and improve their day-to-day life both professionally and personally. Some examples of resources could include scheduled breaks during the workday, access to line management training, or implementing specialized employee engagement software for manufacturing that gives workers instane mobile access to a Central Hub storing core company document.

Using a variety of methods to study leadership and workers, such as Employee Surveys, interviews and administrative data, the JD-R model has been proven to be a valid method for assessing how employees feel about their job resources and demands, and in turn their engagement levels.

4. The Gallup Employee Engagement model

The Gallup model of employee engagement refers to their Q12 Survey, which consists of 12 employee engagement survey questions. After taking the Q12 survey, leaders and managers will be able to effortlessly work each item's concepts into conversations, meeting agendas, performance evaluations and team goal setting. The 12 questions are:

1. I know what is expected of me at work.
2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
7. At work, my opinions seem to count.
8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
10. I have a best friend at work.
11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

The 12 questions are split into four levels (See image below) required for an environment of trust and support in the workplace. By meeting the needs of the three levels of foundational employee engagement drivers, leaders can drive top level personal and professional growth for their employees.

Using these levels as a guide to manage your team, you can improve their performance and continue developing them professionally.

It's important to note that these four levels do not represent consecutive phases. Managers do not complete level one and then level two, etc. Leaders must ensure that employees' needs are met on level one first, however they must then continue to deliver on that level while meeting their needs on the second, third and fourth levels.

Simply put: if you don't meet your employees basic needs on an ongoing basis, the other levels won't follow.

5. The AON Hewitt model

The AON model of employee engagement consists of three main sectors, Say, Stay and Strive. Based on employee responses to "say, stay, and strive," engagement levels can be determined and used as a predictor of business outcomes. 

AON goes on to recommend some key steps when implementing an engagement framework, which include:

• Define your improvement strategy
• Boost the impact and effectiveness of your managers and leaders
• Create an aligned employee value proposition
• Design and implement total reward programs.

By using these steps, leaders can successfully improve employee engagement and drive better business outcomes for their organizations.

How to pick the right employee engagement framework for you

What business targets are you aiming for?

To choose a fit-for-purpose engagement model, you need to understand the goals that you want to achieve through engagement. Some of the most common business targets are: improved innovation, increased employee retention and productivity, and better financial performance.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) built around employee engagement metrics can also make strong targets for your engagement framework. For example, some organizations might aim to increase employee participation in the workplace and their willingness to contribute to company goals – both of which are important metrics for measuring employee engagement and satisfaction.

Some key questions to ask yourself at this point could include:

• What's the main engagement problem you’re currently facing? 
• What are your business targets?
• Does the engagement framework align with KPIs and company goals?

Understand your team setup

The first step in choosing the best employee engagement framework for your organization is to understand the different types of teams that you have. This will help you to better understand the specific engagement needs of your team, and tailor the framework accordingly.

For example, a frontline workforce is going to require specific framework targets, such as increasing employee engagement in nurses or on the factory floor. On the other hand, an office-based team may be looking to increase employee participation in company events or projects.

The truth is, frontline workers are often left with no engagement projects that meet their needs. Unfortunately, this has led to a growing number of frontline workers left feeling unheard and disengaged. 

To do better for your staff, start by really getting to know them and their team setup.

Assess your current technology

When choosing your framework to engage employees, run-of-the-mill employee engagement activities and boring old company practices need to stay in the past.

If you really want to drive employee engagement outcomes in your organization, you need the right tech. Luckily, when it comes to the best digital tools for employee engagement, we know a thing or two.

From employee engagement platforms and digital communication tools to online learning resources, there's a growing number of technology solutions available to help you improve your organizational culture and increase engagement.

In our humble opinion, Blink is the absolute frontrunner when it comes to tech solutions for engaging employees. Blink offers:

• Secure Chats to drive feedback loops, two-way communication and meaningful workplace relationships
• Central Hub for instant access to core company policies, procedures and files
• Blink Feed for company announcements and engaging day-to-day updates
• Frontline Intelligence to help you measure and analyze how your employee engagement strategy is performing
• Employee Surveys to drive a movement of listening within your organization.

With these digital features in one Frontline Engagement App, Blink really is the perfect fit for any business looking to improve employee engagement and, ultimately, business outcomes.

So if you're ready to start taking your employee engagement efforts to the next level, how about trying Blink today? You'll be able to easily meet your communication, collaboration and company culture goals!

Identify engagement framework allies

Employee engagement framework allies are those who are invested in improving your organization's culture and are willing to work alongside you to help achieve this.

For example, if you're looking to boost employee participation in your workplace, it might be worth reaching out to HR teams or management to see if they can dedicate budget towards more frequent team meetings or staff events.

Alternatively, if you're a comms or HR leader, you might need to get CIO or even CEO buy-in in order to implement the right digital tools to kickstart a new framework.

Overall, finding allies for your employee engagement framework can be a powerful way to get more support behind your goals, and achieve better results in the long run. So make sure you reach out to anyone who might be able to help you move forward.

How do you implement an employee engagement model?

It’s important to choose the right model and identify your allies to ultimately achieve your goals. To implement this thinking, it's important to approach implementation in a structured way. This will help you have a clear plan to manage the process from start to finish.

Some key steps include overhauling your digital employee engagement tools, testing and setting measurable goals, creating regular check-in points for measuring progress, and ensuring that everyone involved is aligned with the same vision and implementing employee engagement best practices.

What Blink can do for you...

Now that you have a better understanding of how to implement an employee engagement model in your organization, you can think about implementing a tool like Blink.

At Blink, strong employee engagement is at the heart of what we do. That's why our mobile engagement app offers a range of powerful tools and features to help frontline organizations improve their culture and build better relationships with their staff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV1_4ZdjPQ4&ab_channel=Blink

With an average activation rate of over 85% across numerous deskless industries, Blink can help you drive more open and honest communication, increase employee participation in your initiatives, gather feedback from across all departments, all of this to help you drive key metrics and KPIs. 

Get started today

A record 50.5 million people living in America quit their jobs in 2022 — and a further 40% of US employees considered leaving their jobs. Organizations need to step things up a notch if they want to start engaging both their desk-based and frontline staff.

The good news is there are many employee engagement strategies, tactics, and ideas you can implement to turn around the situation. The 12 strategies we discuss in this guide will help you create an engaging workplace experience and drive employee engagement for both desk-based and frontline employees.

Frontline Employee Engagement in 2024

Blink created this guide after working with hundreds of frontline organizations. Now, these insights can help other leaders prepare for a year that promises both challenge and opportunity.

Download to learn more: The top eight frontline engagement trends to watch out for and the six key strategies for success

A quick recap: what is employee engagement?

Employee engagement is the ongoing process of ensuring your workforce feels:

• Emotionally connected to their job, coworkers, and organization as a whole
• Satisfied with their job role and function
• Aligned with your company’s values
• Able to give 100% during work hours

Industry statistics cite employee engagement as a key factor in employee satisfaction, retention, and even company profitability. Employee engagement should be a number one priority for businesses globally — and yet, as of 2023, only 23% of employees globally are engaged.

You can use a number of methods to measure employee engagement levels in your business. Think surveys, metrics, and other engagement KPIs that will help determine how motivated, satisfied, and fulfilled your employees are in their work.

Remember, employee engagement is often the byproduct of a great employee experience. If you provide a fulfilling, enjoyable, and inspiring workplace experience, you enable and encourage engagement.

With this in mind, you need to tailor and adapt your strategies to meet the needs of different types of employees, including frontline workers. For instance, the tactics required to drive employee engagement in manufacturing industry environments will look entirely different from those used in corporate offices. Tailoring your approach in this way will make their overall experience positive and rewarding.

The foundations of effective employee engagement strategies

Engaged employees can be your greatest business asset. They are more focused and committed than disengaged workers, encourage their coworkers, and positively impact your bottom line.

But improving employee engagement is not about what you do. It’s about what you are as an organization, the culture you cultivate, and the values that you live by.

So before we jump into the employee engagement strategies, it’s important to look at the key values of employee engagement that form the foundation for those strategies. Those core values are:

Respect

Respect is an essential consideration for all your high-level decisions about managing employees. For your workers to be engaged at work, they should be able to trust that they are being treated with fairness and respect.  

So how do you convey this in your processes and policies? You pay competitive wages, allow enough breaks, listen to their ideas, and formally recognize excellent performance and value-abiding behaviors.

Transparency

If your employees aren’t aware of anything about your organization that’s beyond their scope of work or immediate team, you can’t blame them for feeling like an outsider. Sooner or later, they’ll feel isolated and disengaged.

Being in the loop doesn’t just help them do their jobs in a better way, but also makes them feel like they belong. So it’s essential to communicate openly and regularly with all your employees.

The more transparent your communication, the higher level of trust you’ll build with your workers. And the more comfortable they’ll feel sharing their thoughts and concerns, which brings us to the next pillar of employee engagement.

Two-way communication

Most organizations follow a top-down approach to employee communication in which frontline employees hardly ever have a say. But these workers often have the best insights because they work directly with customers day in and day out.

So one of the best values to nurture and cultivate for high employee engagement is two-way communication. Give your workers ample opportunities to raise their voice and share what they think. Then act on this feedback to take your employee engagement to the next level.

12 actionable employee engagement strategies

Here are 12 employee engagement strategies & tactics you can implement today:

1. Foster co-worker relationships

When employees have friendly relationships with immediate team members and other people in the organization, they are more likely to enjoy the day-to-day.

Workplace relationships don’t just help with networking, they also provide the guidance and motivation a worker needs to succeed in their role. And creating opportunities to build and nurture these connections is one of the best employee engagement strategies.

Co-workers don’t always cross paths throughout the working day — especially in frontline organizations. It might be up to you to encourage better intra-department connections through organized events. You could create a program to encourage workers to collaborate, socialize, or train each other on the parts of the job that they know best.

Workers from different departments can connect, share notes, and exchange best practices. This way, they can also try out a recently learned skill or explore different options they might want to pursue in the future.

In fact, there are many cases in which employees consider leaving their organization to pursue a different career path. This program will help you facilitate the lateral moving of an employee to a different department, so they aren’t forced to look elsewhere. This way you hit two goals with one stone: high employee engagement and better employee retention.

2. Have a thorough onboarding process

Onboarding is essential for setting the right tone and expectations when a new employee joins your team.

As the statistics in the video above highlight, around 20% of new hires leave in the first seven weeks of employment, but organizations with a strong onboarding process have improved retention rates by 82%.

A strong onboarding experience is achieved by:

1. Making sure your onboarding process covers not only organizational policies, but also the company’s core values, mission, and vision
2. Giving your new employees mobile access to relevant materials and resources to learn from, and encouraging all employees to provide their feedback
3. Acknowledging the importance of connection during onboarding. Introduce new hires to their team members, leadership, and coworkers. For a dispersed workforce, this can be done by ensuring your employees have the right digital tools and channels to connect from wherever they are

A sense of belonging from day one is integral in order to improve employee engagement — particularly for the frontline, where 80% of workers feel they have few connection opportunities at work.

See how Go North West is using Blink to make new team members feel part of the organization right from day one.

3. Rethink physical spaces

Frontline employees power the global workforce. With no central break room or day-to-day opportunities for office chat, dispersed workers can become increasingly disconnected from the rest of the organization.

While team building and other social events may be organized with the best of intentions, they often miss the mark for frontline workers, putting more pressure on employees instead of providing a channel for enthusiastic engagement.

If you’re a frontline leader, you need to rethink your social spaces and channels to meet the engagement expectations of all your employees. This might mean creating dedicated digital channels, Feeds, or groups for frontline workers who would otherwise never have a chance to interact.

Deliberately creating space for accessible social interaction can help build relationships, increase engagement, and create an environment of inclusion and positivity throughout your organization.

4. Clarify career pathways

Results of a recent Frontiers report show that:

1. Career growth has a positive impact on knowledge workers’ organizational engagement
2. Career goal progress and professional ability development promote job engagement
3. Career growth has a positive effect on affective commitment, which in turn influences employee engagement.

If you can make workers feel that they can advance their careers without leaving your company, you’ll see a big boost in employee engagement. Workers at every level of your company should be able to view a clear-cut career path ahead and the map to follow that path.  

So when formulating employee engagement strategies for your company, see how you can help workers get in complete control of their careers. The more assured they are about achieving their future goals, the more engaged you’ll find them to be.

How to accomplish this? Take your workers’ input on where they see themselves in the future. Here’s a career development plan template that might come in useful, as you do.

When you empower employees to take charge of their goal setting in alignment with team objectives, they’ll be more invested in working hard to hit those goals. And they won’t need tight schedules to do the same, leading to an improvement in overall satisfaction.

5. Provide training and learning opportunities

Helping workers learn new skills and investing in their professional development is crucial to their engagement.

In fact, 35% of millennial employees (who also make up around 35% of the US workforce) said they were attracted to employers who offer excellent training and development programs for this reason and saw it as the top benefit they wanted from an employer.

There are many measures you can take to facilitate employee education:

• Conduct online workshops that support employees’ learning goals
• Make educational content easily accessible through a central repository
• Provide reimbursements for courses workers enroll in

When you invest in employees’ learning and development, you are sending a message that your company is committed to them for the long term. And this demonstration of commitment makes them far more likely to give their 100% on the job.

6. Clear and consistent communication

Dispersed staff need a tool that allows them to interact with each other as if they were in the same room. This is key for breaking down barriers, unifying teams, and working productively, no matter where your team is located.

Secure 1-1 and Group Chats, a News Feed for communicating organizational updates, and team or departmental channels are all essential.

At Blink, communication is part of our culture and we are strong believers in its power. This is something that you must emphasize too if you wish to engage your employees. When you build a culture of trust and open communication, you help create an environment of transparency, respect, and collaboration.

You also need to make sure your team members are able to communicate with each other. Every team member should be aware of the communication channels that the organization uses and how to use them.

As leaders, don’t forget your own role in communication, either. Simply providing employees the channels to communicate and actually engaging employees through these channels are two different things.

To ensure a clear and consistent communication strategy, consider:

1. Frequent News Feed updates to keep team members in the loop
2. Regularly scheduled 1-1s and ongoing two-way feedback loops
3. Targeted posts in group chats and forums for sharing ideas and gaining insights
4. Frequent Employee Recognition or shoutouts in the company channels

7. Improve internal branding

When someone asks where they work, your workers can feel absolute pleasure, cold apathy, or even disdain or embarrassment answering that question. It all depends on your company’s reputation inside and outside the premises.  

Money is undoubtedly a strong motivator, but employees also want to feel proud of where they work. The strength of your organization’s brand and what it stands for is directly related to your workers’ level of engagement.

That makes internal branding one of the most crucial employee engagement strategies. It means you need to ensure that your workers understand, support, and feel connected to your mission, vision, and values. The more convinced they are of what your brand stands for, the more likely they are to emulate behaviors that speak to the same values.

The supermarket chain Trader Joe’s is a great example. It has designed a fun and quirky environment for both workers and customers, with the workers conveying its brand values through different aspects of their job. The way they name products, design signage, décorate the store, and interact with customers — everything aligns with the Trader Joe’s brand.

The checkout process is just as warm, friendly, and casual. Workers display enthusiasm and a genuine desire to help with their feedback and expertise on the products.  

This goes on to show that when done correctly, internal branding can create a virtuous cycle. It will attract workers who love your brand, who will further communicate their passion to your customers and partners, thereby enhancing the brand and attracting more top talent.  

8. Encourage diversity and inclusion

D&I initiatives are crucial to the overall employee experience, making them a great place to focus your efforts for improving engagement levels. Research by ADP states:

“Studies have shown that employees who are satisfied with their organization’s commitment to diversity and inclusion (D&I) are twice as engaged as dissatisfied employees. Changeboard adds that diverse and inclusive organizations work 12% harder, are 19% more likely to stay longer with the organization, and collaborate 57% more effectively with peers.”

What does this look like in action? Bentley University highlights some key actions that can help you better promote diversity in the workplace, including to:

1. Address implicit bias: Make sure everyone in the company, starting with your C-suite and leadership teams, is aware of their unconscious bias and take proactive steps to address it
2. Acknowledge intersectionality: D&I initiatives must not ignore or sidestep the fact that all individuals have nuanced social identities and backgrounds that can confer or deny privilege in accordance with cultural norms
3. Invest in Employee Resource Groups (ERGs): Investing in ERGs, or affinity groups that provide social support for employees with shared backgrounds, interests, and/or experiences is one of the most effective ways to ensure diversity initiatives remain top-of-mind
4. Offer mentorship programs: Mentorships encourage both personal and professional growth, and provide a pipeline for leadership development. For groups with fewer role models in senior positions, mentorship can be crucial to cultivating diverse leadership
5. Communicate with transparency: Be open and transparent about the goals of your D&I initiatives. Communicate progress towards achieving measurable objectives, ensure everyone is informed about key developments in the initiative, and most importantly, be open to feedback from all employees on how you can improve it

In addition to these diversity strategies, every segment and every department of your organization must also feel included to foster true D&I and, in turn, boost engagement.

In fact, studies show that belonging is one of the most powerful predictors of D&I efficacy in the workforce. Organizations with high levels of belonging also have higher employee net promoter scores (eNPS), which are correlated with higher engagement levels.

Frontline workers can experience the very opposite. Warehouse workers, for example, are typically secluded from other employees — and that goes double if they work the night shift as well. If a frontline worker continues to feel left out, then their engagement is likely to suffer. It’s crucial that you take the necessary steps to ensure that everyone has a sense of belonging and inclusion, starting with your frontline employees.

9. Survey, listen, and act

Your employees all have improvements they’d make to their roles, whether it’s a better work-life balance, tools that they can actually use in their roles, or more contact with management. You need to collect these insights — and act on them — to keep your employees engaged long-term.

An employee engagement survey can help you gain this valuable feedback from workers. An employee survey gives you insights into employees’ opinions, attitudes, and experiences — and you can use this data to identify areas for action.

You can also use surveys to recognize areas of improvement and understand what makes employees proud of their work.

Make sure you follow through on survey results with actions that address the employee feedback provided. Additionally, keep your workers in the loop with regular updates on progress and changes made as a result of their input. This will help build trust between your team and management, and demonstrate your commitment to employee engagement.

10. Recognize and reward

Rewards and recognition are essential for employee engagement. In fact, one 2022 Harvard Business Review study found that when an employee says their manager is great at recognizing them, then that employee is 40+% more engaged than those with managers who were not.

Recognition is an effective way to keep employees motivated. It also reinforces the behaviors you want more of in your organization.

For example, if you want to encourage team collaboration, reward teams that work together on a project or present a unified front during client meetings. If you need increased productivity, recognize employees who go above and beyond to get the job done.

Remember, rewards don’t have to be expensive or elaborate. Digital recognition tools or Kudos are both an effective and cost-effective way to show appreciation for your team’s hard work.

11. Provide incentives and perks

While closely related to your rewards and recognition schemes, incentives and perks work slightly differently. Typically, incentives are used to elicit a particular action from your employees. For instance, you might offer bonus pay for completing a project before the deadline or reaching certain on-the-job targets.

Unlike as-and-when recognition and rewards that react to a job well done, with ongoing incentives, workers will often know what they will get for completing the challenge ahead of time, and exactly what is required in order to receive that incentive.

Perks are more general benefits that make working in your organization more desirable. Some basic examples could include flexible work hours, subsidized gym memberships, and free snacks or coffee. You really need to get more creative than this, however, if you want to provide perks that your employees really want.

For example, factors such as compensation, growth through promotion, paid training, and high-value traditional benefits have the largest impact on frontline employee preferences when choosing a new role. However, employers do not value the same factors, according to the same research by McKinsey. The study states:

“When it comes to growth-oriented attributes, employers tend to emphasize a higher job title (among the bottom five attributes for frontline employees) over job growth and learning opportunities (both top-five attributes), which may help explain why frontline employees cite a lack of employer-provided development opportunities as a primary barrier to their advancement.”

To align your company perks with the needs of your frontline workers, you should consider providing opportunities for a yearly raise or promotion, advanced learning and employee development opportunities, and ongoing upskilling.

12. Implement employee engagement tech with analytics tools

Analytics are essential for a successful employee engagement strategy. With the right engagement analytics tools, you can gain insights into how employees are engaging with company messages, what topics they’re most interested in, and how to best tailor future activities to their needs.

For example, use feedback or survey tools on mobile devices to collect real-time data from employees. This data can then be analyzed to reveal the most critical areas of focus for your engagement strategy.

You can also use dedicated analytics features to tailor specific messages or activities that best meet the needs of individual employees. This helps you create a more personalized, effective experience for workers and drive more meaningful engagement within your organization.

Using technology to monitor employee engagement is also one of the best ways to ensure that initiatives are tied directly to overall business objectives. Analytics help you understand if there are any engagement gaps that you need to fill.

Are there certain teams that consistently fail to engage with your content, for example? Tracking open rates, comments, will help you identify any disengaged teams or employees, so that you can work to address and improve their experience.

How to create an employee engagement strategy

Set goals

You need goals that are specific and measurable when creating a successful employee engagement strategy. This provides the foundation for your efforts, ensures everyone is on the same page, and helps you assess progress along the way.

Identify your issues

Once you have established your goals, determine what obstacles stand between you and achieving those objectives. Communication issues, lack of motivation, or a disconnected team can all put your progress at risk. Knowing what might stand in your way will help you tailor activities to your organization’s needs and develop solutions that are relevant and effective.

Build your plan

Next, you need to create a plan of action for achieving your engagement goals. You should include activities such as tailored employee surveys, tech and communication refreshes, and analytics implementation in this plan.

Analyze and adjust

Finally, track the progress of your employee engagement efforts with analytics tools and review how well they worked. Adjust activities based on the findings, and move forward with more tailored initiatives.

Why your employee engagement strategy might fail

Not listening to feedback

If you don’t listen to what your employees are telling you, then your engagement activities will be misguided and ineffective. You need to respond quickly and effectively to feedback in order to ensure that your initiatives meet their needs.

Not having the right tools

Communication and engagement tools are essential in today’s workplace, and even more so if you want an engaged workforce. Without the right tools, you won’t be able to track progress or employee engagement scores accurately — let alone ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Plus, if your tools aren’t fit for mobile, you will be missing out on the chance to engage with your key employees when they are on the move.

Not having leadership buy-in

Employee engagement strategies rely on strong leadership support. Without it, your initiatives can easily be overlooked or deprioritized as other programs take precedence. Make sure that your leadership is involved and invested in the process to ensure success.

But who are your most engaged allies?

How would greater employee engagement help them meet their targets?

How do you bring the opportunity to life for your wider leadership team?

What are the risks they’ll ask you about, so that you can prepare in advance?

We cover this and more in our essential guide to executive buy-in for frontline employee experience.  

Not communicating effectively

Employee engagement strategies only work when teams are communicating effectively. Invest time into making sure that communication channels are clear and regularly updated with relevant content so that everyone can stay in the loop.

Final thoughts

No one wants employee disengagement. It’s costly and damaging to morale. Plus, disengaged workers make errors at a 60% higher rate.

But still, many companies turn a blind eye to the issue. They wait to take concrete action and implement employee engagement strategies until things get out of hand.

The good news is that improving employee engagement is both possible and measurable. You need the right steps, the right engagement tools, and serious execution. So take a good look at your present culture and see which of these strategies will be a good start for you.

Remember, your company is a community. And communities prosper only when every member and segment feels valued, trusted, and respected.

Blink is an internal communications tool that can help take your employee engagement to new heights.

Request a free demo to get started.

Here's the question I come back to constantly: how do you get 16-to-19-year-olds on the shop floor to care about a message from the CEO?

It's not a rhetorical question. It's one my team has been working on for the last 18 months, and we've made a real impact.

Five generations, one workforce

JD Sports isn't a small operation. We have 90,000 colleagues across 20+ countries with25 brands under the JD Group banner. And five generations working side by side, with 70% of our workforce being under the age of 30.

That last number is the one that keeps me up at night (in a good way). The majority of our people are on shop floors, not in front of laptops. They're not opening an intranet. They're not watching the hour-long town hall recording. 

There's never a day where we don't walk into the office and think: what can we do for the stores today, and how are we going to get this message to land? Everyone has a different love language. There is no one-size-fits-all anymore, there just can't be.

The red flag: one-way, overly corporate communication

As a FTSE 100 company, we have real obligations. Results to share, legal updates to communicate, leadership directives to cascade. None of that goes away.

But the way we were delivering it? It wasn't landing.

Long messages. Lengthy calls. Content that felt designed for a boardroom, not a stockroom.

The fix wasn't to dumb things down. It was to meet people where they actually are.

JD Now: going where our people are

We launched JD Now - our internal comms platform - in the UK 15 months ago. The brief was simple: mobile-first, bite-sized and human.

Instead of polished corporate videos, we started producing 30–45 second clips on iPhones. Quick editing, often with a same-day turnaround. A CEO update became five key points, delivered straight to camera, in under a minute.

For some of our shop floor colleagues, it might be the first time they've ever seen anything from our team or leaders. Because it's on their phone and it's done in a style of content they’re already used to seeing from their other favorite apps.

But the bigger unlock wasn't the content my team was making. It was the content our colleagues started creating themselves.

When you give people a platform, they run with it

Employee-generated content has taken over JD Now — and honestly, we didn't plan it that way.

One store team created a popular movie franchise-themed video to promote an Air Max release. A group in London started recording a podcast about career progression, using an Amazon mic and an iPhone. These all became smash hits with great engagement of likes and comments from their peers and leaders. We didn't ask them to do any of this. They just did it, because they'd found a space that felt theirs.

That podcast host? We spotted him, brought him up to Manchester to host a major youth event, and then took him to a King's Trust event where he met Prince William. Because he posted on our internal comms platform.

Making leaders human

One of the most consistent things we heard in surveys was simple: there’s a big opportunity to know and understand the people who are leading us better.

We tackled this head-on with JD Now — starting with our senior leaders in retail. Many of them are known as the important people who come in, provide feedback and expect excellence (we always make sure we’re the best, of course).. However, during our launch week, and the weeks leading up to it, we empowered these leaders to use JD Now as a platform to connect with their people - not just talk about sales, but use it as a way to connect and engage in a way they might not have been able to before. They’ve leaned into it…now commenting on various posts and showcasing their personalities a bit more.

The response from colleagues? Oh, they’re normal people!

I know it sounds corny. But we were blown away by how many colleagues said: yeah, actually, employee communications can be engaging. One comment, a post, a like on a photo from a store and the ability to have more visibility did so much more for the perception and connection to that team than a dozen town hall appearances.

The numbers back it up

When we first launched JD Now, we saw an incredible 74% adoption across our initial 20,000 colleagues, and it has grown from there. Right away, we knew that our teams had a genuine desire to experience a new way of communicating. 

This was validated with a 3% increase in our overall Communication score in our first global survey following the launch of JD Now. We absolutely credit that to changing how we communicate and how we get retail leaders genuinely involved.

But the metric I care about most isn't a survey score. It's when a store manager says to me, unprompted: "We should put that on JD Now."

We didn't prompt them. They came to us. That's what matters.

What I'd tell every comms team

The future of communications isn't rooted in communication. It's about culture.

• What makes your organization you? 
• What are your values, and how do they connect with your colleagues? 

Everything else falls into place when you feel really good about what you have to offer — and when your people feel it too.

Gen Z is taking over the workforce whether we're ready or not. I'm a millennial, so I'm somewhere in the middle, but I see it every day, and understand the importance of connecting to people in a way that resonates with them, and knowing one-way isn’t the best way. 

The organizations that'll win aren't the ones with the slickest content strategy. They're the ones that make young people feel like they actually belong there.

That's what we're building at JD. And we're only just getting started!

Employees spend hours on TikTok but avoid the company intranet like the plague. So what’s the deal?

TikTok is built for discovery, connection, and delight. It understands and delivers what audiences want. In. An. Instant.

The average company intranet? Well…safe to say, it’s not quite made it into the user experience big leagues.

Nevertheless, the intranet still plays a central role in many organizations. It’s a way to land messages, boost employee engagement, and improve operational efficiency. But only if employees are actually logging in.

This is where we can take inspiration from TikTok — an app that the average user opens a mindblowing 20 times per day — to create a modern social intranet.

A modern social intranet is a million miles from the dusty old document repository your employees grumble about. Done right, it’s a bustling hub of activity — and a place where your workforce actively chooses to hang out.

Want to know more? Here’s what your intranet can learn from the world’s stickiest social platform.

The problem with most intranet solutions

The average intranet packaged solution is about as far away from TikTok as you can get.

It’s built for desktop, not for mobile devices. The UX is cluttered and dated. Content is stale or irrelevant. Communication is one-way. And frontline workers are often excluded from the experience entirely.

The result? Employees actively avoid your intranet.

They use workarounds and WhatsApp in its place. And when they do log in, the overriding feeling is one of frustration. This damages the employee experience along with the workplace productivity, internal communication, and employee trust you expect your intranet to support.

But things are changing. Modern social intranets are rewriting the rules. They’re borrowing lessons from social platforms, like TikTok, and applying them to the digital workplace.

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Why TikTok wins (and what that has to do with work)

With two billion users spending an average of 95 minutes a day on the app, TikTok is a master of user engagement. So what makes it so addictive? And how can you bring that same energy to your employee intranet solution?

Let’s take a look.

TikTok tactic #1: Algorithmic personalization

The “For You” feed knows you better than your best friend. It learns what you like and serves it up on repeat. With a never-ending stream of videos — all relevant to you and your viewing preferences — there’s always a good reason to stop by the app.

Applying it to your intranet: Use personalization features to serve employees content that actually matters to them — based on their location, team, role, tenure, or interests. When employees see content and resources that relate to them, they’re more likely to see value in the intranet.

TikTok tactic #2: Short-form, snackable content

The most popular TikTok videos are short and snappy. They start with a killer hook to grab attention. They opt for authenticity over polish. And they feature text or captions that are quick and easy to digest.

Applying it to your intranet: Boost content consumption and move away from text-heavy messages. If you have a lot of information to share, break it up into bite-sized chunks. Include captions or TL;DRs. Use images, videos, and graphics to stop the scroll and help employees digest new information quickly — even in the middle of a busy work day.

TikTok tactic #3: Endless scroll

TikTok’s feed is designed to be frictionless. No clicking through menus. No dead ends. Just one piece of engaging content after another. There’s always something new for users, available just one swipe away.

Applying it to your intranet: The best intranets feature a home feed that invites browsing and discovery. They surface fresh, relevant content — from CEO updates to shift changes to the next team social — and put them where employees are most likely to see them.

TikTok tactic #4: Social interaction

Likes, comments, shares — TikTok is built for interaction, not just passive viewing. Users can respond to content and pass it on. That two-way employee communication builds employee communities and drives engagement.

Applying it to your intranet: Modern social intranet solutions act as a digital water cooler — a place to build connections. So give employees a way to react to what they see, using likes, emoji reactions, comments, and polls. Let them ask questions, offer feedback, cheer each other on, and share knowledge with their co-workers.

TikTok tactic #5: A creator culture

TikTok thrives because anyone and everyone can be a creator. Every day users drive trends and spark conversation. They enjoy a sense of contribution, creativity, and collaboration that keeps those user numbers rocketing upward.

Applying it to your intranet: Build an internal creator culture at your organization and include employees in your content creation engine. Encourage employees to share birthday shout-outs, behind-the-scenes videos, work hacks, and weekly wins. With authentic and diverse intranet content from employees, you make the intranet feel like their space, not just another management tool.

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What the modern social intranet looks like

To harness these tactics for your workplace, you need a different kind of intranet. This is what it should look like.

#1. Mobile-first and frontline-friendly

For too long, frontline employees have been excluded from the company intranet. To give them the same access and user experience as desk-based employees, you need a solution with mobile access built right in. A mobile-first intranet offers the same features and functionality across all devices — and puts company resources into the pocket of every employee. 

#2. Rich, multimedia content

When creating intranet content, make like a social media marketer and think about your intranet as more than a content management system. Your intranet should support highly visual, eye-catching content. We’re talking images, videos, graphics, and easy-to-digest formats, like Stories. By ditching text-heavy content, you convey information and engage employees more effectively.

#3. Smart personalization + notifications

On a modern social intranet, personalized experiences come as standard. Employees receive tailored internal comms on custom homepages and can easily adjust their notification preferences. With features like employee journeys, you can also automate content to appear to the right employees at the right time.

#4. Two-way interaction

Social media is built on two-way conversations. A modern intranet solution gives employees the option to like, comment, share, and post emoji reactions to news feed content. Other interactive features include polls, surveys, Q&A events, and instant messaging tools.

#5. Seamless integration

TikTok is super easy to use. Just a few taps and users can be scrolling through the latest content. Your intranet can mirror this experience by integrating with your HR systems, scheduling, payroll, and collaboration tools — enabling employees to do more from one user-friendly dashboard.

Need to address the skeptics? Why this isn’t about dance routines at your desk

Adding a little TikTok spice to your employee intranet doesn’t mean persuading your CEO to jump on a viral video bandwagon. Or allowing your workforce to add unnecessary noise to internal communication channels.

Most organizations aren’t like TikTok — and don’t want to be like TikTok. And that’s 100% okay. Because this isn’t about mimicking the latest social media trends. It’s about leveraging the potential of TikTok design principles:

• Design for engagement
• Personalize the experience
• Remove points of friction
• Make it social and visual

By integrating social media-style features into the company intranet you can count on higher employee engagement, better reach, and improved connection across your organization.

It’s easier to reach your whole workforce, including your frontline organization. And when you do, you provide them with relevant and attention-grabbing content that will have them coming back for more.

Your next steps: Modernizing your intranet experience

So what next? How do you go from a clunky old intranet to something worthy of the TikTok era?  Here are the key steps involved in upgrading your intranet:

Audit your current intranet solution. What do you feel is working? Which parts of the intranet get the most and least traffic? What needs to be changed?

Talk to employees. What do they want in an intranet solution and how do they feel your current intranet meets their needs?

Partner with internal stakeholders. Get internal communications, HR, and IT on board to reimagine the platform, laying out the intranet features you class as must-haves and nice-to-haves.

Find the right platform. Browse the top intranet software providers and take shortlisted solutions for a test drive, looking for tools that prioritize a digital employee experience, not just storage.

Start small. When rolling out new employee intranet software, pilot each new feature. Or test the platform with a small group of employees before tweaking and launching it to the rest of your workforce.

Make improvements. Like TikTok, use content analytics and user feedback to continuously improve your intranet solution so it meets the needs of employees now and into the future.

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Will you make the social intranet shift?

Today, employees expect consumer-grade tech tools in the digital workspace. By taking inspiration from tools, like TikTok, you can make your intranet — and the overall employee experience — a central part of your digital transformation.

Incorporate the very best social-style design and you create a reliable and engaging source of information and connection. You reduce employee frustration and improve intranet usage stats, too. 

Blink is a mobile-first modern social intranet that comes with a personalized news feed, Stories, Communities, seamless integrations, and more — everything you need to deliver a high-impact and interactive employee experience.

Blink. And build an intranet your people actually want to use.