Alison has been with Aggregate for nearly four years, and is Factory Manager for the Concrete Products department.
Alison is that one person you can go to when having a bad day. She’s always so inspirational even though there have been hard times in her life. Even when there are mistakes or hiccups in the factory, she will always bounce back and be the first one to lend a hand or an ear to help in whatever way she can.
With a personal motto of “never stop trying to be better,” she is passionate about breaking barriers to create a future that is inclusive, productive and effective, which is clear in everything she does.
What does she want to do next?
Alison wants to progress onto a Regional Operations Manager Role.
Nominated by: Maxine Tookey, IMS Manager
What we'll cover
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A survey conducted by the American Association of Critical Care Nurses reported that 66% of respondents considered leaving their job due to the pandemic.
At first glance, it may seem like the pandemic is what caused frontline workers to feel burned out and leave their jobs, but Amanda Bettencourt, Ph.D. of the association, says,
“This was the stress test for an already stressed system.”
The employee experience for frontline workers has been overlooked for a long time. Finally, businesses are paying attention to how to improve internal communication for their frontline workers.
The truth is that frontline workers love creating a good customer experience. Matthew, a Registered Nurse at Denver Health, says,
“I love what I do. I chose this profession because I wanted to be on the frontline doing this, and there’s nothing else I want to do.”
If your frontline workforce is ignoring your company updates, it is definitely time to rethink your approach. However, before you completely overhaul your strategy, it is incredibly helpful to review a few successful internal communication examples to see exactly how top organizations are getting it right. Once you have that baseline, you can begin applying the improvement steps below.
But how can businesses make the work experience better for frontline workers?
Keep reading to learn how to motivate frontline employees and support them so they can do what they do best – taking care of your customers.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
Benefits of empowering frontline staff
How to improve internal communication on the frontline
1. Make communications accessible to everyone
2. Personalize communication
3. Make it easy to give and view feedback
4. Create a single source of truth
5. Streamline manual processes
6. Provide ongoing training opportunities
7. Ask frontline employees for their ideas
8. Check in regularly and in person
9. Celebrate achievements
10. Put yourself in their shoes
Final thoughts: how to improve internal communication on the frontline
Benefits of empowering frontline staff
Many frontline workers love the work they do. Their job satisfaction comes from helping patients and creating a positive impact on customers.
“We get a sense of accomplishment doing our part to keep folks safe. We find the supplies that they need and get it to them as quickly as possible.”
When your frontline staff feels connected and empowered, they can focus on delivering an excellent customer experience.
But, if your frontline workforce feels unsupported and unheard, employee morale can plummet and lead to burnout and a higher employee turnover rate.
If you want to improve customer satisfaction, it starts by caring for the employees who interact with customers and patients every day.
How to improve internal communication on the frontline
Make communications accessible to everyone
Personalize communication
Make it easy to give and view feedback
Create a single source of truth
Streamline manual processes
Provide ongoing training opportunities
Ask frontline employees for their ideas
Check in regularly and in person
Celebrate achievements
Put yourself in their shoes
1. Make communications accessible to everyone
According to a Frontline Employee Workplace Survey conducted by Yoobic, one in three frontline employees feel disconnected from the company. During the COVID-19 pandemic, companies had to make fast changes to business strategies and operations.
While these changes often affected frontline employees, they didn’t feel included or well-informed. More than 75% of respondents say that receiving internal communications through a mobile app would make them feel more connected to HQ.
2. Personalize communication
Including frontline employees in internal communications is an excellent start, but it won’t solve the problem entirely. More messages don’t automatically equate to higher employee engagement. You need to make sure that your messages are meaningful to frontline employees.
When you communicate significant changes to essential workers, make it easy to understand how any new initiatives will affect their daily work. Anticipate possible questions from frontline employees and answer them in your original message. This should be a key part of your internal communication plan anyway.
For example, if you’re implementing COVID-19 precautions in-store, let employees know how you’ll be supporting them with signage or website updates so they feel supported.
3. Make it easy to give and view feedback
Some initiatives look great on paper, but they don’t work in real-time with customers.
Ben Davis, a social worker in New York, told Time Magazine of a time when top-down pandemic precautions like remote contact made it more challenging to work and connect with individuals who suffer from mental illness symptoms like paranoia.
What seemed like a good idea at first was ineffective and became the source of concern for many frontline workers.
According to Davis,
“It was all very different and very confusing. I don’t know how well he – a patient – understood that I was doing it to help keep him safe.”
In this case, Davis’s feedback was heard. His team implemented changes focused on the long-term protection of frontline workers, such as allowing them to stop administering medication if gloves run out.
Employees on the frontline can feel frustrated if they don’t have access to the resources they need to do their jobs.You must give frontline workers a place to provide feedback and ensure they see that the feedback has been taken and processed.
4. Create a single source of truth
Consider using a mobile app to deliver your intranet or knowledge Hub so your deskless employees can access the right resources.
5. Streamline manual processes
A whopping 71% of frontline workers feel bogged down by repetitive manual tasks and paperwork. One part of motivating frontline employees involves letting them focus on work that creates impact, such as working with customers.
It may sound small, but spreading your admin work across multiple platforms means your frontline workers have to log into several websites to take care of repetitive work.
Respect your frontline workers’ time by consolidating administrative work into a single portal and automating manual processes.
6. Provide ongoing training opportunities
There’s a direct connection between growth opportunities and employee retention. Team members who see a future with your company are more likely to stay engaged and experience high levels of job satisfaction.
During onboarding, show your frontline workers there’s a clear path to growth in your company. Then, make sure they can easily access resources to help them build the skills they need to advance.
For example, clinic receptionists can develop skills to become Medical Assistants and then continue to advance to higher Medical Assistant levels (MA II, MA III) to earn a higher salary.
7. Ask frontline employees for their ideas
Take time during meetings to let people provide an overview of their projects, goals, and progress.
When dealing with customer feedback issues, you can also show your frontline staff you value their expertise by asking for their opinions and suggestions. Use polls and surveys to stay tuned into the customer experience through your frontline workforce.
8. Check in regularly and in person
Too many business leaders underestimate the importance of frontline workers. A grocery store bookkeeper describes his experience to New America as, “bosses come through. They don’t speak to you. They think they’re better than you…We are the ones that are helping you make this money.”
Leaders must schedule regular site visits, but you have to remember to acknowledge on-site and remote employees and genuinely listen to them.
Treat site visits as an opportunity to build relationships with frontline staff, show them that you’re there for them, and reinforce the idea of teamwork.
9. Celebrate achievements
Employee recognition is an integral part of motivating frontline employees. Take time to celebrate work-related achievements like promotions and personal milestones such as birthdays and anniversaries.
10. Put yourself in their shoes
Learning to empathize with your frontline workers creates a better work environment for everyone. Don’t assume the challenges you face in the office are the same your remote employees deal with every day.
Instead of making assumptions, ask your frontline employees questions about their experience and really listen when they tell you. Use questions like “How can I make it easier for you to get your work done?” to get actionable feedback from your frontline workforce.
Lead by providing support and proactively removing the obstacles that make it difficult for frontline workers to succeed.
Final thoughts: how to improve internal communication on the frontline
How many businesses could survive without their frontline workers? And still, they’re often overlooked and misunderstood.
Learning to motivate your frontline employees through empathy, communication, and support can transform your customer experience and overall business. Discover employee engagement for modern workforces with Blink today.
Are you stuck between Speakap and Blink for your organization's employee communication solution?
Keep reading to find out the major similarities and differences and see which one is right for you.
Speakap vs. Blink — quick facts
Speakap and Blink are both mobile-focused employee communication apps designed for organizations with many frontline workers.
The main difference is the number of features — and cost.
Speakap could be the perfect lightweight top-down communication software for you if you’re just looking for a way to keep employees up to date and enable chat features.
However, if you want more extensive interactions, a centralized hub, and in-depth customization that replaces all other employee intranets, Blink’s features are more than worth the price.
Speakap vs Blink: How they’re similar
Blink and Speakap have a few similarities:
Modern UI
Speakap nails its app by providing a straightforward user experience that is comparable to consumer-oriented apps your employees are already familiar with. With its timeline and one-on-one chats, it will fit right into your employees’ day.
The same can be said for Blink. The user interface is intuitive and modern, making it enjoyable to use for any employee. Users report that the platform “works equally well for desk and frontline workers.”
Timeline
Blink offers a versatile feed to share news, updates, and employee-generated content. You can send important notifications, share inspiring pictures and stories, and collect acknowledgements through actionable posts.
In Speakap, it’s straightforward to share news articles, publications, documents, and images. However, some features are slightly more limited. Some user reviews say “docs can't be opened directly within the app” and that there is a “Limited availability to insert images into posts.”
Custom branding
Blink’s theming options make it simple to add your own colors, images, logo, and even a fully white-labelled app with your company’s branding.
Speakap also offers excellent features to create a branded employee communications platform. You can create a branded app, add a custom logo, and play with menu themes.
Speakap vs. Blink: How they’re different
Analytics
Blink is a robust frontline communications platform that offers a lot of analytic capabilities and customizations to reach and engage every worker.
You can track your employees’ engagement with the content through data on every post’s reach, impressions, and interactions.
For uploaded documents, you can see the total number of views for each file and the change in views over time. You get an overall picture of your organization's engagement through a total user and active adoption count as well
Speakap has metrics that provide insight, including usage, adoption rate, read receipts, and user polls.
However, some users will find the analytics weak compared to other platforms. Besides tracking the employees who engage with your posts, data like reach and impressions are missing.
Omni-directional communication
Blink leans on user-generated content for their feed, making it ideal for organizations that want to open up lines of communication and encourage engagement.
In contrast, Speakap prioritizes a top-down style of communication. This could be a disadvantage for organizations looking for maximum engagement and collaboration between all levels of employees.
The communication style is less targeted to individual groups and teams, and some reviewers report that they “can’t target multiple recipients per post.”
Integrations
Along with a feed for daily updates, a hub for document sharing, pages for long-form content, and a multi-directional chat, Blink can be tailored to the needs of each organization.
You can customize the look of your app through personalized branding and many integrations. You can also add any essential software through Blink’s API.
Using Blink’s micro-app feature, you can add just about any functionality to your centralized app. Complete end-to-end customization can take some work through micro-apps and necessary integrations.
In Speakap, you do have a good range of integrations for HR and e-learning. But you only get read-only interfaces, links, and iframes rather than something more substantial.
Speakap is unlikely to be an overall internal communications solution as it lacks a native way to customize the functionalities within the app.
Besides linking integrations, users can’t add additional functions like payroll tracking into the app itself. Users say a con for their experience with Speakap is that there is “no ability for custom features.” and you “can't connect different apps easily.”
Customer service
Blink’s newness is a major plus for user experience and feature adoption, but this means some essential features are still being rolled out, and bugs do occur.
However, the customer service and development teams are quick to resolve any issues. Blink offers each client a dedicated support contact that oversees the transition and helps to optimize the platform for each business.
Blink also takes customer input and feedback heavily into consideration when developing new features.
Speakap’s users also frequently say they appreciate the company’s customer support, which also assigns a dedicated customer success manager to each account. Nonetheless, users report that “There are some features that would need better customer support.”
Speakap vs Blink: pricing
Blink offers four levels of paid service based on company size, while Speakap offers three pricing tiers based on features and customer service.
Blink levels:
Essential: $3.40 per person, per month
Business: Price on application
Enterprise: Price on application
Enterprise Plus: Price on application
Speakap levels:
Basic: Price on application
Premium: Price on application
Additional features, customer support
Premium+: Price on application
Additional features, priority technical support
Speakap vs. Blink: final thoughts
Both Blink and Speakap are good employee communication tools for organizations with a number of frontline workers. If your goal is to encourage across-the-board engagement with a total communications solution, go with Blink.
If you’re looking for a more targeted top-down communication app that fits into your organization’s existing platforms, go with Speakap.
If you’re not sure, try Blink’s powerful frontline employee communications solution for free.
Healthcare. Manufacturing. Hospitality. Whatever your industry, frontline workers are the lifeblood of your company.
Frontline workers know what’s wrong before you do.
They know what delights customers—and what drives them mad. Why customers are buying less, cancelling contracts, moving to competitors.
The problem? Most companies aren’t listening.
Research shows 60% of frontline workers feel their suggestions go unheard. That can be discouraging and lead to disengaged employees.
That’s why, to get your frontline staff to feel appreciated, you must find ways to improve employee experience. By doing so, you’ll see a drop in absenteeism, safety incidents, and an increase in work quality.
It’ll also translate to a better experience for your customers. After all, your frontline staff interacts with your clients every day. If they feel better, they provide better service.
The benefits are great, but remember—it all starts with making your employees feel heard.
For that reason, it’s crucial to include your frontline workforce in internal communications. Not by sending ad-hoc corporate comms in their direction. But by creating an internal comms strategy that’s as relevant to frontline workers as it is to desk workers.
With thoughtful, relevant communications at every stage of the frontline employee lifecycle.
The employee lifecycle refers to the employees’ experience at your company throughout their tenure. It starts from the instant they first learn about your company and ends when they exit.
An understanding of the employee lifecycle can guide you on how to personalize employee experience to match workers’ unique priorities.
80% of professionals rate employee experience as important or very important, but 59% feel they are not ready to address the associated challenges. That explains why many organizations have a one-size-fits-all approach to creating a workplace experience.
However, different employees have different needs based on where they are in the employee cycle. Making that distinction is one of the ways HR can improve employee experience.
Moreover, the duration of the employee lifecycle also depends on whether the majority of your staff is desk-based or frontline. Frontline workers tend to leave at a dramatically higher rate than their desk-based counterparts.
In fact, most verticals see an average of 50% turnover per year, leading to several disadvantages:
Increase in likelihood of data breaches
No provision for giving digital identity to frontline workers
Additional schemes and incentivization to retain frontline workers
Constant hiring, onboarding, and offboarding
Decline in loyalty towards the organization
No wonder the employee lifecycle of frontline workers is so damaging and frustrating. It’s unfortunate considering how this turnover can be reduced without making a big hole in your budget.
Just put yourself in your worker’s shoes—What should the company start doing to improve your employee experience?
Frontline workers aren’t just motivated by money. They are also driven by meaningful work, inspiring work culture, and internal recognition. By implementing an effective internal communication technology and employee experience software, you can have many of them stay longer with the company.
An intro to employee lifecycle management software
Including frontline workers in your internal comms doesn’t just help you garner customer insights; it adds to your bottom line. In fact, a recent Forbes study showed firms that involve 75% of their frontline employees in internal comms achieved more than 20% growth over a year.
As frontline workers also tend to be remote workers—on the field, at the bus depot, at a hospital—the easiest way to bring them into communications is via employee lifecycle management software that reaches them wherever they are.
In other words: if you can’t bring them into a physical office, bring them into a digital one. Building a better employee experience starts with bringing your frontline staff into the conversation.
This digital platform used to be a desktop-based intranet, but that technology has gone out of date in recent years, especially for frontline workers.
In fact, our recent research shows that 2 in 10 healthcare employees don’t even know how to use their company intranet. It’s just too sluggish for today’s workplaces.
While desk-based workers have improved their workflows with technologies such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, frontline workers are stuck with noticeboards and letters.
That’s where modern intranet software fills the gap. It’s built for mobile, but also compatible with desktop devices. Providing a single hub for knowledge sharing and communication makes way for a better employee experience at every step of improving the employee lifecycle.
What are the employee lifecycle stages?
1. Outreach
The first stage of the employee lifecycle is when potential employees come across your brand and the job vacancy.
But today’s workers are more selective than ever before. The average number of applicants per job opening has declined from 52 in 2016 to 36 in 2017 and 29 in 2018.
Potential workers don’t express interest just because you have an open position. And they won’t blindly trust the positive references provided by your company.
Instead, they’ll rely on the PR you have “earned.” They’ll read online reviews, reach out to your current staff members, and check your social media mentions. Improve employee experience, and you’re more likely to read positive posts or tweets.
That’s why your employer branding is crucial at this stage. Your employer brand is how potential and current employees view your company. It’s the image that comes to their minds when they think about your reputation as an employer.
And it can be strengthened with the right communication tools.
Think about what you would suggest to improve your experience as an employee, and ask your frontline staff for their input.
A modern intranet solution such as Blink can help you ensure that your existing workers are well-versed with all your policies, core values, brand statement, employee benefits, and recent accomplishments.
ALT: Blink centralizes document sharing to improve employee experience.
This information will shape the messages your employees spread elsewhere on the web through employer reviews, informational interviews, and social media updates. And it’ll help you build a reputation that attracts a talented workforce.
2. Recruitment
The demand for frontline workers is higher than ever due to the pandemic and great resignation. However, the talent pool has been retiring or retraining for less demanding positions.
The result is a massive shortage of frontline workers. No wonder 82% of companies struggle to recruit the right people.
If you want to attract the best talent, demonstrate you know how to enhance employee experience for your workers. You need a concrete strategy that brands your organization as an exceptional place to work. And at the core of this strategy is a modern intranet platform.
Encrypted and fully secure private messaging between members of your hiring team (or any of your workers) should be a priority. Blink offers this and robust form-building functionality that enables your HR division to create application materials tailored to each vacancy.
3. Onboarding
Most employees make up their minds about staying or leaving an organization within the first three months of joining.
And given the fast turnover in recent times, it’s important to start on the right foot and look for ways to improve employee experience. One such method is improving the onboarding process. Implementing a structured employee onboarding process is essential to making a good impression on your top talent and shaping them into productive, engaged team members, which will ultimately have a positive impact on employee performance and retention.
Onboarding processes often consist of many meetings and conferences, along with tons of files and folders that need to be reviewed, filled, and submitted to different departments.
Depending on the size of your recruitment drive, you may also need to create hundreds of new datasets for each hire, increasing the risk of inaccuracies.
An intranet can help you centralize, structure, speed up, and even automate parts of the process.
With Blink, for example, you can automate the entire user creation process, eliminate a great deal of overhead, and keep the user profiles always up-to-date.
Not just that, setting up a designated onboarding site with Blink can help you centralize essential training materials and resources. You can also encourage new employees to connect with each other and ask questions using the chat function.
Another onboarding issue that arises with frontline workers is that many don’t have a corporate email address, let alone a digital identity. That’s why Blink lets you set up accounts for frontline workers without assigning them email addresses or phone numbers.
The beauty of such a system is that frontline workers can easily access Blink and the data associated with third-party software integrations such as Microsoft 365.
The result? Your company makes a great impression and your workers start identifying themselves with your culture right from the beginning.
4. Training and development
Learning is another crucial part of the employee lifecycle. However, a common issue for frontline organizations is the difference in the learning styles of workers.
Let’s take the age factor for example. While older employees may prefer conventional training tools such as seminars, meetings, and paper-based reading material, younger generations are more inclined towards social engagements, texting, and online reading.
Blink has the tools you need to bridge this gap, all accessible from a single place. For the young crowd, it offers social and gamified training features like badges, kudos, and leaderboards.
Meanwhile, baby boomers get access to traditional educational formats including video webinars, explainer videos or articles, and printable manuals.
5. Performance
This stage of the lifecycle usually requires some ideas to update your employee experience strategy with some new ideas.
After all, a common issue with frontline workers is the lack of well-defined career progression. Many stay in the same role and pay bracket throughout the employee lifecycle, and not necessarily because they want to.
Workers can feel they have no big, long-term goal to strive for. That affects motivation and engagement while increasing employee turnover.
Blink can support you here too, by letting you plan concrete roadmaps to aid career growth and promotion milestones.
Your workers can get a direct line of communication with mentors whose careers they wish to emulate, along with learning materials and best practices to build new skills.
Employee recognition is the key to engagement, yet 63% of employees don’t feel recognized for their achievements. With Blink, you can monitor workers’ progress and reward top performers.
Little gestures such as giving a big ‘thank you’ at an online event, or tagging and thanking people in the newsfeed or your organization or department can go a long way. It would also encourage other employees to follow suit.
6. Offboarding
As much as intranet software can increase employee engagement and slow down your turnover, some employees will still leave. And it’s important for your organization to get a pulse of the exit process.
According to one study, companies that act on employee feedback have twice the engagement score of those that don’t.
You basically want to know three key things:
Why are they leaving? Timely feedback can help nip key issues in the bud.
Did they successfully complete all their exit formalities?
Do they still have access to any sensitive information?
So Your intranet solution should be ready to handle all these aspects.
Blink, for instance, automates de-provisioning, eliminating the risk of ex-employees still having access to company data.
It also helps you organize exit interviews, offboarding checklists, and pulse surveys so you can learn from each employee’s feedback to improve employee experience.
Final thoughts: Improve employee experience with an optimized intranet
To succeed in the new work era, frontline workers need experiences tailored to their needs at each stage of the employee lifecycle. Whether it’s their first week on the job or last, they need personalized resources, training, and access to key people in the organization.
Learning how to improve employee experience at each of these stages will help reduce turnover, increase engagement, and lead to happier workers. Understand how employee experience and engagement work together. Don't forget to into account the relationship between employee engagement and employee experience.
Employee lifecycle management can help you deliver a stellar experience to both frontline and desk-based employees. And by adopting a next-gen intranet software like Blink, you’ll increase employee engagement and streamline your worker’s experience.
Digital signage for frontline workers: what actually works
Walk into any warehouse or factory break room and you'll find a screen on the wall, cycling through safety alerts, shift schedules, or a slide deck frozen since 2019. Screens solve one real problem: they reach workers who aren't at desks and can't check a phone on the floor. But they create another. There's no way to know who actually saw the message, and that gap is measurable.
This guide covers how digital signage works in frontline environments, where it genuinely earns its place in the channel mix, and where mobile-first communication fills the gaps it can't.
What is digital signage for frontline workers?
Digital signage for frontline workers refers to screen-based displays deployed in physical work environments to communicate operational information to employees who don't use desk computers or company email. Common locations include break rooms, production floors, warehouse loading bays, locker rooms, and staff entrances.
Typical content includes shift schedules, safety briefings, KPI dashboards, policy updates, training reminders, and HR announcements. Screens are centrally managed through a content management system (CMS), so communications teams or IT administrators can push updates across every screen in every location from a single dashboard.
The core appeal is reach without requiring a personal device. In environments where smartphones are prohibited, clean rooms, food production, heavy machinery operations, a wall-mounted screen is often the only scalable way to put information in front of workers during their shift.
Where digital signage genuinely earns its place
Not every deployment of digital signage is washing its face. But in specific operational contexts, the case is strong.
Factory floors and production environments are the clearest fit. When workers are operating equipment that demands full attention, and when personal device use is either prohibited or impractical, screens mounted at eye level near workstations or break areas are one of the few viable ways to deliver operational messaging. Safety alerts, shift targets, downtime notifications, and quality metrics all belong here.
Warehouse and distribution environments have a similar profile. Loading bay screens showing today's dispatch priorities, attendance boards, or compliance reminders reduce the relay of information through supervisors, which means fewer distortions and faster response to changing conditions.
Break rooms deserve separate consideration. A screen in a shared rest space reaches workers at the precise moment they have headspace to absorb information. Pre-shift briefings, HR policy updates, benefit enrollment reminders, and company news all perform better in a break room context than they would on a production floor, where attention is split.
Healthcare and public-facing environments use digital signage primarily for wayfinding and patient-facing communication, but staff-facing screens in nurse stations and staff rooms serve a genuine internal communications function, particularly for shift handover information and policy updates that supervisors can't always relay in person.
The real limitations, and why IT directors need to plan around them
None of this means digital signage solves the frontline communication problem on its own. There are four structural limitations that any IT or Operations leader evaluating a digital signage investment needs to account for.
No read receipts, no compliance trail. Digital signage is broadcast communication. You can verify a screen was on. You cannot verify that a specific employee saw a specific message. For regulated industries, healthcare, food production, financial services, where you need to prove that a policy update or safety briefing was acknowledged by named individuals, a screen on a wall doesn't give you that. You need a channel that generates a paper trail.
No two-way communication. Screens push information. They don't enable responses, questions, or acknowledgment. When a policy changes and a worker has a question, that question either goes unanswered until they find a manager, or it goes up through a chain that introduces delays and inconsistencies. In high-regulation environments, unanswered questions about safety procedures have real consequences.
No reach outside the building. Workers who are on their commute, at home reviewing a shift change, or working a split shift across two sites can't see a break room screen. For any communication that needs to land before the shift starts, schedule changes, emergency alerts, pre-shift safety reminders, digital signage arrives too late or not at all.
No data on individual engagement. You can measure screen uptime, content loop completion, and scheduled broadcasts. You cannot tell your CHRO which employees haven't acknowledged the new safety protocol, or show your compliance team a timestamped record of individual engagement. When you need that data, and in most regulated environments, you will, digital signage can't provide it.
Why frontline workers need more than a screen
The communication gap isn't about technology, it's about verification. Research consistently shows that organizations with high frontline turnover cite poor communication as a top driver. Screens don't close that gap on their own because they don't create the conditions for two-way trust.
The pattern shows up in adoption data. When organisations add a mobile-first communication layer alongside physical signage, engagement metrics change substantially. According to Blink's customer data (2024), at easyJet 88% of over 20,000 employees became active users of a single platform. At JD Sports, 87% adoption was reached in 10 days. At Dollar Tree, 96% adoption across a workforce that was never going to be reached through break room screens alone. At Stagecoach, adding a direct mobile channel contributed to a 26% reduction in driver turnover.
That's not an argument against digital signage. It's an argument that signage works best as part of a layered channel strategy, where screens handle broadcast operational messaging in physical spaces, and a mobile-first platform like Blink handles everything that requires reach, verification, and response. Blink's frontline communication solutions are built specifically for the workforce that screens can't fully reach.
Getting your channel strategy right
For IT and Operations leaders evaluating digital signage as part of a broader frontline communication infrastructure, the decision framework matters more than the technology choice.
Step 1: Audit your content types. Not all communications belong on a screen. Separate broadcast operational content (shift schedules, safety KPIs, downtime alerts) from compliance-sensitive content (policy acknowledgments, training completions, HR updates) and personal content (payslips, individual schedule changes, direct manager communication). The first category suits digital signage. The second and third require a channel with verification.
Step 2: Map your compliance requirements. If you're in a regulated industry, establish exactly which communications require individual acknowledgment and a timestamped audit trail. This determines which parts of your channel mix need a verification layer, and where digital signage alone creates regulatory exposure.
Step 3: Establish your integration requirements. A digital signage CMS that pulls shift data from your workforce management system (Workday, Kronos, SAP) reduces manual content updates and keeps screens accurate. Your IT security model, SSO, GDPR compliance, role-based access control, and audit trails for who published what, needs to be defined before procurement, not after.
Step 4: Define the mobile complement. For workers who do carry smartphones, even in environments where phones are restricted during shifts, a mobile-first platform extends your communication reach beyond the building, enables two-way messaging, and provides the individual engagement data that screens can't. This is the layer that turns your signage investment from a broadcast tool into a complete communication infrastructure.
Step 5: Measure what matters. Screen uptime and content loop metrics tell you the technology is working. They don't tell you communication is working. Layer in mobile engagement rates, acknowledgment completion rates for compliance content, and frontline feedback response rates. These are the metrics that connect communication investment to operational and retention outcomes.
How Blink complements digital signage for frontline teams
If you're evaluating the mobile layer of your frontline communication stack, Blink is built specifically for the 80% of workers who don't sit at desks. It handles everything digital signage can't: individual reach, compliance acknowledgment trails, two-way communication, and a personal communication feed that workers actually check.
Pizza Pilgrims reached 96% adoption. JD Sports hit 87% in 10 days. easyJet has 88% active users across 20,000+ employees. The platform integrates with Workday, ServiceNow, and SharePoint, supports SSO and GDPR compliance, and provides the role-based access control and audit trails that IT Directors need before they can sign off on a new communication layer.
In theory, everyone loves employee empowerment. Empowered employees are more productive and engaged, more likely to trust senior leadership and more likely to approach situations. What’s not to like?
Equally, that initial process of letting go can be hard – and that’s nothing to be ashamed about. Employee empowerment is a relatively recent philosophy, and many of us will have progressed our careers with a top-down approach to workplace management.
With the huge rise in remote and hybrid work, this approach is crumbling. As many workplaces are set to remain remote, and many others are losing employees in droves due to lack of career progression and low pay, it’s not a viable long term strategy.
Your managers can add huge amounts of value to your business in the projects they oversee and the bonds they build with their teams. Micromanagement is wasting them as a resource.
Staff empowerment involves trading some control over various aspects of your work environment for higher productivity and greater job satisfaction. Here’s how to embrace letting go in return for these tempting performance gains.
“Employee empowerment is a management philosophy that emphasizes the importance of giving employees the autonomy, resources and support they need to act independently and be held accountable for the decisions they make.”
“Autonomy, resources and support” encompasses a range of things here, and could include:
Offering employees freedom over where they work (e.g. remote or hybrid working arrangements).
Offering employees freedom over how they work by building managerial trust and avoiding micromanagement.
Providing resources for skills development and career progression
Structuring your organization in a way that allows employees some say in how it’s run, for example employee voice initiatives and shareholder schemes.
Employee empowerment, engagement, and satisfaction…what’s the difference?
Employee engagement is the strength of the mental and emotional connection employees feel toward the work they do, their teams and their organization.
Employee satisfaction is a measure of how happy an employee is in their role, and with their place of work in general.
Employee empowerment is providing the resources and support needed for your employees to act independently.
If you’re the type for metaphors (don’t blame you, they’re super useful!), consider employee satisfaction and employee empowerment as two key building blocks for employee engagement.
High employee engagement is the ultimate goal – companies with engaged employees are 21% more profitable than companies that aren’t. Workplace satisfaction and empowering employees with control over how they work are essential contributors to this.
The benefits of empowerment in the workplace
Your workforce is more flexible
Empowered workforces can work across locations and time zones, innovate more, and find solutions to problems quicker. That’s a real asset across your business – you can create better products, offer a vastly improved CX and build watertight internal processes.
Your workforce is more productive
Employees who feel trusted are more likely to get more done in the same space of time. This is partly because it’s easier to feel driven when you have autonomy over your work, and partly because micromanagement is a major time drain. Free your colleagues from this over-hierarchical hellscape and they’ll be more willing to go the extra mile.
Your workforce trusts leadership more
Trust is a two-way street. You’ll find that if employees are trusted to manage their workloads and have a say in how your business is run, they trust senior leadership to make mutually beneficial decisions as a result.
Research by the Great Place to Work Institute and Fortune suggests that trust between managers and employees is the main factor in the world’s best workplaces. Workplaces with the most mutual trust beat the average annualized returns of the S&P 500 by a factor of three.
How to empower employees in the workplace
Employee empowerment isn’t a bandaid that you can tack onto your existing workplace to make it better. It needs to be woven into the fibers of your company culture.
Bad news: this takes time and effort.
Good news: this investment will absolutely pay off in the long term. Creating new management practices, investing in new ways of working, sharing feedback regularly and creating a culture of recognition all help you maximize the value you get from employee empowerment as a business.
Feedback: give it and receive it
The more feedback you give on performance, the more you empower your employees to work dynamically, creatively and independently.
The more feedback employees share with you about the workplace, the more your workplace can meet their needs – and the more likely they are to stay.
Recognition: little and often is key
Did you know that a simple ‘thank you’ just once per month to your employees doubles employee engagement, halves the risk of them leaving and triples the likelihood of them sticking with you in the long term?
By all means celebrate the big milestones, but don’t forget to create a supportive, encouraging atmosphere day to day as well. Self belief is empowering – let your employees know that they’re doing a good job and watch performance improve.
Career development: make sure employees are working towards something
Career development motivates employees to act independently. Why take the risks that come with autonomy and decision-making responsibilities if there’s no payout?
In a recent survey 63% of workers cited lack of career opportunities as a reason why they left their position – the joint most popular response alongside ‘poor pay’. To create an empowered workforce motivated to stick around for the long-term, take a look at your career progression structure. What could be improved? Or, if you haven’t got any formalized structures in place, how could you design them to support the needs of your workforce?
Communication: two-way, not one-way
Watching your employees’ every move makes your workforce resentful and erodes trust. Instead of monitoring behavior, start thinking about how you can facilitate meaningful two-way communication between managers and employees.
As well as the right software – employee apps, instant messengers and project management software are all useful here – take a look at shifting your concerns away from regulating behavior and more towards focusing on results.
Responsibilities: avoid making things too top heavy
The classic scenario: managers are expected to maintain a huge degree of control over their teams, resulting in time pressures, delays and a lack of feedback for frontline teams.
By sharing responsibilities across employees and teams, you reduce this pressure drastically and encourage employee autonomy. You also avoid gradual erosion of trust and performance stagnation, as you empower your managers to spend time with their teams and invest time in employee development.
Barriers to employee empowerment and how to overcome them
Stuck on building a naturally empowering workplace? Check these common barriers to employee empowerment.
Your remote employees can’t communicate
To empower employees in a remote environment, your communications strategy needs to be stronger than it’s ever been.
If performance is suffering and deadlines are being missed due to confusion, invest in remote employee communication tools and make sure your managers are checking in at least daily.
Fear of position loss
If your employees are increasingly autonomous, what’s in store for middle to lower management positions?
Ease your managers’ concerns about this by communicating new expectations for different roles. If they know that employee empowerment is as much about reinvesting their time in meaningful work as empowering the workforce, they’re significantly more likely to get on board.
Lack of clear goals
“Be empowered” won’t cut it. To maximize returns on your employee empowerment strategy, you’ll need to be specific about what these goals look like. This could include:
Employees handling specific tasks on their own
Employees contributing regularly to strategic discussions
Employees shaping their workplace via employee voice initiatives
Employee empowerment in different industries
Not all industries work in the same way. What empowers employees in one industry might be impossible in another. Your healthcare workers might not be able to work remotely, for example, or there may be a particularly rigid professional hierarchy in place that you need to work around.
No matter your sector or organizational structure, there are ways to empower your employees. If flexible working is difficult, or there are real limits on the responsibilities you can share, try focusing on:
Employee voice initiatives like surveys and focus groups
Career progression – if your industry is hierarchical, work with it!
Recognition – a little ‘thank you’ never goes awry
Employee empowerment resources
There’s no such thing as being “too nerdy” about the wellbeing, productivity and performance of your employees. If you’re up for a bit of further reading, take a look at these resources.
And, don’t forget to check out our Frontline of the Future podcast! Listen here.
Employee empowerment examples
Need some real-world empowerment inspiration? Take a look at how these three businesses encourage their employees to reach their full potential.
Timpsons
British service retailer Timpsons is a renowned example of what happens when you trust your employees.
The business’s ‘upside down management’ philosophy was borne of owner John Timpson’s realization that “the only way to provide truly great customer service is to trust our customer-facing colleagues with the freedom to serve customers the way they know best.”
Timpsons’ frontline team members are encouraged to do whatever they can to provide a brilliant customer experience, including changing prices, rejigging displays and paying up to £500 to settle a complaint – without having to justify themselves to anyone senior.
John Lewis
If you’re looking for the ultimate employee empowerment strategy, look no further than employee ownership. Your employees become shareholders in your business, and get a share of annual profits and a say in how the business is run.
It’s definitely a commitment, but UK department store John Lewis makes it work. According to recent figures, 84% of John Lewis retail partners recommend John Lewis as a great place to work and 86% of customers feel valued when they shop with John Lewis outlets. Positioning their workforce as partners rather than employees drives empowerment; the retailer regularly tops ‘best workplace’ polls as a result.
Google
It’s no surprise that worldwide innovation leader Google expects the best from its employees. To facilitate this, Google invests a lot in building a creative work environment where employees are empowered to develop new skills at every turn.
Google Cafes encourage employees to build connections across the business, whilst the Google Moderator management tool draws a wider audience into meetings with a range of interactive features.
Google also allows its engineers to spend 20% of their working week on projects that interest them but show no immediate promise of paying dividends. Employees have the chance to develop new skills and work with their interests, whilst Google keeps ahead of the pack on long-term innovation.
Employee empowerment: final thoughts
As how we work continues to change, employee empowerment is becoming essential. Your teams need to be flexible, adaptable and engaged if you want to remain competitive – particularly right now, as open vacancies soar and workforces are asked to do more with less.
Employee empowerment will look different in different workforces. For example, you might not be able to offer flexible working, but you can still allow employees control over their processes and a say in how the workplace is run. Or, you might have strict protocols that need to be followed, but be able to offer some degree of time and location flexibility.
Whatever staff empowerment means for you, encouraging meaningful communication between managers and employees, setting clear expectations and building a culture of mutual trust is essential to success.
Blink is an employee app that enables two-way conversations, builds trust and empowers employees as a result. Get your free demo today!
For years, the intranet market has been quietly humming in the background — necessary, but rarely exciting. Static sites, low adoption, and an “if it ain’t broke” mindset have kept things predictable.
But the rhythm of work has changed. Employees expect consumer-grade experiences that rival modern social platforms, and organizations need platforms that actually connect people — not just store documents.
Enter 2025’s Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Intranet Packaged Solutions, where Blink made its debut — not just as a newcomer, but as the market’s most exciting Challenger. It’s a milestone that says as much about where the market is heading as it does about where we stand.
The significance of a Challenger debut
The Gartner Magic Quadrant is one of the most respected evaluations in enterprise technology. Each year, Gartner assesses intranet providers on Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision, mapping them into four quadrants: Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche Players. Decision-makers around the world look to this report for support and validation in their platform investments.
Being named a Challenger means two things:
We’re executing at a high level.
We’re pushing the market forward with a bold, differentiated vision.
For us, debuting in this position validates years of momentum — from scaling frontline employee engagement to redefining what an “intranet” even means. But more importantly, it signals a broader shift: The industry is ready for something more human, more connected, something more vibrant.
A new rhythm for the digital workplace
The modern intranet is no longer a static homepage. It’s a living, breathing ecosystem that powers communication, culture, and connection across every corner of an organization — from HQ to the shop floor.
This report reflects that evolution. It highlights the growing importance of frontline access, intelligent content, and designing for the employee experience. These aren’t fringe capabilities anymore — they’re must-haves.
That’s exactly where Blink has been leading:
Frontline-first design that reaches the 80% of workers traditional intranets forget.
Mobile-native experiences that fit the way people actually work.
Analytics and insights that make employee engagement measurable, not mythical.
AI-powered communication tools that help leaders connect with clarity and scale.
In short: Blink isn’t playing the same old tune. We’re remixing the intranet into something people actually want to use.
Why this matters for buyers and the market
For IT, HR, and communications leaders, Gartner’s recognition offers something invaluable: confidence. It confirms that the market is moving toward solutions that are not only functional but felt — favoring all-in-one employee experience platforms that drive adoption, engagement, and belonging.
Blink’s debut as a Challenger underscores three broader trends shaping the intranet software landscape:
People-first design is now non-negotiable: Usability, accessibility, and experience aren’t nice-to-haves; they’re the new foundation. Platforms that feel like consumer apps are setting the bar.
The frontline workforce is being reconnected: Enterprises are realizing that true culture and communication can’t stop at the office door. The intranet must extend everywhere work happens.
The era of “static sites” is ending: Modern intranets are dynamic platforms integrating AI, video, and microapps — enabling communication, knowledge, and action in one place.
Gartner’s report confirms what many leaders already feel: The traditional intranet model is out of sync with how work happens today.
The Blink perspective: Challenger as a mindset
Being named a Challenger isn’t about position — it’s about posture.
At Blink, we see this as validation and responsibility. Validation that our people-first approach is working. Responsibility to keep raising the tempo for what’s possible in the digital workplace.
We’re here to make work feel better — for everyone. That’s why we obsess over adoption. Why we invest in intuitive design. Why we believe that when every employee has a voice, the whole organization moves faster.
As our CEO Sean Nolan puts it:
“We’re not here to play the same tune as everyone else. We’re spinning the future of work — remixing the intranet into something vibrant, exciting, and actually worth using.”
What comes next
The intranet category is in transformation — and Blink’s debut marks a turning point. The market is hungry for connection, simplicity, and meaning at work.
Delivering experiences that feel as good as they perform
The recognition from Gartner is both a milestone and a launchpad. Because being a Challenger isn’t the end of the story — it’s the start of the remix.
Read the full report
Get your complimentary copy of the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Intranet Packaged Solutions (2025) to explore the full market landscape, compare vendors, and see how the industry’s next chapter is being written.
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