Blink + Workday Integration: Employee Experience Bridge

Employee experience in 2025: trends to watch

Employee experience (EX) has been a trending topic across workplaces for a few years now. Originating as what seemed like a corporate buzzword quickly became a large-scale strategy for major employers across the globe. 

In 2023, we saw a different story. For employers, there were strikes. There were debates about a return to the office. The Great Reshuffle was replaced by the Great Gloom – an epidemic of unhappy workers.

And according to Forrester, the EX outlook for 2024 remains gloomy:

“Two key metrics dropped between 2022 and 2023 globally: Employee engagement fell from 41% to 37%, while culture energy fell from 63% to 59%[...]We predict that 2024 will see continued decline, with employee engagement dipping to 34%.”

These percentages are likely lower for frontline employees. 

That’s because frontline workers often miss out on the employee engagement boosts available to their office-based counterparts. We’re talking connection and development opportunities, tech tools, and regular recognition.

The key issue now is what employers plan to do about it. Employee experience remains an important focus for any forward-thinking business. That’s because when employees are happy and engaged, your business benefits from:

• Better staff retention and talent acquisition
• Improved productivity and performance
• Higher rates of customer satisfaction
• Improved employee wellbeing and attendance

This all impacts a company’s bottom line. Organizations with the best employee experience can achieve nearly three times the financial returns on assets when compared to those with the worst.

So how are companies planning to engage and retain employees in 2024? And what EX patterns are already emerging? Here are the employee trends set to impact the future of employee experience over the coming year and beyond. 

Top 5 EX trends to look out for in 2025

The growth of AI in the workplace

First on our list of employee experience trends is artificial intelligence (AI).

AI was a hot topic in 2023. As generative AI – like ChatGPT and Bard – marched onto the scene, lots of people got their first, hands-on experience with the technology.

Many businesses are already on board. 55% of respondents to a McKinsey survey said that their organizations were using AI in 2023. And more than two-thirds expect their organizations to increase AI investment over the next three years.

AI isn’t going anywhere. So in 2024, we predict that more companies will harness its potential for both business and employee experience transformation. Here’s how.

Streamlining workflows

AI is helping to streamline workflows. Which is good news for organizations – and for frontline employees.

Tech takes care of repetitive and monotonous tasks. It reduces frontline friction, so employees can perform tasks more easily. Workers get to spend more time on customer care and on activities that demand a higher level of expertise.

For instance, in retail, AI is predicting increased footfall. This gives shop floor staff time to prepare the store and provide a better service.

In healthcare, AI can help to reduce waiting times, which means happier patients and frontline healthcare staff.

And in manufacturing, real-time AI insight into equipment status allows workers to make repairs before machines break down entirely, making their job easier.

In 2024, more businesses will use AI to improve processes and streamline the work of their frontline teams.

Internal communications

AI is also playing an important role in internal communications. Leaders are using AI to perform tasks like these:

• supporting DEI by highlighting bias in real-time, as employees type a message
• identifying employees who haven’t received recognition in a while
• helping employees find relevant resources on the company portal

Some organizations are also using AI chatbots to support the employee experience. Bots provide 24/7 assistance to employees, guiding them through company systems and helping them complete HR self-service tasks.

This spells satisfying experiences for employees where their queries are answered quickly – and a lighter workload for your People Team.

HR

HR teams are using AI to hone recruiting, onboarding, and training processes. They’re making these EX touchstones more effective and streamlined.

AI is helping to:

• remove bias from the recruitment process
• predict the needs of new hires
• highlight training resources relevant to a chosen career pathway

This means People Teams get more time to focus on value-add employee experience activities. And employees feel more engaged with your organization, right from the very beginning of their journey.

But a word of warning. Getting the right AI balance will be key. Employees are happy to deal with AI for some HR functions. But AI in its current form lacks emotional intelligence. A real, human touch is still needed if you want to achieve the very best EX.

Education

As a whole, organizations are more optimistic and curious about AI than they were five years ago. But there’s a disconnect between leaders and frontline employees. According to a BCG survey:

• Leaders are more optimistic than frontline employees about AI (62% vs 42%)
• Leaders are more likely than frontline workers to say they’ve received training to improve skills and stay relevant (44% vs 14%)
• Leaders use generative AI more regularly than frontline workers (80% vs 20%)
• Regular generative AI users are more optimistic than non-users about the technology (62% vs 36%)

Frontline workers are worried about AI eroding or stealing their jobs, so we anticipate AI education being an important part of the puzzle in 2024. Leaders will have to explain the value of this tech to employees and how they plan to use it going forward.

Top tip: Check out this research from the American Psychological Association. Employees are more likely to worry about AI when they don’t feel valued at work. So developing other areas of employee experience – like recognition – can help smooth your journey toward AI adoption.

Adopting EX technology

Every digital interaction a worker has at your company forms part of their digital employee experience (DEX). But workplace tech often falls short.

It fails to mirror the seamless digital experiences people get in their lives away from work. It’s also often inaccessible to any worker who doesn’t sit behind a desk.

However, in 2024, it feels like things are changing.

Updating technology

52% of employees believe that software related to their employee experience is dated and difficult to use. And 52% of frontline employees say they would leave their jobs over poor tech tools.

Employers are taking note. In response to employee tech frustrations, companies are upgrading from old company intranets to modern, mobile-first solutions.

They’re using employee apps, like Blink, that help organizations create connected company ecosystems that include every member of the workforce.

Available via a smartphone app, Blink doesn’t rely on email addresses or a complicated login process. It’s a secure, streamlined platform that puts company comms, tools, and resources in the same accessible place.

And because mobile-first apps like Blink are similar to the digital tools employees already use at home, they’re intuitive. Any team member can pick up an app and use it instantly.

Streamlining technology

We now know that too many tools hamper the employee experience. Rather than switching between different platforms, employees prefer to use the fewest number of programs to achieve their goals.

So this year, companies are battling tech bloat and looking for tools that perform multiple functions. They’re also implementing tools that meet the needs of various departments – like HR, IT, and comms teams – bringing all EX essentials under the same roof.

This streamlined approach will reduce the need for multiple employee logins. Instead, tools will be increasingly integrated and easy to use.

Personalizing the experience

Employees are getting personalized experiences away from work. Movie recommendations on Netflix. The annual listening roundup from Spotify. A shopping list from their supermarket app.  

We know that a personalized approach drives customer loyalty. So could this be the year employers apply the same logic to their employee experience?

Personalized internal comms

Good internal communication is essential to EX. It fosters trust between employees and leadership. It also makes your workforce more engaged, connected, and aligned.

The best internal comms are reliable and consistent. They’re also personalized to each employee, based on their location, department, role, or tenure.

Comms leaders are increasingly using personalization as a way to get their message heard. They’re doing this with the help of tech that allows them to segment employees more effectively. 

This means employees no longer receive irrelevant memos. They don’t get distracted or overwhelmed by internal communications that don’t apply to them.

Instead, they receive tailored messages that resonate – and that encourage sustained engagement with comms going forward.

Personalized tech

As you’ve probably gathered, tech and AI are a common thread throughout these employee experience trends. They’re integral to the progress being made in the sector.

As well as using AI to segment your workforce and target internal communications more effectively, you can use tech to create personalized digital experiences.

For example, employees can reconfigure their company dashboard, prioritizing the features most relevant to their work. Some companies are using tools that go a step further, using AI to personalize portals automatically.

Personalized learning and career pathways

L&D and career advancement are still top priorities for frontline employees in 2024. But one size never fits all. So we expect more organizations to develop personalized learning and career pathways for their employees.

It’s about making learning accessible and engaging for each individual. Leaders will make micro-learning, mentorship, coaching, on-the-job learning, and online courses available to all employees.

It’s also about making learning relevant to each individual career path. Tech tools – once again – stand at the forefront of this shift. L&D leaders are using them to identify and benchmark skills related to each role. And then recommend relevant learning materials and assessments.

Employees want to be heard

Companies that only engage in top-down communication will stick out like a sore thumb in 2024. Listening and open communication are now cornerstones of good employee experience management.

Employees want to feel heard because it helps them to feel valued. And employers stand to benefit, too. 

When you give employees a voice – and listen to what they have to say – you gain valuable insight into what your workforce wants. You then make better EX decisions. But this is only possible when you allow information to travel in all directions – top-down, bottom-up and peer-to-peer. 

Manager training

Good company-wide communication relies on an open company culture. But it seems there’s disagreement over how well organizations are doing. 

According to Leapsome’s Workforce Trends Report, 97% of HR leaders say that they have a good feedback culture. But only 13% of remote employees agree. What’s more, a third of all employees don’t feel they can talk to HR.

This is perhaps why organizations are putting greater focus on manager development. Managers help set the culture. But listening and open communication don’t always come naturally. 

With training, managers can gain the active listening and empathy skills they need to encourage collaborative communication. They also learn to embrace rather than shy away from employee feedback.

Surveys & feedback

In a bid to make EX strategies more effective, we expect organizations to spend more time in 2024 gathering the opinions of employees.

They’ll be finding out what matters to their workers. And what workers think of EX as it currently stands. 

Companies will develop a regular schedule of feedback requests and surveys. Annual surveys to track progress over time – and pulse surveys to get an up-to-the-minute snapshot of their organization.

Personalization comes into play here too. By personalizing surveys to different departments, teams, and employee journeys, organizations get better feedback engagement and more accurate results.

But simply filling out a survey isn’t enough to make employees feel heard. Currently, it’s a hollow exercise for a worrying proportion of organizations.

According to O.C. Tanner’s Global Culture Report, only 58% of organizations take action to improve after receiving employee feedback.

So to get the most employee satisfaction and retention benefits from your surveys, always incorporate the following actions: 

• Acknowledging and thanking employees for feedback
• Sharing survey results
• Communicating how you plan to use employee feedback to improve EX

Giving everyone a voice

When it comes to being heard, some employees seem to have a louder voice than others. Usually, it’s those closer to the heart of operations – employees based at HQ who get regular contact with managers and leaders.

However, as organizations strive to improve EX for all employees, they’re looking to include everyone in the conversation. This means frontline as well as desk-based teams.

Leaders increasingly understand the importance of spending time with frontline workers – either digitally or in person. It’s a way to grasp the realities, successes, and challenges of their roles.

We predict more of this in 2024, as well as a push for more inclusive decision-making.

With the right communication tools, accessible to everyone, head office can pose questions and present problems to all employees. They can get input from all members of the workforce and craft better, more effective solutions.

Data-driven decision-making

As we’ve seen, companies are using tech solutions to supercharge their EX. In the process, they’re gathering a ton of valuable data that they can use to inform their future efforts.

Data-driven decision-making is the last of our employee experience trends. And it seems it’s becoming par for the course. Organizations are routinely asking their employees:

• Are you engaged with your team?
• Are you happy with management? Leadership?
• Are you satisfied with your experience at work?

Companies are using data from staff surveys to better identify employee experience issues. But they’re also getting a sense of the bigger picture by setting employee sentiment data alongside statistics on staff retention and productivity.

With the help of segmentation, they’re able to understand these figures at a granular level – by location, by department, by manager. This is allowing leaders to make more targeted and effective EX interventions.

But to harness the potential of data-driven decisions, you need the right tech tools. You need readily available, real-time data. You also need data that is well-presented and easy to digest so management can pivot EX strategies effectively.

Blink analytics lets you see positive and negative team relationships at a glance. It shows you the data associated with each individual post on the company newsfeed. And it has all of the features you need to filter and benchmark data with ease.

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What’s your EX plan for 2025?

2023 was a tough year. But the future of employee experience remains bright and exciting.

In 2024, we expect to see a real internal comms culture shift. Organizations are finding ways to amplify unheard frontline voices. They’re also making real efforts to act upon what they hear – and to involve everyone in the conversation.

AI and tech are a powerful force that we can use to improve EX. They make work easier and more enjoyable for employees while helping leaders create personalized and engaging experiences at every point in the employee journey.

And finally, thanks to both employee listening initiatives and great AI and tech tools, employers are getting better access to perspective-changing data. This is allowing them to drive informed and effective EX transformation.

So what are your EX plans for 2024?

Incorporate these employee trends into your EX strategy and you’ll get ahead of the competition. You’ll develop an employee-centric approach that drives better retention, productivity, and profits.

Check out a preview of Blink here to see how our frontline employee super-app can help transform employee experience.

How engaged your frontline employees are directly impacts how successful they are as a team. If you can encourage engagement then productivity, quality, care, commitment, and retention surely follow.

Yet, no matter how clear the correlation is, it’s not always as clear how to achieve frontline employee engagement.

In this guide, we share expert insights for your employee engagement strategies — helping you create a positive working environment that inspires satisfaction and success.

From understanding the importance of communication and collaboration across the organization to leveraging technology for better team performance, this guide will cover the activities and tools needed to foster an engaging frontline culture.

The current state of frontline employee engagement

Recent employee engagement statistics tell us that only 21% of employees are engaged at work.

The percentage is likely lower when it comes to the frontline.

That’s because frontline employee engagement is often handled as an afterthought. There’s a misconception that when workers are out in the field, then they don’t ‘need’ to feel connected to the wider business. Or that because their role doesn’t require a computer, they won’t want digital tools to improve their experience.

We see from our work with frontline organizations that these assumptions are wrong, and that frontline employees do want to feel engaged.

Communication starts to flow much more freely when the right tools are in place (as much as 10x more for certain Blink customers); frontline staff are more willing and able to provide feedback (survey responses increase by 300%); and you can help almost every employee to better connect with the company’s mission and vision.

So why do so many attempts at frontline employee engagement fall flat?

Workers might resist not because they don’t want to engage, but because they have become wise to empty frontline engagement projects and initiatives. The programs that fail are the ones that misunderstand what frontline workers need to succeed — or that ask too much of them while delivering too little.

“Great, another thing to remember”

“It’s not a natural part of my day”

“It’s a one-off thing”

“It’s too hard to use”

To help create frontline employee engagement initiatives that work, we first have to understand why these employees have become disengaged in the first place.

Why frontline employees become disengaged

1. Lack of the right technology

According to Blink research on the health and social care space:

• Over one-third (34%) of employees can’t easily access workplace systems on their mobile
• Nearly 20% aren’t using their company’s intranet
• … and two-thirds of this ~20% aren’t even sure how to log on

Disengagement with — or lack of access to — company platforms leads to missed information and feelings of isolation. At best, this can impede a frontline worker’s ability to do their job (maybe they miss an important update or never receive new guidance). At worst, it distances them so much from the rest of the business that they exist in their own, dissatisfied silo.

52% of frontline workers say they would leave their job over tech tools, making leveraging the right technology a very easy win for keeping your frontline engaged and retained.

But we can’t take the same tech stack that desk-based workers use and apply it to the frontline.

As Ian Gordon, former President of Administrative Operations at Elara Caring, told us in an interview:

“Being a frontline worker can feel like you’re on an island by yourself, and the solutions that you need must be quicker and more succinct. You can’t spend a lot of time signing in and navigating. You need to get to your answer now.”

The ‘right’ technology for frontline engagement will:

• Be intuitive and frictionless
• Allow the most essential, day-job-critical messages to cut through
• Facilitate the workflows that are most important to the ‘deskless’ front line: shift swapping, accessing pay stubs, providing feedback, and so on.

If your frontline tools don’t deliver on the above, then your frontline employee engagement efforts will be wasted.

2. No sense of belonging

Frontline disengagement can also result from a lack of community.
80% of frontline employees say that they are afforded few connection opportunities at work, according to McKinsey research.

And even if these opportunities exist, frontline workers aren’t always engaging with them. McKinsey found that frontline workers were taking part in the below methods of community and connection just once a month or less:

• Internal corporate communications (e.g., town halls)
• Watercooler talks with co-workers
• Employee resource groups
• Other work-related events

Touchpoints like these are all essential for building team spirit and rapport within frontline teams. And if workers aren’t engaging with them, then this speaks volumes about the types of community events that frontline leaders should invest in.

The best way to learn what works for your frontline is to ask them.

We touch on the concept of outside-in thinking in our whitepaper, ‘The frontline engagement roadmap: A step-by-step guide to driving transformative change’. Download your copy today.

3. No clear development opportunities

If you think that all engaged frontline workers are ‘rockstars’ — satisfied with mastering the job they have today rather than looking to step up — then think again.

There’s a very good chance you have ‘superstars’ in your frontline workforce as well. When engaged in a role, these employees are further motivated by the idea of career progression and will actively seek out opportunities to advance and develop. 70% of frontline workers apply for advancement opportunities when they are offered, seeking greater financial security, learning, and development.

But how easy is it for these employees to find this professional development?

Lack of development opportunities came up as a theme — and a reason for leaving a role — among the health and social care workers we spoke to in 2021. Further research has found a similar trend in the retail space, where 32% of frontline workers cite a lack of career development as a turnover factor.

“The vast majority of deskless workers (97%) report that they would stay in their current roles if their conditions improved. Such conditions go beyond a pay rise, meaning that HR needs to offer deskless workers the same opportunities as their deskbound counterparts.”

Frontline leaders should strive to offer clear development opportunities to frontline workers, plus training and learning resources wherever helpful. This could include anything from providing access to relevant training courses and a Hub for training materials, or offering them direct opportunities to move into managerial roles.

There’s also something to be said for training and empowering first line managers to help frontline workers develop. 73% of frontline employees agree that having a manager who supports their career progression is key to career advancement.

4. They don’t feel listened to

The 2021 Blink research we mentioned earlier was called our Listen campaign. And it got its name for a reason.

In it, we surveyed 1,000 frontline UK health and social care workers to find out how their day-to-day lives could be improved. And one word cropped up again and again: listen.

Over one-third of the frontline workforce feels their organizations would fail to act on employee feedback — and that needs to change if we want them to keep providing it. To truly empower your frontline employees, you need to show them that you value what they do and that you hear what they say.

No more out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality. No more assuming your frontline is ‘getting on just fine’. If your frontline workers don’t feel heard, your engagement strategy isn’t working. It’s as simple as that.

5. No culture of, or channels for, recognition

Nearly 4 in 10 (37%) frontline workers don’t feel as valued as their desk-based counterparts. We were saddened to learn this from our Listen research, but not all that surprised.

After all, the recognition strategies that work for desk-basked employees can’t be efficiently deployed for the front line. A line manager can’t send a team-wide or company-wide email celebrating someone’s contribution. You can’t all get together at 5pm on Friday to toast the week’s achievements.

As with the tooling and community-building tactics we looked at above, frontline recognition requires a unique approach. How can you bolster both technology and community to give credit where credit is due?

It’s also important to make sure that feedback is given as soon after the event as possible. So ask yourself: what are the platforms that allow a quick turnaround of employee recognition in a fun, engaging way?

Help employees feel valued with Blink

Frontline employees deserve to be recognized for the hard work they do: for being the backbone of an organization’s success.

Without this, it’s no wonder they become disengaged.

6. Inefficient communication strategies

In our research, almost one-fifth of workers state that they don’t receive relevant internal communications from their employer organization.

An effective comms strategy combines group and 1:1 Secure Chats, regular Feed updates, engaging company news announcements, and more — all wrapped up and delivered in a platform or platforms that frontline workers want to engage with.

Given anything less than this, frontline teams can feel left out of the loop and unable to participate fully in their organization’s culture.

Get your frontline-centric communication strategy right and you can expect to see frontline employee engagement pay off in a myriad of ways.

Blink’s best advice for frontline employee engagement

Use tools that work for them

Your frontline staff need digital tools that work for them: where they need them and when they need them. From seamless integration with your current tech stack, to push notifications, single sign-on capabilities, and more, there are a number of tools that make it easy for frontline employees to engage on the go.

A frontline engagement app like Blink allows your workforce to easily access everything from one single platform. We’re talking company news, training materials and resources, inter- and intra-team communications, feedback surveys — the list of features keeps growing.

No more complex systems to navigate or multiple passwords to remember. Blink provides you with a simple, intuitive mobile app that gives your frontline employees the power to stay connected and engaged.

Book a free demo today

Conduct regular pulse surveys

Your frontline staff are the eyes, ears, and face of your organization. Listen to what they have to say, and you can learn more than you’d realize about your product or service, how happy customers are, and how well your processes are working today.

Pulse surveys offer up a consistent and user-friendly way to gather frontline feedback, no matter where your teams are working.

The data you gather can help identify areas of improvement — both internal and external to the business. This, in turn, will have a positive impact on all the essential metrics: frontline employee engagement, customer satisfaction, plus revenue and ROI.

💡 Learn more about How To Conduct Your First Employee Engagement Survey today.

Listen to and action feedback

Remember that statistic about frontline workers not believing their feedback will be actioned? Now is your time to win back their trust.

Remember, employee engagement should be earned. It won’t be given freely.

As a frontline leader, making sure that feedback is heard and put into action should be an essential part of your wider engagement strategy.

Be open and honest with the results of your surveys — and communicate what you’re doing as an organization to action this feedback.

Never present results as better or worse than they actually are, and always encourage an open dialogue about the outcomes of feedback initiatives. If you want your employees to offer their feedback on an ongoing basis, you need strategies that communicate to them how you’re hearing what they say.

You could even share your survey findings in a company-wide Feed announcement, along with specific objectives the organization has taken from the results and when these new initiatives will be put into place.

This doesn’t add any extra pressure to your frontline, but it does make your employees feel heard and valued.

Create engagement champions

Setting off on a frontline employee engagement transformation isn’t easy — or, it doesn’t feel easy at the start, at least.

We look at the power of allies in our frontline engagement roadmap and Ian Gordon also referenced how influential they can be:

“You need to find someone who has the energy, passion, and is empowered enough to lead the initiatives. That person could be the project lead, but preferably it’s someone from the frontline or with frontline experience. The frontline needs to have that relationship with management all the way up and be comfortable to share their concerns.”

Ian Gordon, Former President of Administrative Operations at Elara Caring

These allies, or engagement champions, can help drive initiatives both top-down and bottom-up, facilitating two-way communication between management and staff. They can also support the adoption of new tools, ensuring that frontline workers are comfortable and engaged as new technologies are implemented.

Blink Champions are the cornerstone of a successful launch with the frontline’s leading engagement app. Their role includes:

• Working with other Champions to ensure the launch is a success
• Raising awareness of Blink
• Encouraging others to use the app
• Being active in the Feed
• Educating their team on how to use the app
• Being an advocate for Blink
• Becoming an expert on Blink

Get commitment from every level of management

Ideally, you’d have engagement allies from the front line to your C-Suite.

If your company’s mission is to boost frontline engagement, then every staff member in an authority position needs to show their support. Yes, engagement should be enabled by managers buying into the right digital solutions, but it should also be held up by your company’s values and all aspects of your leadership.

Our research also demonstrates that frontline staff want senior management to listen to them, communicate with them, and respond to them. A simple, yet frequently forgotten, task.

First line managers could be a particularly interesting group to engage with: making up 50% – 60% of a company’s management and directly supervising as much as 80% of the frontline workforce.

When employees interact with their first line managers daily, it’s essential that those individuals set an example and demonstrate engagement through their behavior.

Managers should also be available to listen to frontline workers and act upon any issues they identify. This will help drive the desired engagement from the bottom up, inspiring the workforce to keep engaging regularly.

Recognition and reward

Forward-thinking companies are already investing in co-worker recognition tools. This helps deliver meaningful recognition and rewards to their employee base, reminding employees how valued they are.

Such approaches can quickly encourage motivation, nurture employee wellbeing, raise employee morale, and boost engagement levels across the board.

You should also consider directly rewarding engagement (interactions with your employee app, for example) to reinforce and reward the behavior, creating a positive ripple effect to inspire more engagement.

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What your business stands to gain

Frontline employee engagement = fewer absentees

Teams within the top 20% of employee engagement scores realize a 41% reduction in absenteeism. Imagine what your frontline organization could do with fewer empty shifts and less time spent finding staff to cover sickness — plus the additional revenue this will inevitably create.

Frontline employee engagement = lower turnover, higher retention

The cost of replacing an employee can range anywhere from 50% – 250% of their annual salary. So it’s no surprise that 87% of HR experts consider employee retention one of their highest priorities.

Why are we telling you this in an article about employee engagement? Because engaged workers are more likely to stay with their employers.

Disengaged workers will either be in an active search for their next role or much easier to sway should a desirable opportunity arise elsewhere. If you can create an engaging employee experience, however, you’ll retain your best talent.

Frontline employee engagement = a healthier bottom line

Engaged frontline employees deliver better quality of service, leading to customer satisfaction and loyalty.

92% of business executives believe that engaged employees perform better. And with engaged frontline workers performing at their best, better business outcomes are a natural development.

Bottom line improvements for highly engaged organizations include:

• 10% higher customer ratings
• 18% higher sales
• A 23% difference in profitability

In this way, an increase in engagement from frontline employees can be felt by every stakeholder, in every department, and at every level of the business.

What now?

Achieving operational excellence is a challenge on its own. Doing so while also investing in employee experience can leave frontline management teams feeling overwhelmed.

So let’s break it down into simple steps.

If you understand why frontline employees disengage, what motivates them, and how to keep them engaged, then you can establish a frontline engagement strategy that truly works.

Companies can unlock tremendous value from their workforce, demonstrate a real commitment to their employees, and drive positive business outcomes — all by leveraging the power of frontline employee engagement.

How can Blink help?

At Blink, we understand the importance of engaging with frontline employees. We’ve helped over 250 frontline organizations increase engagement and performance throughout their frontline.

Our frontline engagement app helps you measure and manage employee engagement in real-time to drive sustained improvements across your business. With our advanced analytics and tailored solutions, you can quickly identify problem areas, create action plans, and keep your employees engaged.

With our comprehensive suite of solutions, we’ll help you unlock the power of your frontline and achieve the results you’re looking for.

Get started with a free demo

Not every team is going to bring maximum energy every single day. That’s normal.

But if disengagement feels less like an occasional bad Monday and more like a permanent setting, something deeper is going on. For frontline workers especially, the gap between what they experience and what office-based employees take for granted is real — and it shows. The right employee experience platform (EXP) can close that gap in ways that matter.

An employee experience platform for frontline organizations gives every employee — frontline, remote, hybrid, and desk-based — access to communication, recognition, feedback, and connection. All in one simple, mobile-first space.

One login. One experience. One shared culture. And a big boost for employee morale.

Here, we explore what low morale really looks like — and how the right workplace culture platform can help turn it around.

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Understanding low employee morale

Employee morale is the attitude, satisfaction, and emotional well-being workers experience in relation to their job, team, and organization.

Employee morale is closely linked to employee engagement (the degree to which employees feel invested in their work and workplace) and employee motivation (the energy and enthusiasm employees bring to their work).

Causes of low morale

Causes of low morale in the workplace are varied. They include poor leadership, lack of recognition, unclear goals, unsustainable workloads, and limited growth opportunities.

The quality of internal communication and employee engagement strategies make a difference. Company culture is also a big factor.

57% of people who rate their organizational culture poorly say they are actively or soon will be looking for another job. And just 45% of those working in poor or terrible cultures are motivated to produce high-quality work.

Symptoms of low morale

Signs of workplace disengagement and low morale include:

• Absenteeism
• Avoiding collaboration
• Missed deadlines
• Negativity
• Lower employee satisfaction metrics

Impact of low morale

Low morale can lead to disengagement, lower productivity, and increased turnover. Despite these risks, 3 in 4 employers fail to regularly check in on how motivated their workforce is feeling.

How a workplace culture platform improves morale

A workplace culture platform (also called an employee experience platform or employee engagement platform) brings together everything employees need to feel good about their work.

Instead of scattering culture across emails, noticeboards, PDFs, and disconnected tools, it puts everything in one place.

For organizations with complex, decentralized workforces, a workplace culture platform provides tools for:

• Employee communication
• Recognition and rewards
• Feedback and pulse surveys
• Knowledge and resources
• Co-worker connection

What difference does this make to morale? Let’s look at some stats. After launching Blink’s employee experience platform:

• 95% of Elara Caring employees feel more connected to their employer and company culture
• Bus company, Go North West, experienced a 26% reduction in employee turnover
• More than 8 in 10 employees at Domino’s are using the platform every month to check in with updates and celebrate team wins

As a platform for workplace culture, Blink builds morale into daily work. It allows you to collect feedback, increase psychological safety, and deliver timely manager support.

As a mobile-first platform, Blink makes these collaboration tools and resources available on employee smartphones. So you can bring a better employee experience to every member of every team.

Key benefits of using a workplace culture platform

Thinking of launching employee experience software for frontline organizations? Here are the benefits you can expect:

• Recognition at scale. Employee recognition tools make appreciation easy. You improve employees’ sense of value and belonging, driving employee retention and engagement in the process.
• Better business performance. According to Gallup, highly engaged teams have 17% better productivity, 23% higher profitability, and a 10% increase in customer loyalty.
• Visibility into engagement metrics. With one centralized platform and a dashboard for employee sentiment, it’s easy to spot issues with morale and engagement, then prioritize interventions.
• Less “busy work.” Centralized communication, recognition, and culture-building tools simplify work. So teams have more time for creative and value-add tasks.

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Addressing hybrid, remote, and frontline workforce challenges

For years, organizations unintentionally built workplace culture around office life. Town halls. Team lunches. Desk-side chats.

Effects on morale may once have been minimal. But things have changed.

A large proportion of employees are now working remotely or on a hybrid schedule. And frontline employees are simply fed up with being forgotten.

This is causing problems for frontline, remote, and hybrid workforce engagement:

• 21% of frontline employees in the UK are quiet quitting — they say a lack of recognition, ineffective communication, and poor relationships with co-workers and managers are to blame.
• 41% of remote workers feel disconnected from company culture
• Just 1 in 3 remote organizations take active steps to foster community and a cohesive remote team culture

A centralized, mobile-first employee experience platform can change all that. It overcomes barriers of time and geography, giving every employee access to the company culture and connection they crave — straight from their smartphones.

Wondering how to welcome non-office workers onto your platform? Here are a few ways to use a culture-building tool for all employees.

Build connections

Support your teams to build connections and a sense of belonging with easy access to chat and company news feed tools.

Provide digital access to resources

Forms, shift swap tools, company policy docs, L&D, career progression, and operational tools — make everything available to all workers in just a few taps of the app.

Make frontline employees visible on the platform

Use employee-generated content and behind-the-scenes insights to make frontline, remote, and hybrid voices heard on your platform.

Personalize content

Use targeting tools to ensure each segment of your workforce sees personalized content and resources relevant to them and their roles.

Creating a virtuous employee lifecycle using data and feedback

Start using employee experience management software for your frontline organization, and you create a positive feedback loop.

You build a more positive company culture, ensuring every employee feels part of it. And you have the tools you need to measure the success of your morale-boosting initiatives — so you can become laser-focused in your approach.

The best workplace culture platforms provide platform usage data and employee feedback, plus actionable insights. Actionable insights are data-driven discoveries that prompt specific improvements to processes, policies, or engagement strategies.

To convert these insights into tangible improvements, you need to move from platform data and analytics and employee feedback to action. You have to close the loop with visible change.

For example:

A pulse survey reveals worrying levels of employee burnout in a particular team.

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You tell employees what you’ve found and what you plan to do about it (perhaps reallocating workloads or offering more flexibility).

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You make changes. Then, continue to report back, sharing results and progress transparently with employees.

By taking this approach to workplace sentiment analysis, you embed employee voice as an important part of company culture — and successfully use comms and HR analytics for engagement, satisfaction, and employee morale.

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Launching a workplace culture platform: tips for success

The way you approach culture platform implementation can make or break adoption. You need a good handle on change management in HR tech and a solid employee experience strategy.

As you roll out, you need to:

1. Define culture and engagement goals. What do you want your new platform to achieve? Develop SMART goals and take benchmark readings.

2. Get leaders on board. Ensure leadership buy-in. Emphasize the difference that C-suite input and interaction make. Then, develop ways for them to be visible on the platform.

3. Transparently communicate changes. Tell employees that a new platform is coming and how it benefits them. You may like to incentivize early adoption.

4. Train users. The best platforms have a minimal learning curve. But ensure everyone (particularly frontline and remote staff) is up to speed to ensure high platform adoption rates.

5. Integrate with your tech stack. When your culture platform plays nicely with other workplace tools (for example, HRIS system, shift booking tools, and learning platform), you encourage adoption and amplify impact.

6. Integrate communication tools into daily routines. Create a comms calendar that details when you’ll share recognition, employee surveys, and community updates, ensuring regular cultural touchpoints.

7. Use metrics to iterate and adjust. Keep an eye on platform analytics to find out which of your cultural initiatives are having the most impact and which need to be tweaked.

These adoption strategies will help you maximize return and avoid common pitfalls.

Workplace culture and technology: What’s next?

The right tech tools support a better, more inclusive, more inspiring workplace culture. But where are things headed next?

As ever in the world of tech, there are changes on the way. Here are the shifts in technology and employee expectations we expect to see over the coming months and years.  

• New platform features. Features like AI-powered content, hyper-personalized recognition, predictive workforce analytics, and mobile-first experiences will become the norm. AI in employee experience is here to stay.
• Super-apps for workforce management. In response to app overwhelm, organizations will seek to simplify their tech stacks. They’ll avoid point solutions and, instead, choose tools that support every element of workforce management — with either in-built features or deep integrations.  
• The rise of employee voice. Organizations that really listen to their employees keep their finger on the pulse and can respond to engagement and morale challenges in real time. Soon, continuous listening will be the norm.

The future of digital workplace technology is already on its way. And it’s clear. Organizations are focusing on fewer tools and better experiences.

We’re already seeing the “platformization” of culture. Disparate tools are being brought together in unified, employee-centric apps, and organizations are realizing the power of tech to transform productivity and morale.

Blink. And create a culture that boosts employee morale and motivation.

In April, Blink attended the American Ambulance Association Annual Conference & Trade Show (a.k.a. AAA)  in Nashville, TN. As the premier event in the ambulance industry, leaders gather at AAA to discuss the trends and pitfalls they face, find innovative vendor solutions, and hear from experts about the future of Emergency Medical Services (EMS). 

We had the honor of sharing the stage with a few of those trend-setting industry experts. Blink hosted a panel discussion, “Uncensored: Cutting The BS On Employee Communications,” with two of the industry’s most straight-talking COOs: Danielle Thomas (Lifeline Ambulance) and Meredith A. Lambroff-Brown (Armstrong Ambulance Service). 

Keep reading to discover some of the employee communications insights Danielle and Meredith shared with the audience. 

Why good employee communications matter for EMS agencies 

First, let’s set the stage to understand why frontline communications are so critical for ambulance companies. EMS frontline workers—paramedics and emergency medical technicians (EMTs)--play a critical role in society. Ambulance companies face a difficult task, however, when it comes to keeping a strong workforce and staying connected with them. 

Frontline roles in healthcare related industries are notoriously challenging to keep filled—and EMS is no different. Over the last few years, turnover rates have increased, with an average of 11% turnover in the US and a peak of 20% turnover in high response volume areas in 2022. The turnover problem is compounded by waning applicant pools, with nearly two-thirds of agencies reporting a decrease in applications. 

On top of that, EMS practitioners are a young and increasingly diverse workforce. In California, for example, the EMS workforce is younger on average than the rest of California’s workforce. In the US, more broadly, EMTs are one of the youngest workforces, with a median age of 29.7 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

What industry COOs are saying about employee communications

Against this backdrop, what advice and insights did Thomas and Lambroff-Brown have for companies struggling to communicate with a young, mobile, and diverse workforce? Here are a few takeaways from the talk.

1. Comms is a must-have, not a nice-to-have

In many ambulance agencies, the practice of communications is often viewed as an afterthought, rather than what it really is: one of the most powerful tools available. A good communication strategy has the power to educate, motivate, connect, and focus workers; a bad communications strategy can tear down people and workplace culture. 

‍2. Master the building blocks of communications

When working on your internal communication strategy, pay attention to the three main building blocks of communication—what you say, how you say it, and how you deliver it. Each company will need a different voice tailored to their audience, so play around with these facets to ensure your message is being heard. 

‍3. Create a relevant and sustainable comms strategy

Getting employee communications right is hard because language and culture are always evolving. What worked yesterday isn’t guaranteed to work today. That’s why leaders need to constantly ensure their comms are specific, set clear expectations, and provide a model for the rest of the workforce. In other words, “what you put up with, you end up with.” 

‍4. EMS leaders are scared to over-communicate, but shouldn’t be 

In any organization, the comms team will need to handle sensitive topics. Naturally, leaders are scared of over-communicating and causing uproar over certain topics. But, rather than letting the fear of an outcome shut down communications, focus on building trust with the workforce through constant communication. That way, you’re more likely to be given grace to make a communication misstep by employees who feel connected to you already.

‍5. Build the culture with your posts

Your communications strategy plays a critical part in building the company culture. This is especially important—and challenging—for frontline organizations where workers often work alone or in pairs. Don’t shy away from posts that may seem “fluffy,” and be sure to tailor those posts to your workforce. For the younger EMS workers, the COOs take advantage of videos in the Blink Feed, because that’s how that generation consumes information.  ‍

6. Control the narrative

Rumors and misinformation are an unfortunate part of managing frontline communications. Rather than avoid tough topics, the comms strategy needs to prioritize getting ahead of the narrative. Whether it’s discussing the disparity between racial representation in the workforce and in leadership roles or an emergency issue like an error with gas card payments, set the terms of the discussion early and provide clear next steps to fend off the rumor mill. 

‍7. Measure the operational impact of your strategy

Good comms are measured by more than anecdotes. Inefficient communications and misaligned technology hinder frontline workers and contribute to waste and high turnover. When Lifeline Ambulance switched to Blink for their communications and HR tool, the company saved $420,000 in the first year—nearly 10x more than their investment in Blink. Understand the operational cost of your current strategy, find new strategies and new tools like Blink, and measure the impact regularly.

In summary, a good frontline communications strategy is one of the most important things an EMS agency can do.  But communicating with a young, diverse frontline workforce can’t follow the same playbook as your office-based staff. Ambulance agencies need a communications strategy that is tailored to this mobile, fast-paced, highly-dispersed workforce.

If you can find what works for your agency, it can help reverse the turnover trend and help create positive employee engagement that propels the business forward.

It was a compelling, hour-long discussion with both COOs. This summary is just a fraction of the insights the audience walked away with. 

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If you're exploring alternatives to Happeo, you're likely looking for a modern intranet or employee experience platform that better fits your communication, collaboration, or content needs. While Happeo offers a sleek, Google Workspace-friendly intranet solution, it may fall short for organizations that need deeper employee engagement, more robust integrations, or greater frontline accessibility.

Before diving into the best alternatives, here’s what to look for.

What to look for in a Happeo alternative

When evaluating Happeo alternatives, keep these key criteria in mind:

• Employee-first UX – Choose a tool that’s intuitive across devices and roles, not just built for office workers.
  
• True mobile parity – Ensure the mobile experience offers full functionality, not just read-only access.
  
• Instant communication features – Look for platforms with video, voice, push alerts, and Q&A—not just static posts.
  
• Plug-and-play integrations – Prioritize tools that connect easily to your existing HRIS, payroll, scheduling, and productivity software.
  
• Dynamic targeting and personalization – Employees should only see content that’s relevant to them, based on role or location.
  
• Built-in governance tools – Features like post approvals, audit trails, and localization ensure compliance at scale.
• Insight-driven decisions – Make sure the platform offers analytics that go beyond vanity metrics to show real impact.

The top 10 alternatives to Happeo

#1. Blink (Best all-in-one Happeo alternative)

Gartner Rating: 4.8/5
G2 Rating: 4.7/5
Pricing: Free trial available; custom pricing based on company size and feature needs

Blink is the #1 Happeo alternative for organizations seeking a more dynamic and inclusive employee experience platform. While Happeo is well suited for desk-based teams using Google Workspace, Blink stands out by meeting the needs of every employee — whether they’re on the front line, hybrid, or remote.

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Unlike traditional intranets, Blink is mobile-first, meaning employees can access personalized news, resources, and tools wherever they are. Its unified News Feed centralizes top-down comms, peer-to-peer messages, surveys, forms, and file sharing in one place. Features like voice notes, live video streaming, ghostwriting for leaders, and built-in translations make communications faster, more authentic, and accessible across diverse teams.

Blink also includes content governance, user-level targeting, analytics, and native integrations with HRIS, payroll, scheduling, and messaging tools. And while Happeo focuses on static content hubs, Blink offers a real-time digital HQ that drives usage and engagement.

If you’re looking for an intranet alternative that’s secure, flexible, and designed to drive meaningful impact across all teams, Blink is your best bet.

#2. Jostle

G2 Rating: 4.4/5
Gartner Rating: Not listed
Pricing: Starts at $4/user/month

Jostle is an intranet alternative focused on clarity and usability. It’s ideal for mid-sized companies looking to simplify internal communications without overwhelming users with complex features. Jostle offers a visually organized structure with dedicated spaces for announcements, discussions, and documents.

Unlike Happeo, which leans into integration with Google Workspace, Jostle is platform-agnostic and easier to implement for Microsoft-based teams. However, it may lack the customization and extensibility needed by enterprise-scale orgs. It's a strong contender for companies prioritizing simplicity over design flexibility.

#3. Simpplr

G2 Rating: 4.6/5
Gartner Rating: 4.4/5
Pricing: Contact sales for custom pricing

Simpplr is a sleek and highly customizable intranet solution that focuses on employee engagement and personalized experiences. It includes features such as smart feeds, event planning, video content, and policy management—all wrapped in a modern interface.

For companies looking for more than just a content hub, Simpplr’s AI-based recommendations and analytics offer a smarter way to keep employees informed. While it rivals Happeo in terms of UI and UX, it does require more onboarding and configuration time. It's best suited for enterprises with dedicated internal comms and IT support.

#4. Staffbase

G2 Rating: 4.5/5
Gartner Rating: 4.3/5
Pricing: Custom enterprise pricing

Staffbase caters to internal communications teams at large enterprises, particularly those managing distributed or non-desk employees. Its core strengths include branded employee apps, segmented messaging, newsletters, and editorial planning tools.

Compared to Happeo, Staffbase leans more heavily into comms and content workflows rather than being a digital workplace or document hub. This makes it an excellent alternative if you want to elevate your comms strategy but don’t need native integrations with Google or Microsoft ecosystems.

#5. Unily

G2 Rating: 4.5/5
Gartner Rating: 4.3/5
Pricing: Typically starts at $30,000/year

Unily is an enterprise-grade employee experience platform that delivers polished design, multilingual support, and deep integrations with Microsoft 365. It includes customizable content pages, advanced analytics, and personalization features.

Unlike Happeo, Unily is better equipped for global organizations with complex structures and compliance needs. However, its enterprise pricing and implementation time may be a barrier for smaller teams or those needing a fast rollout.

#6. LumApps

G2 Rating: 4.3/5
Gartner Rating: 4.2/5
Pricing: Starts at $12/user/month

LumApps is a robust intranet platform with strong support for both Microsoft and Google environments. It offers a central hub for personalized news, documents, and collaboration with social features like commenting and reactions.

Compared to Happeo, LumApps goes further in enabling internal branding and knowledge management at scale. Its onboarding can be intensive, but for organizations that want a visually impressive and highly segmented experience, it’s a solid choice.

#7. Firstup

G2 Rating: 4.4/5
Gartner Rating: 4.1/5
Pricing: Custom pricing based on company size

Firstup is built for employee communications at scale, with automation and personalization features that help you deliver the right message at the right time. It excels at campaign planning, content scheduling, and measurement.

While Firstup isn’t a direct replacement for a traditional intranet like Happeo, it’s a powerful alternative for companies focused on messaging, employee activation, and comms ROI. The platform is highly data-driven and ideal for comms teams seeking a more strategic approach.

#8. Haiilo

G2 Rating: 4.5/5
Gartner Rating: Not listed
Pricing: Contact sales

Formerly known as Smarp, Haiilo combines employee communications, advocacy, and intranet tools into a single platform. It’s known for its intuitive UX and ability to empower employees to share content externally.

Compared to Happeo, Haiilo emphasizes social amplification and mobile-first communications more than intranet-style documentation. It’s a strong pick for organizations looking to boost brand reach and engagement from within.

#9. Noodle

G2 Rating: 4.2/5
Gartner Rating: Not listed
Pricing: Starts at $3/user/month

Noodle is a no-frills intranet platform designed for affordability and simplicity. It covers the basics—document management, employee directories, calendars, and chat—in a clean and easy-to-use interface.

While Happeo has more polish and integrations, Noodle wins on cost and ease of deployment. It’s a practical option for smaller teams or budget-conscious orgs that don’t need advanced features or automation.

#10. Igloo

G2 Rating: 4.2/5
Gartner Rating: 4.1/5
Pricing: Starts at $8/user/month

Igloo offers a modular intranet solution for businesses that want to build a digital workplace tailored to their needs. With features like forums, wikis, task management, and dashboards, it’s more of a knowledge-sharing and collaboration platform than just a content hub.

Unlike Happeo, which is visually streamlined but limited in scope, Igloo supports cross-functional use cases such as project collaboration and onboarding. It requires more setup time but pays off in flexibility.

Final thoughts

Happeo offers a solid intranet experience, particularly for organizations tightly integrated with Google Workspace. But for many teams—especially those with a mix of deskless, remote, and office-based employees—it may not go far enough in enabling real-time communication, personalization, or frontline access.

Whether you need better mobile capabilities, deeper integrations, or more authentic engagement, there are several strong alternatives to consider. Blink rises to the top for its all-in-one approach, modern UX, and inclusive design. Explore your options carefully—and choose a platform that scales with your people, not just your tech stack.

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Why teams choose Blink over Happeo

Happeo is built around Google Workspace, which works well if your whole company already lives there — but it leaves frontline and deskless workers without native email accounts largely underserved. Blink is mobile-first, requires no corporate email, and is used daily by teams at McDonald's, Domino's, and Chick-fil-A. See how Blink compares.

Employee engagement: The goal every company is chasing. And for good reason.

When people feel connected to their work and supported by their organization, you can count on more energy, productivity, and loyalty.

But engagement isn’t something that just happens. It’s built, little by little, through everyday workplace experiences.

That’s where engagement drivers come in. These are the things that shape how employees feel about their jobs, their teams, and your company as a whole. From safety to tech tools to progression to workplace friendships — they all add up.

And to really move the needle on employee engagement, these are the foundations you need to put in place. With them, you’ll find it easier to inspire, motivate, and retain your teams.

Ready to learn about the key drivers of employee engagement? Let’s go!

Why you need to know the drivers of employee engagement

Globally, just 23% of employees are engaged at work in 2025. That means the majority of workers are either disengaged and eyeing their exit, or sticking around just for the paycheck. Neither outcome is good for your business.  

As we’ll see in a moment, many of the drivers of employee engagement are linked to connection, company culture, and access to the right workplace tools. And this is why frontline employee engagement is a particular challenge.

When employees work away from HQ, with patchy comms and limited co-worker contact, they’re a lot less likely to report high levels of engagement.

Knowing the drivers of employee engagement — and how they play out across different parts of your workforce — can help you develop a more effective employee engagement strategy. It helps you put employee engagement best practices into action and find meaningful ways to increase and measure your engagement efforts.

So let’s take a look. Which drivers of engagement should you be keeping tabs on in 2025?

What are the key drivers of employee engagement?

A driver of employee engagement is a workplace factor with the power to motivate and inspire employees. Together, these elements create a culture where people want to do their best work.

The 16 key drivers of employee engagement are:

1. A safe working environment
2. Tech tools
3. Internal communication
4. Psychological safety
5. Fairness
6. Management
7. Autonomy
8. Progression
9. Leadership
10. Work-life balance
11. Purpose
12. Well-being support
13. Two-way feedback
14. Peer-to-peer relationships
15. Company culture
16. Recognition

In this guide, we’ll break down why each of these drivers matters — and how you can put them into practice to boost employee productivity, satisfaction, and retention. 

Physical drivers of employee engagement

Physical employee engagement drivers relate to the workplace environment and the tools employees are expected to use.

#1. A safe working environment

A safe and comfortable working environment isn’t just a legal requirement. It’s a signal that your organization values its people — and it allows employees to focus on doing their best work. 

But recent research reveals that 56% of employees don’t feel completely safe at work. They say that poor communication, inadequate safety training, and weak safety reporting processes are putting their well-being at risk.

For customer-facing teams, there are other safety concerns to consider — a shocking 46% of UK workers have experienced customer aggression at work.

How to drive engagement with the work environment

Lots of things contribute to a feeling of safety in the workplace — good air quality, ergonomic desks, the right safety equipment, good hygiene measures, and robust safety protocols.

Here are some other things you can do to improve workplace safety:

• Make safety info easy to access. Employees shouldn’t have to track down a dog-eared paper manual to get up to speed on safety processes. Make process and policy documents available digitally on your company’s content hub.  
• Provide streamlined reporting tools. Your teams should also have easy and effective ways to report their safety concerns. For frontline teams, that might mean using digital forms rather than paper processes, so it’s easy for them to report hazards on the go.
• Ask employees what they think. Conduct an employee engagement survey to find out what employees want from their physical work environment. It may be as simple as turning down the air-con or improving access to personal protective equipment (PPE).

#2. Tech tools

Digital tools now form a huge part of the employee experience. Most organizations use software for internal communication, HR self-service, learning and development, and company operations. They even use tools for employee engagement.  

When these tech tools are intuitive and integrated, they help workers to achieve a state of flow. When they’re outdated and clunky, they create friction and frustration.

How to drive employee engagement with tech tools

To drive worker engagement with tech tools, the software you choose needs to meet the following criteria:

• Intuitive. The best tech is easy and intuitive to use. It doesn’t require extensive training and achieves high levels of adoption organically.
• Mobile-first. It’s difficult for frontline employees to access desktop-based software. Mobile-first tech tools ensure that every employee can access workplace software from their smartphone.
• Consumer-grade. When it comes to tech, employees have high expectations. The tools you use in the workplace should mirror the consumer-grade experiences they enjoy on apps like WhatsApp and Instagram. 
• Integrated. A complicated tech stack can feel overwhelming for employees. So the best tech tools integrate with one another, creating a joined-up system, with tools ideally accessed from one centralized dashboard.

Mental drivers of employee engagement

Mental employee engagement drivers are the psychological factors that shape how employees feel about your organization.

#3. Internal communication

Internal communication is one of the most important drivers of employee engagement. Because if people don’t know what’s going on, they feel disconnected from your company.

The best comms keep people informed, aligned, and motivated. They give employees the context they need to do their jobs well and feel part of company culture.

Driving employee engagement with internal comms

If you’re still using a clunky old intranet or relying solely on email for internal communication, there are lots of ways to improve engagement with comms:

• Centralize your channels. A single, mobile-first hub for news, updates, and resources means no more scattered messages — and communication channels that everyone can access, even hard-to-reach frontline employees.
• Make it two-way. When comms are just a C-suite broadcast, they don’t tend to drive engagement. So allow employees to comment, react, share their ideas, and even create their own internal comms content.
• Be open and authentic. Transparent communication builds trust. It helps to create a culture of psychological safety (more on this in a moment). And, when you go beyond the corporate memo to write like a real-life human, employees are much more likely to remember your messages.
• Go social. The best internal communication tools provide a modern social experience. They give comms teams the tools they need to create rich, multi-media content that catches audience attention. Think images, short-form video, live streams, and infographics.

#4. Psychological safety

Psychological safety means employees feel comfortable speaking up — sharing ideas, asking questions, admitting mistakes, and even challenging the status quo — without worrying about a backlash.

But unfortunately, only 42% of employees strongly agree that they feel psychologically safe at work. And just 35% say they can voice their opinions without fear of repercussion. That silence comes at a cost. Without psychological safety, people hold back — and innovation, collaboration, and employee engagement suffer. 

How to drive engagement through psychological safety

Psychological safety starts at the top of your organization. Here’s how:

• Set an example. Leaders and managers need to communicate openly, admitting their mistakes and asking employees to share their ideas.   
• Recognize employee input. When employees do speak up, they should be praised, not punished. Highlight employee contributions so others feel empowered to have their say.
• Create a dialogue. Use anonymous employee surveys, quick-fire polls, listening tours, and leader Q&As to start a conversation with employees.
• Keep comms channels open. Beyond big, feedback-gathering initiatives, use instant messaging tools and adopt an open-door policy. That way, when employees have a concern or a bright idea, they know exactly where to go.

#5. Fairness

Fairness is another important employee engagement driver. It’s the sense that employees are being treated equitably — with regard to pay, workload, recognition, opportunities, and access to workplace tools.

Sometimes inequalities in the workplace go unnoticed by leadership. For example, did you know that for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women move up the ladder? Or that two in five frontline employees say they’re viewed as inferior by employees in the office?

People notice when promotions go to favorites, when workloads aren’t balanced, or when policies aren’t applied consistently. And when things don’t feel fair, resentment and disengagement set in.

How to drive employee engagement through fairness

You can promote fairness in the workplace by:

• Create clear policies. Put policies in a shared content hub so employees can access them. And stick to these policies consistently, across all teams and levels of the organization.
• Be open. Transparency is another essential. Be open about pay — and about how compensation and promotion decisions are made.
• Ensure equitable access. Make training, internal comms, and workplace tools accessible to all employees. For frontline workers, that might mean replacing desktop-based systems with mobile-first tech. 

#6. Management

The relationship between employees and their managers is one of the strongest drivers of workplace engagement. According to Gallup, managers account for 70% of the variance in team employee engagement.

A good manager supports, coaches, and clears roadblocks, inspiring loyalty and productivity. A bad manager drives people out the door.

For deskless teams, especially, managers are a vital link between HQ and the frontline. They’re the ones who share information, set expectations, and deliver recognition. Their leadership can make or break the employee experience.

How to drive employee engagement through management

You can have the best employee engagement strategies in the world. But if your managers aren’t on board, those initiatives simply won’t cascade down to your workforce. To support employee engagement, managers need time, the right tools, and the right training.

Here’s what you can do to help:

• Recognize their role. Acknowledge managers as engagement champions. Give them space to focus on their team, not just on tasks and KPIs.
• Train them. Managers don’t always have the soft skills they need to promote employee engagement. So train frontline leaders in active listening, empathy, and coaching. Dedicated employee engagement training may also come in useful.
• Provide the right tools. Overstretched managers need efficient systems. Streamlined mobile-first tools for communication, HR self-service, and recognition make it easier for them to support their teams and drive engagement.

#7. Autonomy

Driving engagement means giving employees autonomy. Employees should have the freedom to take ownership of their work — because when employees feel empowered to make decisions and solve problems without constant oversight, engagement and productivity get a boost.

In contrast, micromanagement stifles creativity and erodes trust. It contributes to a “bare minimum” mentality, where employees tick tasks off their to-do list, never feeling truly invested in their work.

How to drive engagement through autonomy

Creating an environment where autonomy thrives means balancing freedom with clear direction and support. Here are a few ideas:

• Set clear expectations. Employees are more likely to embrace autonomy when they’re clear on the boundaries. Clear goals and guidelines give them the confidence to act without seeking manager approval.
• Provide the right resources. Easy access to information and resources empowers independent work. Use a content hub to store policies and procedures — and provide self-service tools and templates.
• Encourage problem-solving. Cultivate a culture where employees feel safe to try new approaches and share ideas without fear of failure. Show that you trust employees and they’ll feel empowered to take ownership of their work.

#8. Progression

A lack of career growth opportunities is the number one reason people give for changing jobs. And organizations that don’t provide skills-building opportunities are 72% less likely to have employees saying they want to work there in a year’s time.

When employees see a clear path forward within your organization, they’re more motivated, productive, and loyal. But, for frontline workers in particular, progression can feel out of reach. They’re often overlooked for training opportunities and career paths aren’t always made clear.

How to drive engagement through progression

Give employees the space and support they need to grow, learn, and progress, and you boost engagement while reducing employee turnover. Here’s what you can do to help employees see a future at your organization:

• Shine a light on career paths. Use internal comms and manager 1:1s to share clear routes for progression, including promotions and skills-building opportunities.
• Invest in training that fits the frontline. Mobile-first microlearning makes it easy for employees to grow on the go. They can complete bite-sized modules without stepping away from their roles.
• Create growth opportunities beyond promotions. When a new role isn’t available, use stretch assignments, job shadowing, and lateral moves to help employees develop new skills and experience new challenges.
• Offer mentorship. Pair employees with more experienced co-workers who can offer skills development and career support.

#9. Leadership

Leaders set the tone for your organization. When leaders are visible, authentic, and inspiring, employees feel proud to be part of the company. They also have a clear understanding of where the company is headed and how they contribute to its success.

But leaders aren’t always great at sharing their vision in a way that lands with employees. Less than half (49%) of internal communicators say their leaders are effective at communicating with employees.

Reaching the frontline is an even tougher task. This segment of the workforce might never meet senior leaders face-to-face, so they often feel disconnected from the C-suite. This can leave the feeling like just a number, rather than part of something bigger.

How to drive employee engagement through leadership

To create a trusting and engaged workplace, good leadership comms are essential. So what can leaders do to create this kind of culture?

• Be visible. Use video updates, town halls, and frontline-first comms channels to make leadership more accessible to every employee.
• Be human. Leaders should use the comms platforms employees use. They can also humanize their comms by demonstrating empathy, ditching unnecessary jargon, and sharing relatable stories.
• Lead with transparency. Don’t just share decisions. Share the why behind them. Honest communication builds trust, even when talking about difficult topics.  
• Lead by example. Leaders should live and breathe the values they expect employees to demonstrate. Authenticity inspires engagement.

#10. Work-life balance

Work-life balance has become one of the biggest workplace talking points in recent years. Employees don’t just want a paycheck — they want the flexibility to manage work and their personal lives without burning out.

Give people the flexibility they crave and they’re more likely to be engaged and stay working for your organization, too. 80% of workers say their loyalty towards a company increases when it offers flexible work options.

Of course, flexibility looks different for different sectors of your workforce. Office teams may be able to work from home a few days a week — or work flexible hours. For shift workers, achieving flexibility requires a little creativity, but it’s absolutely possible with the right approach.

How to drive engagement with work-life balance

Work-life balance is a top priority for employees. To ease stress and support flexibility, you can:

• Plan ahead. Give staff advance warning of shifts, provide access to shift swap software, and try to accommodate their shift preferences wherever possible.
• Provide practical perks. On-site childcare, a gym, or the option to buy extra vacation days all help employees manage life beyond work.
• Create clear boundaries. Make sure people aren’t under pressure to check emails or company comms outside of their working hours.
• Set realistic expectations. Ensure workloads and shift patterns are sustainable, so employees aren’t pushed past their limits.
• Foster open communication. When managers know employee needs and preferences, they can create schedules and solutions that make a real difference.

#11. Purpose

Purpose connects day-to-day tasks to the bigger picture. When employees understand how their work contributes to the organization’s mission, they work with commitment and pride — particularly when that mission makes a positive difference beyond the four walls of your organization.  

But purpose isn’t always clearly communicated. Almost one in five employees say they have zero clarity on company strategy, performance, or their contribution.

Driving engagement through purpose

Want to align your workforce behind the company mission? Here are a few ideas:

• Communicate the mission. Use storytelling, internal channels, and team meetings to regularly repeat your company’s mission.
• Link tasks to impact. Show employees the real-world outcomes of the work, whether through data, customer feedback, or social impact stories.
• Celebrate contributions. Recognize and share examples of work that align with company values.
• Empower employees to contribute. Give employees opportunities to lead projects, share ideas, and help shape the company mission.  

#12. Well-being support

Between the state of the world, a cost of living crisis, and the stressors of modern life, employees are feeling the strain. And that’s before we even consider what their workday looks like.

Only 57% of employees report good holistic health, which includes mental, physical, spiritual, and social well-being. And they want help — 83% say that companies have a responsibility for the health and well-being of their people.

There are lots of very good reasons to invest in employee well-being. When employers support physical, mental, emotional, and financial wellness, employees are more resilient, less likely to burn out, and more likely to bring their A-game.

How to drive engagement through employee well-being

To boost employee well-being, take a look at the following ideas:

• Offer mental health resources. Provide access to counselling services, mental health apps, and training for managers so they can recognize the signs of stress. Regularly signpost these resources across internal comms channels so employees know what’s available.
• Promote physical well-being. Consider desk ergonomics and safety equipment. You may also like to offer healthy eating options, fitness classes, or subsidized gym membership.
• Support financial well-being. Help employees overcome money worries by offering salary advances, financial planning workshops, or benefits that ease cost-of-living pressures.
• Ask employees what they need. Use employee surveys and manager 1:1s to find out what your workers are struggling with most. Then, tailor support accordingly.

Social employee engagement drivers

Social connection is another significant driver of employee engagement. The contact employees have with co-workers, managers, leaders, and company culture impacts their productivity and commitment.

#13. Two-way feedback

Employees should get regular feedback from their managers. Research from Gallup shows that employees who get valuable feedback about their performance are five times as likely to be engaged as those who don’t.

But feedback should never be one-way. Employees should also have the opportunity to share their ideas, concerns, and opinions — on everything from internal comms to employee experience to the brand of coffee you stock in the break room.

Giving employees a voice helps them feel valued. It also helps you craft a more engaging workplace experience going forward.

How to drive engagement with two-way feedback

When gathering feedback from employees, bear the following tips in mind:

• Make feedback easy. Use mobile-first tools so all employees, including frontline staff, can respond to surveys and polls — and contact their managers via chat tools.
• Be consistent. Don’t wait for the annual employee engagement survey. Use pulse surveys and quick-fire polls to take the pulse of your organization at regular intervals.
• Take action. Employees quickly lose faith in the process when their feedback doesn’t lead to meaningful change. So create a plan of action based on what you hear.
• Close the loop. Let employees know what actions are being taken as a result of their feedback. They’ll see that their input matters and be more likely to respond to your next survey.

Want some ideas for your next employee engagement survey? Read this: Employee engagement surveys: Best practices & 46 questions to ask

#14. Peer-to-peer relationships

Did you know that 42% of Gen Z and 40% of millennial employees say they wouldn’t mind earning less money if they had good friends at work?

Strong workplace relationships are one of the top components of employee engagement. Having a work bestie also leads to better collaboration, productivity, well-being, and company loyalty.

So how do you help your staff to make friends? These days, bringing people together IRL isn’t always easy. Frontline and remote teams rarely set foot in the office. So to build peer-to-peer relationships across your organization, you have to be intentional.

How to drive engagement with peer-to-peer relationships

To encourage strong peer connections, you can:

• Provide communication tools. Dispersed teams don’t get much opportunity for camaraderie. So ensure they have mobile-first communication channels, like direct messaging and video call tools, that help them stay in touch no matter where they’re working.
• Create online communities. Encourage like-minded co-workers to get together by supporting the creation of communities around hobbies and shared interests.
• Create a digital water cooler. Use the company news feed to bring co-workers together. Share photos from the latest social event, celebrate an employee’s work anniversary, or launch a hashtag competition to get people talking. 
• Organize virtual get-togethers. A virtual coffee morning, co-working, or lunch break brings dispersed teams together. This informal setting is an opportunity to go beyond the work agenda and get to know co-workers better.  

#15. Company culture

An inclusive company culture is one where every employee feels valued, respected, and able to bring their whole self to work. This is really important for engagement.

8 in 10 people say a sense of community helps them perform better at work — and 55% would quit if they felt they didn’t belong.  

Despite this desire for belonging, only 2 in 10 workers say they feel connected to company culture. Frontline workers, in particular, have few opportunities to engage with their workplace community — and can be left feeling disconnected and isolated.

How to drive engagement with company culture

Many of the other points on this list contribute to a positive and inclusive company culture. But here are a few extra ideas for building a workplace community that everyone feels part of:

• Make comms accessible. Internal communication sits at the heart of company culture. So use mobile-first tools to ensure every employee can access the latest culture-building content.  
• Translate your content. If you have a large multilingual workforce, translate internal content so everyone can understand it. The best employee engagement apps come with built-in translation features.
• Celebrate company values in action. Highlight real examples of employees living your company values through stories, recognition posts, or internal awards.
• Training and awareness. Equip leaders and employees with training on unconscious bias, inclusive language, and accessibility — so nobody feels left out of the company conversation.

#16. Recognition

Only 22% of employees strongly agree that they get the right amount of recognition for the work that they do. And over half say the recognition they receive isn’t authentic, personalized, or equitable.

But we know that employee recognition is another important driver of employee engagement. When employees are recognized and rewarded for their hard work, they’re more likely to give their all. And recognition doesn’t have to be grand. Small, consistent, and sincere acts of recognition show employees that their work matters.

How to drive engagement through employee recognition

Whether you’re marking a work anniversary, the success of a big project, or an employee’s dedication to going the extra mile, here’s how to make recognition more effective.

• Make it timely and specific. The most meaningful recognition is given soon after an achievement and explains clearly what was done and the impact it had.
• Make it equal. The same recognition and rewards should be available to all members of staff. Digital employee recognition tools can help you reach employees who don’t work at HQ.
• Encourage peer-to-peer recognition. The act of giving recognition makes employees more likely to stay working for your organization. So encourage co-workers to comment with their congratulations on recognition posts.
• Tailor rewards. Ask employees what rewards they want to see for top performance. You can then tailor your rewards program so it truly incentivizes your workforce.

Ready to drive employee engagement at your organization?

Get to know the drivers of engagement and you can make meaningful improvements to employee engagement at your organization.

For frontline employees, that often starts with the right workplace tech. An employee app like Blink puts connection, company culture, and vital workplace tools into the palm of every employee’s hand.

Using secure single sign-on technology, teams can use their personal smartphones to catch up on company news, congratulate co-workers, respond to polls, and send digital forms.

Thanks to strong integrations, they can also use the Blink dashboard to access other workplace software, like HR self-service, training courses, and shift swap tools. And your HR team can keep track of employee engagement metrics with the help of in-depth analytics.

Blink brings your whole organization together, so engaging employees gets a whole lot easier.

Blink. And drive employee engagement across the frontline and beyond.

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