Chris has been with Stagecoach since June 2014, making this year his 10th anniversary! Starting out as a driver, he is based on the Lincoln depot.
Chris consistently goes above and beyond in his role, adapting brilliantly to late changes to his working rota and the work contained in it. The nature of the transport industry and staffing needs means no two weeks are the same, as we have to meet demand.
Chris is ultra reliable all the time and never balks at extra work. If Chris says he can't do something for us, there is always a very good reason for that. I feel he deserves recognition for all he gives to both the Training Team, and the drivers he is responsible for.
What does he want to do next?
Anything we want him to do, he will turn his hand to it. The sky’s the limit!
Nominated by: David Earl, Delegated Driving Examiner
What makes him awesome?
Chris has been with Stagecoach since June 2014, making this year his 10th anniversary! Starting out as a driver, he is based on the Lincoln depot.
Chris consistently goes above and beyond in his role, adapting brilliantly to late changes to his working rota and the work contained in it. The nature of the transport industry and staffing needs means no two weeks are the same, as we have to meet demand.
Chris is ultra reliable all the time and never balks at extra work. If Chris says he can't do something for us, there is always a very good reason for that. I feel he deserves recognition for all he gives to both the Training Team, and the drivers he is responsible for.
What does he want to do next?
Anything we want him to do, he will turn his hand to it. The sky’s the limit!
Nominated by: David Earl, Delegated Driving Examiner
What we'll cover
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5 practical ways to prove internal comms ROI (and finally unlock budget)
If you work in internal communications, you’ve probably been asked some version of:
“But what’s the actual impact?”
Whoever’s asking the question — an executive, a stakeholder, a budget approver — isn’t looking for engagement. Or reach. Or clicks.
They want to see tangible impact of internal comms on the business. And that question exposes a gap. Because, as digital communication and collaboration expert Sharon O’Dea put it in our recent webinar:
“It’s not that leaders don’t care about communication. It’s that the value isn’t always framed in terms they prioritize.”
That’s the real problem.
Of course internal communications drive impact across the business — but too often, the function is positioned in a way that feels disconnected from the outcomes leaders actually care about.
In the session, Sharon unpacked how to close that gap, with a practical framework for connecting comms to real business problems, measurable outcomes, and ultimately, investment.
Here are five takeaways you can apply immediately.
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1. Start with the business problem, not the comms ask
What’s leadership actually worried about?
Hint: It likely isn’t comms metrics, channels, or formats.
What keeps leaders up at night are the things that can make or break the success of the business over the long term.
That’s where your case needs to start. If you lead with a solution, you’re asking for budget. But if you lead with a business problem, you’re positioning comms to solve something that already has a cost attached to it.
This is where many business cases fall down early. They jump straight to the tactic — a new platform, a new channel, a new campaign — without anchoring it in a clear, existing problem.
Sharon’s advice was to slow down and do some light-touch discovery first. What’s actually getting in the way today? Where are people struggling to access information, complete tasks, or understand what’s expected of them?
Sometimes the issue isn’t a lack of tools — it’s a mismatch between what exists and how people actually work.
When you start there, your business case becomes much easier to land.
2. Find the friction — that’s where your ROI is hiding
One of the most practical prompts from Sharon points to one of the biggest unlocks:
“Where are poor comms creating measurable drag?”
Because comms teams know that ROI doesn’t live in dashboards. It lives in the day-to-day friction employees deal with.
You see it in:
Managers repeating or clarifying missed updates
Onboarding that takes longer than it should
Change initiatives that stall or never fully land
Safety issues linked to missed or inaccessible information
This is what good communication actually impacts. And more importantly, this is what the business is already paying for. They’re just not calling it “comms.”
One example Sharon shared brought this to life: An employee who said the only time they read company emails was when they were in the bathroom — because that was the only uninterrupted moment in their day.
That’s not an engagement problem. That’s an access problem.
And when you frame it like that, it becomes much easier to connect communication to productivity, efficiency, and performance.
3. Stop reporting activity, start proving impact
“We improved reach by 20%” isn’t a business case.
It’s a metric. It’s useful. But on its own, it doesn’t mean much.
Instead, Sharon encourages internal comms teams to reframe comms metrics in terms of operational outcomes:
We reduced onboarding time by three days
We cut policy clarification tickets by 18%
We improved shift-fill speed
Now you’re speaking the language of the business — and building credibility for the internal comms function along the way.
This doesn’t mean you need perfect, direct ROI for everything. But it does mean connecting your metrics to something tangible.
If reach improves: What did that enable?
If engagement increases: What changed as a result?
If access gets easier: What friction disappears?
The strongest cases don’t just show what happened. They show why it mattered.
4. Build a case that reflects reality, not assumptions
Comms teams are often more plugged into the business than they realize. Or as Sharon puts it, “You probably know where the bodies are buried.”
You know:
Where people are blocked
What leaders actually care about (even if they don’t say it directly)
Where things break down between HQ and the frontline
But that insight, typically gathered through informal or educational conversations across the business, often remains as a qualitative input.
Building a business case is the perfect opportunity to put this invaluable knowledge to work. Use what you already know, and back it up with real examples. Pair data with lived experience. Combine survey results with actual employee stories.
This is what makes a case land. Not a 40-slide deck, not a long list of features, but a clear picture of what’s happening today — and what it’s costing.
And importantly, this is also how you build alignment across stakeholders.
Internal comms initiatives rarely get approved in isolation. Your case needs to resonate with finance, HR, IT, operations — each with their own priorities. The more grounded your case is in real business challenges, the easier it is to bring those groups with you.
5. Treat comms like infrastructure
“These things are treated as one-off programmes… and then you have to fight for them every time.”
Sound familiar?
A new tool gets funded. A project gets approved. And then two years later, you’re back at square one — rebuilding the case from scratch.
Sharon’s reframe: Good comms should be a staple of business hygiene.
When comms is positioned as a project, it’s easy to cut — but when it’s invested in as infrastructure, it becomes essential.
That shift doesn’t just change how you get budget. It changes how the business sees your role. Internal comms is no longer just a support function, but a part of how work actually gets done.
How to make the move from comms team to business translator
This is the shift.
As Sharon put it, we need to connect what we do to “specific and measurable” impact.
That means:
Translating engagement into performance
Translating comms into operational outcomes
Translating investment into dollars saved
Because the value is already there.
And if you don’t make that shift, the business still pays, just quietly — in lost time, slower onboarding, missed information, and duplicated effort.
That’s the cost of doing nothing.
So the goal isn’t to make comms sound more impressive. It’s to make it visible, measurable, and undeniably fundable.
When you do that, you’re not asking for budget. You’re making a case the business can’t ignore.
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!
Say hello to Surveys from Blink: the quick and easy way to gain actionable feedback from your frontline workforce, helping you deliver your best employee experience.
Solving a uniquely frontline issue
The frontline connection gap — a failure to enable frontline workers to communicate with the same ease, scale, and speed as desk-based workers —is real, and so too are the risks it carries. But closing it is easier than you might think.
With Blink's new in-app survey tool, you can create a connected workplace culture by getting real-time data from your employees themselves.
What's so powerful about surveys through Blink?
Employee survey tools like Peakon and CultureAmp made it easy for leaders of desk-based teams to access employee engagement insights. But for frontline organizations, it's a very different story:
Paper problems: many frontline workers are still asked to complete paper surveys, which are easy to ignore and even easier to lose
Desktop friction: completing online surveys using a shared desktop terminal or tablet demands time from a frontline worker's busy shift — and there are only so devices to share around
One too many tools: even when frontline workers are given mobile access to survey tools, many still struggle with the complexity of bad user experience and a new set of log-in details to remember
All of this leads to incredibly low response rates, which make for datasets that aren't insightful or actionable. That's what Blink has set out to solve.
Introducing Surveys on Blink
Surveys are now available to use on Blink's frontline app, transforming your ability to capture crucial information from your frontline teams. It's incredibly simple to use:
Select your target audience
Choose a best-in-class survey format
Launch to your frontline in minutes (one-question surveys can be live in 30 seconds!)
Employee engagement surveys - engaged employees are more productive and loyal. Find out how engaged your teams are today and how you can improve their experience
Pulse survey - ask one burning question frequently to track changes and identify patterns
0-10 eNPS (employee Net Promoter Score) - get a 'North Star' metric for your employee engagement
Onboarding surveys - the first few months of a new starter's journey are critical, and these types of surveys reveal whether the process is running as it should.
Every single answer in a Blink survey is anonymous — and that anonymity is made clear to your frontline workers. This ensures they have the confidence to be candid and, in turn, means that you get a true read on current performance with clear opportunities for improvement.
How Blink triples your survey response rate
Our customers have seen their response rates increase by 300% by using Blink to deliver them. Here's why it works:
We're mobile-first. With Surveys on Blink, you can transition away from paper surveys and shared desktops to having surveys appear seamlessly in the palm of every frontline employee's hand
It's all-in-one. Decrease the friction caused by having to remember another password by embedding your in one frontline app
Surveys are co-located with the other tools your frontline needs. Unless you make life easier for the frontline you can’t expect them to engage. With Blink, you're delivering exactly what the frontline needs — from paystubs to scheduling and access to critical documents. This means your surveys are in an app that gets opened an average of seven times a day
Guaranteed anonymity. By offering anonymity, frontline workers feel safer giving genuine feedback, leading to better quality results
What's next?
If you're interested in getting started with Surveys on Blink, either talk to your Customer Success partner or request a Demo.
In the coming months, we'll be announcing even more data-focused features to help you better understand your frontline, empowering your 2023 strategies with insight. Stay tuned!
With the news that Workplace by Meta will be shutting down within a year, there are going to be thousands of companies looking to replace their employee experience platforms soon. Sure, finding a new solution for internal communications with the right features and functionality is important, but just as important (and not talked about enough) is the implementation and rollout experience for employees.
In my mind, a great product implemented poorly is no longer a great product. So, what does a great implementation process and experience really look like?
Whether you’re looking to upgrade your employee app before Workplace from Meta shuts down or you’re just curious to learn more about Blink, here is my take on what a great implementation experience should look like.
I’ve spent over a decade in the implementation space and know how common it is to hear that a vendor will “go the extra mile” for a customer during the crucial time between signing the contract and launching the technology.
Rarely, though, is the extra mile enough; sometimes, what it takes is the extra 1,600 miles.
Prior to my role as Head of Implementation at Blink, I spent the first 8 years of my career in technology consulting working at large firms like Aon and Accenture. In that time, I travelled to 30+ countries and learned how to deliver business value through broader people and technology transformation at multinational enterprise companies.
In all that time, I have never worked in an organization that goes so far above and beyond as Blink. This is truly a whatever-it-takes company, even when it takes a 1,600 mile road trip through 8 states to visit 6 different plants to ensure one of our customers launches the right way. On this particular trip, we met with Plant Managers, HR, Production Managers and more, to build out a use case strategy, run training sessions, and hold focus groups to ensure we were delivering a comprehensive roadmap for their new employee app.
This hands-on approach is why we have an industry-leading user adoption rate of 90% across all our customers. But it’s more than just our willingness to traverse state lines that creates a great implementation experience.
The values that drive our implementation process
I know two things to always be true about implementation: first, customers are busy. Since launching an employee app often involves a lot of contributors and stakeholders, sometimes getting everyone on the same page is the biggest barrier to launching on-time.
Second, and most important, we’ve only got one shot to launch your platform right. Change is often met with scepticism or some resistance, so we bend over backwards to set you up for the best first impression on launch day, from a seamless onboarding experience for employees to quick, demonstrable value for your executive stakeholders.
Our approach and our values that drive the team are done with these two things in mind to ensure each customer sees a high adoption right out of the gate.
So what goes into our process that makes it so successful? There are five things I’d like to highlight:
The experts
When you sign up with Blink, you’ll be guided through the implementation process by an experienced team spread across the US, UK, and Australia. All of our implementations are done solely in-house. Over the years, we’ve developed a playbook of best practices to follow and accumulated deep industry knowledge to recommend the best course of action for your unique needs.
Once you’ve launched, the Implementation team is still there with you. Not only are they helping ensure a smooth transition to your Customer Success partner, they’re helping gather metrics and feedback on the launch and supporting your efforts to hit the user adoption target in those early days.
Our employee-focused strategy
Whether you’re rolling out your first employee app or you’re replacing an old solution like Workplace, getting your employees to buy-in to Blink (or any new technology) is so important at launch. For companies with deskless workforces, where communication is a challenge, in particular, getting that early buy-in is a virtuous cycle where the employees start telling their colleagues about Blink.
When Stagecoach, one of the largest transit providers in the UK, rolled out Blink, their post-launch survey found 100% of the drivers would recommend the app to their peers. With 21,000 bus drivers across the country, word of mouth helped accelerate adoption as much as any top-down messaging.
That’s why, when we plan for a launch at your organization, we ensure there is functionality that your employees want to help get them invested early on. We’ve got an extensive catalogue of integrations that give them easy access and notifications for paystubs, time-tracking, vacation requests, IT help desks, and more. Pair that with Single sign-on, and employees will be doing all these things with one-click access through Blink.
The result of providing quick value to your employees is a high usage and adoption rate. Stagecoach, for example, has an average of 6 app opens each day from 89% of their drivers. That level of employee engagement and communication is critical to keeping everything running smoothly.
Rollout success you can measure
Everyone who implements Blink will know exactly what success looks like. We outline the six key pillars to a successful rollout early on so you have a benchmark for what to expect:
We’re going to get the leadership team aligned around the opportunity driving the rollout
We’ll determine the key metrics and KPIs for success with you so everyone is working towards the same goals
We’ll help you build your company’s digital front door—turning Blink into the single point of access for everything they need—to maximise adoption
We’re going to ensure the look and feel of the app matches your company’s brand to build trust in the early adoption phase
We’re going to build a comprehensive activation strategy to reach every employee, while taking into account the unique challenges posed by disparate and diverse workforces
Lastly, we’re going to help you build out and optimise the app after launch by introducing new functionality and soliciting user feedback to guide the improvements
Our clear roadmaps
With a feature-rich solution like Blink, unleashing the full experience is like asking employees to drink from a firehose.
To avoid overwhelming people, we help you develop a clear roadmap for the long-term experience. It starts with the Day 1 MVP that’s focused on addressing the most pressing needs and quick wins for the employee experience. From there, we help you bring new functionality to the employee experience in a way that boosts adoption without overwhelming users.
Every roadmap is tied to the KPIs you outlined earlier, so there is a definitive business value for each phase. If, like many Blink customers, you’re trying to save money by modernising outdated processes, that KPI can be tied to functionality like payslips being put into the app instead of being mailed out.
That simple change saved one Blink customer $300,000 per year on mailing and printing costs—and we were able to measure that impact because of the KPIs we had established early on.
Low-lift launch
We understand how busy our customers are, so we want every app to be launched quickly—but with as little effort on your part as possible. While you and your team are going to be involved, we keep as much of the work behind the scenes to minimise the disruption to you and your team.
When you combine our expertise with the out-of-the-box functionality and pre-made assets, getting to launch day is simple and fast. We measure implementation in weeks, not months and quarters. You can have users onboard in as little as 6 weeks, while still delivering a compelling first impression with your new employee app.
These five pillars can't capture all of the hard-work and care that the Implementation team has here at Blink. That doesn’t happen without having a team that’s willing to go above and beyond for every single customer.
Change management while implementing Blink
The implementation journey is an intense period for the stakeholders. It’s a lot of work to do quickly, and one of the ways we help ensure you’re staying on course is through our comprehensive Change Impact Assessment.
With so much change, it is easy to lose the forest for the trees and get lost in the day-to-day minutiae of the launch process. The Change Impact Assessment is designed to keep you on track by helping you understand how Blink will affect the following areas:
Operations: How will Blink affect current workflows, and what adjustments are needed to seamlessly integrate it into your existing processes?
Company culture: What changes in team dynamics and communication can we anticipate? How will this software align with your corporate culture?
Resource allocation: What are the costs, both financial and time-based, for training, implementation, and long-term management of the platform?
Technology integration: How does Blink fit into your existing technology landscape? Can we integrate into and leverage compatibility with existing systems?
Return on investment expectations: How does introducing Blink to ADQ map into your business goals? We’ll establish metrics to measure the effectiveness and ROI to ensure change is actively happening and tracking to your business goals.
Hands-on support, on-site or online
Some of the most memorable moments for us come from our on-site, white glove support for the implementation process. Whether we get to visit a corporate headquarters in Chicago to run use case discovery workshops or trekking out to a distribution centre to train frontline managers to use the app to communicate with their team, we’re always hyped to work alongside our customers.
Even if we’re not spending weeks on end at your office, we’re shooting for the same launch experience with every customer. Our job is to ensure you’re going to be successful in delivering enough value to your employees that they fall in love with the Blink app.
So, virtually or in-person, you get hands-on support experience from us. We’ll help you find, train, and empower a network of advocates and experts within your organisation who will help ensure launch-day communication is on point.
Adoption drives feedback drives adoption
Launch day success is not the end for us. Once your employees are onboard, we’re going to canvas for your people’s first impressions to understand what’s resonating and what’s missing the mark.
Getting this survey feedback early on helps us course correct, if necessary, to take you from 70% user adoption at launch up to the 90% user adoption rate we want for all of our customers.
The surveys are rarely surprising, though, because of all the work that went into the implementation journey. From getting stakeholders aligned on KPIs to running frontline focus groups, we know the value is going to be felt from day one.
Blink. And you’re set up for success.
When I take a step back and think about everything that goes into launching each company’s employee app from the people—executive sponsors, project managers, Comms, IT, Operations, managers—to all the planning, content creation, and communications efforts, it’s amazing to think about how all that work leads to something as simple as a text or email invite on launch day.
All the hands-on work that we do prior to launch is to ensure that your employees have a seamless experience from day one. That starts with the invitation to download the app and login to their “digital front door” for the first time. From there, they’ll be able to communicate with secure chat, post in the Feed, search for policies and documents in the Content Hub, and access important information like payslips, vacation requests, and scheduling—all without leaving the app or having to enter another login.
Our job is to make getting to launch as effortless as possible. Because, we know, once your employees login to Blink, they’re going to be more engaged, more informed, and, ultimately, more likely to stick around.
Employee communication and engagement is more important than ever in the remote-work era and for the frontline. You can put your trust in my team’s experienced, hands-on approach to help you deliver the most value to your employees. It’s what we’re so passionate about and what we do best.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves: the first step is signing up for a demo today to learn more about the Blink platform.
2022: the year BYOD policy finally became mainstream?
Towards the end of the 2010s, BYOD was considered on its way out. The balance between good data security and infringing on employees’ private lives was difficult to manage, and buy-in rates were low.
Now, however, employers are adopting BYOD in their droves.
Why?
If you’re thinking ‘COVID. Definitely COVID’, you’re about 90% of the way there.
Equally, it’s not the only factor that has contributed:
The speed, resilience and availability of 5G make remote working significantly easier from a wider range of devices.
Increasing usage of smart IoT to increase productivity, including smart speakers and enhanced wearables. With 1.3 billion projected subscriptions to IoT-related technologies in 2023, this is very much an emerging use case for BYOD.
With the increase in remote working since COVID and consumer tech evolving rapidly, now is the time to think about tightening up your BYOD policy, or creating one from scratch if you don’t have one already. Here’s what you need to know, with a bring your own device policy template included at the end of the article.
“BYOD is the concept of employees using their personally owned device(s) for work purposes.
With BYOD, an organization has ownership of the corporate data and resources that may be accessed or stored on a device, but the device itself is the property of the user.”
Following on from this, a ‘bring your own device’ policy is the set of rules and regulations both employee and employer need to follow to make this work. Ultimately, it’s about maintaining a balance between your employees’ privacy and your IT security needs as an employer.
You might be partially BYOD without even realizing it! For most businesses, the big use case is smartphones. If you’ve ever asked employees to use their smartphones for any work-related purpose, that’s a BYOD policy. This could include:
Running work social media accounts
Installing employee apps, workplace instant messenger or any other internal comms tool
Taking work-related calls
Using it to track mileage, manage driving routes
Expense filing (via uploading photos of receipts, for example)
In fact, you’re very much in the minority if your employees don’t use their personal phones for any business activity – 87% of companies depend on their employee’s ability to access mobile business apps from their personal smartphones.
What are the benefits of BYOD?
BYOD policies can:
Save your business money on recurring hardware spend (bear in mind that most laptops will need to be replaced every few years, and that you’ll need to keep buying more as your business grows its headcount!)
Help establish remote working as a viable option. New employees have everything they need to start immediately and aren’t held back by not having the right equipment.
When managed well, BYOD is flexible, affordable, and accessible. Employees save time by working with the devices they like best, and you can implement a mobile-first approach without a huge expenditure on company smartphones.
What are the challenges and risks of BYOD?
The biggest issue BYOD workplaces face is data and device security. Whilst you can set up fair usage policies and train your employees in good security practices, you can’t completely dictate how they use their personal devices.
Let’s say you have a BYOD policy and you’d like your employees to install a mobile intranet app on their personal smartphones. After initial installation, you have no direct control over:
How often each employee installs updates
Where they take their smartphone
Who uses the smartphone
What else they install on their smartphone and how they use it
All of these are major security risks when it comes to corporate data. Whilst personal devices are increasingly a target for hackers, even the most mundane everyday accident can pose a threat.
Did your employee leave their phone unlocked on the bus?
Could children or other family members access work info by accident?
Instances like these can pose a huge risk. You’re also relying on employees to have access to devices that will support the software you want them to use. This might be a fair assumption for some workplace demographics (salaried, management level employees) but shouldn’t be taken as a given.
That’s why, if you’re serious about BYOD, you’ll need to give some serious thought to:
Making your policy comply with a wide range of device types
Providing adequate IT support for personal devices
Creating a policy that is seen as fair by employees, and doesn’t infringe on their personal lives
Creating a bring your own device policy
Want to benefit from the flexibility and cost savings BYOD offers, without turning your workplace into your IT security team’s worst nightmare? A solid BYOD policy is the answer. Follow these steps for a safe and secure workplace.
Preparing for and creating a BYOD policy: 5 steps to success
Decide which apps employees should be able to access from personal devices
In terms of risk, there’s a difference between your employee’s personal calendar tool, a project management solution and your business’s accounting app. Consider which level of security you’re comfortable granting access to in a less-regulated environment – you might want to keep systems with particularly sensitive info away from BYOD policies.
Decide which personal devices your employees can use for a BYOD policy
Weigh up risk vs reward here. If you already have a policy for using company laptops and have an entire cupboard of them to distribute, you might be better off sticking with them. Be sure to consider the implications of smart speakers and IoT devices too.
You might also want to impose an age limit on devices your employees use. Older devices that don’t support the latest software and operating system versions are a huge risk as weak points become well documented by hackers.
Set up reasonable security controls
Again, this is a balancing act. Your employees are likely to be more than happy with some security protocols on their device – this helps protect their personal information too! Equally, they might become understandably bitter about completing a 15-factor authentication process every time they check their WhatsApp.
You could start with a requirement to password protect their device, with biometrics if available, and add two-factor authentication for each business app they need to login to. A screen that locks after a set period of inactivity is also useful.
Check your SSL certificates
An SSL certificate is a snippet of code on your web server that makes online communications more secure. If employees need to view confidential information such as financial accounts or sensitive personal info like payroll and benefits, an SSL certificate helps ensure they can do that safely.
Mostly, this is a job for your IT team – but it’s good to be aware of it whilst drawing up the rest of your policy.
Outline BYOD expectations for employees and provide training
Your employees know how to use their own devices – but don’t take it as a given that they’re completely up to speed on the latest IT security know-how.
That’s why regular IT security training is vital. Cyber threats are constantly evolving, and what was good practice 18 months ago might be out of date today. Make it part of your onboarding process, and ensure that you have e-learning top-ups every year for maximum impact.
BYOD Do’s and Don’ts
Looking for a quick guide to BYOD security? Share these do’s and don’ts with your employees as a handy reference!
DO
- Keep your passwords secure and change them regularly
- Use biometric features for device security if possible
- Report any lost or stolen devices to IT within 24 hours
- Complete our refresher training regularly so you’re aware of the latest threats
DON’T
- Share your device passwords with anyone
- Screenshot or copy company data to other locations on your device
- Access systems that you don’t need to
- Access sensitive data in crowded areas without a screen protector
- Leave your device unattended for any length of time
BYOD policy examples
A basic, top-level BYOD template looks something like this:
Introduction
Lay out what the policy is for and why it’s needed
Acceptable use
Explain what employees can and can’t do with a device used for BYOD
Supported devices
List what devices your IT team can support for BYOD access to business systems
Security
Outline the security expectations for employees’ BYOD.
Risks/disclaimers
Explain the risks of BYOD policy, what to do if a device is compromised, and how the business deals with security breaches.
Want to see this BYOD template in action? Check out a real-world example here.
BYOD policy: final thoughts
Plenty of businesses use BYOD solutions successfully, 24/7. With the right foundations, bring your own device can be a safe, accessible and flexible way of managing remote, hybrid and mobile workforces in particular.
A solid BYOD policy is vital to unlocking these benefits. Too vague, and you risk security issues developing that you have no direct control over. Too overbearing, and your employees will start to resent it, disengage, and find workarounds.
Set clear expectations, provide regular security training and be open to discussion with employees for the best results. Offering to pay a percentage of the value of the device each employee uses for work isn’t necessary, but it’s a nice touch that says “We appreciate what you’re doing for us”. And, in the long run, that will pay off significantly.
Silencing our nightly wind-down reminders and ignoring the unopened book on our nightstand as we endlessly scroll through increasingly negative news articles and social media posts — only to feel worse afterward.
It’s called doomscrolling, and it’s not just a buzzword. It’s a real problem.
Coined — and escalated — during the Covid pandemic, doomscrolling is the growing habit of constantly consuming negative articles on news sites or social media. What may begin as a well-intended desire to stay informed on world events can quickly devolve into a downward spiral of distressing content. For instance, searching for updates on the economic market can lead to a flood of articles on recessions and layoffs, and looking up the latest on a local election can unearth politically divisive headlines. It’s an especially easy trap to fall into on smartphones, as our social media apps algorithmically learn how to keep us scrolling for more.
The unending cycle of stress caused by doomscrolling has the power to infiltrate not just our personal lives, but our professional ones, too. It exacerbates feelings of anxiety and pessimism that people can inadvertently bring to work with them, hindering workplace satisfaction, focus, and productivity.
And if you don’t think your workforce is impacted by the doomscrolling dilemma, you may be surprised: A recent survey revealed that nearly 1 in 3 U.S. adults who use social media — and, generationally, a whopping half of Gen Z adults (53%) and millennials (46%) — said they occasionally or frequently doomscroll.
The good news? Employers can help to reverse this trend and improve employee well-being.
Enter: The power of positive internal comms
If we consider the average 8-hour workday, employees spend a third of their day — or more — at work and on workplace tech platforms. This means that internal communications leaders have an opportunity to make a meaningful difference in mitigating the damage of doomscrolling and creating corporate content that uplifts the workforce.
Let’s explore four ways that internal comms teams can help their workforce detox from doomscrolling and boost employee spirit — whether they’re on the frontline or in the front office.
1. Gauge the mindset of your employees
Doomscrolling, and overall negativity, can be detrimental to an individual’s mindset, focus, and overall well-being — making it a priority for HR and people-facing leaders.
To lift up employees, an important first step is acknowledging the challenges that people may be facing and understanding the state of the workforce. In addition to having open conversations with employees in team meetings or one-on-one check-ins, internal comms teams should consider conducting company-wide outreach.
Short-form polls, which people can respond to anonymously, can be a great way to gauge how employees are feeling across the organization. By conducting a quick poll or pulse survey on how stressed people are feeling outside of work, or how supported they feel by their manager or employer, organizations can establish a baseline for employee morale and track sentiment over time with follow-up check-ins.
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This is also an excellent chance to see what employees are looking for in their company’s internal comms. Employees can share their thoughts on the frequency, formats, themes, and channels they prefer the most when it comes to receiving information from their company, helping internal comms to ensure their important company updates and culture-building messages aren’t lost in the noise.
2. Create a positive communications culture
Long gone are the days of internal comms being just corporate news-sharing and policy updates. Today’s most successful comms plans include telling uplifting stories from across the organization as part of a broader effort to improve employee engagement and retention.
By regularly celebrating company wins (like the opening of a new facility), recognizing employee contributions, and celebrating big milestones (such as birthdays and work-iverseries), internal comms teams can establish a rhythm of lighthearted and positive content. Not only can this help to counterbalance negativity outside of work, it’s a good step toward humanizing and strengthening internal storytelling overall.
For employers who have a significant population of frontline workers, the risk of disconnect and isolation can be much greater, given the very nature of how and where they work. These team members may want more frequent and engaging updates — think personal shout-outs from coworkers or short-form videos from people leaders — that highlight their hard work and the positive impact they’re having on the organization.
Bonus points if all of this employee celebration and recognition is happening on a mobile platform where everyone can engage and chime in with their own comments of appreciation.
3. Encourage connection over isolation
Employers of any size and scope — and especially those who have a combination of office-based, frontline, and remote workers — know how difficult it can be to build a cohesive sense of community. When not all employees have a company email address or access to a work computer, how can you reach everyone where they are? And, maybe even more importantly, how can they connect with one another?
This is where a mobile-first internal comms platform can be a game-changer. Virtual chats and communities give employees a dedicated place to communicate with each other. By mimicking the most collaborative parts of social networking apps like Facebook, internal comms leaders can facilitate social connection and create a unifying and fulfilling employee experience.
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And with easy photo- and video-sharing capabilities, employees can be not just consumers of internal comms content, but creators as well. Consider encouraging employees to generate and share their own content — giving coworkers visibility into their day-to-day roles, for example, or virtually checking in from their current worksite. This can be a great way to incorporate more voices and bring a new level of authenticity and personalization to your internal comms strategy.
4. Promote a digital peace of mind
Even when it comes to uplifting internal comms, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.
Part of the appeal of doomscrolling is that it’s easy to mindlessly scroll on and on — the last thing we want workplace platforms to do is encourage the same behavior. Internal comms teams can mitigate the endless scroll by keeping their messages positive, avoiding information overload, and making their digital workplace super relevant.
Sharing content based on team, role, or region, for example, can minimize potential information overflow. Likewise, labeling critical company updates as mandatory reads can help internal comms ensure their must-read messages are being seen, while providing flexibility to employees to engage with or dismiss other posts as they see fit. And organizations that offer employee well-being solutions, such as a mindfulness app, can create an internal resource hub that quick-links to helpful employee benefits where they’re easy to find and use.
Finally, as a rule of thumb, internal comms should serve as external eyes and keep a pulse on what’s happening outside of work. Be sure to stay up to date on current social conversations that may be causing distress, as well as upcoming events that may cause heightened anxiety. By factoring these concerns into monthly or quarterly plans, internal comms teams can more proactively create content that’s timely and helpful to employees across the organization.
Don’t let doomscrolling get your employees down.
Detoxing from doomscrolling is about more than just unplugging from technology, which is often difficult or — for some employees — outright impossible. It’s about thoughtfully using workplace platforms to create an encouraging and supportive environment at work.
By taking a more strategic approach to employee morale and implementing these uplifting communications strategies, internal comms teams can help their people stay positive, connected, and resilient — even during the most uncertain times.
Learn how you can uplift your workforce with an inclusive and interactive internal communications platform. Discover Blink today.
