Meet Chris Long Melton

What makes her awesome?

Kerry Schumann is an Occupational Therapist with diverse experience in the healthcare sector. Currently employed at Ross Care since October 2022, Kerry previously held a similar role at Millbrook Healthcare and worked at the Eastern Cape Department of Health from December 2018 to November 2022, where responsibilities included establishing sustainable services as the sole therapist at a district-level hospital.

Kerry always goes above and beyond her role. She will always reach out to help anyone who needs it. She shows great initiative and is proactive in everything she does — and always has a smile around the office. She has always shown amazing rapport with service users and their family. Kerry is just a general delight to work alongside. 

How has Blink helped in her role?

Kerry is our Blink Champion for Chandlers Ford.

What does she want to do next?

She wants to keep doing the best she can each and every day and hopes to progress within the clinical.

Nominated by: Craig Chester, Workshop Team Lead

‍

Blink, the leading employee engagement super-app, announced that The Learning Experience, a premier early childhood education provider, has successfully implemented Blink’s employee engagement platform as part of its strategic initiative to improve frontline staff communication, engagement, and retention across its 350 locations.

As The Learning Experience continues its significant growth, finding innovative ways to enhance company culture and ensure effective communication across all locations has become increasingly important. Due to the nature of the work, traditional communication methods aren’t accessible, as most staff members are teachers who do not use email during the day and need a more flexible solution. To address these needs, the organization launched a strategic initiative called Operation Blue Elephant, utilizing Blink’s platform to enhance engagement and streamline internal communication. This effort focuses on unifying the experience for the company’s 10,000 employees, 90% of whom work in franchise-operated centers with limited direct connection to the corporate team.

Blink’s platform, known as the "Happy Hub" within The Learning Experience, has become a key component of its employee engagement strategy. This centralized communication tool offers employees timely access to essential information, core tools, and a platform for feedback, thus enhancing overall engagement and connectivity.

“Blink has been a game-changer on how we communicate and engage with our employees,” said Traci Wilk, Chief People Officer, of The Learning Experience. “By providing a unified platform, we’ve ensured that every team member, from corporate staff to frontline franchise employees, feels connected and valued. This initiative is not just about improving communication-it’s about building a culture where every employee thrives.”  

Key highlights of the Happy Hub

• Comprehensive benefits program - The Learning Experience introduced "TLE Cares," an affordable benefits package for franchisees to offer their employees.

• Reimagined teacher onboarding program - Through the platform, new teachers have the tools they need to succeed from day one, leveraging new technology and resources.

• Happiness index - The Learning Experience began running both parent and employee engagement surveys. Viewing these results together gave the organization and franchisees a clearer idea of their performance and how Happiness index scores relate to employee engagement, retention, and family enrollment at centers.

Results

Since the launch of the Happy Hub, there has been a notable improvement in employee retention rates. The streamlined onboarding process has also contributed to this success by boosting new hires' confidence and readiness to lead classes effectively. In addition,  the positive reception of the platform, with 99% of franchisees actively participating, highlights its effectiveness in enhancing staff engagement and creating a more supportive work environment.

Sean Nolan, CEO and co-founder of Blink said, “The success of The Learning Experience’s Happy Hub showcases the profound impact of effective frontline connection.  In today's competitive market, fostering a strong organizational culture and ensuring employees feel supported is crucial for retention and growth. Other organizations can look to The Learning Experience as a model on how to leverage technology to achieve these goals.”

‍

Last year, Blink started working with First Bus to connect their entire workforce in one place: drivers, engineers, managers and corporate functions. Most of whom don't sit at a desk, don't have corporate email, and historically haven't had much of a digital relationship with their employer at all.

What made this project interesting was that we weren't coming in solely to implement Blink. First Bus was already mid-way through a Workday transformation programme and Blink was to become a key part of it. 

There was a reason for that. By the time we came in, nearly every major bus operator in the UK was already running Blink, so this wasn't an untested bet for a frontline workforce. And Blink and Workday already work closely, technically and in the way the two are delivered, which on this programme meant working alongside LACE and Kainos, the partners building Workday itself.

Implementing Blink is not just about getting the product ready for go-live, the configurations, the integrations, the complications. Getting a deskless workforce to actually use a new system means understanding how they spend their day, what they'll bother picking up their phone for, and what they'll ignore. As an implementation manager at Blink that is absolutely central to the role. 

Implementing Workday is a different beast. The scope, the build, the resources required, the timelines and the complexity can be challenging. Workday is a profoundly capable product. It's the source of truth for employee data, learning, payslips and far more. The bedrock other employee experiences get built on top of. If an organisation were a restaurant, Workday is the kitchen. And to build the kitchen, you need to hire the chefs, design the menu, spec the equipment, and that’s before you’ve even prepared a single dish. It’s a big task, but an operational kitchen doesn’t equal a fully functioning restaurant. The food can be extraordinary, but if nobody's there to take the order, explain the menu, and bring it to the table, your frontline workers are just standing outside with their tummies rumbling, no idea there's gourmet grub just around the corner.

Blink is the front of house. The experience layer that makes the kitchen work for everyone.

Greeting the guests

Getting any product into the hands of a deskless workforce is a challenge and being on the ground for this kind of launch really matters. This change initiative succeeded through a high-level partnership involving Blink, the transformation and communications units at First Bus, HR and Payroll experts LACE Partners, and Kainos, who managed the technical implementation of Workday. Teams went into the depots in-person on launch day to help people get set up. Union briefings ran region by region in the months beforehand, and in the run-up to go-live the message went out everywhere people would see it: notice boards, team meetings, and on digital signage in depots.  Everyone understood this couldn't be handled with an email and that proper preparation for launch was pivotal to success.

A table for 14,000 

Blink and Workday launched together to everyone at First Bus. One front door for everything: driver duties, team communications, and Workday sitting inside it alongside the rest. Frontline colleagues didn't need to understand what Workday was or find their way into it separately. They downloaded one app, and it was all there. And it was theirs. What showed up was shaped by their role, their location, their shifts, all pulled from Workday in the background without anyone needing to go looking for it. 

Which is just as well, because for many of them, if you'd said "we're launching Workday", the honest response would have been "What? But I've already had six work days this week." The name meant nothing to a bus driver. What mattered was whether it was worth opening.

Before, getting hold of a basic document meant calling the depot office and waiting. Now it's easily found in the app.

A tailor-made menu

Transformation programmes often shift. Timelines move, scope changes, things that were supposed to be in phase one end up in phase two. At First Bus, the payroll project was delayed; giving the frontline access to their payslips through the app on day one was not going to happen. In a standalone Workday rollout, removing one of the key incentives for a frontline worker to open Workday at least once a month, is a real problem. 

However, everything carried on with a few minor tweaks to the menu. The Blink Hub contained a shortcut to the pre-existing payroll provider, and a lighter version of Workday was launched with careers and learning as the key frontline use cases. First Bus achieved 80% user activation on Blink within the first week, with the majority of them accessing Workday.

Now for the main course

First Bus now has Blink adoption over 90% and Workday embedded across the workforce. But that's just the starter and there’s more on the Workday menu coming soon. Payslips, mandatory learning notifications and actionable nudges will land inside the app the workforce already opens every day. With employees opening Blink over 4.5 times a day, there’s no need to resource at ground zero for another transformation programme. No need for posters in the depot canteen or more boots on the ground. A feed post campaign, a short explainer video in the hub and an FAQs Page, and the Workday potential is unlocked.

That's what getting everyone looking in the right direction actually buys you. Not just a successful go-live, but the ability to keep adding value without having to  find the resource and rebuild the case for change every time.

Every Workday programme faces timeline pressure, scope changes, and the harder problem of reaching people on the frontline. The kitchen will always be complex. But if you build the front of house properly from day one, everything that comes out of it lands easier, lands faster, and keeps people coming back.

If there's one thing I'd take into the next programme, it's that every frontline rollout needs a personalised menu to give everyone a reason to open the app without being told to. Curate that, serve it well, and every other dish feels like part of their menu.

Because front of house isn't a nice-to-have, it's what turns a kitchen into a restaurant.

{{first-bus-launch="/callouts"}}

Are you on the hunt for the perfect communications software for your organization and having a difficult time choosing between Blink and Dynamic Signal? 

Read on to find their key similarities and differences and make the decision that's best for your workforce.

Dynamic Signal vs. Blink — quick facts

Both Dynamic Signal and Blink are designed as mobile-first employee communication platforms with web and desktop apps.

One major difference between the two apps is that Dynamic Signal also aims to transform employees into employee advocates across external platforms. Blink is entirely focused on the employee, while Dynamic Signal focuses more on company PR and image. 

Dynamic Signal was founded in 2010 in San Bruno, CA, and Blink was launched in 2019 in London, UK. Blink comes with modern features and UI that the Dynamic Signal app doesn’t. For example, Blink offers features like micro-apps, payslips, staff rosters, and customizable branding. 

In contrast, Dynamic Signal relies on other, sometimes older, methods to engage their frontline workers, like gamification techniques, external social sharing, and newsletters.

Dynamic Signal’s approach is likely to work better with desk-based workers and organizations that want to use user-generated content, while Blink is more successful among frontline workers.

Dynamic Signal vs. Blink: How they’re similar

When choosing between Blink and Dynamic Signal, note there are some similarities between the two apps:

Mobile

Blink is a great option if you want to encourage more engagement and communication across all levels of your organization. It suits companies with many frontline and mobile workers. As a newer company, Blink comes with modern features, and the user experience feels like any other consumer social app, making it intuitive and fun to use. 

Dynamic Signal also offers a mobile app that makes it possible for deskless employees to stay up to date and connected wherever they are. 

Integrations

Dynamic provides two-way integrations with third-party tools like Teams, Yammer, Slack, and more, along with an API to create custom integrations. 

Blink is also highly customizable. It offers personalized branding, integrations, and micro-apps — for payslips, lunch menus, or anything else your organization might need. 

Analytics

A strength of Dynamic Signal lies in the robust analytics and reporting tools that track member views, shares, post reach, and more. Users frequently name the “extensive reporting” as a major plus of the platform. However, users say “reports require external spreadsheet software as native report management is poor.”

Blink also offers extensive analytics that encompasses active users, reach, impressions, likes, comments and link clicks, with visualizations right in the app. The platform enables you to filter data by timeframe or team, so you can track the effectiveness of specific campaigns. 

How they’re different

There also some key differences between Blink and Dynamic Signal:

Newsletters

If you are looking for multiple communication methods, Dynamic Signal could be a good choice. Along with feed posts, users can create news posts, newsletters, automatic digests, and send push notifications for important announcements. Plus, the audience targeting features let publishers deliver their content to the right people.

Though Blink offers Pages for static blog content, there is no newsletter feature available from the beginning. In terms of variety of content for Blink, users say the platform “would benefit from more video options.”

Content approval

Blink’s focus on user-generated content means that there are less barriers for your employees to post and share content on the news feeds. This leads to a high volume of content, which can sometimes be overwhelming. Users say “the feed may need better filtering options.”

For companies that want to consistently produce content held to higher standards of uniformity, admins can utilize the planned approval workflows.

Gamification

Dynamic Signal offers badges and leaderboards to encourage frontline workers to interact and complete configurable goals. 

Blink does not have any gamification features other than the social feed’s likes and comments. 

Omni-directional communication

A strength for Blink is its thoughtful focus on encouraging communication from every level of the organization. The feed page is easy to participate in for any worker, and the people directory opens lines of communication across the organization. 

Dynamic Signal is more of a top-down communications platform, which means there are fewer opportunities for workers at all levels to engage with others. While there is a news feed, moderators review employees’ submissions, which could discourage true engagement.

Chat feature

Blink offers a chat feature for employees to communicate, send documents, and kick of video calls. 

In Dynamic Signal there are no fully-fledged chat features, so it would not replace shadow IT like Whatsapp. Similarly, there are no do not disturb or away features found in other chat software to let workers step away from work during breaks.

Intranet

Blink’s Hub serves as a powerful reference where important documents, files, and policies are easy to organize and find through search.  

In contrast, Search experience to find news and articles tends to be poor in Dynamic Signal. Users must rely mainly on manual navigation, which means it would not make an ideal intranet replacement. 

Setup time

With excellent customer support and a great UI, Blink is one of the easiest employee communication apps to onboard.

Users won’t require any technical training to engage with the tool. And on the backend, the fully managed tool lightens the load on the IT team.

However, as a newer communication and engagement platform, many features are still being rolled out and beta-tested, which means elements are constantly changing.

While the development team is agile and fast-moving, occasional bugs do occur.

With Dynamic Signal, learning the platform can take some time as many features are quite technical. While this means it can be powerful, it isn’t a set-up-and-go tool.

Both admins and users will require training to take full advantage of the features, however, users often say they receive “good support from the customer success team” which can help make the onboarding process go more smoothly. 

Dynamic Signal vs. Blink: pricing

Blink offers four levels of paid service based on company size:

Blink levels: 

• Essential: $3.40 per person, per month
• Business: Price on application
• Enterprise: Price on application
• Enterprise Plus: Price on application

Dynamic Signal has recently been integrated into Firstup’s line of products. The company customizes your plan with features, so you’ll have to grab a custom quote for more information. 

Dynamic Signal vs. Blink: final thoughts

Both Blink and Dynamic Signal are excellent choices for an internal employee communications solution. 

If you want a hands-off and engaging platform with great value, go with Blink. 

If your team already has an internal communication plan with specific messaging requirements, and has the resources to commit to a higher-effort platform, go with Dynamic Signal. 

If you’re not sure, try out Blink’s powerful frontline employee communications solution for free. 

Extroverts get a lot of attention and recognition because they’re the squeaky wheels at your company. The valuable contributions of introverts, on the other hand, may get overlooked.

Because those employees are less likely to fight to get noticed. Sound familiar? Then you may have an employee engagement problem on your hands. And that could cost you a lot of money in the long run.

We tend to value extroversion in the workplace because it looks a lot like passion and dedication. Quiet, thoughtful introverts can look less dedicated at first glance, but are often more productive, better risk-takers, and make great leaders.

Ignoring the needs of these high-performing employees when you’re looking at employee engagement activities?

It can mean unintentionally alienating a big portion of your workforce.

That’s an expensive mistake to make when you consider the average cost to rehire is equal to 33% of the annual compensation.

It makes more sense to look at employee engagement strategies that can help introverted employees feel more comfortable, more satisfied, and as a result, more loyal to your company.

Below, we’ve put together a big list of employee engagement strategies designed just for introverts in the workplace. But first, we want to talk about what sets your introverted employees apart and why engaging them matters so much.

What makes introverts in the workplace different?

Instead of talking about ‘energy’, let’s look at the science behind introverts and extroverts. Introverts and extroverts quite literally have different brains. When you look at scans of introverts and extroverts, you’ll see a difference in concentrations of gray matter.

And where there’s more gray matter, there are more of certain kinds of skills. Your classic hand-raising, go-getter extrovert will have more gray matter in the medial orbito-frontal cortex area of the brain. Deep-thinking introverts have more gray matter in the prefrontal cortex.

On top of that, introvert brains and extrovert brains respond differently to dopamine. The chemical that motivates us, makes us more talkative, and keeps us alert, among other functions.

Extroverts have more active dopamine receptors. Introverts respond more readily to a chemical called acetylcholine that makes people feel good when they turn inward.

All of this technical stuff means that your introverted employees have great problem-solving skills, amazing memories, and a knack for planning and then following through on long-term projects. They are energized by thinking, reflecting, and mapping out the future.

By common metrics of employee engagement, they can seem unengaged. But if you shift your employee engagement strategies and corporate communications strategies to include activities and tech tools they’ll like? They will become some of your most engaged employees.

Why is employee engagement important for introverts?

The short answer is that engaged employees stick around. Researchers commonly find that 50% would accept another job offer on the spot if the benefits were right.

What’s surprising isn’t that those employees would be willing to go. But rather than the other half are willing to stay even when given the promise of greater pay somewhere else. That’s employee engagement.

When your workforce (introverts and extroverts alike) feel a connection both to the work they are doing and to your company’s larger goals, they’ll be more likely to stick around through thick and thin. That will save you time and money. They’ll also work harder, be more productive, and more likely to go above and beyond the call of duty.

Here’s how to make sure your introverted employees are just as engaged as the extroverts at your company:

Employee engagement strategies for introverted employees

1. Change your interview process

When your goal is to boost employee engagement in introverts, why not start from day one? In job interviews, many extroverts shine because they’re born to pitch.

Introverts will often perform best in job interviews that feel more like one-on-one conversations. Panel-style interviews, where they feel like a product on display, can be stressful. Unless you’re hiring for a high-stress position, you may end up with a broader pool of great candidates this way.

2. Limit team sizes on group projects

Working with huge teams can be extremely stressful for introverts for a variety of reasons. Two heads may be better than one, but once teams get too large productivity can suffer because there is more back and forth happening than actual work.

Introverts tend to prefer less chaotic work environments, and you can cut down on chaos by following Jeff Bezos’ two pizza rule. If you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, it’s probably too big.

3. Make work more flexible

Extroverts may love the hustle and bustle of your busy workspace, but that same energy can drive your introverts crazy.

Create space for uninterrupted work time by instituting flex work and other policies that allow employees to come in earlier or leave later to take advantage of an emptier office.

Allowing employees to work from home when the mood strikes or to disconnect from the company intranet when they’re heads down on a big project can also boost employee engagement in the long run.

4. Have meeting-free days

Regular meeting-free days also cut down on the kinds of interruptions that can leave introverts feeling disconnected from their work.

When there are regular days or times when no meetings can be scheduled, introverts can comfortably immerse themselves in projects at those times because they know their focus won’t be compromised by yet another meeting.

5. Make meetings introvert-friendly

Don’t spring meetings on your introverts who may benefit from time to prepare for each one.

Make sure introverts get a chance to prepare for each meeting in advance and to give their input after all the extroverts have had their say.

Also, be sure that your meetings are relevant to current projects and have structure. You can bet that it’s your introverted employees who are feeling the most annoyed and uncomfortable when a meeting goes off the rails.

6... (Or just have fewer meetings)

Before you schedule that next meeting, ask yourself whether you really need to pull that employee away from their vital tasks for some face-to-face time?

Could you accomplish the same thing with an employee app like Blink that lets you curate and disseminate information in ways that respect your introverted workforce’s valuable time?

7. Update your communications methods

Just because extroverts are the first ones to stand up to deliver project updates in front of the team doesn’t mean introverts have nothing to say.

An app like Blink can help the introverts at your company have more of a voice without forcing them too far outside of their comfort zones. You could use video as an update tool versus requiring all employees to give in-person presentations.

They can connect with their colleagues for collaboration and mentorship right in the app. And it’s a way to recognize and applaud the contributions of introverts without forcing them into the spotlight.

8. Invest in additional training

One of the biggest challenges deskless workers face is feeling like they don’t have the same resources available to them as employees in a traditional office setting do.

This can make them feel less confident in their work—especially if they are introverted and may not feel like they are able to reach out for help.

By offering ongoing training, you will not only help your introverted, deskless employees feel more confident in their work, but you’ll also show them that you are invested in their success.

9. Brainstorm better

Group brainstorming sessions can feel chaotic to a true introvert because there’s little structure and some voices will always drown out others. Brainstorming sessions are easier on introverts when groups are smaller and there is some structure in place guiding the sessions.

That might mean pre-planning when you’ll discuss what topics or asking people to prepare ideas in advance. That will give the introverts in your company time to reflect on what they want to say and as a result, they’ll be more likely to share their great ideas.

10. Give introverts opportunities to get social

The idea that introverts don’t like people or don’t like having fun is a pervasive myth that has unfortunately caused a lot of harm. Introverts are as friendly and as fun as extroverts—and can party just as hard when they want to.

Give your employees a platform like Blink where they can share social events with coworkers and encourage (but don’t require) people to get to know each other inside and outside of work.

11. Rethink the open office

If you’re in a position to contemplate an office redesign, keep in mind that open office spaces aren’t always the collaboration engines they were meant to be.

Between greetings, noisy colleagues, chit chat, and other interruptions, open offices can be very distracting—and not just for introverts who might not want to stop work to talk about last night’s big game.

If a redesign is out of the question, think about creating ‘quiet zones’ outside of communal areas where introverts can get a break from the noise.

12. Put introverts into leadership positions

You might assume that extroverts are more suited for leadership roles, but consider that many of the world’s most capable leaders (e.g., Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, or Warren Buffet) have been introverts.

Why do introverts make good leaders? They tend to be fiercely dedicated, thoughtful decision-makers, and surprisingly strong-willed. Plus, they’re good listeners.

13. Make space for communication

Be sure that you’re giving introverts space to share their ideas and concerns, whether that’s by asking for their opinions in meetings, holding regular open-door hours, or giving them an employee engagement platform like Blink where they can respond anonymously to company-wide polls.

If you get the sense that your introverted employees don’t feel like they’re being heard, ask them to share their thoughts or feelings in writing at their leisure.

14. The right praise and feedback go a long way

Often, deskless and frontline employees don’t have a supervisor observing their day-to-day performance and as a result, may receive little to no praise or feedback from their manager.

While it’s true that praise and feedback are good for all employees, how you deliver praise and feedback is important too — especially when it comes to your introverted employees.

Introverted employees want to be recognized when they do an outstanding job on something, but likely prefer a personal email from their manager, rather than a company-wide shout out.

15. Realize that introversion is a spectrum

Avoid stereotyping the introverts and the extroverts at your company by acknowledging that each individual will fall somewhere on a spectrum.

That way you avoid making the mistake of leaving introverted workers out of employee engagement activities or not giving extroverted employees time for quiet reflection or uninterrupted work.

Ideally, the employee engagement strategies you put in place should address the needs of all the people who work at your company.

There are so many diverse personality types at every company, and that’s a good thing. Everyone who works with you should feel like they have a role to play, whether it’s the thinker, the communicator, the analyzer, the risk-taker, or the seller.

When you make sure that introverts feel just as comfortable and fulfilled at your company as your extroverted employees, you’ll absolutely reap the benefits. Engaging employees across the board should be your ultimate goal.

Blink is an all-in-one employee engagement platform that can change the way your workforce feels about your company. Try it out today!

“Prove it.”

If you’re in internal communications, you’ve heard that sentence more times than you’ve heard “quick question” (which, as we know, is never actually quick).

The shift is real. Five years ago, a lot of comms tech lived in the “nice to have” bucket. In 2026, it’s a boardroom conversation — and boardrooms don’t buy “nice.” They buy outcomes: efficiency, reduced risk, better retention, higher adoption of expensive tech investments, and measurable operational wins.

In our recent webinar, Proving internal comms ROI in 2026: Lessons from the other side, Ricky Sickelmore shared what he learned after 24 years in transport (including launching Blink at Stagecoach and introducing it at Arriva) — and what consistently held up when leadership came knocking for ROI.

Here are the six takeaways internal comms teams can apply immediately.

1. Ditch vanity metrics for outcomes

Email opens. Page views. Likes.

They’re not useless… they’re just not convincing.

Ricky’s rule: stop leading with activity metrics and start leading with business value. Executives don’t want to hear that “people saw the message.” They want to know: did anything change, and did it matter?

So translate comms problems into operational and financial realities:

• Safety reporting increases (e.g., digital near-miss reporting vs. “find the form somewhere and hope someone bothers”)
• Compliance improvements (e.g., “mandatory read” confirmation)
• Turnover movement (not because comms magically fixes attrition — but because comms can remove friction, improve onboarding, and drive consistency)

A useful gut-check: If your metric can’t be repeated in a budget meeting without you adding a 3-minute explanation, it’s not your headline metric.

Executives aren’t interested in open rates. They’re interested in the financial reality.

- Ricky Sickelmore, Blink

2. Start with hard costs and operational efficiency

If you want CFO attention, lead with the stuff they can smell from three floors away: tangible savings.

Ricky shared a simple example that’s painfully common in frontline-heavy orgs: printing and distributing documents at scale. One organization saved over £200,000 by moving payslips from print-and-post to digital distribution.

But don’t just stop at “printing costs.” The strongest ROI cases widen the lens:

• Printers and maintenance
• Paper, postage, distribution
• Staff time to print, collate, deliver, reprint
• Support tickets created when things go wrong

And when you talk about “time savings,” make them real. Not “we saved time.” Instead:

• “We reclaimed 10 hours per week of manager time previously spent manually filling shifts.”
• “We reduced password reset requests because employees access systems through one authenticated front door.”

Pro tip from Ricky: Do a basic “time and motion” study. Follow one process end-to-end and document every human touchpoint. That one form might bounce across 8–10 people, with delays that never show up on a neat process map.

3. Build a cross-functional case, not a “comms case”

One of the biggest mistakes internal comms teams make is trying to win budget alone — with a comms-only story.

Ricky put it bluntly: ROI gets easier when internal comms stops being “the comms team’s project” and becomes an operations, safety, engineering, and HR win.

That means stakeholder interviews early — not once the deck is already written.

Ask department heads:

• What’s your biggest friction point right now?
• What manual work is wasting your team’s time?
• Where do you have compliance risk?
• What’s the cost of not fixing this?

Example Ricky gave: if a safety leader can’t reliably get 20 drivers in a room for a briefing, that’s not a comms problem — it’s an operational risk. A digital “mandatory read” gives you trackable compliance without the logistics circus.

Make it tangible: Form a small steering committee with reps from the functions that will benefit most. When you go for sign-off, you’re not walking in alone — you’re walking in with allies.

You’re not in it alone — get the right stakeholders in the room early.

Ricky Sickelmore

4. Prove time-to-value through onboarding

Want a metric that operations leaders actually care about? Onboarding efficiency.

Ricky called this one “underestimated” — and he’s right. Onboarding is where friction shows up immediately, and where improvements are easy to translate into time, money, and productivity.

If employees can receive policies, procedures, training content, and day-one essentials before they even start, you can often get people productive an entire day sooner.

That’s not “engagement.” That’s time to value.

And onboarding improvements have a bonus effect: they reduce downstream errors, reduce manager time spent repeating the same information, and improve early retention (again — comms isn’t the sole driver, but it’s a meaningful part of the system).

5. Position your platform as the digital front door

One of Ricky’s biggest reflections: early on, it’s easy to think you’re buying “a comms tool.”

But the strongest ROI cases position the platform as the gateway to your digital estate — the place employees actually start their day.

This matters because most organizations are already paying for expensive systems (HRIS, scheduling, payroll, benefits, learning, etc.). The problem isn’t always the tool — it’s access and adoption.

If your internal comms platform:

• Uses SSO
• Reduces password resets
• Gives employees one place to find and access tools
• Increases self-service

…then your comms investment is also protecting and amplifying other investments.

Ricky shared a real pattern: Once access is simplified through a single front door, usage of other systems can jump dramatically — and suddenly your internal comms platform isn’t “another tool.” It’s the tool that makes the rest usable.

6. Establish a baseline — and sell the cost of inaction

You can’t prove improvement if you don’t know where you started. And you can’t create urgency if you can’t show what “doing nothing” costs.

Ricky’s advice: Baseline early — and don’t just baseline comms metrics.

Baseline business realities that leadership recognizes:

• Turnover / attrition
• Survey participation rates
• Safety reporting volumes
• Time spent on manual processes
• Printing, distribution, and support costs
• Operational delays caused by information gaps

Then translate that into the cost of inaction: the money currently leaking from the business because processes are manual, access is fragmented, and frontline teams can’t reliably get what they need.

When you can credibly say, “Here’s what it costs us to do nothing,” the investment stops feeling optional.

Common mistakes to avoid when proving internal comms ROI

A few “don’t step on this rake” moments that came up in the conversation:

• Don’t lead with outputs. “We sent 12 newsletters” isn’t ROI.
• Don’t build the case in isolation. Cross-functional pain points = stronger case.
• Don’t ignore hard money. The “soft” story matters, but hard savings gets you in the door.
• Don’t skip the frontline reality check. Spend time with frontline teams. Watch the work. Learn the friction.
• Don’t assume leaders know what to ask for. Often the first job is clarifying the real question behind “prove ROI.”

{{mobile-desktop-main="/image"}}

Be the change maker

Internal comms ROI in 2026 isn’t about becoming a finance team overnight. It’s about learning to translate.

Translate comms into outcomes.

Translate friction into cost.

Translate “this would be helpful” into “this will reduce risk, save time, and speed up productivity.”

Or, in Ricky’s words: Be the change maker.