Why "we'll deal with it later" is the most expensive decision you'll make
The investment in employee experience is easier to justify than most people think. You just need the right framework to show what inaction is already costing.
Sallianne Buttsworth
Published:
June 10, 2026
Last updated:
June 10, 2026
There's a question HR and comms leaders hear constantly. Not from their teams. From finance, from the C-suite, from every budget conversation they've sat in.
"Can you put a number on it?"
For years, employee experience has struggled to answer this question cleanly. The work is real. The impact is real. But the costs are spread across departments, buried in different reports, attributed to different owners. Turnover sits in HR. Productivity drag lives in ops. Compliance risk belongs to legal. Nobody's joining the dots.
So the status quo continues. And the bill quietly compounds, yet the symptoms get louder and louder across the organisation.
This is the cost of inaction - and it's larger than most organizations realize.
When frontline employees don't receive the right information at the right time, things go wrong in slow, expensive ways. Managers get buried in administration instead of being out on the floor with their teams. New starters take longer to get up to speed. Safety incidents increase when critical information doesn't reach the right people. And when workers don't feel connected, absenteeism climbs and your best people start to leave.
None of these show up as a line item called "poor employee experience." But they are costing money. Every week. Across every site.
The challenge for HR and comms leaders isn't proving that the problem exists. It's translating it into language that moves a business case forward.
The most effective approach is to align on the inputs before you build the case. Work backwards from what the business already tracks. Confirm the turnover figure with HR. Ask ops for average shift-fill time. Check with compliance on how often missed communications create rework or incidents. When the data points are owned across the organization, the problem is too - and the conversation shifts from "can you prove this?" to "what do we do about it?"
That's exactly the framework behind Blink's Cost of Inaction Calculator. It takes the metrics your organization already holds - workforce size, average salary, turnover rate - and models the financial impact of communication gaps, productivity loss, employee replacement costs, and operational risk. This can then be used in your business case for employee engagement, built in the language leaders can't ignore: tangible financial impact, grounded in your own numbers.
We work alongside our customers and prospects to diagnose these symptoms every day. The goal isn't to win a budget argument. It's to make the cost of doing nothing impossible to ignore.
If you want to see how the model works in practice, I am running a live session on June 17 - The hidden cost of a disconnected frontline. The session walks through the calculator methodology, the assumptions that drive the calculations, and how to use the output to build a stronger business case with finance and operational leaders. It's also available on demand.
The investment in employee experience is easier to justify than most people think. You just need the right framework to show what inaction is already costing.
There's a question HR and comms leaders hear constantly. Not from their teams. From finance, from the C-suite, from every budget conversation they've sat in.
"Can you put a number on it?"
For years, employee experience has struggled to answer this question cleanly. The work is real. The impact is real. But the costs are spread across departments, buried in different reports, attributed to different owners. Turnover sits in HR. Productivity drag lives in ops. Compliance risk belongs to legal. Nobody's joining the dots.
So the status quo continues. And the bill quietly compounds, yet the symptoms get louder and louder across the organisation.
This is the cost of inaction - and it's larger than most organizations realize.
When frontline employees don't receive the right information at the right time, things go wrong in slow, expensive ways. Managers get buried in administration instead of being out on the floor with their teams. New starters take longer to get up to speed. Safety incidents increase when critical information doesn't reach the right people. And when workers don't feel connected, absenteeism climbs and your best people start to leave.
None of these show up as a line item called "poor employee experience." But they are costing money. Every week. Across every site.
The challenge for HR and comms leaders isn't proving that the problem exists. It's translating it into language that moves a business case forward.
The most effective approach is to align on the inputs before you build the case. Work backwards from what the business already tracks. Confirm the turnover figure with HR. Ask ops for average shift-fill time. Check with compliance on how often missed communications create rework or incidents. When the data points are owned across the organization, the problem is too - and the conversation shifts from "can you prove this?" to "what do we do about it?"
That's exactly the framework behind Blink's Cost of Inaction Calculator. It takes the metrics your organization already holds - workforce size, average salary, turnover rate - and models the financial impact of communication gaps, productivity loss, employee replacement costs, and operational risk. This can then be used in your business case for employee engagement, built in the language leaders can't ignore: tangible financial impact, grounded in your own numbers.
We work alongside our customers and prospects to diagnose these symptoms every day. The goal isn't to win a budget argument. It's to make the cost of doing nothing impossible to ignore.
If you want to see how the model works in practice, I am running a live session on June 17 - The hidden cost of a disconnected frontline. The session walks through the calculator methodology, the assumptions that drive the calculations, and how to use the output to build a stronger business case with finance and operational leaders. It's also available on demand.
The investment in employee experience is easier to justify than most people think. You just need the right framework to show what inaction is already costing.
Boston – June 11, 2024 – Blink, the leading employee engagement super-app, today announced the next generation of its platform. The latest release introduces AI-driven advanced employee intelligence to reshape how organizations understand and enhance employee engagement, retention, productivity, and overall workplace satisfaction for both deskless and desk-based employees. This new level of insight and analysis triggers real-time nudges and mobile alerts across all levels of the business to aid in decision-making and prompt action.
Key Features and Benefits
Gather the team - Activation analytics which track employee engagement from day one, help achieve a 95% employee activation rate. Leaderboards pushed to managers to encourage healthy competition and discussion.
Optimize operations - Usage analytics provide insights into the use and performance of internal apps, shift booking rates, form completion and critical updates. This improves operational efficiency and user experience across the organization.
Captivate with comms - Communications analytics monitor how employees interact with internal comms, helping to identify preferences and needs and create more effective internal comms campaigns.
Building bonds to shape culture - Engagement analytics track the use of chat and channels, helping to curate effective channel sizes, increase awareness and suggest suitable channels to employees. This fosters engagement and communication across the business.
Listen to and understand employees - Survey analytics developed with HR experts offer detailed insights from employee surveys. AI-powered sentiment analysis provides a clear picture of employee sentiment and areas of improvement. This feature also helps to improve participation through real-time participation alerts.
Understand turnover risks - By integrating with HR systems like Workday, Blink tracks highly segmented employee turnover data to identify problem areas. Correlating turnover with other engagement metrics provides a full picture of where, how, and when to act on turnover risks.
Blink’s advanced analytics leverages extensive data from the platform to provide a detailed view of engagement and adoption across an organization. The analytics dashboard allows HR leaders to examine specific metrics and trends, and to clearly understand employee behavior and communication patterns. These insights enable organizations to make informed decisions to improve employee experience and performance.
For a comprehensive overview of Blink's superapp, click here to explore the full product capabilities.
Elara Caring, a leading home healthcare provider, has successfully implemented Blink's advanced employee intelligence to enhance its onboarding and retention strategies. By utilizing Blink's new hire surveys and analytics dashboards, Elara Caring gained critical insights into their employees' experiences during the first few months of employment.
"With Blink’s insights powering our ElaraCare Application, we’ve created actionable strategies to improve team member experience," said Thomas Firmani, president, Personal Care Services at Elara Caring. "New caregiver feedback data – obtained through multiple touch points – has enabled us to refine our team member engagement process. Leveraging Blink’s in-app features, we have more personalized posts, enhanced support channels, and improved recognition platforms.”
"People feeling engaged in their work and happy are critical for the success of any organization," said Sean Nolan, CEO and founder of Blink. "Our enhanced platform provides the necessary advanced tools for organizations to gain deep insights into their workforce. By understanding employee sentiments and behaviors, leaders can make informed decisions that enhance the employee experience, productivity and ultimately reduce turnover."
About Blink
Blink is a provider of a leading super-app designed for frontline organizations. The company aims to revolutionize employee work life by bridging the digital divide between deskless and desk-based employees, enabling effective communication and engagement in distributed organizations. Blink is used by industry-leading companies, including RATPDev, Elara Caring, and Domino’s. Each user opens the app an average of seven times a day, helping lower frontline attrition by up to 25%. Founded in 2015 and with offices in London, Boston, and Sydney, Blink is a Leader in the G2 Grid® for Best Employee Engagement Software. Visit Joinblink.com for more information and follow on LinkedIn and X.
Digital inclusion is the ability of individuals and communities to access, understand, and use technology in a safe and meaningful way. More often, we hear of digital inclusion and digital equity as social concepts — do citizens have equal access to health tech solutions, for example, and do they have access to the internet in order to participate in society?
But frontline digital inclusion and digital equity for employees are just as important.
Frontline digital inclusion is essential in order to bridge the connection gap between the frontline workforce and the rest of an organization.
By understanding frontline digital inclusion better, we can helpcreate a more equitable global workforce where everyone has access to the tools, resources, and people they need to succeed. In doing so, we encourage increased employee engagement, and unlock productivity and performance for the business, so everybody benefits.
What is digital inclusion?
Before we get into the specifics of frontline digital inclusion, let’s start with some definitions.
Digital inclusion is an important concept in the modern world as access to technology and digital services play an increasingly critical role in people’s lives. It refers to the ability of individuals and communities to access, understand, and use technology in order to take part in society, regardless of their social or economic backgrounds.
On a larger scale, digital inclusion projects serve to create equity where it isn’t already: between those who have access to digital resources and those that don’t. Frontline digital inclusion is one example of this concept in action, as it refers to providing equal opportunities for frontline workforce members to use technology in their daily activities.
Digital inclusion comprises three key areas:
Accessibility
Digital skills
Connectivity
Accessibility
Digital accessibility refers to the ability of all individuals to access digital content, tools, and services, including those with disabilities, sensory impairments, or neurodiversities.
On a global scale, improving digital access involves a wide range of considerations, such as providing alternative formats of content (such as audio or braille versions), designing websites and applications to be inclusive, and ensuring that digital services can be accessed in different languages or formats.
Digital skills refer to a range of abilities needed to use digital tools, devices, and communications applications effectively. Understanding their purpose and how they can be used to benefit the user also falls under this definition.
Digital education and training initiatives are important for helping people to develop the skills they need to be digitally included. Digital skills are an essential part of being digitally literate in today’s world, allowing individuals to take advantage of all that technology has to offer.
Connectivity
Digital connectivity refers to the ability of individuals to connect to the internet and online services, as well as the infrastructure and internet connection that supports this.
Enabling digital connectivity involved providing internet access in areas where there is none, or setting up public Wi-Fi networks in remote locations. This is particularly crucial in developing countries, where access to the internet can be a huge advantage.
What would digital inclusion look like for the frontline?
Frontline digital inclusion includes everything from having access to devices and software, understanding how they work and how to use them properly, and being able to take advantage of the same digital services as those in higher positions or working at HQ.
Accessibility
Workers should have access to the digital tools needed for their roles, whether their job is desk-based or not. When frontline employees have digital equity, they are able to better perform their daily work tasks using relevant software and mobile-optimized platforms.
Language is particularly important to consider here. Frontline environments like healthcare are becoming more divergent and employees are speaking a broader range of languages between themselves and with their patients. Any technology provided to them has to be easily translated to avoid crucial messages being missed.
Digital skills
Digital skills can be thought of in two ways when it comes to frontline digital inclusion.
One: is the tool intuitive for the frontline or has it been designed with desk-based workflows in mind?
And two: are frontline employees being offered relevant training, onboarding, and support for the digital tools provided?
You might need to create additional resources for improving digital skills, such as tutorials, videos, and webinars. You can also direct them to key employee engagement champions who can empower them to use their new tech effectively.
Connectivity
Connecting your organization from the C-Suite to the frontline brings about a huge wealth of benefits, from ‘soft’ benefits like belonging and inclusion, to ‘hard’ benefits like the effective flow of information and a faster time to response.
Mobile-first digital technologies — like accessible and engaging frontline employee apps — help ensure your teams stay connected in-field and are able to access everything they need.
The digital divide: understanding frontline digital exclusion
By now, you’re hopefully as sold on the idea of frontline digital inclusion as we are. It’s not only an ethical imperative, but a business one too.
So what’s currently stopping digital equity on the frontline? Why are so many frontline workers experiencing digital exclusion?
Frontline teams typically lack access to the digital resources needed to perform their roles. They may also be offered existing tools and services that fail to meet their needs. Digital inclusion barriers may come from a lack of familiarity or understanding of how to use the tools, a lack of technological infrastructure, or simply limited access to devices and software while working in the field.
To put the problem into numbers:
34% of frontline healthcare employees can’t easily access workplace systems on their mobile devices
Nearly 20% of frontline healthcare employees aren’t using their company intranet
… and two-thirds of that 20% don’t know how to
With a digital divide like this, it's no surprise that frontline organizations are seeing a drop in the usage of and engagement with their digital channels (more on this below).
In short: we have to combat digital exclusion in order to deliver digital inclusion. And at work, that starts with the frontline.
Frontline digital exclusion in action
Digital exclusion wastes time and money. It can also be a serious contributing factor to employee disengagement.
At home health provider Elara Caring, employees were choosing to drive up to an hour each way to collect their paystubs in person as it was too difficult to access this information online
For the same employees, a lack of communication between head office and the teams in the field left them feeling unsupported and disconnected
Transport provider Stagecoach hired a full-time role just to manage platform password reset requests from frontline employees
We know that bridging this digital divide adds value.
Organizations with the highest degrees of digital connectivity and empowerment are able to grow in ways that other businesses can’t. Here’s why…
Why is digital inclusion important for frontline teams?
How digital exclusion impacts frontline engagement
Feelings of exclusion negatively impact employee engagement and therefore care and commitment
It becomes difficult to understand frontline employee engagement. Paper-based employee engagement surveys go unanswered and unanalyzed — and if you can’t understand engagement, you can’t improve it either
How digital exclusion impacts frontline performance
Employees will naturally drift away from your business objectives and mission statement when kept at a digital distance
Frontline staff become less invested in their day-to-day activities and more burnt out, negatively impacting performance.
How digital exclusion impacts frontline profitability
Operations can easily become chaotic and ineffective without an efficient flow of information between co-workers and departments
Higher costs as recruitment and retention come under threat; the ‘leaky bucket’ of labor supply means that significant funds are deployed to the finding and training of a replacement workforce who might not stick around for long anyway
Fresh challenges arise around recruiting and retaining new employees as the business loses its reputation as a good place to work
Disengaged organizations see 23% lower profitability than highly engaged ones, and the longer employees remain in a disengaged state, the harder it is to turn around
How digital exclusion impacts frontline retention
Digital exclusion can result in rising frustrations, poor employee morale, and low satisfaction due to the lack of adequate tools and resources available
As 52% of frontline workers claimed they would leave their job over tech tools, it’s clear that these frustrations can have an impact on your employee turnover rate, too
The average annual employee turnover rate is estimated at 18%, yet some frontline industries and organizations are experiencing much higher turnover levels. US frontline retail employees, for example, have a historic turnover rate of over 60%
Three actionable tips to drive your frontline digital inclusion efforts
Now for the how: here are three actionable tips to consider when driving digital inclusion for your frontline employees.
1. Understand who’s responsible
First and foremost, you must understand who is responsible for driving digital inclusion in your organization. While traditionally this has been the job of the CIO or CTO, it's clear that others in the C-Suite such as Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs) can have a major role to play.
“Given how technology has infiltrated the entire C-suite, it’s clear that while CTOs and CIOs are still in charge of which technologies to purchase and deploy, their collaboration across departments is expanding. They need input from the entire executive team to ensure their investments match and support the overarching goals of the business and leverage collaboration to have the greatest impact.”
Analysis by Deloitte (pictured below) also explores the role of the C-Suite in managing the hyper-connected workplace. Touching on how CHROs, CIOs, CROs, COOs, and individuals can adjust to the changing world of hyper-connected work, this analysis provides an excellent starting point for organizations to better understand the roles and responsibilities of each C-Suite member.
However, important to remember that true employee techquity requires buy-in and team effort from not just the entire exec team, but also heads of HR/People, Internal Comms, and that all-important first-line manager. In fact, it's crucial to leverage the first-line frontline manager if you are going to succeed with frontline digital inclusion.
A CEO might only spend 6% of their work hours with the frontline, despite these staff members representing up to 80% of their business. Conversely, frontline managers spend the most time with the frontline, yet are often overlooked and undervalued. With first-line knowledge, your inclusion efforts will be much more effective.
With all this in mind, placing responsibility for frontline digital inclusion squarely on the C-Suite is too limiting. It’s important to have a comprehensive strategy in place with clear roles and responsibilities for all stakeholders.
A digital inclusion strategy for the frontline should include a comprehensive assessment of existing technology access and resources available to frontline employees. This assessment should cover areas such as:
Device availability (i.e., laptops, tablets, and smartphones)
Internet connection speeds and access to data on your work sites
Availability of learning and training materials
Access to technical support
Any other resources necessary to ensure successful digital integration
Once a comprehensive assessment of existing resources has been completed, your frontline digital inclusion strategy can be created and regularly updated:
This strategy should include objectives, goals, action plans, and resource requirements necessary to achieve the desired outcomes. Improved employee engagement, enhanced customer service capabilities, and increased productivity are all in reach
Regular reviews and updates of the strategy are key to its success. Employee engagement KPIs and frontline analytics should be established in order to track progress made against the strategy
Finally, a successful digital inclusion strategy should include continuing education and training initiatives for frontline staff. These initiatives should focus on upskilling employees in areas such as data security protocols and best practices for the platform you choose.
Check out the digital inclusion checklist at the end of our guide for more strategic guidance.
3. Enable, engage, and understand your frontline
Achieving frontline digital inclusion requires enabling, engaging, and understanding your employees.
By combining the three, you can create an effective frontline digital inclusion strategy that puts your employees on the path to success.
Enable
Enabling your frontline with the right technology goes beyond simply providing them with a device and internet connection. It’s about equipping them with tools to succeed in a digitally-connected workplace.
For deskless workers, this might include:
Content Hub: A central hub that's accessible on the go, storing critical policies, procedures, schedules, and guides in one place
Digital Forms: Creating and distributing mobile-first digital forms, gathering data, and automating key processes. No hassle. No paper. No IT support tickets
Single Sign-On: Access to all applications from one single app, without the hassle of remembering usernames and passwords
Integrations: Integrate your existing tools and apps into new employee tech for intuitive and streamlined use
Engage
To receive engagement from your frontline, you have to earn it. This means providing digital tools that encourage engagement, as well as recognizing and rewarding input.
For example:
News Feed: Bring the whole company together with a News Feed that's fun, familiar, and easy to use — you might just reduce time spent on non-core tasks by up to 90%
Secure Chats: Create an intuitive, seamless communications experience for everyone with secure, mobile-first chats
Recognition: Provide instant, personalized recognition for every employee, directly to the palm of their hand
Understand
To truly understand the digital experience of your frontline staff, you have to take the time to get to know them. This means listening, empowering their voice, and understanding how their experience affects their job performance.
Analytics: Utilize powerful analytics for insight into the people and relationships that make your organization tick
Surveys: Ditch paper surveys, build trust with your frontline, and get more data with short, regular Pulse surveys designed for higher engagement
Your frontline digital inclusion checklist
Digital inclusion is an important factor in the success of any organization. To measure the success of a digital inclusion strategy, there are certain key points that should be checked:
Start with user experience: Understand the experience of your frontline staff by listening to and empowering their voice, and understanding how their experience affects job performance
Offer digital support: Make sure all employees have access to online services, regardless of their digital literacy
Utilize powerful analytics: Leverage analytics for insight into the people and relationships that make up your organization
Take surveys and measure engagement: Replace laborious paper surveys with short, regular, mobile-friendly Pulse surveys to gain more data and build trust with employees
Provide tailored digital tools: Choose tools that are tailored to the needs of your deskless employees, and ensure a seamless user experience
Offer recognition: Show appreciation for employee performance with rewards, badges, shout-outs, and leaderboards
Invest in collaboration: Connect employees with one-on-one conversations, secure chats, and team communication tools to foster a culture of collaboration
By following this checklist and leveraging the right digital solutions for your organization, you can make sure that no one is left behind as you strive for greater digital inclusion. With Blink, this is made easier than ever.
Blink. And you bridge the digital divide
Frontline digital inclusion is an important and essential program — and it’s not as complex as it sounds.
By understanding the unique experience of deskless workers, providing access to digital tools tailored to their needs, and listening to and recognizing employee feedback, organizations can ensure that no one is left behind in the digital world.
But remember: not all digital services are created equal. At Blink, we believe in providing a seamless, intuitive user experience for the frontline, which is why ourfrontline employee app was built with deskless employees in mind.
With features including Secure Chats to News Feeds, Pulse Surveys, and Recognition tools, our employee-first solutions empower organizations to make their frontline staff feel connected and engaged throughout their journey.
Let us help you drive digital inclusion within your organization – get started with Blink today.
Project Hydra was initially a short-term project commencing early September 2023. It was expected to last initially for 8 weeks (on Saturdays) — however, it has continued until June 2024. The necessary upgrades to water pipes at the VHK affected access to the renal unit, impacting on patients attending their scheduled dialysis. The Project Hydra Volunteering Team supported patients to access the alternative route to the unit to ensure patients were supported, and their stress minimized.
The Volunteers assisted patients on arrival in a meet-and-greet / escort role. This involved welcoming patients in the designated reception area and escorting them to the clinic area. Our volunteers were more than happy to help, and worked a rota system over the Saturdays on a shift basis, starting at 6:45am and finishing at 6:00pm. During September 2023–June 2024, eight volunteers assisted with Project Hydra, supporting — on some days — 30+ patients.
How has Blink helped in their role?
Communications updated Blink with relevant information about the ongoing works and its impact. This allowed the Volunteer service to communicate effectively with the Project Hydra Volunteer Team to inform them how long they were still needed to provide this service for.
What do they want to do next?
Our volunteers continue to support the hospital, both staff and patients, and maintain their drive and passion to give back and provide support to the NHS and the people who use it.
Nominated by: Elizabeth Fallas, Volunteer Service Support Officer
David Brown is a titan of the public transport industry. His star-studded career has taken him from a graduate with London Transport to CEO of Go-Ahead Group. He's been GM for CentreWest London Buses, Operations and Managing Director for London General and London Central.
#1. Always grasp opportunity.
The advice I give to graduates, young bus managers or other leadership groups is this: grasp opportunity whenever you can. Don't let them pass you by, because they won't come back again.
#2. Bring more young people in.
Privatization was a death knell for a lot of graduate schemes. It was an easy way to save money, to look at the bottom line. But we ended up with a generational hole of senior managers coming through.
One of the first things I did at Go-Ahead was reintroduce a graduate scheme. I'm very excited to see that cadre of talent come through.
#3. And promote them fast!
Now I want to help that young talent leap from junior management to senior or directorship roles. To bridge that generation gap, their career needs to accelerate.
We have a 93% retention rate. That's partly because people see a trajectory to the top of the organization. You need to give people real responsibility and accountability. It's a fantastic time to be in the transport industry as a young person. Because if you're good, there are infinite chances for you to stand out.
#4. (But don't force them to stay).
I'm relaxed about people leaving – because I know they'll come back. But they'll come back with another set of skills and experiences to help us. We need these people as part of transport. I'm passionate about that whole industry, not only the Go-Ahead version.
#5. Real progress happens when there's no time to plan.
I never worked harder than in lockdown. It was 24/7. We were trying to reconstruct our business. We needed lots of local leadership. So from day 1, nobody blinked. We just got on with it.
Desk-based and frontline stepped up massively. The frontline were in some scary situations in their day-to-day, and I'll always be proud of how they coped.
#6. Learn from your mistakes — even in a crisis.
After the first lockdown, we reviewed our actions and said, "What do we do well, and what could we do better?” Because that's what you should do, of course. But when there's a second wave, we also must be ready to remember what we instinctively did well.
The downside has been the public message about our business, that it's unsafe to travel by public transport, and demonizing public transport. That is a real big hurdle that we've got to overcome.
#7. There's a place for greater formal collaboration in transport today.
All the bus PRC companies have grown up in a siloed era: never collaborating, out of fear of the Competition Act, and the CMA.
Now the operators do talk to each other, but only in the context of the CPT, which is our trade body. We've got a huge amount in common, and we need to leverage that better.
We're going to have to be far more agile, far more responsive to an ever-changing situation. That feeds into our engagement with our colleagues’ representatives from the trade union. It's been more collaborative because we've realized it goes beyond the small issues or the legal aspects.
#8. Let's lose the bureaucracy.
When we went into lockdown, people said “Well, we've got to tell the traffic commissioner, we’ve got to check”. I said, “You just go do the right thing, and they're going to have to catch up with us. We’re going to have to do the right thing, and plead forgiveness afterwards.” Because we haven't got the time to wait 270 days to make decisions.
The industry needs more of that, not less of that. We need to be more flexible, more agile and more collaborative going forward.
#9. Technology will help us re-position ourselves.
Technology can automate a lot of aspects to make public transport jobs easier. That leaves the drivers extra time to do the bits we want more of, which is looking after customers. It's important to push that going forward, so passengers feel looked after as well as safe.
Technology will also help us stay relevant around the issues of air quality and climate change. I'm excited to see how that develops.
#10. The UK government must step in – before it’s too late.
At the beginning of this year, I saw a new dawn for public transport. I could see we were going to get good, generous funding from the government. We were helping the government see how transport fits into every single department – not just its own.
Now, we have to pick all that back up. We need the government to spend as much money as they did telling people to travel, as they did telling them not to. A sort of 'Eat Out to Help Out' scheme on trains and buses. That level of commitment is imperative.
And if they don't? We'll be left with hollowed out cities. And no one wants that.
New employee journey maps can take time to develop. But when adding more smiley faces isn’t enough, how do you get an employee journey map to work better for your organization?
The concept of employee experience maps has been gaining traction as a way to boost employee engagement and improve your onboarding process.
The template follows a pretty straightforward path from hiring, through training, and eventually exiting, but it’s the way you use these maps that makes them valuable.
You know your workers will have training at a particular stage, but how helpful is it? Do you see an increase in turnover at any stage? These are the types of questions your employee journey maps should help you answer.
Why use an employee journey map?
An employee journey map can be a helpful tool for improving the employee lifecycle. This concept visualizes the entire employee experience through your organization, from onboarding until their last day.
There are a few different ways to name each stage of the journey, but every employee experience map follows the same basic flow:
Recruitment and hiring
Onboarding
Engaging and training
Development
Progress and performance
Exit or offboarding
These employee journey touchpoints describe the main stages a worker might be at within the company.
You can track the average time it takes to complete each step, assign different training and feedback for different stages, and look for patterns within your journey maps.
An employee journey map can help with engagement as you can better address the needs and concerns a worker will have by knowing where they stand in the organization.
Making the most of this tool will help you actually get some use from it.
How to make a better employee experience journey map
Don’t worry. Not all good employee experience journey maps lead to Manchester. They just have to lead to happier workers.
Whether you already use an employee journey map template or are just starting to look into the idea, there are some steps you can take to make your maps work better.
They are the following:
Create different maps for different roles. The map for a frontline manager will look different from a warehouse worker, with different training and onboarding for each position. Depending on your organization, you may need a few maps or a few dozen.
Analyze your employee journey maps and look for patterns. Do many employees have trouble at the same part of the training? That may become more obvious when you compare maps and visualize the issue at hand.
The latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows an average tenure of 4.1 years, and 22% of workers had been with their current employer for a year or less.
Looking up industry-specific numbers can help you further pinpoint areas to focus on when planning out your journey maps.
Time feedback to the stage in the journey your employee is at. Look for onboarding feedback while the process is still fresh in their mind.
Provide appropriate feedback to your employees as well. Let them know how they’ve improved after training, or likewise what they could concentrate a bit more on.
Remember, journey maps are a tool that can help predict how an employee’s experience will look, but it’s not set in stone. There can be unexpected events that change their journey map.
Like a global pandemic that reduced working hours by 17.3% in 2020. Most of us are still trying to get back on track after that one.
Make sure your organization learns from the tool. These aren’t coloring book pages for employees to fill in while HR processes their paperwork. Learn from them.
Did you know only 12% of employees strongly agree their company did a good job at onboarding?
Using an employee journey map, you can analyze your new hires at this stage and see why they might feel that way.
Wrapping up — Making employee journey maps better for your workers
Employee journey mapping is one of those tools with lots of potential. It can help you improve different processes in your organization, increase employee engagement, and create an easy-to-follow workflow for various roles.
Or you can spend an entire quarter making everyone fill these in and then promptly lose them in a subfolder that was last opened three years ago.
Just keep in mind that creating an employee journey map is the first step. You also need to make it easy to access for employees and have them provide feedback.
Andy has such a positive attitude to his work. I can load him up with work as we are a very busy site and he comes back for more. He will always look to help the prisoners with fixes to their cell power as he is aware that's all they have. He assists all trades and gives great advice to the electrical supervisor. We're happy for the chance to recognize his hard work and valuable contribution.
How has Blink helped in his role?
By sharing information which can help ours and other sites- for example cell call plates that cannot be smashed, and lights from another manufacturer. The sharing of this type of information is great for the company.
What does he want to do next?
Andy has conscientiously trained himself on the Test and Inspection course, meaning he will be able to assist the company with extra work on testing.
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