Whenever you place a new hire in a role, you hope they’ll go the distance. But ‘hopefully’ isn’t enough in this challenging recruitment climate.

The first 90 days of employment is an opportunity to set firm foundations and begin the first chapter of a productive, long-lasting relationship. And yet, within the caregiver and healthcare sector, those first 90 days are also where the majority (57%) of turnover occurs.

A small portion of this turnover will come from poor-fit hires and people who are asked not to continue after their probationary period. 95.5% of all hospital staff turnover is voluntary though, so there’s clearly something to analyze here.

To put it plainly, employees who are supported and nurtured through their first 90 days in post become engaged, loyal workers — likely to stay for a year or longer. Those who aren’t, resign.

Let’s look at how you can harness the 90-day retention opportunity for your healthcare organization.

Retention efforts begin before recruitment ends

When we think about retention, we typically think of the employees we’ve already onboarded. And this appears entirely sensible: you can’t retain the staff you haven’t hired yet.

At the same time, we know that the employee experience journey starts way before an official job offer. The ‘moments that matter’ start as early in the lifecycle as first seeing your job advert and visiting your website. 

Candidates are forming an opinion about your organization throughout the application and recruitment process. They’re deciding whether or not they can see themselves staying with you long-term.

At this stage, candidates are looking at factors such as:

• What you ask of them during the assessment process
• How well and often you communicate
• Your employer branding
• What current employees say about your business on social media
• How well your organization is reviewed and how it’s represented in the press
• What your annual reports say about the employee experience, your commercials, vision and values, and position in the marketplace

Not all candidates will deep dive into your organization’s public profile, but some will. And at the very least they’ll be on the receiving end of how you manage the application process. So to start as you mean to go on: to help employees get past the first 90-day threshold, your recruitment efforts need to serve as retention efforts, too.

This can be a challenge for organizations using staffing agencies, who may have significantly less control over their relationship-building efforts. Similarly, US companies deploying CDPAP may find care workers appearing on the payroll without any previous facetime and with limited understanding of the provider that’s hiring them.

The need to deliver retention is pressing even in these scenarios. Attrition is a phenomenal cost burden for healthcare organizations placing employees from any recruitment source. 

Understanding attrition factors

Healthcare workers brought into your organization through traditional means — that is, not CDPAP or staffing agencies — must have been excited about the opportunity enough to accept your offer. What can happen to make them want to leave only a few months later?

Experience versus expectations

Employees come to a new role with a series of expectations. These come from their previous work experiences, your employer branding, and the job description. If their experience is significantly worse than — or even just different to — their expectations, they may decide to move on.

There’s a ‘two-factor theory’ at play here. On one hand, you have hygiene factors, otherwise thought of as ‘causes of dissatisfaction’. These can include issues such as problems with managers, poor working relationships, or a feeling of inadequate health and safety.

Motivating factors are the opposite: they make a worker want to stay. These include opportunities for growth, having a sense of purpose, and feeling recognized for good work. 

If there’s a significant mismatch between hygiene factor expectations and experience, don’t be surprised if your staff start to churn quickly. An absence of motivating factors may take longer to push staff into leaving, but eventually, this will too.

Lack of access to training, resources, and tools

Staff who lack the necessary training, resources, and tools to perform their duties effectively quickly become frustrated and demotivated. They’re unable to enjoy their work or do it well.

This isn’t just an attrition risk. A lack of access like this also creates compliance and patient safety concerns — it leaves your organization open to risk, reputationally and financially.

‘Access’ is the right word to interrogate here. Training might be on offer for healthcare workers, you may have paper copies of necessary resources, and specific tools might have been rolled out to the frontline to support their day-to-day. But if employees can’t access them easily — without disrupting their working day — then they simply aren’t fit for purpose.

Frontline healthcare workers need tools designed to meet their needs. Tools and software solutions originally aimed at office-based workers are unlikely to fulfill this requirement.

It’s also important to recognize the additional administrative burden your employees face during their first 90 days. There’s rarely enough time for thorough onboarding and training before workers are asked to care for patients.

This leaves workers trying to juggle patient care and paperwork throughout their first 90 days. This overload and lack of intuitive tools can mean that aspects of onboarding and training get missed.

Scope of the role

Unsurprisingly, some healthcare roles have higher turnover than others. For example, larger hospitals with more than 500 beds have the highest rates of staff turnover.

Similarly, few new hires are comfortable joining a team that remains understaffed. If the situation isn’t resolved promptly then turnover is likely to be high. 

Contact time

Some frontline healthcare workers spend the majority of their day surrounded by other people — on a busy Accident and Emergency ward, for example, or riding in the ambulance with the rest of their EMS crew. Others work solo. Home health carers can go weeks without seeing another co-worker or connecting with HQ. 

Every frontline worker needs contact time with their manager. They need support, development, and feedback on their performance. They also want to share their difficulties and suggestions, and this contact time is all the more important during their first 90 days when so much of the role is new.

Contact time with co-workers is essential too. Teams need to spend time together to create a sense of belonging. They can share ideas and experiences and provide peer-to-peer support.

Healthcare and home health organizations relying on staffing agencies and CDPAP need to put in considerable extra effort to encourage this kind of culture.

Seizing the opportunity: what makes those first 90 days engaging

Flipping the above on its head, we can now start to assess what a great first 90 days looks like for healthcare employees.

An immediate and thorough welcoming

Employee onboarding plans set the tone across four important Cs: compliance, clarification, culture, and connection.

• Compliance is vital in healthcare. You need to know that new hires understand what’s expected of them to satisfy the necessary criteria and continue with best practice. You should also use the onboarding process to ensure employees go through any required training or certifications before they treat patients.
  
• Clarification is broader than compliance. It helps employees understand what their job role is in detail and by being crystal clear from the off-set you can set them up for success. You might also choose to clarify who they will work with, who they can turn to for questions and support as they learn the ropes, what your organizational goals are, and how much their individual contribution matters.
  
• Culture we’ve mentioned already and it’s where many healthcare organizations start to fall down where retention is concerned. Harvard Business Review data concluded that “Competitive pay and other support options are essential to recruiting caregivers, of course, but organizational culture, including a commitment to excellence, is what makes them stay.”
  
• Connection is rarely ever achieved without the right cultural environment. If culture can be thought of as how you work as an organization, then the way you connect your teams together naturally falls into this category. Remember: just because a healthcare worker is put on a busy ward with many busy co-workers doesn’t make them connected. Connection requires considered effort, from them and from you. And you have the opportunity to lead by example from as early as day one.

Welcoming staff shouldn’t be a one-way process, though. Yes, you will have lots of information you need to pass their way, but the earlier you get them actively engaging the better. 

Run regular onboarding surveys at the end of weeks 1, 4, 8, and so on. And if you have employee groups and communities available to join, make sure your new hires know they are there. These could be around internal initiatives, like digital inclusion, or shared values and characteristics like LGBTQ+. Look for every opportunity to create community, belonging, and psychological safety. The impact on retention and employee wellbeing can be transformational.

An effective onboarding can, according to BambooHR:

• Make employees feel 18x more committed to their employer
• Increase a sense of connection in 91% of employees
• And lead 89% of employees to feel ‘very engaged’ in their work

What could your healthcare organization do with stats like that?

Having the tools needed to succeed

Frontline healthcare workers often have tools extended to them as an afterthought. Whatever their desk-based peers in head office are using is what they are asked to use too. 

But these tools are not fit for purpose for the frontline. Either as a result of bad mobile user experience, requiring multiple log-ins, complicated filing systems and navigation, or all of the above.

Some crucial workflows are still paper-based by default, causing a digital divide to form between healthcare teams. This impacts efficiency and productivity, employee engagement and satisfaction, and the quality of patient care.

By empowering frontline staff with the right tools for the job from their very first day you can greatly reduce attrition risks, solving for the ‘hygiene’ and ‘motivating’ factors we covered earlier on.

A tool that’s built for the frontline first will:

• Be mobile optimized and easy to use on the go
• Facilitate single sign-on and bring all mission-critical apps together in one place
• Allow teams to stay connected to each other and the wider organization

Transitioning from desk-based tools to a frontline employee app will make frontline hires feel valued and invested in. It’ll also keep them with your organization way beyond the first 90 days.

Checking in regularly

It’s no shock to anyone that great relationships rely on effective communication. What’s important is how you make this kind of communication normal for your new employees. 

• Encourage new hires to ask questions, build connections, and proactively seek out the training they need. Home Health Pulse explains it perfectly when they say, “Because inexperience breeds vulnerability, caregivers who feel unsure or underprepared in their position for too long will choose to save their dignity and quit to go where they feel competent.”
  
• Focus on their relationships with co-workers and the first-line managers who lead them. These should be your employee’s first point of contact when they need help, so make it easy for them to ask
  
• Ask for their feedback often. When staff find it easy to talk about the challenges they’re facing, you hear about problems early. This lets you tackle emerging issues around burnout or frustration before it’s too late. 91% of nurses blame burnout, poor working conditions, and pay for the staffing shortage — hear them out on these issues to minimize attrition. Annual healthcare employee surveys are only the beginning.

Offer your new hires a variety of paths to communicate their needs. Blink Pulse surveys let you track feedback from your new hires, opening up the opportunity to optimize and improve your retention rates.

Connecting new hires with your overall purpose and mission

“I’m yet to meet a clinician or caregiver who got into this line of work to be on a computer all day” explains Ian Gordan, former President of Administrative Operations for Elara Caring. 

And it’s true. At the risk of over-generalizing, frontline healthcare workers typically want a sense of purpose in their work — and it pays to provide this sense of purpose as soon as you possibly can.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult to remember this purpose when workers are constantly rushed, focusing on the immediate needs of their patients. Limited contact with co-workers can make this problem worse.

It’s here that tooling becomes essential again:

• A shared news ‘Feed’ allows you to send regular reminders of the company's purpose and internalize those values in new hires
• Building connections and ‘Chats’ between team members provides a collective sense of excellence and dedication to the cause
• Mandatory reads shared in the Feed and then saved in a centralized ‘Hub’  give all staff members a place to refer back to if they ever need a reminder

Rewarding and recognizing key behaviors

Lastly, but equally as importantly, there’s reward and recognition. 

Keep your new hires motivated and enthused during and after their first 90 days by demonstrating a culture of recognition. Reward staff who are doing well early in their time with you. Give them a shout-out on your news Feed or gift them some company goodies. 

It’s a basic tenant of psychology that we should reward the behavior we want to see repeated, but the benefits of recognition programs in the workplace extend far beyond productive behavior. Culture, customer service, and commercial outcomes are all improved when your healthcare workers feel appreciated.

Reaching the 90-day milestone — and beyond

Don’t let the 90-day milestone pass by without at least some form of recognition and check-in. If your employee stays with you past the first 90 days, celebrate that — and them.

If your employee voluntarily leaves before they pass the 90-day milestone then you have an opportunity to learn. Ask your employee why they’re leaving and what could have enabled them to stay.

Consider going further, too. Consider holding regular ‘stay interviews’, offering employees an opportunity to discuss concerns they have with their role and their aspirations for their career.

Blink. And deliver the best employee experience from recruitment to retirement

Blink helps you keep top talent from recruitment to retirement. Our frontline employee app enables and empowers healthcare staff with the tools, resources, and support they need to thrive at work and offer outstanding patient care.

Learn more about Blink for healthcare here.

In the current landscape, remote workforce management is a vital skill for your business. 

With more businesses moving towards remote and hybrid working – and remote work options becoming a strong pull for employee retention – there’s never been a better time to review how you manage remote employees.

Below, we run through exactly what you need to know to set up and manage a remote workforce effectively. 

Remote workforce management

A remote workforce is any workforce that can complete its main duties away from a central place of work. Remote workforce management is the practice of leading and managing a remote workforce using a mixture of communication, processes and technology.

What’s the difference between mobile workforce and remote workforce?

Remote workers generally work in their own space, usually (though not exclusively) in some sort of home office. They are not obliged to stay here – they can work wherever they need to. This opens up a whole range of flexibility benefits – they can work on the train, whilst waiting to pick their kids up from school or in that cute cafe down the road which does the best flat whites. 

A mobile workforce needs to move from location to location to complete its work. They might do this on a day-to-day basis, or be positioned in one location for weeks or months at a time. A few examples of mobile workforces include: 

• Drivers for bus, taxi, train or haulage fleets
• Community healthcare teams
• Consultants who work client side on long-term projects
• On-the-move sales teams with numerous appointments each day
• Tradespeople who travel to jobs and clients

How is remote work changing the workforce?

It’s easy to see why remote work is so appealing to employees – it’s flexible and great for work-life balance, whilst opening up a huge range of roles that would otherwise have been off-limits. 

Because of remote work, the vacancies available to employees have increased significantly. An employee based in Atlanta doesn’t have to limit themselves to Atlanta-based roles – they could apply for roles previously based in New York, LA or even abroad. 

What does that mean for you, as an employer? 

Ultimately, you’re going to have to work harder to keep hold of your talent. March 2022 saw a record 4.5 million US workers quit their jobs, with common reasons for doing so including low pay, no career advancement opportunities and feeling disrespected at work.  

This means that employee experience will play even more of a key role in employee retention than it does now, and is likely to become a key strategic focus for businesses in the coming years. 

The benefits of a remote workforce

If there’s one thing the pandemic has proven, it’s that remote work can be a fantastic tool for both employee engagement and workforce productivity. Far from experiencing the chaos expected at the start of the pandemic, many businesses were immediately impressed by their employees’ ability to adapt to the ‘new normal’ and the productivity that accompanied that. 

With a remote working policy, you can: 

• Access a wider pool of talent with no geographical limits – invaluable for hiring as open vacancies continue to hover around an all-time high.
• Access a wider pool of talent that is often excluded from onsite jobs, for example, people with disabilitiesdisabled people, young parents and those without transport.
• Improve employee work-life balance by removing commuting times and allowing your workforce control over when and where they work. 
• Increase employee retention – employees with access to remote work are 68% more likely to report high organizational commitment and 30% less likely to look for another job in the next year. 

The great news? You don’t even have to trade this for a drop in productivity. Remote or partly remote employees are 63% more likely to report high levels of innovation, and 75% more likely to report being often or always engaged.

Challenges and risks of a remote workforce

When managed well, remote work is a super effective way of expanding your talent pool whilst increasing employee productivity and retention. Equally, there are a few risks that you’ll need to be aware of – factor these into your remote employee management policy to minimize them. 

Distractions and lack of direct supervision

Books, food, TV, hobbies…whatever your distraction of choice, your home has it, within seconds of your workstation. As a manager, it can be an uneasy feeling to have no direct oversight of your employees in this type of environment. 

Isolation and fewer career advancement opportunities

In the Buffer State of Remote Work Report, 24% of respondents reported loneliness as a key difficulty of remote work – only ‘difficulty unplugging’ and ‘no reported struggles’ scored higher. Isolation can drain productivity and morale, so it’s important to invest in an inclusive digital workspace to combat this. 

Communication and technology issues

Not being in the same physical space as your team can cause communication hiccups – make sure you have the right sort of software on hand to overcome this. 

Security

If your employees aren’t in the office full time, it’s more difficult to make sure they’re completing their IT security training and using their work devices responsibly. 

Bring your own device (or ‘BYOD’) workplaces are on a particularly slippery slope here. 83% of companies have some sort of BYOD policy for at least some of their employees, but only 32% require employees to register their devices with IT for software installation. If you are going down the BYOD route, make sure you have the right security procedures in place. 

How do I create a remote workforce?

The answer that many businesses could give here is “get caught by an unprecedented global pandemic, send all of your employees home at once and figure things out from there.” 

Now that the initial shockwave of COVID-19 has died down, however, you have the luxury of a controlled and managed shift to remote work. When you’re rolling out remote working, it’s important to give everyone time and space to adapt to new processes. This could include upgrading and monitoring your IT infrastructure to cope with remote working, buying in the right hardware or simply creating a suitable home workspace. 

1. Give plenty of notice

If your employees plan their lives around being in the office during certain times each day, giving them space to adapt helps ease your workforce into the change. Aim for a month’s notice, ideally more if this decision has been a long time coming. 

2. Roll out department by department, if needed

Going remote requires investment – and you may need to take a short term dip in productivity on the chin as everyone gets used to new arrangements. Rolling remote working out department by department might make this easier to manage, both cash flow-wise and for  keeping key functions running as normal. 

3. Plan for investment in software and office equipment

It’s a given that you’ll need to up your investment in cloud communication tools and product management tools. Equally, be prepared to spend on other amenities you offer your employees at the office – extra monitors, ergonomic chairs, laptop stands and more might all be useful. 

4. Find the right people to oversee the process

A stakeholder panel is a great way to make sure all relevant voices are heard when planning your shift to remote work. Include managers, employees from teams who are going remote and representatives from any functions who might be impacted by this. 

5. Allow for growth and adjustment

Is everything going to go swimmingly the instant you move out of the office? Probably not – expect slowdowns as everyone adjusts to their new normal. Keep monitoring progress and learning from your mistakes, and things will quickly start to pay off after this adjustment period. 

How can I monitor employees working remotely?

Employees like remote work for the autonomy and responsibility it gives them – this is what contributes to the sky-high engagement and productivity rates at remote companies. 

You should not be looking to monitor your remote employees 24/7. They won’t respond well to being micromanaged, and you’ll undo all the benefits remote work offers. Instead of monitoring, shift the focus onto building channels for effective two-way communication. 

Start by: 

• Setting clear deadlines and expectations – are your employees expected to keep core hours, for example, or are you taking a more flexible approach? 
• Set up daily check ins – a quick ten-minute chat about the work day is reassuring for both manager and employee.
• Regular feedback sessions ensure remote employees don’t feel ignored and can develop their skills at the same rate as an on-site employee would. 
• Use remote collaboration tools to keep in contact throughout the day. Instant messengers, employee apps and project management solutions all help here. 
• If you need visibility into how employees spend their day, consider an employee monitoring tool to track time usage.  

Remote workforce management software

The secret to a great remote workforce management strategy? Finding the right software for the job. 

There’s no ‘one size fits all’ here – it’s all about weighing up what you need to meet your unique requirements as a business. You might need the basics only, or you might need remote versions of several different systems to replace the office working environment. 

How can technology help remote workforce challenges?

Whilst remote work has been a mainstream working practice since the pandemic began, nearly a quarter of employees reported not having the right equipment (hardware or software) to do the job as recently as spring 2021. 

Remote work hinges on having the right tech. Remote employees need software to communicate with their colleagues, share ideas, keep track of deadlines, perform data analysis and more. 

You’re likely to have some of this software available in an office setting anyway – so it’s the communication tools that really make the difference. Having intuitive and accessible employee apps, instant messengers and video conferencing tools on hand ensures communication channels stay open, productivity remains high and employees don’t feel isolated. 

Remote workforce management technology: the must-haves and the nice-to-haves

The must-have software below would be pretty tricky to go without If you’re starting an online business from scratch!

• An employee experience app app: mobile internal comms tools like Blink allow employees to share and access important info instantly, from their smartphone. Social feeds and two-way publishing allow employees to expand their internal network, whilst push notifications ensure that important messages aren’t missed. 
• Video conferencing: why opt for crackly, awkward and generally unreliable phone conferencing solutions when you can use cloud-based video platforms like Zoom and Teams to meet and discuss ideas face to face?
• Workplace instant messenger: faster and friendlier than email, workplace messengers like Slack can be used to make remote communication easier (or just for idle workplace chatter that builds workplace morale – pet pic channel, anyone?) 
• Project management tools: distributed teams need an effective way of keeping on top of tasks and deadlines. Project management tools like Trello, Basecamp and Monday.com use intuitive visual layouts to display and manage these processes. 

Depending on your needs, you could also consider: 

• Employee productivity tools: time trackers, note-taking apps and site blockers can all contribute to your employees’ productivity levels. 
• Online whiteboard tools: whiteboard and ideation tools like Miro allow your workforce to take remote collaboration beyond a shared Google Doc or Slack channel. 
• Employee monitoring software: if you’re concerned about productivity, one way to ensure your employees are keeping their minds on the job is by using employee monitoring software to track time usage. 

Final thoughts on remote workforce management

As a manager, the transition to remote work can be tough. How can you provide the right levels of support and oversight when your employees are scattered across the country – or maybe even beyond? 

With the right technology and the right approach, however, it’s more than manageable.

It goes beyond ‘manageable’ to ‘super beneficial’ in many cases – remote work removes the stress and time pressures of office-based working so that your employees can thrive. If you manage this with the right processes and the right tech, you’ve got a recipe for success!

Blink is an employee app that connects remote workers – get your free demo today

The most common communication challenges in organizations from big enterprise businesses to small startups are so widespread that dealing with them can start to feel normal.

It’s easy to forget that internal communications issues can have a big impact. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can safely back burner internal comms because communication challenges and barriers are so widespread.

The fact is that poor internal communications can seriously harm your business. It’s a domino effect of frustrating communication, poor morale, lower productivity, higher absenteeism leading to higher employee turnover, and finally, higher costs and smaller profits.

Of course, when you’re in the thick of things, the relationship between poor internal comms and your bottom line might not be very clear. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that communication was thought of as a nice but not necessary soft skill.

We put together this article to lay out some of the ways communication challenges and barriers can sap a company’s resources along with strategies for making your internal comms more effective (also see the best way to improve internal communications).

The deep impact of communications challenges in organizations

The idea that internal communications problems can make a business less profitable can seem overblown.

The statistics, however, show that having a weak internal comms strategy (or having no strategy at all) can have a detrimental impact on everything from employee engagement to your business's bottom line.

Here’s how communications challenges in organizations affect success.

Communication challenges and barriers lead to increased employee turnover

Studies looking into the real cost of employee turnover often show different results.

Some studies show it costs employers 33% of a worker's annual salary to hire a replacement while other research suggests that it costs three times that salary.

What all of the data has in common is that employee turnover definitely costs companies big bucks.

Employee retention and profitability go hand in hand, and the good news is that research shows that 75% of employee turnover is preventable.

Relationships suffer when communication is a problem

Two heads are better than one, but whole teams of heads are necessary for long-term success.

When people can’t communicate with one another effectively because of technical barriers or, worse, can communicate but feel uncomfortable doing so because there’s not a culture of openness at a company, collaboration may slow or even stop.

That means innovation can’t happen and problems languish with no solutions. Your employees just can’t be as productive when relationships with colleagues are strained and everyone feels like they’re working in isolation.

Less productivity means less profit.

Customer service suffers when there are communication challenges

Internal communications and external communications are inexorably linked.

Employees need access to information to answer customer queries, respond to sales inquiries, or help customers get what they need.

When they can’t get that information easily, they’re apt to feel a strong sense of disengagement that can actually lead to everyone—workers and customers alike—feeling frustrated and dissatisfied during encounters.

Dissatisfied employees leave, and as we’ve shown above, that costs money. And dissatisfied customers take their business elsewhere, costing you even more.

Poor communication = stress = higher healthcare costs

This might seem like a stretch, but stress costs the United States $300 billion every year—a figure that includes costs shouldered by businesses that provide insurance to their employees.

While there’s no way to show a hard and fast causal link between frustrations caused by comms issues and increased healthcare costs, it’s worth mulling over the idea that the communications challenges in organizations that stress workers out may also be contributing to expensive physical and mental health issues in those same employees.

Healthcare is expensive, after all, and effective internal comms is cheap in comparison.

Internal communication problems can be a motivation killer

Workers who don’t feel like they have an important role to play, who don’t understand what is expected of them, and who feel like they don’t have a voice literally can’t give their all.

Time that would otherwise go toward productive (and profitable) work is instead spent trying to navigate a confusing company culture or to figure out what that company’s priorities are. There’s no passion among employees because they feel totally disengaged from their tasks and their teams.

The Gallup State of the American Workplace report put it succinctly: “Actively disengaged employees aren’t just unhappy at work—they are resentful that their needs aren’t being met and are acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers potentially undermine what their engaged coworkers accomplish.”

Communications challenges in organizations lead to mistakes

Workers who have access to the information they need to really contribute to a company make fewer mistakes because they feel comfortable concentrating on the work in front of them.

Employees who are focused on trying to figure out what their priorities should be or simple emotional management are more prone to error.

In a retail environment, the result of this kind of disengagement may be fewer sales. In industries like healthcare, however, mistakes can lead to hugely expensive regulatory issues or even injury and death.

Poor internal communication makes boosting employee satisfaction impossible

You can’t boost your workers’ overall satisfaction if you don’t have a clear idea of what employees like and don’t like about their day to day.

At companies with strong internal communications strategies, managers regularly touch base with employees to get a sense of what’s working and what isn’t. When comms just isn’t a priority, chances are slim to none that workers will open up about what changes could make your business better.

Absenteeism rates are higher when communications is an issue

Employees who can’t jump ship at the moment may show their communications-related dissatisfaction by simply not showing up.

A Gallup study conducted in the UK showed that disengaged workers miss 10 more working days each year compared to peers who feel a strong connection to the company vision and are clear on what’s expected of them.

The biggest challenges facing internal communications teams

The factors that have contributed to the biggest communications challenges in organizations are well documented at this point. Lack of clarity, platform. and targeted messaging.

The main problem that companies have faced has always been how to address those factors effectively and economically. Email and Dropbox alone are outdated.

Just having a clear vision doesn’t necessarily mean it is easy to share and then reinforce that vision. A company intranet portal that provides a platform for internal comms may not actually facilitate good communication. And getting the right information into the hands of the right people has always been tough.

Luckily, solving the big communications challenges in organizations has become easier with tech tools like an internal communications tool. Intranets have evolved over time from simple information repositories to a kind of mobile base of operations where business happens from anywhere.

Blink, for instance, can help you communicate administrative and benefits information, but is also a platform for collaboration, a place to store and search for data, a way to solicit feedback (including anonymous feedback), and a social hub for employees to share with one another.

It lets internal comms teams curate messaging so employees stay on the same page without getting overwhelmed by emails, meetings, memos, and Slack chatter.

Up-to-date internal comms tools like Blink’s employee app are even more important for businesses with a lot of frontline workers—especially now that nontraditional employees like remote workers and long-term contract workers make up such a large percentage of the workforce.

By automating paper-based processes, microapps like this help increase productivity overall.

How effective internal communications will change your business for the better

Curious about what effective internal communication can really do for your bottom line? Here are some statistics that might surprise you:

• Companies that communicate effectively are 50% more likely to report below average turnover levels.
• A 5-point improvement in employee attitude results in a 1.3% increase in customer satisfaction and an increase in company revenue.
• Higher engagement can mean a 40% reduction in absenteeism.
• Employees who feel fully informed and more engaged may be 21% more productive.
• Companies with effective communication strategies see 47% higher total returns to shareholders.
• Poor communication is cited as the main cause of failure for IT projects.
• 69% of employees say they’d work harder if their contributions were recognized and praised.

Knowing what you know now, we also want to offer you a quick list of steps you can take right away to gauge how your internal comms is currently working and to enhance your internal comms strategy.

1. Assess your current strategy — Assuming you have one, that is. If not, you’ll want to make one. But if you do, take the time to consider your internal communications objectives, who has ownership of comms, if the tools you are using are effective, and whether your current strategies are really getting the job done.
2. Poll your employees — Do they feel like they have a voice in your company? If they have an idea, can they easily share it? When they have questions, can they find answers quickly and easily? Does dealing with administrative tasks take up way too much time? Do they like your communications tech? Let workers answer anonymously and adjust your comms strategy accordingly.
3. Put everything in one place — Make this the year you finally commit to storing your company data in one place so tracking down a file is never again a half-day affair. When you use Blink to store the information your employees need—from HR docs to project guidelines—they can easily find it all.
4. Stop sending so many emails — Lengthy, reply-all type email threads are frustrating and, frankly, easy to ignore. Worse, they interrupt the flow of work and often contain irrelevant information leaving workers feeling resentful instead of informed.
5. Send information to the right people — Use a comms platform like Blink that lets you send information to specific employees and teams instead of the entire company. You can even label posts priority and check to make sure that your messages were received and read by recipients.

The bottom line is that employees at every level of your company will be happier, more productive, and more passionate about their work if they feel informed.

The internal communications strategy you put into place now will not only make it easier for your employees to do their jobs, but will also make your company more profitable in the long run.

Blink makes it easier to overcome the most common organizational communication tool challenges in organizations. Are you ready to tackle the challenges facing internal communications at your company?

Employee experience isn’t shaped by a single moment or interaction.

It’s built, day by day, through the tools people use, the information they receive, the way they’re managed, and how easy it is to get work done.

In many organizations, those experiences are inconsistent.

Some teams are well-supported and connected. Others deal with clunky systems and unclear communication. The experience can vary wildly depending on the manager, the role, or even when someone joined the organization.

This is where employee experience management comes in.

Instead of leaving the employee experience to chance, organizations can take a deliberate approach — designing, measuring, and improving the interactions that shape working life, to create a more connected and effective workplace.

In this guide, we break down what employee experience management means in practice, why it matters, and how to build a strategy that works across your organization.

Defining employee experience management

Employee experience (EX) is the sum of every interaction an employee has with your organization — from their first contact during recruitment to their last day, and everything in between.

It’s shaped by culture, communication, workplace technology, management quality, recognition, and development opportunities.

Employee experience management is the deliberate design, measurement, and improvement of those EX interactions. It’s not a once-a-year survey. Instead, it’s an ongoing commitment to understanding what employees need and ensuring the organization delivers it.

Critically, employee experience management isn’t just an HR function. While typically led from within HR, it’s an organizational ethos that needs to be embedded across leadership, operations, comms, and IT if it’s going to have meaningful impact.

The importance of employee experience management

The business case is clear-cut. Just 31% of US employees are actively engaged at work. And this has a significant impact on business budgets. 

Organizations that neglect employee experience see lower engagement, higher attrition, weaker operational performance, and worse customer experience.

Employee experience management, therefore, delivers several specific benefits:

• Improved engagement and retention. Employees who feel informed, supported, and valued work harder and are significantly less likely to leave. Given that replacing a single employee costs upwards of 40% of their salary, engagement and retention improvements have a measurable impact on profitability.
  
  
• More effective communication. EX management creates the infrastructure for two-way communication — not just top-down broadcasting but genuine dialogue between employees and the organization. This is good for engagement, workforce collaboration, and alignment.
  
  
• A culture of continuous improvement. When feedback is gathered systematically and acted on visibly, organizations build the kind of trust that makes employees willing to contribute, raise concerns, and work hard for their teams.
  
  
• Better insight. Continuous listening tools give leaders a real-time picture of how employees are feeling — surfacing issues before they show up in exit interviews or attrition figures.

Frontline employee experience management

Managing employee experience for frontline workers presents a distinct set of challenges — and most EX management frameworks weren’t built with them in mind.

Frontline workers don’t typically have corporate email addresses or regular desktop access. They can’t easily participate in surveys sent to inboxes they rarely check, or access intranets that don’t work on smartphones.

They’re often the furthest from leadership and the least connected to company culture — yet they’re the employees who represent the organization most directly to customers, and the employee segment with the highest rates of turnover.

Employees are keenly aware of this experience gap. 

Only 10% of frontline workers say they have high access to the tools, tech, and opportunities they need to connect and advance in their workplace.

In organizations with both frontline and desk-based employees, almost half (49%) report that there are two separate cultures at play: “One for the frontline and one for everyone else.”

Improving frontline employee experience requires a deliberate strategy:

• Mobile-first communication tools that reach employees via smartphone
• Two-way feedback channels that don’t require a desktop login or corporate email
• Recognition systems that are visible to the whole workforce
• Training and development content, accessible between tasks, not in scheduled sessions that take employees away from frontline responsibilities
• Simplified workflows — for tasks like shift swapping, leave requests, and accessing payslips — to reduce administrative friction

What does an employee experience manager do?

As organizations take EX more seriously, dedicated employee experience manager roles are becoming more common — particularly in larger organizations.

An EX manager’s responsibilities typically include:

• Mapping and continuously improving the employee journey across all lifecycle stages
• Designing and running feedback programs — surveys, pulse checks, focus groups, exit interviews
• Collaborating across HR, IT, comms, operations, and leadership to implement EX initiatives
• Managing and optimizing the technology platforms that underpin employee experience
• Analyzing engagement and behavioral data to identify trends and inform decisions
• Measuring the business impact of EX programs and presenting findings to leadership

In smaller organizations, this work is often distributed across HR and internal comms teams. The job title doesn’t really matter. Instead, it’s about assigning ownership of employee experience strategy and finding ways to incorporate these tasks into team to-do lists.

Where to start: Building an employee experience management strategy that works

New to employee experience management? Or want to hone your strategy? Here are the steps you should try to follow when designing, measuring, and making improvements to EX at your organization.

1. Understand your current employee experience 

Before designing improvements, you need an honest picture of where things stand. What’s working? What’s creating friction? Where are there gaps between the experience employees are having and the one the organization intends to provide?

Look at any available data — results from your last employee engagement survey, attrition rates, employee satisfaction scores. And consider every pillar of employee experience. This includes:

• Physical work environment
• Pay and benefits
• Company culture
• Employee well-being
• Technology and tools
• Career growth and development
• Recognition
• Internal communication
• Management and leadership

2. Define your employee experience goals

Once you understand the current reality, set specific, measurable employee experience goals that align with your organization’s priorities. These might include:

• Reducing voluntary turnover in the first 90 days
• Increasing survey response rates among frontline employees
• Improving manager effectiveness scores
• Reducing avoidable HR query volume

Vague goals produce vague results. The more specific the objective and the more clearly it connects to a business outcome, the easier it is to measure progress and demonstrate ROI.

3. Secure leadership support

Employee experience management without leadership buy-in is an uphill battle. When leaders prioritize EX, it signals to the entire organization that this is a serious, funded commitment — not a box-checking exercise.

Employees are perceptive. They can tell the difference between an organization that’s genuinely invested in their experience, and one that’s simply running through the motions.

When seeking leadership support, lead with data. Connect your EX goals to the business outcomes leaders care most about — retention costs, productivity, customer satisfaction, operational performance. Put your case in the language of finance, and you’re more likely to get the backing you need.

4. Build a cross-functional team

Talent experience management works best when it’s genuinely cross-functional. When HR, IT, internal comms, operations, and finance all have a stake in employee experience — and all play their role in improving it.

So seek allies beyond your immediate team. Communicate the benefits of employee experience for each function and align around shared goals, so everyone is pulling in the same direction.

For example, an employee experience manager could work with IT to remove points of friction from the employee app experience, with internal communications to develop a structured onboarding hub, or with operations to streamline shift management.

Small, targeted collaborations can help you build momentum and expand EX’s organizational footprint.

5. Design the employee journey

We can map employee experience across six key stages in the employee lifecycle: attraction, recruitment, onboarding, engagement, development, and exit.

When designing employee experience, it’s important to consider each of these touchpoints in detail.

Attraction

This is the first contact potential employees have with your organization and the very first stage of employee experience.

Your employer brand, job descriptions, and the values you convey on your careers page all shape the impression candidates form — and whether that impression matches the reality of working for you.

Organizations that can showcase a strong employee experience tend to attract better candidates with less effort.

Recruitment

The recruitment phase of the employee lifecycle covers everything from application to offer. A straightforward application process, timely candidate communications, and real candidate care — even with unsuccessful applicants — sets the tone for the employee relationship before it’s even really begun.

Onboarding

The onboarding process marks an employee’s entry into the organization. And it’s one of the highest-stakes moments in the employee lifecycle. 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for at least three years after a great onboarding experience.

A structured, consistent onboarding program — accessible from a smartphone for frontline employees — significantly improves early retention.

Development

Employees who see a path forward within your organization stay longer and perform better. And development can take many forms.

Formal training programs, career mapping, promotions, mentoring, stretch assignments, and accessible microlearning all signal that your organization is invested in its people.

Engagement

Keeping employees engaged is the next part of the EX puzzle. For employee experience managers, that usually means:

Continuous listening. Understanding how employees are experiencing the workplace, in real time.

Supporting managers. Managers have a huge impact on employee experience, so equipping them with the right skills, knowledge, and tools is a high-return investment.

Improving recognition. Timely, authentic, and visible recognition improves employee motivation and boosts company culture.

Hunting down friction. Every unnecessary step in an employee’s working day is an experience problem. Regularly audit workflows, tools, and processes to identify and remove friction.

Building a sense of belonging. Employees who feel connected to colleagues, leadership, and company culture are more engaged and resilient.

Exit

Departing employees still have a lot to offer. Exit interviews provide valuable insights into how to improve EX. What’s more, they help to ensure a positive employee experience right up until an employee’s last day. It protects your employer brand and increases the likelihood of future referrals or returns.

6. Consider digital employee experience

Today, the digital tools employees use are a core component of their workplace experience. We call this the digital employee experience (DEX). 

When those tools are old-fashioned, clunky, or simply inaccessible to frontline workers, it harms employee experience — regardless of how strong your culture or communication is elsewhere. 

Ideally, you need consolidated, mobile-first tools that reduce friction and tool fatigue. Your software should help employees access information, complete tasks, and connect with colleagues from one user-friendly dashboard. 

7. Conduct employee research

A single annual survey isn’t enough. Effective employee experience management requires continuous listening across multiple channels.

Here’s what that could look like: 

Employee surveys: Quarterly engagement surveys give you up-to-date insight into what employees are thinking and feeling. Use a mix of qualitative and quantitative questions on all aspects of EX, and ask staff to complete surveys via your employee app to improve response rates.

Focus groups: Gather small, diverse groups of employees to participate in open discussions led by a facilitator. Encourage candid conversations and allow groups to explore specific topics in-depth. These sessions can shine a light on the why behind particular survey responses.

One-on-one interviews: An alternative to focus groups, these feedback sessions give space for quieter voices and those who don’t feel comfortable airing their opinions in a group setting. It gives you the chance to ask follow-up questions and really understand an individual’s take on EX.

Listening tours. On a listening tour, you visit employees while they work. You get to know standard operating procedures better, and experience points of friction in real-time, alongside employees.

Exit interviews: Among the most honest feedback available. Departing employees have less reason to soften their views and can tell you what aspects of employee experience contributed to them leaving.

Pulse surveys: Short, frequent surveys that capture sentiment in real time and (if you wish) anonymously. These usually consist of one to five questions, and are particularly useful during periods of organizational change.

News feed polls: Quick, in-the-moment polling through your employee platform. A low-friction, high-engagement way to gauge reaction to specific updates or decisions. 

Sentiment analysis: Analyze the tone and content of employee activity — comments on news feeds, open-text survey responses, platform engagement patterns — and you can surface EX issues before employees raise them formally.

8. Develop EX initiatives

With a clear picture of where you currently stand, defined goals, and best practices, you’re ready to design targeted initiatives. Here are a few examples.

Launch a mobile-first employee app

The problem: Your employee experience feels fragmented, with office-based employees getting the best of your organization while frontline, remote, and hybrid workers get the worst.

The solution: A mobile-first employee app can bring everyone together. Put comms, resources, recognition, and admin tools in one place — and get the EX analytics you need to drive strategy forward.

Develop a new and improved onboarding process

The problem: Your 90-day retention rate is sky-high. New hires say your onboarding process is complex and confusing.

The solution: A structured onboarding process that is automated, consistent, and accessible to all employees — regardless of role, location, or manager. Employees get access to multimedia resources, instant chat tools, and lots of face-to-face connection, too.

Enhance recognition and rewards

The problem: Employee research reveals a recognition problem. A high proportion of employees haven’t received any recognition in the past quarter. Those who did receive recognition didn’t find it authentic.

The solution: Launch a recognition program on the company news feed. Use manager shoutouts, peer-to-peer recognition, and visible company-wide celebrations to shine a light on employee successes. You’ll make employees feel seen and valued, and create the kind of culture that employees enjoy being part of.

Make internal communication more interactive

The problem: The majority of internal communications are top-down. Platform analytics show limited interaction in the form of likes, comments, and shares.

The solution: Work with internal comms to develop interactive company content. They can launch polls, conduct leadership Q&As, pose questions on the news feed, and even encourage employee-generated content. It’s a way to make your channels more engaging and create a sense of belonging.

Empower managers

The problem: Your recent manager effectiveness survey shows that there’s massive variance between teams. This is having a knock-on effect on employee engagement and experience.

The solution: Identify locations or departments where managers could use additional training or support. Ensure they have the tools and resources they need to lead their teams well. Give managers a clear baseline for what “good” looks like and ensure managers have the bandwidth to deliver on EX and engagement initiatives.

Prevent burnout

The problem: Absenteeism rates are rising, as are resignations. Your last employee survey revealed increasing levels of stress and feelings of burnout.

The solution: You can prevent burnout at your organization with realistic workload expectations, accessible well-being resources, and a culture that normalizes asking for help. Train managers to spot the signs of burnout and signpost well-being support on digital communication channels.

9. Measure, evaluate, and iterate

As you make changes to employee experience at your organization, you need to gather feedback, tracking your progress against the goals you set in step two.

Look at platform analytics. Seek employee feedback. Conduct sentiment analysis. Segment data to really understand how EX plays out across the business.

Then, iterate. Use insights to improve employee experience even further, treating EX as an ongoing discipline, not a one-time project.

The role of AI in employee experience management

AI is reshaping the employee experience and employee experience management. It’s a tool for improvement — and a source of new challenges.

12% of employees say they now use AI at work daily. Employees say AI helps them do things they couldn’t do before. But 78% of those who use AI in the workplace are sourcing their own tools, often because organizations aren’t providing consumer-grade alternatives.

EX managers need to find ways of incorporating approved AI tools into employee workflows. They need to address employee concerns around AI — 1 in 4 workers are worried that the technology will lead to job losses. They also need to establish clear principles about where AI adds value —and where human judgment and empathy are irreplaceable.

More positively, AI presents a big opportunity as a tool for EX leaders. AI-powered sentiment analysis can surface patterns in employee feedback at a scale no human team could manage manually.

AI can also help EX managers to deliver better employee experiences. Personalized content recommendations, automated onboarding journeys, and intelligent nudges for managers are now all within reach.

Employee experience management best practices

Ready to take your EX leadership to the next level? Here’s what you should be doing. 

Ask for feedback — and act on it visibly

When employees see their feedback leading to real change, they’re more likely to contribute to your next poll or survey. So close the loop between listening and action. Tell employees what you find, share your plan of action, and keep them informed of progress.

Promote open, interactive communication

Move beyond top-down broadcasting. Create spaces for employees to respond, react, and contribute — through comments, polls, live Q&As, and community channels. Two-way communication builds trust and makes employees feel heard.

Focus on high-impact moments

Some points in the employee lifecycle have an outsized effect on experience. Onboarding, role changes, returns from leave, and performance review cycles are all moments where thoughtful, timely communication makes a big difference. Design these moments deliberately rather than leaving them to chance.

But don’t underestimate micro-moments

The big moments matter. But so do the small ones. A quick recognition shoutout. A manager who checks in after a difficult shift. A quick behind-the-scenes live stream from your CEO. Build these cultural micro-moments into every workday, and you’ll drive trust, open communication, and connection.

Segment employees

Different employee groups have different needs. So segment your data to understand how each employee group experiences your workplace. You can then develop policies, resources, tools, and communications that support every employee to thrive within your organization.

Make it continuous

Annual surveys and quarterly reviews aren’t enough. You end up working off outdated information and fail to spot EX issues as they arise. The organizations with the strongest employee experience are the ones that listen, measure, and improve as a continuous process — not a one-off project.

Invest in the right technology

EX management software centralizes feedback, communication, and analytics in one place. It makes it much easier to manage EX strategy at scale and demonstrate its impact to leadership.

Powering better EX with the right technology

Trying to deliver an employee experience strategy manually is a huge challenge — particularly in mid-to-large-sized organizations. To make employee experience management scalable, consistent, and measurable, you need the right tech tools.

Here’s what to look for when choosing employee experience software:

Mobile-first design. If your employee experience platform doesn’t work seamlessly on a smartphone, it doesn’t work for a significant portion of your workforce.

Two-way communication channels. Look for channels that support genuine dialogue — a news feed employees can respond to, direct and group messaging, live Q&As, and community spaces.

Survey and feedback tools. Built-in pulse surveys, polls, and feedback forms give EX managers the continuous listening capability they need without requiring a separate survey platform.

Employee journey tools. Automated employee journeys that deliver the right content at the right time — useful for onboarding experiences and beyond.

Recognition features. Peer-to-peer and manager-led recognition, visible to the whole workforce and accessible from the same app employees use for everything else.

Audience targeting. The ability to deliver relevant content to specific employee groups, segmented by role, location, department, or tenure.

HRIS and systems integrations. Deep integration with your existing HR, payroll scheduling, L&D, and well-being tools, and single sign-on so employees only need one user name and password to access your digital hub.

Analytics and reporting. Real-time insight into platform engagement, content performance, and survey results — connected to business outcomes, like retention and revenue.

The future of employee experience starts here

The organizations getting employee experience right aren’t leaving it to chance. They’re designing it. Measuring it. Improving it continuously — across every role, every location, and every moment that matters.

Good employee experience management means developing an EX strategy and delivering it consistently, no matter how large or distributed the workforce.

To have real impact, EX managers need to see what’s happening in real time, reach every employee in the flow of work, and act quickly on feedback and behavioral signals. They need one place where communication, insight, and action come together.

Blink gives EX managers that foundation.

It’s a single mobile-first platform where communication, feedback, recognition, and employee insights sit together — so EX teams can design better experiences, act faster, and prove impact with real data.

Employees enjoy work days with more flow and less friction. EX managers get to run employee experience from one intuitive, feature-packed dashboard.

Blink. And power better employee experiences across your organization.

Missed our last Quarterly Unlock release? Catch up on the details here!

Welcome to the February 2026 edition of the Quarterly Unlock — your inside look at what’s new in Blink and how it helps teams move faster, communicate more clearly, and unlock more value across the employee experience.

This release is built around a simple idea:

As organizations scale, systems multiply and communication noise increases. Blink should get smarter, more connected, and easier to manage — without adding complexity.

Here’s what’s new.

#1. Smarter, more relevant communication

When employees see too much content, important updates get buried. When connectivity drops, access disappears. When engagement dips, comms teams feel it first.

This quarter, we’re making sure the right people see the right content at the right time — wherever they are.

Smart Feed

We’re introducing a recommended Feed experience that prioritizes relevance — not just publish time.

• Surface the most important content first
• Reduce manual pinning and featuring
• Adapt the Feed as organizations grow
• Improve visibility without extra admin effort

Instead of a strictly chronological stream, Blink becomes intelligent — helping important messages cut through the noise. Designed for large organizations and high-volume Feeds, Smart Feed is built to evolve alongside your communication goals.

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Offline Mode

Frontline work doesn’t always come with reliable signal. Now, Blink doesn’t require it.

• Save hub content and Feed posts for offline access on mobile
• Access saved items centrally
• Automatically sync updates when reconnected
• Retain control over sensitive hub items with protected content settings

The result? Critical documents and updates remain accessible — even in low-signal environments like aviation, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, and field operations.

Email delivery of Feed posts

Multi-channel delivery — without duplicating work. Admins can now send a published Feed post as an email to:

• Everyone in a group
• Or only those who haven’t read it

Each email includes a preview and a direct CTA back into Blink — helping re-engage inactive users and strengthen visibility for critical communications.

For most customers, this feature will be included at no additional cost. For large enterprises with high-volume usage, it may be considered on a case-by-case basis.

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#2. Deeper interoperability across enterprise systems

Employees rely on multiple systems to get work done. But switching between them slows everything down.

This release brings core HR workflows into Blink — turning it from a communication tool into an action hub.

Actionable Workday Nudges

Managers can now approve or deny leave requests directly inside the Blink Feed.

• Faster leave request approval turnaround
• Reduced friction for frontline managers
• Less logging in and navigating systems for employees
• Improved visibility into HR processes

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Workday Digests

Daily or weekly summaries highlight open Workday tasks that require attention. Instead of relying on employees to monitor their HR inbox, Blink brings reminders into their everyday workflow — reducing missed deadlines and improving task completion.

SAP SuccessFactors daily Digest

For customers using SAP SuccessFactors, Blink now delivers a configurable daily digest when new tasks are waiting.

• Task count surfaced directly in the Feed
• Link-through to complete tasks in SuccessFactors
• Custom branding supported

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#3. Safer, more confident Communities at scale

As Communities grow, governance becomes critical.

This quarter introduces new controls that allow organizations to scale engagement — without sacrificing oversight.

Request to join a Community

Community admins can now require approval before new members join.

• Communities can be set to Open or Closed
• Admins receive join requests and approve on web or mobile
• Settings take effect immediately

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Request to create a Community

Employees can suggest new Communities — subject to admin approval — supporting organic growth while preventing uncontrolled group sprawl.

Automated Keyword Blocking

Organizations can now define an organization-wide keyword blocklist that prevents specific words or phrases from being sent in chats and comments.

• Immediate, private feedback to users
• Managed via moderation tools
• Works across web, iOS, and Android

This privacy-conscious safety layer helps reduce compliance risk and maintain professional standards — particularly in regulated industries.

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What this Unlock means for your team

For employees

• A more relevant Feed
• Reliable access to content
• Critical updates delivered more consistently

For leaders and comms teams

• Greater confidence that key messages are seen
• Intelligent distribution at scale
• Safer, better-governed Communities

For IT and operations

• Stronger integration with enterprise systems
• Reduced context switching
• More control as usage scales

If you’re a customer, reach out to your customer success manager to discuss participation and enablement options.

If you’re exploring Blink, book a demo to see how the February 2026 Unlock brings communication and action into one seamless experience.

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. 

What is employee empowerment? 

Let’s turn to the Society for Human Resource Management for a useful top-level definition of employee empowerment:  

“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. 

Empowering employees before, during and after the pandemic (SHRM)

Examples of employee empowerment (Chron)

Source: theinvestorsbook.com

Blink resources – a few more friendly blog posts that might be helpful!

Employee voice in the workplace

Workplace culture: what is it and why is it so important? 

A complete guide to employee recognition programs

Managing remote teams: best practices and tips for virtual leaders

How to create a remote work policy in 2022

Why & how to empower frontline employees

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!