How to Calculate Employee Retention Rate (With Examples)

Blink. And your finger's on the pulse.

Say hello to Surveys from Blink: the quick and easy way to gain actionable feedback from your frontline workforce, helping you deliver your best employee experience.

Solving a uniquely frontline issue

The frontline connection gap — a failure to enable frontline workers to communicate with the same ease, scale, and speed as desk-based workers — is real, and so too are the risks it carries. But closing it is easier than you might think.

With Blink's new in-app survey tool, you can create a connected workplace culture by getting real-time data from your employees themselves.

What's so powerful about surveys through Blink?

Employee survey tools like Peakon and CultureAmp made it easy for leaders of desk-based teams to access employee engagement insights. But for frontline organizations, it's a very different story:

• Paper problems: many frontline workers are still asked to complete paper surveys, which are easy to ignore and even easier to lose  
• Desktop friction: completing online surveys using a shared desktop terminal or tablet demands time from a frontline worker's busy shift — and there are only so devices to share around
• One too many tools: even when frontline workers are given mobile access to survey tools, many still struggle with the complexity of bad user experience and a new set of log-in details to remember 

All of this leads to incredibly low response rates, which make for datasets that aren't insightful or actionable. That's what Blink has set out to solve.

Introducing Surveys on Blink

Surveys are now available to use on Blink's frontline app, transforming your ability to capture crucial information from your frontline teams. It's incredibly simple to use:

1. Select your target audience
2. Choose a best-in-class survey format
3. Launch to your frontline in minutes (one-question surveys can be live in 30 seconds!)
4. See your findings within Blink's Frontline Intelligence reports

What kind of surveys can you run?

• Employee engagement surveys - engaged employees are more productive and loyal. Find out how engaged your teams are today and how you can improve their experience
• Pulse survey - ask one burning question frequently to track changes and identify patterns
• 0-10 eNPS (employee Net Promoter Score) - get a 'North Star' metric for your employee engagement
• Onboarding surveys - the first few months of a new starter's journey are critical, and these types of surveys reveal whether the process is running as it should.

Every single answer in a Blink survey is anonymous — and that anonymity is made clear to your frontline workers. This ensures they have the confidence to be candid and, in turn, means that you get a true read on current performance with clear opportunities for improvement.

How Blink triples your survey response rate

Our customers have seen their response rates increase by 300% by using Blink to deliver them. Here's why it works:

• We're mobile-first. With Surveys on Blink, you can transition away from paper surveys and shared desktops to having surveys appear seamlessly in the palm of every frontline employee's hand
• It's all-in-one. Decrease the friction caused by having to remember another password by embedding your in one frontline app
• Surveys are co-located with the other tools your frontline needs. Unless you make life easier for the frontline you can’t expect them to engage. With Blink, you're delivering exactly what the frontline needs — from paystubs to scheduling and access to critical documents. This means your surveys are in an app that gets opened an average of seven times a day
• Guaranteed anonymity. By offering anonymity, frontline workers feel safer giving genuine feedback, leading to better quality results

What's next?

If you're interested in getting started with Surveys on Blink, either talk to your Customer Success partner or request a Demo.

In the coming months, we'll be announcing even more data-focused features to help you better understand your frontline, empowering your 2023 strategies with insight. Stay tuned!

Movement is your bread and butter. The movement of goods. The movement of passengers. But when it comes to the movement of information, transit and logistics organizations have it tough.

Reaching employees who aren’t tethered to a desk isn’t always easy. These employees don’t tend to have a company email address. And they don’t have easy access to desk-based tech and tools. This means they can’t access the traditional intranets that many organizations still use.

If you’re anything like thousands of transit and logistics companies up and down the country, you may be experiencing an employee communication gap. And this causes no end of organizational headaches.

Frontline managers bear the brunt. They already juggle competing demands. But they also spend a big chunk of their workday relaying messages between the C-suite, HR, and frontline workers.

Remember, every minute a frontline manager spends sending out comms or fielding inquiries is another minute diverted from delivering speed and quality.

Frontline workers suffer, too. When internal communication is patchy, they feel less connected to their organization. And less satisfied with their jobs.

You can put an end to these headaches with effective workplace communication. It’s a bridge that connects HQ with your transit depot, warehouse floor, and drivers. A solution that eases a frontline manager’s workload and helps you better reach transit and logistics employees.

In this article, we explore all the ways you can develop effective workplace communication in your transit or logistics organization. So buckle up and let’s take a closer look.

Importance of reaching your transit & logistics employees

When the people within your organization struggle to communicate effectively, it isn’t simply an inconvenience. Poor employee communication can cause serious problems for your company. Problems like inefficiency, employee disengagement, and staff churn.

Luckily, the converse is also true. Prioritize communication and find ways to reach your transit and logistics employees and there are valuable business benefits to be gained.

You improve manager efficiency

Currently, managers spend a lot of time using ineffective methods to reach employees.

They stick paper memos on the depot noticeboard. They make phone calls. And they take on the role of messenger, carrying information between HR, leadership, and frontline employees.

When you make employee communication more effective, managers get valuable time back. They can get messages out quickly and effectively. So they have more time to focus on other tasks.

You empower your frontline

Good employee communication empowers your frontline. You help them thrive in their roles and feel connected to the larger mission. You put the tools and resources they need at their fingertips.

For example, employees find it easy to get the latest company updates. They can also access information on their shift schedule and pay stubs. And get support from managers when they need it.

You boost staff happiness and retention

Focus on communication and you make your workplace friendlier and more connected. Managers and leadership can communicate with employees. But employees can also communicate with one another. And they have a direct line to decision-makers

This connection supports engagement, which supports employee loyalty. When an organization has good internal communication, staff are less likely to leave.

We know that it’s difficult to hire frontline staff right now, in both transit and logistics organizations.  Labor shortages are impacting a company’s ability to operate and turn a healthy profit.

Engaging your employees better — with the help of effective internal communication — makes it more likely that they’ll stay working for your organization.

8 strategies to improve how you reach your transit & logistics employees

We know how important good employee communication is to a frontline organization. So let’s take a look at all the ways you can achieve it.

Use an employee app

Some of your transit and logistics employees sit at a desk. But many of them spend their days on the road or on the warehouse floor, away from the office.

These frontline team members don’t necessarily have an employee email address. And they very rarely have access to a work computer. This makes them hard to reach — particularly if you’re using traditional, desktop-based communication tech.

A mobile-first employee communication tool, like a frontline app, bridges the gap between head office and frontline workers.

A few standout features?

An employee app doesn’t require an employee email address or a desk-top device. Employees can access all company comms securely via their smartphones.

An employee app is easy to use. Its interface is like that of popular social media apps. So employees find it intuitive to use and adoption tends to be high.

An employee app is a one-stop-shop. Employees get everything from pay stubs to shift schedules, co-worker messages to mandatory updates. All in the palm of their hand.

An employee app is effective. Updates and tools are available for employees to access at a time and place that suits them. So fewer messages are missed.

Implement regular meetings

Whole-team meetings help you to create an open dialogue. Employees get up-to-speed on the latest company news. Managers can answer employee questions. Everyone feels more connected to co-workers and the wider organization.

You can also use meetings to find solutions to problems. When you have a full range of perspectives and priorities in a room, it’s easier to make decisions that work for everyone.

Regular meetings are an important tool in internal communications. But they’re not always easy to arrange for transit and logistics teams. When everyone is working different shift patterns – across many locations – implementing whole-team meetings is a challenge.

There are a couple of ways around this.

You can rotate the time and location of meetings so employees on a fixed shift pattern aren’t always missing out. You can also keep meetings short and sweet to maximize the number of people who can attend.

And don’t forget to harness the power of tech. Virtual meetings are just as valuable as in-person meetings. As long as everyone is able and encouraged to give real-time input.

Provide training opportunities

Continuous training gives employees the skills, knowledge, and confidence they need to excel. It helps employees to make better decisions and provide better service. It also helps your organization to comply with safety regulations.

But frontline employees often miss out on training opportunities.

According to McKinsey research, 20% of frontline employees says that their employer offers no resources to adequately prepare them for advancement opportunities. And 65% say they are unsure or unaware of how to achieve career advancement.

Employees feel more engaged — and therefore more receptive to company comms — when they feel valued, enabled, and supported.

As well as offering role-based training equitably to both frontline and desk-based teams, you can use training to support your comms goals in the following ways:

• Teach new hires about company culture and communication norms
• Offer training on the communication tools you use
• Incorporate training on company goals and how an employee’s role supports them

Training makes employees better at their jobs. But it can also help them to feel more connected to their work and the wider organization.

Establish feedback loops

A one-way conversation, where we can’t get a word in edgewise, is no fun. We’re happy to listen – but we want our voices to be heard, too.  

It’s no different for company communications. The most connected and engaged organizations welcome two-way conversations between employees and leadership.

Of course, top-down communication has its place. Leaders need to share company updates and essential information with employees. But ideas, queries, and opinions need to flow in the other direction too.

You can encourage more bottom-up communication from your transit or logistics employees by creating feedback channels. Try to run:

• Pulse surveys: to get a snapshot of how employees are feeling
• Annual surveys: to gain in-depth insight into the employee experience and benchmark your performance

If you don’t have survey tech that frontline employees can use, suggestion boxes are an alternative. You could also run a regular schedule of 1-2-1 meetings so employees can speak up about any issues they’re facing.

Just remember that facilitating regular, anonymous feedback is only the first step in the process. To ensure employees get involved with your feedback program, you need to establish a feedback loop.

This means telling employees what their feedback has revealed — and any changes you plan to make. You can then give them further updates on the actions you’re taking and the results they’re producing.

Promote transparency

Trust is the foundation of positive internal communication. Employees are more likely to engage with your comms when they trust in what you’re saying. And they’re more likely to be transparent in their own communication when they have your example to follow.

So how do you make your employees more trusting? It all starts with transparency in the way you share information.

Transparent communication helps employees to understand leadership logic. When they understand the reasoning behind decisions and changes, they’re more likely to get behind them. And when you’re honest about challenges and problems, they may also be able to offer helpful solutions.

Ultimately, when employees can count on open, valuable communication like this, they’re less likely to avoid noticeboard memos and the company emails that land in their inbox.

Transparent employee communication is easier when you have the right communication channels — like town hall meetings, a frontline app, and regular 1-2-1s. Training can also help managers and employees to embrace a company culture where sharing information is the norm.

Recognize your employees

Recognition is a form of employee communication that fosters connection between employee and employer. It helps to create a positive work environment with high morale and engagement.

If you feel you could do more to recognize employees, start by thinking about your company culture. What are the behaviors you want to see in your organization?

Then align recognition with these behaviors, celebrating and rewarding employees when they demonstrate them.

Here are a few ideas for ways you can weave recognition into your day-to-day:

• Celebrating work and personal milestones
• Peer-to-peer recognition (where co-workers get to highlight the successes of their peers)
• Employee of the Month awards
• Public recognition via employee communication channels

By offering regular, timely recognition you motivate employees to do a great job. And by recognizing employees publicly, you inspire their co-workers to follow suit.

But it’s not just about performance and productivity. Recognition feeds your internal communication efforts, too.

That’s because engaged employees are more likely to read and respond to company messages. And because recognition helps to strengthen workplace relationships. Show that you value one another and open, trusting, effective communication becomes a whole lot easier.

Support collaboration

Collaboration supports internal communication — and vice versa. That’s because collaboration translates into all the following:

• Effective knowledge sharing: when employees have the right communication channels, they can share insights and learning with other team members
  
  
• An aligned organization: when your teams work together, you align employees around company goals and objectives
  
  
• Improved problem-solving and decision-making: two heads are better than one, so when employees regularly share ideas and perspectives you end up with better solutions and decisions
  
  
• Strong relationships: employees who work together develop stronger relationships and find it even easier to communicate and collaborate in the future

You can encourage collaboration by celebrating collaboration when you see it. You also need easy-to-use communication channels that break down silos. This means frontline teams can work together, even when they’re physically apart.

Imagine a bus driver comes across a patch of black ice on their route. With a clearly defined, mobile-first communication channel, they can quickly and easily alert other drivers to the hazard.

With good collaboration, everyone’s work gets safer, easier, and more satisfying. And employees have the support they need to be better at their jobs.

Offer clear internal communication channels

Think about how your organization communicates with employees in the here and now. You and your teams might be using some (or all) of the following:

• An intranet
• Noticeboards
• Phone calls
• Emails
• Word of mouth
• A suggestion box
• Personal messaging apps
• Town hall meetings
• 1-2-1 meetings

These communication channels don’t meet the needs of every employee within a transport or logistics organization.

Drivers and warehouse workers don’t always have access to a company email address or the company intranet. It’s pretty much impossible to schedule a town hall meeting that everyone can attend.

Some of these methods of communication are also unreliable and inefficient. Memos on a noticeboard are quickly out-of-date. Individually calling employees about their shifts takes up a lot of manager time. And messaging via personal apps isn’t always secure.

A modern intranet or employee app is a more effective alternative. When you put a clear communication channel in place — and train employees in how to use it — you cut the noise.

You also reap the following benefits:

• You create one source of reliable information so employees learn to trust company comms
  
  
• Managers spend less time on comms because they can quickly and easily reach all employees on the same communication channel
  
  
• Frontline and office-based employees get equal access to internal communication – no one is left out of the loop
  
  
• Employees get targeted comms, relevant to their roles, so they’re much less likely to ignore the messages you send

Get more internal communication inspiration. Read: The top 5 internal communication trends you need to know in 2024

Blink for transit & logistics

Blink is an employee app built for frontline organizations. It helps transit and logistics companies to achieve better communication, connection, and efficiency. It also acts as the digital front door for your organization. 

Communication

With a built-in newsfeed, messaging function, and content hub, you can achieve effective company communication. You can share your mission and acknowledge top performers. Managers can post mandatory reads, conduct 1-2-1s, and direct communications to specific regions, sites, and departments. All while avoiding information overload.

Connection

You help to combat driver loneliness with employee chat, employee surveys, and an engaging, personalized news feed. You bring connection to solitary roles and help employees to feel seen, heard, and appreciated.

Efficiency

With Blink, you connect frontline staff to management and resolve issues faster. Staff are empowered to file accident reports and outage updates. Managers replace time-consuming paper-based processes with digital ones. Leaders also get valuable data and reporting features that allow them to visualize communication flow and further improve their comms strategy.

A digital front door

Via Blink’s user-friendly dashboard, employees can access all the apps and tools they use. Shipment details, shift schedules, digital order forms, health and safety notices, training materials, pay stubs. With the Blink frontline app, you put everything at the fingertips of every employee.  

Blink case study: Stagecoach bus company

UK bus company, Stagecoach, has already put Blink’s frontline app into action. They needed a way to connect their 21,000 bus drivers and improve staff engagement.

Thanks to Blink they have:

• Reduced staff turnover by 26%
• Increased employee satisfaction by 46%

And with 89% of drivers opening the employee app an average of six times per day, they’ve managed to reach the majority of their frontline workforce each and every day.

Read more about Stagecoach and Blink here. 

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During their first month, employees spend an average of 12.7 hours per week asking coworkers for help. And it doesn’t get much better after the first month. Most workers spend an average of five hours per week waiting to connect with people with the information they need.

If you want to maximize productivity, you need to make information accessible.

That's where knowledge-sharing platforms come in. They facilitate the flow of information and expertise across the board.

What is a knowledge-sharing platform?

A knowledge-sharing platform is a software that enables employees to interact with each other and exchange information. It helps subject matter experts contribute guides, policies, and documents to develop a company's internal knowledge base. 

Key features knowledge-sharing tools should have

With many knowledge-sharing tools available, knowing which one to choose depends on your company's goals, budget, size and your workers' specific needs.

Here are four features to look for when choosing a knowledge management system for your organization:

Cross-platform access

Most of your employees use their smartphones even during working hours. Reviews.org shares that Americans spend an average of 2 hours 54 minutes on their phones daily. Even more important is to remember that 80% of the workforce is in frontline roles - in other words, they rarely have access to a desktop computer at all, and are entirely reliant on smartphones.

It's therefore critical that you opt for a knowledge-sharing solution that employees can access from a smartphone, laptop, tablet, or workstation. That'll help your staff perform their tasks efficiently whether they’re in the office or on the move. 

Smart search

Panopto shares that 60% of employees find it difficult to get the information they need. To ensure that a knowledge-sharing solution truly solves this, you need a platform that provides intelligent search options.

The platform should enable your employees to organize the shared content by labels and tags, so both your remote and deskless employees can find the relevant information quickly.

Integrations

The right knowledge-sharing tool allows you to deliver access to information without having to uproot your existing systems. Most businesses already have their critical documents housed in multiple areas - a good knowledge management tool will allow you to integrate with those systems to draw those documents through rather than having to move them.

Equally important to consider is how user access is controlled - creating another set of sign-ons for users to have to remember (and invariably, request support and resets for) can potentially be more trouble than it's worth. Explore solutions with Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities, integrating seamlessly with your existing stack.

Reports and analytics

To know that adoption is going well and that your investment in your new tool was worthwhile, you need ways to measure engagement. That’s even more true if you’ve got deskless and remote workers. 

Your knowledge-sharing tool should have reporting features to track how much information is being shared, which content is more popular, and which employees contribute the most. All this data can help you identify knowledge gaps and create strategies to mitigate those gaps.

Best knowledge-sharing platforms

1. Blink

2. Notion

3. Bloomfire

4. Microsoft SharePoint

5. Nuclino

6. Confluence

7. Helpjuice

Here are the six best knowledge-sharing tools to facilitate the flow of information and expertise in your organization:

1. Blink

Blink is an employee experience app that gives frontline and remote workers access to the people, communications, and applications they need to do their job on their personal phone. 

You benefit from increased productivity, employee retention, and two-way conversations that bridge the gap between executives, management, and employees.

Blink is ideal for executive teams committed to giving more to their frontline workers. It is flexible, feels like the apps employees use daily, and can be launched in days or weeks.

Key Features:

• Powerful Hub dashboard with quick access to policies, rosters, payslips, and apps
• Secure group, team, or one-to-one chats for real-time two-way communication  
• Newsfeed with a personalized stream of bottom-up and top-down multimedia content including news, videos, and pictures
• Seamless integration with the apps you already love such as Microsoft 365, Workday, and ADP.
• Single Sign On (SSO) — log in to any app without your password
• Frontline intelligence — gain powerful insight into what makes your organization tick, from turnover to engagement and sentiment, to stop problems before they start and create a close-knit community.
• Micro-apps — get powerful branded apps personalized for your company 

Best for: Companies with a large distributed frontline or remote workforce.

Pricing: Starts at $3.40 per person per month (when billed annually).

2. Notion

Notion is a knowledge-sharing platform that combines your internal wiki, projects, and notes in one tool. You can create pages, lists, databases, and tables and interlink them to help your colleagues understand the company-wide web of information. 

Many teams and companies globally use Notion to keep their staff informed and collaborate in one place. 

Notion creates transparency by centralizing all knowledge and work and making it highly customizable. As a result, it saves time and increases productivity for teams of all sizes.

Key Features:

• Content blocks — present information as you want it
• Clean, custom, and easy-to-use text editor
• Easy linking between documents and pages
• Support for multimedia — make your knowledge pages as detailed as possible

Best for: Small technology businesses that manage many documents and projects and want to collaborate easily.

Pricing: Free with limited features. Premium plans start at $8 per user per month (when billed annually).

3. Bloomfire

Bloomfire connects individuals and teams with the information they need to excel at work. It stores relevant information and makes it easily searchable.

This platform powers all departments — from customer support to sales and marketing — with the right information. Your employees can always find the desired information at the right time to make informed decisions that propel them to success.

Bloomfire also uses artificial intelligence (AI) to spark engagement and help your team grow collective intelligence efficiently.

Key Features:

• AI-driven search for quick access to information
• Flexible user roles and permissions
• Custom integrations with open API

Best for: Mid-sized teams, departments, and organizations looking to share knowledge in a meaningful and collaborative way.

Pricing: Premium plans start at $25 per user per month.

4. Microsoft SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint is a knowledge-sharing platform designed around a traditional intranet structure. It helps teams collaborate effectively by letting them share content, applications, and knowledge. 

You can use blocks — including text, videos, forms, and images — to customize page layouts without complex coding. You can also add announcement feeds and news to knowledge pages to ensure they're constantly updated with current information.

Since it’s a Microsoft platform, SharePoint integrates best with other Microsoft tools. 

Key Features:

• Code-free content customization
• News and announcement feeds
• Solid integrations with other Microsoft tools
• AI-powered content suggestions

Best for: Office-focused companies integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem. 

Pricing: Starts at $5 per user per month.

5. Nuclino

Nuclino is a user-friendly, lightweight knowledge management software that empowers teams to collaborate without the chaos of context switching, files and folders, or silos. You can use its simple editor to create rich wiki pages — with text, videos, and images.

You can opt to view data as graphs, lists, or boards to ensure you understand how everything works together. You can also collaborate on every page with team members in real-time, with comments letting you exchange feedback on the spot.

Key Features:

• User-friendly interface
• Minimal setup time
• Real-time content collaboration
• Fast and reliable search

Best for: Startups and small teams looking for a lightweight wiki solution.

Pricing: Free with limited features. Premium plans start at $5 per user per month.

6. Confluence

Confluence is a knowledge-sharing solution and intranet owned by Atlassian. The platform lets users create and manage workflows efficiently. 

You can use Confluence to capture, organize, and preserve your most valuable assets — project plans, company updates, or other vital information. 

The platform’s page tree view and powerful search function make it easy to find the exact file you're looking for.

Key Features

• Multiple integrations
• Customizable templates for all business needs
• Real-time collaborative editing
• Real-time notifications and comments

Best for: Mid-size technology companies looking to improve information exchange in functional departments such as project management groups, technical teams, marketing, finance, HR, and legal.

Pricing: Free with limited features. Premium plans start at $5.50 per user per month.

7. Helpjuice

Helpjuice knowledge base software streamlines the process of knowledge sharing for both your team and your customers. The platform is easy to use, with an editor that's straightforward making content creation fast and simple. Their intelligent search feature is designed to allow your customers and team to find the information they need, when they need it.

One notable feature is their decision tree logic which allows you to build step-by-step guides that help direct users to the information or solutions they need, based on their specific circumstances. This can improve the user experience and reduce time spent searching for relevant content.

Helpjuice's platform is also designed to be flexible. You can customize the look of your knowledge base to reflect your brand, making it easy for customers and team members to navigate. The goal is to provide a platform where information is readily accessible, promoting better customer service and efficient internal knowledge sharing.

Key Features:

• Intelligent, Google-like instant search
• Real-time collaboration features 
• Easy-to-use editor with multi-language support and decision-tree logic
• Fully customizable

Best for: Companies that want an easy-to-use, yet comprehensive knowledge base software solution that’s fully customizable, and capable of fostering effective internal knowledge sharing as well as providing comprehensive external customer support resources.Pricing:  Pricing begins at $120 per month, which includes all features and supports up to 4 users.

What makes him awesome?

Scrolling through Blink, I see so many stories about people going the extra mile and that is fantastic — we do that every day in Heathrow as part of our own expectations of ourselves. We work together to make sure that whatever needs to get done, gets done.

Jamie is the backbone of Heathrow and without him it would not be the same. Jamie was the first employee to go into a COVID household — and he isn’t even a tech! He just gets involved in all aspects of the operation. Jamie lives Medequip values and that’s why I had to nominate him.

What does he want to do next?

To continue being a valued member of the Medequip team. He’s a selfless person!

Nominated By: Davina McGovern, Depot Admin

Restaurant employee engagement has a data problem hiding in plain sight. Ask most operators what's driving disengagement on their floor, and the answer is usually a guess. Ask the employees themselves, and the picture gets a lot clearer.

According to 7shifts' 2025 Restaurant Employee Engagement report, which surveyed 1,500 active restaurant employees, more than half say better recognition from management would increase their engagement, and a quarter say they rarely receive any feedback at all, positive or constructive. That's not a mystery to solve. That's a gap to close.

Here are eight restaurant employee engagement ideas that hold up against what the data actually says employees want, not just what looks good in a manager's meeting.

Why restaurant employee engagement is different

Office engagement strategies lean heavily on things restaurant teams don't have much of: long meetings, email newsletters, all-hands calls. Restaurant staff are on their feet, on a schedule, and often working alongside a different set of colleagues every shift. Engagement here has to work in short bursts, on a phone, without adding to an already demanding job. It's the same dynamic explored in EX=CX: the equation every restaurant operator needs to know: crew experience and guest experience move together, not separately.

8 restaurant employee engagement ideas that actually work

1. Make recognition visible, not just verbal. A manager saying "nice work" in passing is easy to forget by the next shift. Public recognition, whether that's a shout-out on a team feed or a small reward tied to a specific moment, sticks around and gets seen by the wider team too.

2. Close the feedback loop, don't just open it. Running a survey is only half the job. 7shifts' data shows a quarter of restaurant employees say they rarely get feedback at all, and the reverse matters too, when employees give feedback and never hear what happened with it, they stop giving it.

3. Lean on team dynamics, not just pay. 7shifts' research found that coworkers and team relationships rank as the number one motivator for restaurant workers, ahead of financial incentives. Scheduling that protects team continuity and giving crews a way to connect beyond the shift itself both feed into this directly.

4. Give every shift the same information, at the same time. Disengagement grows in the gap between what head office knows and what the floor knows. A menu change, a new promotion, a policy update, everyone should hear it the same day, not whenever a manager gets around to mentioning it.

5. Build a real path, even a short one. Nearly half of restaurant management turnover and a meaningful share of hourly turnover ties back to a lack of visible growth. Engagement improves when staff can see what a next step actually looks like, even if it's a shift lead role rather than a corporate ladder.

6. Make the basics self-serve. Chasing down a manager for a payslip or a shift swap is a small daily friction that adds up. When employees can handle it themselves from their phone, the interactions they do have with management can be about something more useful than admin.

7. Ask before you assume. Pulse surveys, even short ones, give restaurant staff a low-effort way to flag what's actually going on, whether that's understaffing on a specific shift or friction with a particular process, before it turns into someone quitting.

8. Make engagement someone's job, not an afterthought. Engagement efforts that live entirely in a manager's spare time tend to fade under pressure. Building it into a system, whether that's scheduled recognition prompts or a standing survey cadence, makes it durable when things get busy.

How the right employee app makes this sustainable

Most of the ideas above break down at scale without a system behind them. A restaurant employee app like Blink builds recognition, surveys, and company-wide messaging into the same place staff already check for their schedule and pay information, so engagement doesn't depend on one manager remembering to do it every week. Across Blink's frontline customer base, that combination of visibility and ease of use is a large part of why adoption regularly lands above 90 percent in the first week alone.

Blink. And make sure engagement isn't just an idea on a whiteboard.

Sources: 7shifts Restaurant Employee Engagement Report (2025), surveyed 1,500 active restaurant employees.

The Capital District Transport Authority (CDTA) runs the public transit system in Albany, New York. They employ around 800 people.

Most of these employees are drivers and maintenance workers and CDTA was having a tough time staying in touch with them. An intranet. Seat drops. Posters. Digital screens. They tried everything. And it just wasn’t working.

For this webinar, our team sat down with CDTA’s Head of Communication, Jaime Kazlo, and Communications Manager, Emily De Vito. 

Two years after launching Blink, they talked about how they went from an ineffective internal communication strategy causing a huge digital divide to an employee app that supports digital inclusion.

The internal communication problem

Before CDTA found Blink, internal communication was a nagging problem.

They had a high proportion of frontline workers who didn’t sit behind a desk and didn’t have company-issued emails or devices. So it wasn’t easy to share company messages with them.

To communicate with office-based employees, the company was relying on an outdated intranet. For frontline employees, the main methods of communication were:

• Noticeboards and digital screens
• Emergency SMS
• Word of mouth
• Seat drop, where posters were left on a bus operator’s seat in time for their shift

But these comms were ineffective. As Jaime pointed out, “A lot of the folks that work at CDTA don’t necessarily come into the office every single day. They may get their bus out on the road. And if they do come into the office, they’re coming in and getting their work at the dispatch window and then immediately leaving”.

So employees weren’t reliably seeing posters and digital screens. They weren’t getting an awful lot of co-worker contact. And teams ended up relying on one-on-one communication, which put a lot of pressure on supervisors.

Focus group feedback made it clear to the CDTA leadership that their comms weren’t cutting through. Frontline employees were missing out on important communications. They were missing out on the fun stuff too, like competitions and giveaways.

This was creating a disconnect between employees and the organization. And it was harming the employee experience. So in 2021, CDTA decided to make a change.

They wanted to overhaul the way they did internal communications. And they needed a way to meet frontline employees where they were at.

Their CEO, says Jaime, is a champion of open communication and certainly didn’t want more than half of the organization missing out on comms. So with his support, they set out to find a solution.

"I know we’re not unique. A lot of organizations struggle with internal communication. It’s just whether or not you’re going to take that next step to really get to the employees, listen to their feedback, and give them what they need so they can also feel that they’re an integral part of the organization.” — Jaime Kazlo, Head of Communication, CDTA

Deciding on a solution

CDTA already had a SharePoint intranet, which they’d tried to revamp. This was a tool that they’d been using for several years. But it was old, outdated, and poorly maintained.

While a handful of employees chose to use the intranet, many stayed away. In fact, it had gotten to the point where comms and HR teams wouldn’t even tell staff about the intranet because they didn’t want them using it.

The intranet didn’t provide relevant information and wasn’t a good representation of the company. Crucially, it was hard for frontline employees to access.

Having gone ahead with a new and improved intranet, the team had some last-minute doubts. As the launch approached, they questioned whether they wanted to roll this tool out to the workforce.

Jaime says that, having taken the intranet as far as it could go, they were still wondering if there wasn’t something better. A tool that would improve employee communication for the whole organization.

So they took the bold decision to shelve the intranet. And started talking seriously about other options. Here’s how they decided that a modern intranet, in the form of an employee app, was the frontline-first solution they were looking for:

They got buy-in from the IT team. The IT team was integral to the process. They made sure the chosen solution was secure, sustainable, and wouldn’t compromise the company network.

They got buy-in from the union. The team worked to ensure the union president and employees would get on board with their chosen solution.  

They took a cross-functional approach. The comms team collaborated across different departments. They had conversations with everyone who had a big stake in the solution, including HR, IT, and operations. They gathered co-worker questions, found answers, and learned what each department needed from the company comms tool.

They got buy-in from the CEO. Finally, having decided that an employee app was the best solution, they made their case to the CEO, who gave the go-ahead.

“For our workforce — and the way people consume information in this day and age — it seemed archaic to stick with that intranet tool. So we decided to go to something a little bit more user-friendly and something that is pretty much in the palm of everybody’s hand every day.” — Jaime Kazlo, Head of Communication, CDTA

Buying a solution

The next step in the process was choosing app technology that suited their frontline employees and the rest of the organization.

The comms team started by, again, looping in different departments to find out what modern intranet features they needed. 

They asked marketing leaders about their branding requirements. They asked HR how they’d like to use employee information within an app. They spoke to maintenance and transportation teams about the needs of their frontline workers.

This part of the process, says Jaime, was easy. Everyone was on board. Because everyone agreed that internal communications at CDTA needed to change. And because everyone wanted largely the same things:

• a product that was user-friendly and easy to use
• a product that was easy to download
• a product that allowed us to communicate daily company news
• a product that made it easy for employees to receive emergency messages

Once internal discussions had taken place, it was time to vet solutions and choose the best software for the job.

This part of the process was led by the IT and communications teams. The IT team knew what CDTA was looking for technically — and in terms of app security. The comms team knew what tools they needed to communicate effectively with the organization.

After speaking with several vendors and viewing app demonstrations, they decided on Blink. It was a speedy process. The team started looking for a solution in January 2022 and launched Blink in June of that year.

They were able to turn this process around in just six months, says Jaime, because the team got clear on their priorities first. By getting their ducks in a row — and knowing exactly what they were looking for in an employee app —finding the right app was quick and easy.

Ensuring success

Finding the right employee app is the first part of the battle. The next? Ensuring success — in the form of employee adoption and engagement — once that app goes live.

So how did the CDTA team tackle this particular challenge? In the webinar, Emily explains what the team did before and after the launch of Blink to maximize its success.

Pre-launch

The CDTA comms team started their pre-launch activities with a group of company leaders. They wanted to establish these people as app ambassadors. So they made sure they understood exactly what the app was for, what it could do, and how they should use it to interact with employees.

The comms team — along with the company’s new app ambassadors — started promoting the app to the wider organization about a month before it launched. They sent letters, put up posters, and advertised the app on digital screens.

Emily emphasizes the importance of speaking to people face to face, too. She and her team hosted information sessions. They also visited staff in break-out rooms, at every company location, to promote the app and field employee questions.

“[We were] letting them know — “Hey, this app is for you, it’s so you know what’s going on in our company and so you’re the first to know what’s going on in our company”.  

Contests and giveaways also helped to incentivize employees to download and use the app, both pre-launch and for about a month after. For example, the team launched the app on the first day of summer. So they had an ice cream truck come to each division and people who signed up to Blink got a free cone.

Post-launch

Launch done and dusted, the comms team turned their attention to sustaining app engagement levels. And encouraging late app sign-ups, too.

To achieve high levels of engagement, CDTA has focused on:

• Creating engaging content, with input from every department
• Being responsive to employee comments and questions
• Using pictures and graphics to grab employee attention
• Balancing serious content with fun content

Emily says managing the app and its content doesn’t take up her whole day. And you don’t need someone to do it 24/7.

Her role now involves asking team leaders to send her regular content. She launches surveys. And she posts at least a couple of informal, fun posts each month. That might mean highlighting a member of staff who got a promotion. Or — as CDTA did recently — posting pictures from an Exemplary Attendance Luncheon.

Employees like being able to see pictures of themselves or their teammates, says Emily. They like being recognized for their hard work. And they like being able to comment — congratulating others.

While they see better levels of engagement for fun posts, she says employees like to engage with serious content, too.

For example, CDTA recently did a safety post about cell phone usage on the road. Employees appreciated seeing it on the feed. They like being able to comment and contribute their thoughts. And these posts are a great way to get instant feedback on company policy.

Responding to resistance

CDTA doesn’t require employees to download the Blink app. So it’s up to each individual whether they choose to use it.

Emily acknowledges that some resistance is inevitable. Some employees told her that they didn’t want to see work content on their personal phones. Some simply didn’t see how Blink would benefit them.

But, says Emily, many of these employees have changed their perspectives. “Those people have now come back to me a year later, “Can you send me the invite to Blink again, I wanna download it.””

Part of CDTA’s success in getting employees to come around has been illustrating the personal benefit Blink brings to employees.

Comms team members get in the room with other employees to show them — here’s where you get your tax form, here’s where you see your pay stubs, here’s where you book vacation time.

They’ve also been using Blink’s analytics functions to see which content is working best. By seeing when and where employees are interacting, the team can hone content to make it even more relevant and engaging.

A majority of employees, says Emily, have seen the value of being able to do so much from their smartphones. And now — two years after the launch — adoption is at 80%, just shy of the company’s 85% target, which they hope to meet soon.

Q&A

The webinar ended with a Q&A session. Jaime and Emily provided answers to viewer questions. Here’s a summary of what they discussed.  

Do you allow employee comments on the app? And, if so, how do you manage them?

Allowing comments, says Emily, is essential for two-way communication. And the comments they get on the CDTA feed are mostly positive and primarily question-based.

Negative comments, when they do occur, are seen as a jumping-off point.

When the conversation feels constructive, leaders and managers can respond in the app. Alternatively, they go into Blink’s chat feature to say they’re happy to discuss an employee issue in person — and then set up a meeting.

While the admin team can delete comments, Emily says they would only do this if a comment contained profanity or something vulgar. And, thankfully, in two years of using the app, this is a problem they’ve yet to encounter.

It helps that openness is part of CDTA culture. And that company leaders understand that it solves more problems than it creates. 

“We have a CEO who is very transparent. He wants to know what the workforce is thinking. He wants them to know what he’s thinking[…]If you’re not transparent it brings up more questions and it creates more angst within your company because people are saying “Why aren’t they answering me” “Why are they being secretive?”.” — Emily De Vito, Communications Manager, CDTA

How do you work alongside your union when rolling out an employee app?

CDTA has a unionized workforce. So it was important for them to work in lockstep with the union president during the whole process — from solution scoping to app launch and beyond.

The comms team made a real effort, says Jaime, to explain to the union why they were implementing the app and to help them understand where they were coming from.

There were some employee concerns about how an app might invade their privacy. But we made it clear that the one and only purpose of the app was to make all employees feel included within the organization.

Now that the app is up and running, Emily highlights the importance of the union president having a profile and using the app. And knowing they can get in touch with the communications team when they want to send a union-related message out to the workforce. 

How do you enforce a cell phone policy when you have an employee app?

So you’re promoting a cell phone app. But you have a cell phone policy that means employees shouldn’t be looking at their phones during certain workday hours. What do you do?

For Jaime and Emily, it’s all about education and helping employees understand app features, like Blink’s snooze function.

Employees can set a do-not-disturb function to run automatically during particular times. This means they can pause notifications during work or driving hours. They can then pull out their cell phone during a break or when they’re back at home. 

How does an employee app work for team members without a smartphone?

There are very few employees at CDTA, says Jaime, who don’t have a smartphone. These tend to be older employees who aren’t necessarily very tech-savvy.

For these employees, the company has computers in break rooms. These computers are equipped with Blink’s desktop version. And they’re a way for employees who don’t have a phone — or who don’t want to download the app — to check in with their account and company news.

Does each employee have a profile? How do you manage those?

Every employee has their own app profile. They can upload a picture to this profile. But employees don’t have admin capabilities and they can’t edit anything else.

When it comes to creating profiles, the CDTA comms team worked with the HR team to import employee data. The app integrates with most HR software, so profiles can be added and removed automatically.

You can set up a profile with very basic information, including name, location, and job title. You also need an email address or a phone number so the employee can receive an invite to download Blink.

But you have the potential to refine these profiles. Emily is currently working with the CDTA on segmenting employees. She’s working out which employees should be grouped together so they can send the most relevant comms to each individual.

So there you have it. A summary of our webinar — and of CDTA’s journey from a clunky old intranet to a modern employee app.