At Blink, our mission is to connect and empower workforces worldwide, and a crucial part of that mission is ensuring that our platform is accessible to everyone.

We’re excited to announce that Blink is now WCAG 2.2 level AA compliant, marking a significant milestone in our commitment to accessibility.

Why accessibility matters

Roughly 15% of the global population — around 1 in 6 people — lives with some form of disability. Given these numbers, there’s a high likelihood that many Blink users depend on our app to be accessible.

Many countries require digital products to meet accessibility standards, so we take these obligations seriously. However, our commitment to accessibility goes beyond compliance. It’s about making sure that our platform meets the needs of all users, removing barriers and creating a truly inclusive environment.

Understanding WCAG standards

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a set of internationally recognized standards for digital accessibility. Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), these guidelines ensure that content is accessible to people with disabilities, including those who rely on assistive technologies like screen readers or alternative input devices.

WCAG standards are organized into three levels of compliance: A, AA, and AAA. Level A does not achieve accessibility in many situations, yet AAA is not recommended by the W3C because it is not possible to satisfy all Level AAA Success Criteria for some content. Therefore we comply with AA, whilst striving to meet as many AAA criteria as possible. The latest version of the standards, WCAG 2.2, includes updated requirements that address new aspects of accessibility, such as improved keyboard navigation, visible focus indicators, and content predictability.

How we’ve updated the Blink experience

Here are some of the key accessibility enhancements we’ve introduced as part of our efforts to be WCAG 2.2 AA compliant:

#1. Media accessibility

Blink now supports features that make media content more inclusive. For example, we’ve added the ability to set alternative text for image-only context, allowing user-generated content to be accessible to a broader audience.

#2. Improved visual and text contrast

To enhance readability, we’ve adjusted contrast levels to ensure that users can easily distinguish text from background colors across all devices — an essential feature for individuals with visual impairments.

#3. Flexible orientation and resize options

Blink’s content and interface elements can now be resized up to 200% without losing clarity, and the platform supports both landscape and portrait orientations. These improvements make it easier for users to read and navigate on any device, regardless of their visual needs.

#4. Keyboard navigation and focus visibility

Keyboard focus is now visible and consistent across all interactive elements, enhancing accessibility for users relying on keyboard navigation. Additionally, we’ve ensured that elements won’t change unexpectedly when they receive focus, which prevents accidental interactions and supports smooth navigation.

#5. Consistent navigation and error prevention

We’ve made navigation more predictable and consistent across the app. Users will now receive helpful error messages and suggestions to prevent data entry mistakes, making Blink more user-friendly and inclusive.

Blink’s commitment to accessibility

We’re dedicated to empowering diverse workforces and ensuring that our technology is accessible and inclusive. Here’s how we’re continuing to prioritize accessibility:

• Adhering to standards: We maintain strict alignment with the WCAG 2.2 level AA, ensuring that Blink meets industry-recognized accessibility standards.
• Inclusive development: Accessibility is at our engineering core. From screen reader compatibility to clear navigation, we build with accessibility in mind at every stage.
• Transparent accessibility: We provide an up-to-date, transparent accessibility statement, outlining our efforts and providing information to our users.

Accessibility isn’t just about checking the box — it’s about empowering individuals and creating an environment where everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive.

‍Blink. And create an inclusive employee experience at your organization.

The digital revolution has reinvented how workers interact with their colleagues, customers, and their employers. But not all workers have felt the impact equally. Most office workers today have access to more digital platforms and tools than they can manage. But for the millions of deskless, frontline workers in industries like healthcare, transit, logistics, and retail, they have the opposite problem, often lacking access to basic corporate tools like email. 

Many employers find themselves in a Goldilocks situation—some workers have too many digital tools to manage while some workers have access to too few. In both cases, the impact can mean employees are more frustrated and less engaged with work. 

In this article, we’ll break down the challenge office workers face with so many tools available to them. Then, we’ll talk about how Blink is helping frontline organizations avoid the same challenges with our “digital front door” approach to our employee app. 

More tools doesn’t always make for a better employee experience

If you ask an economist, they’ll tell you that, thanks in large part to advances in technology, productivity in countries like the U.S. has increased steadily this century. In the U.S., for example, labor productivity is up 1.5% per year since 2000—meaning that workers “produced 60 percent more ‘stuff’ and only increased their hours worked by 10 percent” during that period. As more employees in the workforce come to rely on computers, mobile phones, and applications to get their jobs done, productivity will continue to climb.

But when you ask office workers how the proliferation of technology is impacting their jobs, you’ll likely find a slightly different story. According to research, employees feel overwhelmed by new technology as much as they find it helping them. In fact, 96% say workplace tools aren’t helping them to keep up in their jobs because the “workplace tools are not addressing the root cause of the problems, and employees want tools that help them work smarter, not harder.” 

According to that same research, one of the biggest issues (for 26% of workers) comes from “app switching,” with workers saying that they would prefer to have access to everything they need within one solution. A similar survey from Asana found that “21% of respondents agreed that flicking between apps had made them less efficient at their job.” 

What, exactly, is behind the frustration with app switching, though? Why is productivity up for businesses but office workers themselves feel less productive? Let’s take a look at some of the factors.

1. There are more tools than ever that workers need to manage 

Gartner found that, between 2019 and 2023, the average number of applications that knowledge workers need to do their jobs has nearly doubled, from 6 to 11, with some using 26 or more. That number doesn’t include the HR, scheduling, payroll, survey, and learning tools that workers need to manage as well. All of that adds up to a lot of needless switching between apps and a multitude of passwords to keep track of. 

2. More tools means more notifications

Every tool and application is sending a constant stream of notifications to workers’ phones and email inboxes. Despite—or sometimes because of—the large number of notifications, 36% of workers are still missing or failing to notice important updates because of the number of applications used and the amount of information they’re being exposed to. 

3. Tools don’t work together as seamlessly as workers would like

Whether it’s constantly having to login to different platforms or having to put the same information into multiple tools, workers are feeling frustrated by the challenges of managing so many tools. Sure, there are technological solutions such as API integrations and single sign-on that make juggling so many tools easier for workers. But, it can still feel like the incompatibility across different tools and the constant app switching is negating the productivity benefits of the tools themselves.  

4. Burnout is bringing down engagement and productivity

Despite technology making employees’ jobs easier, the employee experience hasn’t necessarily improved alongside. When workers feel overworked and don’t get personal satisfaction out of their jobs, the end result for many is burnout. In 2023, 65% of employees reported suffering from burnout, which is impacting employee performance and retention for many employers. 

How the “digital front door” makes for a better experience

Blink’s employee app was developed for the frontline organization. We know how challenging it can be to bring a deskless, email-less workforce into the digital age. Rather than developing Blink as a standalone app for frontline workers, we’ve built Blink to be the digital front door for the entire workforce.

What does a digital front door do and why does it matter? 

Think of every app your employees use as a house. When knowledge workers get frustrated with app switching, it’s because they have to travel to a new house, unlock that house, and move stuff between houses. 

Blink takes all of those detached homes and makes them rooms in the same house. Workers only have to walk through one front door to access all of the critical tools and systems they need—from scheduling and pay stubs, to HRIS and benefits, to internal communications and training modules.

That’s why we like to call Blink the employee super-app. It’s not just a place for workers to communicate. It’s not just an intranet. It’s not just a feed for important updates. It puts all of this and more into one personalized app experience that is accessible through any mobile device.  

How Blink makes the digital front door work for frontline organizations

In today’s world, security concerns mean that a lack of a corporate email would typically keep frontline workers from using many corporate tools. Another concern is the added cost: whether it’s the cost of  managing thousands of extra email accounts for frontline workers or the risk of low adoption rates for expensive tools. 

Blink’s solution to these challenges is what creates our digital front door approach and helps elevate Blink from employee app to employee super app. Here are the three things Blink does differently to help bring frontline organizations into the digital workplace:

1. Solving the identity challenge

Identity and access management is critical for a secure technology stack, and it usually revolves around a work email address. No email is no problem for us, however: Blink can act as an Identity Provider. 

By providing an identity to frontline workers, Blink can integrate with any third-party application that supports the SAML 2.0 authentication standard. 

This allows deskless workers to effortlessly authenticate and have their accounts automatically provisioned on third-party applications—without asking workers to juggle multiple usernames, passwords, and applications.

Extra security can be added to Blink through biometric verification and enforcing minimum OS requirements for access to tools via the Blink Hub.

2. Leveraging existing IAM solutions

For companies who have existing identity access management systems like Okta or Azure, employees can still access third-party tools and systems via Blink while using the existing IAM tools to authenticate. 

By linking directly into relevant sections of the workplace tools that are already part of your identity infrastructure, Blink can create a secure and cohesive experience for your entire workforce.

3. Solving the third-party app access challenge

With Blink Hub acting as the digital front door for third-party tools, employees have a consistent, familiar user interface, even as tools come and go. 

Thanks to deep links between Blink and the third-party tools, workers can focus on their task at hand, such as “Request time off” or “View payslip,” without worrying what application they need to open. Blink handles it all and takes them directly to the action in the third-party app. 

See how the digital front door could benefit your frontline workforce

The goal of the digital front door approach is to make a seamless and efficient experience for workers to interact with the digital workspace. For frontline workers who have historically lacked access to many tools and platforms, Blink flattens the learning curve and helps avoid the frustration and burnout that many of their office-based colleagues have experienced.

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If you’re looking to bring the benefits of the digital workplace to your frontline workforce, sign up for a personalized demo of Blink’s employee super app today. 

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Frontline workers make up 80% of the global workforce. They play an extremely vital role in many industries across the globe.

But 60% of frontline employees say they’re unhappy with the technology they use at work.

Unfortunately, this stat makes perfect sense. Workplace tech has traditionally been built with office-based workers in mind. So it tends to fall short for the frontline.  

Some companies still use a traditional intranet. And others use a patchwork of different HR and IT apps. These tools may work well for desk-based employees. But they cause three common problems for frontline workers:

• Limited access to tech. Frontline employees don’t have regular access to a computer and don’t always have a company email address. This means they rely on noticeboards, personal apps, and/or shared company computers to access the information and tools they need.
  
  
• Access to poor quality tech. Frontline employees have access to a system that does some things, but not others. They can access tech tools via a mobile device but features are limited and the user experience is lacking
  
  
• Access to too much tech. When employees use lots of different apps via lots of different interfaces, it creates as many problems as it solves. This piecemeal approach can cause friction and tech tool disengagement

Frontline organizations need streamlined tech that works for every employee. As Ian Gordon, former President of Administrative Operations at Elara Caring, said in an interview:

“Being a frontline worker can feel like you’re on an island by yourself, and the solutions that you need must be quicker and more succinct. You can’t spend a lot of time signing in and navigating. You need to get to your answer now.”

Currently, deskless workers waste time and productivity on tasks that could be streamlined. For example, finding their training documents, communicating with managers, or simply tracking down last month’s pay stub.

Thankfully, there’s a solution. A modern intranet takes into account the realities of today’s distributed workforce. It’s a mobile-first tool that provides the same seamless digital experience for both frontline and desk-based employees.

Here, we explore how the right type of technology can benefit your frontline employees and your organization. We also reveal the three features you should be looking for when choosing frontline tech.

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Benefits of a modern intranet for frontline employees

When your frontline has access to the right tech, everyone stands to gain. Let’s take a look at the benefits – for your organization and employees – of a mobile-first employee app.

Higher levels of productivity

When frontline employees don’t have the right tech, they waste a lot of time on tasks that could be streamlined.

They have to call their manager on the phone when they want to change shifts.

They have to use the shared computer on their lunch break to respond to a company survey.

They have to leaf through a paper handbook to find an answer to their question.  

A modern intranet helps frontline employees complete tasks quickly and easily. This means productivity for your organization improves. 

Streamlined workflows

A modern intranet helps streamline the workflow of every employee in your organization, not just those on the frontline.

That’s because frontline employees can use self-serve functions. They can view their pay stubs, launch an assigned L&D module, and request time off. Employees can book shifts and report faults or accidents. They can also chat with their managers via messaging features.

This helps to streamline the work of your frontline workers. But it also helps HR teams and frontline managers. They get fewer queries and fewer phone calls because frontline employees can achieve so much more using the right tech tool - removing the barrier to access and allowing your HR teams and managers to focus on the work they are meant to be doing. 

Tech tool efficiency

The best modern intranets integrate with the software you already use for your business. It's not about adding another tool to your tech stack to be siloed, but increasing access to all of the other tools you already rely on. So employees can access all tech tools from the same, familiar interface.

When workplace tools are intuitive and easy to access, employees spend a lot less time looking for the resources they need. They also spend less time trying to remember different login details. A single click, a single password, and they’re in.

Learning and development

A modern intranet or employee app makes it easy for employees to access vital resources. Like workplace policies, guides, and training materials.

This means new hires get up-to-speed quickly. They can access all onboarding materials via their smartphone. Existing employees also find it easy to weave L&D into their usual workflow.

With access to resources that help them work smarter, not harder, employees become more effective and productive in their roles. 

Improved internal communication

Good internal communication is the backbone of any organization.

Without it, trust in leadership suffers. And with it, engagement and loyalty increases. Employees in organizations with effective communication feel more connected to their jobs. 

But we know that frontline teams usually don’t enjoy the same level of communication and connection as their desk-based co-workers. 

Frontline employees tend to spend very little time at HQ and often spend their days working alone. So they risk missing out on: 

• Vital company updates
• Co-worker collaboration
• Recognition from managers
• Opportunities to make their voice heard

The right tech helps to bridge the gap. It improves employee communication by connecting frontline workers to their co-workers, head office, and company culture.

Real-time communication

Information is often outdated by the time it reaches frontline employees. It’s hard to spot memos on a crowded noticeboard, and it’s easy to miss an important update in a long thread of messages. 

The best modern intranets solve this problem by supporting real-time communication.

Employees can use newsfeed, group chat, and 1-2-1 chat functions to get up-to-the-minute information.

Managers can send smartphone notifications to highlight vital updates. They can post a video of today’s company standup. They can also create and pin mandatory messages to the company newsfeed, ensuring that essential information cuts through. 

With access to relevant, timely information like this, employees make better decisions and solve problems more quickly.

Two-way communication

Top-down communication is useful for establishing company culture and sharing updates. But for truly effective internal communication, information needs to move in all directions.

Modern intranets support peer-to-peer connection. Co-workers can interact via the newsfeed or chat functions. They can recognize a peer’s hard work. Or wish their work bestie a happy birthday.

The intranet also supports bottom-up communication. With a newsfeed, direct messaging, and company-wide surveys, you give frontline employees a voice.

This makes a positive difference to the employee experience. Employees who say their voice is heard at work are 4.6x more likely to give their all.

Collaboration

Imagine a frontline care worker has come across a great article about elderly care. How does that person share their new insight with other frontline workers in other locations?

Perhaps they’ll mention the article to the co-workers they physically cross paths with. Or send a link to the small group of people in their work WhatsApp chat. 

But you really amplify the reach and impact when that care worker can post the article to the company employee app.

The right tech tools allow frontline teams to share the knowledge they gain when they’re out in the field. They can share best practices and collaborate with other employees, even though they’re not based in the same office environment.

Empowerment and engagement

When employees feel empowered and engaged at work, they’re happier and more productive. They provide better customer service and produce better results. They’re also less likely to look for a job elsewhere.

Employee engagement relies on strong employee communication, development opportunities, recognition – and the right tech.

The wrong tech can be a big drain on employee engagement. When workers use slow, inefficient, and ineffective digital tools, it adds friction and frustration to their work day. So implementing a modern intranet can help with all the following. 

Empowering employees

With a company super-app at their fingertips, frontline employees are empowered to make informed decisions and take a proactive approach to their work.

Thanks to user-friendly employee communication channels, they can report safety or equipment issues. They can share their knowledge. And they can access company resources exactly when they need them.

A modern intranet also empowers employees to progress in their careers. 70% of frontline workers are interested in career progression opportunities. But they don’t always get the resources or support they need.

Via an employee app, you can give frontline workers easy access to L&D information, new job opportunities, and any available employee development activities. 

Engaging employees

The right frontline tech helps you to improve employee engagement. It allows employees to engage with co-workers and company culture. And it mirrors the experience provided by employees’ favorite social media apps.

A newsfeed. Likes, comments, and shares. Pulse surveys. Digital 1-2-1s. A searchable company library. A modern intranet with a user-friendly interface creates an experience that employees are excited to use and keep using.

The best frontline tech also offers personalization, another thing that helps to level up engagement. Employees can switch up their dashboards to put their preferred features first. Or prioritize their newsfeed to focus on posts that are most relevant to them. 

Retention and attraction

Frontline teams experience high levels of churn. A McKinsey study found that 45% of frontline workers planned to leave their jobs within the following 3 to 6 months.

Workplace technology is an important part of the puzzle. 78% of deskless workers say they consider the technology at a company when deciding whether to take a job there.

When you equip frontline workers with the right tech, you show your employees that you value them and care about their experience.

You also provide communication channels that support a better employee experience. You allow employees to give feedback and build stronger relationships with co-workers. This makes it easier to hold onto existing staff – and to attract new talent too.

Choosing the right tech for frontline employees

Some tech solutions – like the traditional intranet – don’t fit the realities of frontline work. So what should you be looking for when choosing tech for frontline employees?

The best frontline tech:

• is a one-stop-shop
• offers an intuitive user experience
• has a mobile-first design

Let’s look at these features in a little more detail.

It’s a one-stop-shop

Currently, many organizations are at risk of app overload. 37% of frontline workers use five or more apps every day. But 39% say that apps aren’t actually helping them in their work.

A patchwork of workplace tools means workers have to learn different interfaces and remember lots of passwords. Tech complicates their workflow instead of simplifying it.

The best modern intranet brings together all the software you use. It acts as a digital front door for your organization.

Behind this door, employees find everything they need to do their jobs. Tools for communication, operations, training, shifts, collaboration, and HR. It’s all available via one interface and a single login.

Tech that acts as a one-stop-shop reduces friction in frontline employee workflow. It also drives adoption for your existing tools, improving the ROI on the software you’re already paying for.

Supercharge your frontline with an employee super-app

It provides an intuitive user experience

Investing in the best frontline tech is pointless if you can’t persuade employees to use it. So you need tech solutions that can prove high usage and adoption rates.   

Bear in mind that 56% of deskless workers are using personal tech tools instead of workplace tools. As well as posing security risks, this illustrates a really important point when choosing frontline tech.

Your chosen solution has to compete with the user experience (UX) provided by the most popular social media platforms. So you need tools that offer an intuitive, friction-free UX.

These intuitive tools don’t have a steep learning curve. Instead – because they’re so similar to the apps your employees already use out of work – employees can pick them up and start using them with next to no training.

Because they’re so easy to use, these apps provide clear employee benefits from the get-go. This helps to drive organic app adoption and ensures a higher proportion of your workforce downloads and uses your intranet.

It’s a mobile-first solution

Frontline workers don’t sit at a desk. They don’t always have a company email address, let alone a company computer. Therefore, any workplace tech you choose must be available via a mobile device.

The best solutions have a mobile-first design. They’re not tools designed for desktop with an app added as an afterthought. Instead, they offer the same great features and user experience on a smartphone as they do on other devices.

This allows frontline team members to stay up-to-date with company news, book time off, or look at their shift schedule while they do their daily work. They can access workplace tools from any location, at any time.

Blink: an employee app for frontline workers

The Blink employee app is a modern intranet for a modern frontline workforce. Our app acts as the digital front door for your organization. 

It provides access to the tools and systems your entire workforce needs day to day. And it integrates seamlessly with the software you already use. So employees can access all workplace software using one secure single sign-on (SSO).

As a mobile-first solution, Blink provides the same great user experience on smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers. Frontline workers have exactly the same access as their desk-based peers to company culture, co-worker connection, and workplace resources. 

If you’re looking to improve the frontline employee experience, connect your workforce, and increase productivity, frontline tech is a great place to start. 

Book a Blink demo. Or discover how Blink works for people teams by reading our recent article: Transforming HR teams with the help of a frontline app.

What's Considered a Small Business in America's Fastest-Growing Cities?

A small and medium-sized business (SMB) in the U.S. is generally defined as an independently owned and operated company with fewer than 500 employees. But that number is the starting point, not the whole answer. Industry size standards, measured by headcount or annual revenue, vary widely depending on the sector you operate in, and the cutoffs matter more than most business owners realize.

Especially if you're in one of the top US cities for small businesses. In Austin, Nashville, Charlotte, or Raleigh, "small business" isn't just a label - it's a qualifier for grants, tax credits, and city-funded incentives that can directly affect your bottom line.

Get the definition right, and doors open. Get it wrong, and you may not even know what you're missing.

What is the Definition of a Small Business?

According to the U.S. Department of State, a small business is an independently owned and operated company that is not dominant in its field on a national basis. In practice, that means it's not a subsidiary of a larger corporation, not publicly traded, and not the market leader in its sector.

For businesses with on-the-go workforces such as construction, hospitality, healthcare, and logistics, "small" tends to describe organizational culture and agility more than actual reach. A 200-person home care agency, a restaurant group spread across three cities, a construction outfit running multiple sites at once: all SMBs by standard industry definitions, all dealing with the same core problem. Keeping a dispersed, deskless workforce connected, informed, and performing.

What Qualifies as a Small Business?

Qualifying as an SMB comes down to two things: your industry classification and where your business sits relative to the size threshold assigned to that industry.

Industry size standards use the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) to assign a size threshold to every business type. Most standards work in one of two ways. The first is average annual receipts (revenue), averaged over your most recent three to five complete fiscal years. The second is the number of employees, averaged across each pay period over the preceding 24 months. Full-time, part-time, and temporary workers all count equally.

How Many Employees Does a Small Business Have?

The 500-employee figure is the one that often gets quoted. However, the actual number varies quite a bit by industry.

Manufacturing businesses are assessed on headcount, with standards ranging from 250 to 1,500 employees, depending on the sub-sector. Wholesale trade and retail businesses have thresholds between 50 and 250 employees. Construction, healthcare, and hospitality businesses are typically assessed on revenue rather than headcount, so the question of employee count is slightly beside the point for them.

Some industries are classified as small with 100 employees. Others allow up to 1,500. The 500-employee figure is a midpoint. Your specific NAICS code is what actually matters.

This distinction catches a lot of frontline-heavy businesses off guard. A growing healthcare provider or a multi-site hospitality group can cross a headcount milestone faster than leadership realizes. Checking your standard before you hit that threshold keeps you on top of what you qualify for.

Why the Small Business Definition Matters

Getting your classification right isn't a compliance formality. In the fastest-growing cities in America, it's a direct route to funding and advantages that most businesses never fully pursue.

City and State Grants 

Fast-growing cities actively compete for small business investment. Austin's Business Expansion Program ties performance-based funding to job creation thresholds and local hiring criteria. Charlotte, Nashville, and Raleigh run comparable programs. You need to certify your size to get in the door.

Government-Backed Financing 

Federally backed loan programs are only available to businesses that qualify as small. These typically carry lower rates and more flexible terms than conventional financing, which matters when you're scaling.

Federal Contracting. 

For healthcare providers with public contracts, construction businesses bidding on infrastructure, or facilities management companies on public-sector sites, small business designation determines which contracts you can actually compete for.

Tax Credits. 

Federal and state tax credit programs frequently use official size standards as an eligibility filter. Miss your classification and you could be leaving credits on the table, or applying for programs you don't qualify for.

In markets where rents are rising, the talent pool is competitive, and grant windows close on fixed dates, your classification is a commercial decision.

Importance of Small Businesses in America's Fastest-Growing Cities

Small businesses are the engine of the U.S. economy, and in fast-growing cities, they're what make a main street worth walking down.

According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), there are over 33.2 million small businesses in the U.S., making up 99.9% of all American businesses. They employ more than 61.7 million people, nearly 46.4% of the entire private workforce, and account for 43.5% of U.S. GDP. Between 1995 and 2021, they created over 17.3 million net new jobs.

In healthcare, construction, hospitality, retail, and logistics, small businesses aren't on the margins of those industries. A regional home care network. A family-owned construction firm running public infrastructure contracts. A restaurant group across a booming food district. These businesses employ their neighbors, shape their communities, and set the tone for what frontline work actually feels like day-to-day.

They're also the businesses most exposed to today's retention pressures. Frontline turnover in hospitality runs around 19%. Healthcare is comparable. Replacing one frontline employee costs anywhere from 33% to 200% of their annual salary - manageable for a large business, genuinely destabilizing for a 50- or 100-person operation.

Small Business Resources

Knowing your classification opens the door to a lot of programs designed specifically for small businesses.

Government-Backed Loans

Federal financing options cover most stages of business growth. General-purpose loans handle working capital, equipment, and real estate. Fixed asset loan programs are designed for larger purchases. Microloan programs cater to smaller funding needs, typically under $50,000, and are often the right entry point for early-stage businesses. Federal mentorship programs and Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) also offer free one-to-one advisory services at any stage of growth

Grants

City and state-level funding is also worth exploring. Many cities run dedicated SMB grant programs, offering everything from performance-based funding tied to hiring and wage targets to training programs and business expansion support. State governments typically maintain searchable databases of tax credits, workforce development grants, and industry-specific incentives, most of which use official size standards as the eligibility baseline. Your city's economic development department and your state's business incentives portal are the two places to start.

Government Contracting

SMB status opens doors in federal and local contracting that aren't available to larger firms. Federal set-aside programs reserve a portion of government contracts specifically for qualifying businesses. Registering as a verified small business makes you visible to federal procurement officers actively looking for SMB suppliers.

Workforce Tools

Classification and funding matter. So does having the right infrastructure to actually run your team. For businesses with distributed or deskless workforces, the right communication platform reduces the real cost of keeping people connected and informed. Blink's Small Business offering gives growing teams a communications hub, HR tools, documents, IT support and team chat in a single mobile app, accessible from wherever people are working, not just from a desk.

Types of Small Business Structures

Your business structure matters alongside your size classification. When you apply for grants or financing, the two are often assessed together. For a deeper look at how structure affects your options in fast-growing markets, see our guide to the four types of small business structures for high-growth hubs.

The four most common structures in the U.S.:

• Sole proprietorship: One owner, no legal separation between the person and the business. Simple to set up, but all liability is personal. Common in consulting, trades, and freelance work.
• Partnership: Two or more people share ownership, profits, and responsibility. General partnerships split liability equally; limited partnerships let some partners cap their exposure. Standard in professional services.
• LLC: The most popular structure for small businesses that want personal asset protection without corporate overhead. Flexible on taxes, low administrative burden, and relatively easy to run.
• Corporation (C-Corp or S-Corp): More complex to establish, but stronger liability protection and more options for outside investment. S-Corps have pass-through taxation and a 100-shareholder cap; C-Corps don't have either restriction.

For frontline businesses, the LLC is the most common starting point, with many transitioning to C-Corp structures as they bring on investors or scale. Beyond liability, your structure shapes how grant programs, lenders, and city incentive schemes assess your application.

How to Determine If Your Business Qualifies as Small

Three steps.

First, find your NAICS code via the U.S. Census Bureau's lookup tool and run it through the federal Size Standards Tool to get the threshold for your industry.

Second, calculate your size. For revenue-based standards, average your annual receipts over the last three to five complete fiscal years. For headcount standards, average your payroll over the preceding 24 months, including part-time and temporary staff. If another business can control yours through majority ownership or a contractual arrangement, include their employees and revenue too.

Third, re-check annually. Federal size standards are reviewed on a rolling basis. Growth moves fast, and size status can shift between grant cycles.

Benefits of Small Businesses

For workers, the benefits of working for a small business are often personal in ways that don't show up in a job listing. 

Smaller businesses move faster in hiring, communicate more directly between leadership and workers, and give people a clearer sense of their own contribution - things large employers genuinely struggle to replicate. For a practical look at how small businesses in growth hubs can use creative benefits to compete for frontline talent, see our dedicated guide.

Agility matters too. Small businesses change course faster than large ones. Schedule adjustments, role changes, new tools, responses to local market conditions, all without the inertia that slows larger organizations. 

And there's a community dimension that doesn't show up in a Profit and Loss statement. Small businesses in fast-growing cities hire locally, source locally, and tend to reinvest locally. That builds customer loyalty and earns goodwill from city administrations that are actively trying to support growth in their markets.

Challenges Facing Small Businesses

Running a small business in a fast-growing market is an opportunity. It's also a grind.

Employee Retention

Frontline retention is the biggest pressure point right now. Hospitality turnover runs around 19% annually. Healthcare is in a similar territory. Replacing one frontline employee costs between 33% and 200% of their annual salary, and that math compounds fast when you're losing three or four people in the same quarter. 

Rising Costs

Rising costs add pressure on top: commercial rents in booming cities, labor cost increases, and supply chain volatility. Businesses already running lean don't have much room to absorb any of it. According to Indeed's Global Work Wellbeing Report, workers in healthcare, transport, and hospitality are reporting declining wellbeing even as their workloads stay high. For small operators who depend on stable frontline teams, that shows up in the weekly schedule.

Communication Gaps

Communication gaps are costly and common. Most workers in construction, healthcare, and hospitality don't have a company email address. Updates land on notice boards nobody reads, or in WhatsApp groups that create compliance risk and give you zero visibility. Critical information doesn't reach the right people. The technology to fix this exists.

Multi-site and distributed workforce management adds coordination complexity that grows faster than headcount. For more on the operational side, see our guide on how to manage employees in a small business.

How Blink Supports Small Business Operations

The businesses doing well in high-growth markets right now have invested in systems that keep their people connected and in the loop. A frontline team that actually hears from leadership, gets clear shift information, and feels like part of the organization performs better, stays longer, and tends to recruit for you.

Blink is a single mobile app where every worker gets the news feed, shift briefings, HR forms, team chat, and recognition they need, on the phone they already carry. For small businesses managing frontline teams in fast-growing cities, that's the operational foundation. The rest gets built on top of it.

Get started with Blink today.

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Supercharge engagement across your employee intranet

It might be harsh, but we've all experienced it: Legacy intranet systems are bad at attracting and engaging workers. You may even find that staff actively avoid a traditional intranet, citing outdated content and a clunky interface as reasons to stay away.

If this sounds familiar, your employee intranet is crying out for a glow-up. 

A new and improved intranet is a place where your workforce can access the information, connection, and support they need to do their jobs well. It contains engaging, useful content that has employees logging in multiple times a day.

This unified platform, built around the needs of your workforce, can improve internal communications and amplify company culture. It also has a positive impact on employee engagement, satisfaction, employee productivity, and retention rates.

Ready to turn your intranet into an employee magnet? This guide will help you create a modern employee intranet, with all the essential features and tools you need to transform platform engagement and the employee experience.

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How to turn your employee intranet into a hub of engagement

Set the stage: Design your homepage to make the ultimate first impression

Get your intranet experience off to the best possible start by treating your homepage as a digital storefront. Elevate visuals and copy so they reflect the consumer-grade experience employees enjoy on tech tools away from work.

Use vibrant imagery, brand colors, and an intuitive layout to draw employees in. And put the most important information front and center. That might include company news, employee recognition content, or your latest events.

Some other must-have intranet homepage elements include:

• Clear navigation. Logical menu options make it easy for employees to navigate your intranet. Employees should be able to access all communication channels and resources in just a few clicks. You can also add a search bar and provide robust search functionality to help them uncover any and all intranet content.‍
• Dynamic announcements. Your intranet homepage should feature real-time updates. This makes it easy for employees to get up-to-date news — and it reassures them that your intranet provides relevant, reliable information as standard. Use embedded videos, images, interactive tools, and compelling copy to direct employee attention to your announcements.
• ‍Quick links to essential tools. A good employee intranet platform acts as a central repository for all your digital workplace software. So whether employees want to swap shifts, view their pay stubs, or complete the next module of their training program, your intranet homepage should provide quick links to their most commonly used tools.

Also, bear in mind that your homepage will make zero impression if employees can’t access it. Frontline workers, in particular, struggle to access legacy intranet systems. So ensure your intranet is available on the devices and via the login methods that employees can actually use. That might mean honing or launching an employee app so workers can log into your intranet via their smartphones.

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Make it personal: Tailor the experience for every employee

Imagine you’re a bus driver working for a transit organization and — thanks to your organization’s employee app — you log onto the company intranet using your smartphone.

What do you expect to see on your dashboard?

Are you greeted with details of the next Casual Friday event? A celebration of the previous office lunch? A link to the latest Excel training module?

Or do you see quick links to a shift swap tool and your pay stubs? Do you see the latest route and safety updates — and a post celebrating the driver of the month?

When an intranet dashboard offers a personalized experience, tailored to the role, department, location, tenure, and interests of each employee, you can count on:

• Higher levels of engagement
• Higher adoption rates
• More intranet logins

So when giving your employee intranet a much-needed glow-up, make personalization one of your guiding lights.

Segment employees so they only receive relevant content. Allow employees to customize their intranet dashboard with the widgets and resources they use most. Use AI to surface relevant content and updates based on an employee’s intranet interactions.

Of course, there will be internal communications that are relevant to the whole organization. So there should also be space on employee dashboards for high-level company announcements and mandatory reads. These messages keep employees in the loop and connected to wider business goals.

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Keep it fresh: Ensure your intranet is dynamic and up to date

If we consider the big social media platforms as masters of engagement, it’s clear that up-to-date content is key to creating an employee intranet that your workers want to spend time on. Your intranet platform can quickly feel stale if you fail to maintain the right cadence of effective communication.

So, with that in mind, here’s what you need to do to keep your intranet content fresh.

Post content regularly

A content calendar helps you plan and create content in advance. Seeing everything down on paper, it’s easy to plan a varied mix of engaging content ideas, including news feed posts, blogs, videos, and leadership messages, while leaving space for critical updates too. 

Find your comms cadence

It’s a delicate balance. You need to keep employees engaged with the platform. But you don’t want to overwhelm them with information. To find the right comms cadence for your organization, play around with your content schedule and keep an eye on platform engagement.

Like Coastal Medical — an emergency and non-emergency medical transportation organization — you’ll soon find the sweet spot. Their intranet now has a 98% adoption rate and gets 5.7 daily app opens per user.

Harness employee-generated content

You don’t have to leave content creation to your employee communications team. Encourage employees to share their own posts, photos, and Stories to create a sense of community. This informal content tends to prompt the likes and comments of coworkers.

Commit to regular content maintenance

The traditional intranet is a place where resources go to gather digital dust. Fail to update intranet content and employees come to see your content hub as unreliable and irrelevant. So keep track of publication dates and regularly audit old intranet content, updating and archiving content as needed.

Take inspiration from social media managers

Create Insta-worthy internal comms and your intranet will become irresistible to employees. So make like a social media manager and create news feed posts that are quick to access and easy to digest. Use multimedia visuals to stop their scroll and keep any copy concise and to the point.

Bonus points if your intranet has easy mobile access — especially helpful for frontline and remote teams.

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Foster interactivity: Make your employee intranet a two-way communication hub

Two-way internal communication is another intranet essential. When employees can use the intranet to build connections with coworkers and to share their ideas and feedback with leadership, they’re much more likely to hang out there.

As we’ve already mentioned, employee-generated content is a great way to increase intranet engagement. You can support interactivity using the following key features too:

• Engagement tools. Use polls, surveys, and forums to request employee feedback. If you have a willing leadership team, you can also host live Q&A sessions.
• Recognition features. Use your intranet to celebrate employee achievements — and encourage coworkers to add their congratulations too.
• Collaboration spaces. Create social Communities, where employees can exchange ideas, collaborate on work projects, and connect over shared hobbies.
• Gamification. Use progress trackers, badges, and points to gamify the intranet experience. You can give rewards in return for activities like login streaks or survey completions.

Measure and adapt: Continuously improve the employee experience

No matter how much careful thought you put into your intranet software glow-up, it’s rare to get every little detail right, first time. And this is where intranet data proves invaluable.

Analytics are one of the must-have modern intranet software features. They allow you to track intranet and internal communication metrics, including:

• Page views and time spent on pages
• The number of comments, likes, and shares associated with each news feed post
• Employee adoption and login rates
• User satisfaction scores

As well as tracking key metrics, be sure to seek feedback from employees using surveys and polls. Viewed together, this data will reveal which elements of your intranet solution and content offering are working well — and which could use improvement.

You can then set intranet performance goals and identify ways to adapt your intranet to keep ahead of ever-evolving employee needs.

Build an employee intranet your workforce will love

Make your employee intranet more magnetic and it can become one of the most-used communication tools in your digital workplace. To achieve this, you need to cultivate a social intranet platform, bringing it in line with internal communication trends and employee expectations.

Personalized, multimedia content. Opportunities to interact with coworkers and leaders. Visual appeal and an unbeatable user experience. Data-driven platform improvements. 

Incorporate these social features into your employee intranet and you create a better digital employee experience. You can count on high levels of intranet engagement, a stronger corporate culture, and a happier workforce.

So what should you do first?

Start by taking a good hard look at your current intranet solution. There may be underutilized features on there with the potential to transform the intranet experience.

If, however, you feel you’ve maxed out your current intranet solution and still aren’t attracting employees to the platform, it may be time for a software switch. The best intranet software providers are built with the modern workforce and the latest internal comms trends in mind.

‍Blink. And see what a modern intranet solution can do for your entire company.

“Prove it.”

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

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

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

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

1. Ditch vanity metrics for outcomes

Email opens. Page views. Likes.

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

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

So translate comms problems into operational and financial realities:

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

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

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

- Ricky Sickelmore, Blink

2. Start with hard costs and operational efficiency

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ask department heads:

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

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

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

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

Ricky Sickelmore

4. Prove time-to-value through onboarding

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

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

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

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

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

5. Position your platform as the digital front door

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

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

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

If your internal comms platform:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Baseline business realities that leadership recognizes:

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

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

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

Common mistakes to avoid when proving internal comms ROI

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

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

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Be the change maker

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

Translate comms into outcomes.

Translate friction into cost.

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

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