Hey! I'm Theo Booth, I am originally from the UK but I have spent the majority of my life trying to travel as much as possible and I have lived in 5 countries.
Before becoming a software engineer I was in the shipping industry, initially as a broker before becoming a trader.
I did a Software Engineering bootcamp during lockdown before joining the Solutions Engineering team at Blink as a Full Stack Developer in September of last year.
The responsibilities of the role are twofold: Firstly, to scope out and build custom integrations that can service our clients needs; and secondly, to work with customers to find solutions to/tailor bespoke apps for the pain points in their current ways of working.
The culture at Blink is second to none and the diverse team is a mix of weird and wonderful people all driving towards the same goal. It’s a lovely place to work!
Hey! I'm Theo Booth, I am originally from the UK but I have spent the majority of my life trying to travel as much as possible and I have lived in 5 countries.
Before becoming a software engineer I was in the shipping industry, initially as a broker before becoming a trader.
I did a Software Engineering bootcamp during lockdown before joining the Solutions Engineering team at Blink as a Full Stack Developer in September of last year.
The responsibilities of the role are twofold: Firstly, to scope out and build custom integrations that can service our clients needs; and secondly, to work with customers to find solutions to/tailor bespoke apps for the pain points in their current ways of working.
The culture at Blink is second to none and the diverse team is a mix of weird and wonderful people all driving towards the same goal. It’s a lovely place to work!
Managing frontline employees is an altogether different task than leading a desk-based team.
For one, you’re usually working in shift patterns and you might have insufficient tooling to keep you all connected. This connection gap makes it all the harder to navigate the “Great attrition” risks and widespread disengagement that most first-line/frontline managers are faced with.
But we don’t need to linger on the reasons why managing the frontline can be hard. Let’s focus instead on how to do it more effectively.
Because if we can empower first-line managers to better manage their teams, we can help reduce attrition, increase engagement, and improve the employee experience for everyone.
In this guide, we'll discussyour role as a frontline manager, the challenges faced by frontline teams and their managers, and the best practice approaches you can adopt when managing frontline employees.
Understanding the first-line manager role
Frontline managers play a pivotal role in any deskless organization and account for roughly 60% of a company’s management ranks. They are responsible for managing the day-to-day activities of their teams and ensuring that their organization's frontline remains strong and efficient.
Ultimately, the role of a first-line leader is to enable frontline workers to do their jobs effectively. This might include setting objectives, delegating tasks, providing feedback on frontline employee performance, and ultimately driving organizational success. But it also means giving positive and constructive feedback: celebrating a job well done and stepping in to rectify when things aren’t going right.
And yet, first-line managers are often “accidental managers”, too. They might have been promoted to a managerial role because of their subject matter expertise and hands-on experience in the business — but they’ve yet to receive any dedicated management or employee engagement training to prepare them for the job. A large proportion (around 40% based on recent Harvard Business Review research) are first-time managers as well, in the very first year of their leadership journey.
Maybe that’s a description that resonates? And if it is, you’ll also be able to appreciate how that makes the role more difficult.
First-line managers: overworked and under-invested in?
First-line managers can be the hardest working and most undervalued level of management — under pressure from all angles and expected to pick up the slack caused by frontline labor shortages.
When an organization propels someone into a leadership role with insufficient training and insufficient support, we can hardly be surprised if they struggle to perform. And many first-line managers do: 60% in fact, over their first two years.
Flipping that figure around and helping first-line managers to perform is relatively easy to achieve.
A frontline manager’s potential can be unlocked by:
Providing them with tools for proper team-wide communication and workforce management
Investing in employee engagement training to help manage and improve team morale
Alleviating the strain of manual, repetitive tasks to free up their time to better manage their teams
Doing so is in everyone’s best interests. Frontline employees will receive a better and more fulfilling workplace experience which helps them deliver a better quality of service to customers. The impact of this will be felt on the organization’s bottom line, making frontline manager empowerment a business-critical mission for the C-Suite and other leaders.
If you’re a first-line manager, it’s good to know your worth.
You are in a unique position within the organization — you’re frontline-facing and can act as a touchpoint between frontline workers and your desk-based peers. You can also be the catalyst for better frontline employee engagement and motivation.
Common challenges when managing frontline employees
If you’re facing challenges as a first-line manager, know that you’re not alone.
There are a number of common issues impacting frontline teams, including:
Poor communication and engagement
Attrition and turnover
Labor shortages
Unstable service levels and disappointed customers
Lack of useful tooling
Lack of training for frontline teams
Lack of training for first-line managers themselves
Attrition, turnover, and the unavoidable staff shortages that follow can seriously impact the quality of service provided by the frontline workforce. Frontline teams increasingly struggle to cover more tasks with fewer resources — and it’s often the first-line manager who is left racing to fill empty shifts, deliver on tasks, or explain the drop in productivity to other senior management.
High turnover rates can also have a detrimental effect on frontline team morale, as new employees come in and existing ones leave at a rapid rate. Open communication between you and your team — which also means providing fit-for-purpose employee engagement tools and solutions, and employee engagement activities — will be key in helping to build trust and loyalty within the organization.
Finally, frontline managers must effectively advocate for their teams when they are not getting adequate support from executives and training from the business. This may involve having difficult conversations with the C-Suite or presenting frontline engagement data that shows the value of investing in frontline teams.
7 best practices when managing frontline employees
1. Thorough onboarding
It’s important to provide all new team members with a detailed onboarding program. You want to create a sense of community for them and ensure that they know any responsibilities and KPI expectations for the role from the get-go.
All frontline employees should receive adequate training for their specific roles and ensure they understand the requirements of their job. This will be a compliance must-do in many frontline organizations, of course, but even if the role is light on health and safety or legal regulations, you’ll want to take the time to outline the responsibilities clearly.
Onboarding can be a time-consuming process but it's an early driver of employee engagement, so explore the tools you have available to help lighten the load.
Again, the business case for doing so is easy to sell to decision-makers: the faster you can onboard new joiners, the sooner they can help move the business forward (and the less time and focus you’ll lose on your other essential tasks).
2. Active listening
Listening — and we mean really listening — to your frontline teams is essential for successful frontline management.
It can be difficult for frontline employees to feel heard, as they are often more spread out than desk-based colleagues and have less access to resources and support. As a frontline manager, it is important to ask for, actively listen to, and then share the concerns of your team.
3. Communicate across the board
Frontline teams have a unique brief when it comes to internal communications, and there aren’t too many tools that are really fit for purpose.
Having access to a mobile-first frontline employee appcan help keep everyone in the organization connected. As a first-line manager, you can lead by example — posting and commenting on company updates, messaging frontline employees directly and within groups, as well as making sure that senior leaders are seeing what’s being shared.
By prioritizing communication with your frontline employees, you can ensure they always feel informed, appreciated, and engaged — no matter how infrequently you see them face to face.
4. Support and pastoral care
Management support is key for each team member to feel valued and to keep morale high knowing that their supervisor has their back. This can be done through regular check-ins, providing tailored resources for their development, and actively listening to — and actioning — their feedback for the business.
Empowering your frontline workforce with the support of intuitive scheduling solutions and the autonomy to manage their own workloads can also help them feel valued and give them a sense of responsibility.
Finally, providing instant access to mental health resources will enable employees to feel safer in the work environment, and more comfortable in approaching their manager with any issues they may have.
A TikTok video showing a restaurant manager comforting a tearful employee sparked a big conversation about pastoral care for frontline teams. You will find an approach that feels comfortable and beneficial for you and the people you work with every day.
5. Professional development
Many frontline workers feel that they do not receive the same access to career advancement opportunities as their desk-based colleagues. This can leave frontline staff feeling undervalued and, unsurprisingly, employee motivation starts to dwindle.
Professional development is key for frontline employees. Frontline managers know what is expected of them, and what it takes to be successful in the role. If you see those characteristics in someone else, develop them. This might mean connecting them with development opportunities, recommending them for promotion or training, as well as checking that your frontline staff are happy with their career development via ongoing employee surveys.
By investing in your frontline team’s growth, you can ensure that their skills are kept up to date, increasing their confidence and improving their job satisfaction.
6. Reward hard work and commitment
It’s essential to provide frontline employees with tangible rewards for their hard work and dedication, just as you would your desk-based staff. Not seeing your deskless employees every day doesn’t equal forgetting about their contributions to your company — that’s something you may need to remind desk-based senior leaders.
Rewarding your frontline can be done in a variety of ways: bonus pay, gift cards, lunch vouchers, or even just a public shoutout across the company. This helps to show appreciation for their efforts and encourages them to continue striving for excellence. It also allows you to boost employee morale and create a positive working environment.
While rewarding great work is important, in the current economic climate, businesses don't always have the funds to pay frontline workers more. That's why reward and recognition should always go hand-in-hand.
7. Recognize team and individual achievements
Employee recognition, small or large, is crucial for motivating and inspiring team members.
Showing appreciation is a great way to boost morale and create a positive working environment. Recognizing employees can come in various forms such as verbal praise, recognition in meetings, and virtual employee recognition or Kudos.
If someone has dealt with a difficult customer or situation well, recognize this. If someone has worked extra hard to ensure quality of service, recognize this. Acknowledging great work can help empower employees and make them feel appreciated for their efforts. It’ll also make them more likely to perform that way again.
To retain a frontline worker and enable them to become a valuable asset to your organization, you need to ensure their efforts are recognized. By following this advice, you can show them that their hard work is appreciated and foster an environment of engagement and success.
Expert tips from frontline managers
Healthcare ops expert and former President of Administrative Operations at Elara Caring, Ian Gordon, has some key insights for us on the topic of engaging with frontline employees.
Here are just a few of his expert tips for navigating frontline management and engaging your deskless workforce:
Create bi-directional communication: Communicating issues is a team effort. It starts with the CEO and runs the full way through to the frontline. Everybody has to own it
Redeploy resources to the frontline: Increasing investments into the skills and capabilities of your frontline can be a true differentiator in the marketplace. It is also a good reason for your frontline to feel appreciated and invested in. Wondering where this extra budget will come from? If you can help retain employees with training and development, then you won’t need to spend so much on continuous recruitment
The right tech: Being a frontline worker, you can’t spend a lot of time signing in and navigating complex tech. Having hub-based access to all-inclusive and easy-to-navigate information can really be a benefit to employees
Keeping frontline employees engaged is a key part of running a successful business.
Strategies for employee engagement and retention should cover the seven tips mentioned above. As well as providing accessible resources, frequent rewards and recognition, and implementing tailored technology solutions, you can foster an environment of engagement that will help to retain your frontline workers and enable them to become valuable assets for the organization.
Remember: investing in the growth of your frontline team is essential for success. With the right tools and support in place, you can create an environment of engagement in which everyone feels able to thrive.
Enable: Give your frontline the tools, information, and inspiration they need to go above and beyond.
Engage: Give your frontline instant access to the news, people, and information they need to feel part of the team.
Understand: Use data and insights you need to make the best decisions for your frontline team.
With our one-stop solution, you can get rid of complex and outdated processes that are blocking your frontline's satisfaction — and their success. With Blink, you can finally empower your frontline with the tools they need to succeed.
An ageing population, complex patient needs, staff shortages, and technological transformation are stretching teams to the limit.
The fallout from COVID-19 still lingers. In the UK, the NHS has a waiting list of 7.37 million cases. And while the healthcare strikes of 2023 may have been resolved with pay rises, salary disputes rumble on.
If all that wasn’t enough, we can add long, inflexible shifts and emotionally demanding work into the mix. It’s no wonder that nearly one-third of healthcare employees are disengaged.
This is a problem. Because disengagement hits employee retention, patient care, and any new initiatives you try to roll out. It seems that employee engagement in healthcare is in need of urgent attention — STAT.
Ready to rewrite the prescription? Here, we explore what healthcare employee engagement looks like, why it matters, and how to foster it within your organization.
Too many healthcare organizations are getting employee engagement wrong
After hundreds of conversations with healthcare professionals, one thing has become crystal clear to the Blink team. Employee engagement is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the workplace.
Too often, it gets used as a catch-all term for every good thing a worker might do — from smiling at patients to hitting their KPIs.
An engaged healthcare worker is thought to be better organized, happier, more satisfied, more loyal, healthier, more motivated, more productive, better at communicating, and more prepared to go the extra mile.
Some of these behaviors are indicative of engagement. But there are a couple of key problems with this definition:
It’s unrealistic. No one can embody all of those traits all of the time — especially in a high-stress, resource-stretched healthcare environment.
It’s vague. Phrases like “go the extra mile” make engagement sound fluffy — a nice-to-have and not the essential driver of staff performance it really is.
It’s unmeasurable. Tracking all those behaviors would be tricky. So measuring and improving employee engagement feels like too big a challenge.
When engagement is defined as a wish-list, finding practical solutions is tough. In healthcare, real engagement is specific, measurable, and tied directly to better patient care.
What employee engagement in healthcare isn’t
When figuring out what employee engagement in healthcare is, it can help to start with all the things it isn’t. Employee engagement in healthcare is not:
Satisfaction: A satisfied nurse might feel satisfied with their shift pattern. But that doesn’t mean they won’t walk if another hospital offers better pay or hours.
Happiness: A care worker may feel happy at work because they have a lot of free time to chat with co-workers. But that doesn’t mean they’re committed to the very best patient care.
Motivation: A paramedic may feel motivated to work hard because they have their eye set on a promotion. But that doesn’t mean they’re invested in today’s patients or their current team.
Empowerment: An organization may pride itself on the autonomy it affords to its staff. But staff will only take action and make decisions independently when they feel engaged and supported.
Zero stress: A brain surgeon may feel stressed when operating but still be highly engaged. An optimal level of stress can actually increase engagement.
Productivity: A hospital porter may transport patients efficiently all day long. But that doesn’t mean they’re interacting with patients and putting them at ease.
Engagement isn’t a fixed state. It ebbs and flows — from shift to shift and year to year. And it isn’t the same for every employee or every organization.
Whatemployee engagement in healthcare is
In healthcare, engagement isn’t about surface-level positivity or breakneck productivity. It’s about creating the conditions where people — often working in high-stakes, emotionally and physically demanding environments — can bring their best focus, care, and energy to patients.
To achieve this, you need an employee engagement strategy that goes beyond the HR team to involve the whole of your organization.
1. Connection to the work. Not just liking the job but feeling that their work makes a difference, that their skills are used to their fullest, and that even the smallest task has meaning within a patient’s care journey.
2. Leader behaviors. Day-to-day interactions with managers have a huge impact on employee engagement. Employees who feel that their manager treats them with respect, treats everyone equally, cares about job satisfaction, and encourages teamwork, are more likely to be engaged.
3. Commitment to safety. Staff need to believe their organization is serious about high-quality care and safety. That means being able to flag safety concerns without fear of a backlash, and seeing lessons learned when mistakes happen.
These drivers are built into everyday moments — a handover that runs smoothly because everyone was kept in the loop, a break that’s actually honored, a manager who has your back when a patient’s family is upset.
Underpinning them are crucial workplace behaviors: clear internal communication, a culture that supports all staff, and strong connections between co-workers. The organization is dedicated to a positive employee experience, not just a positive patient experience.
When these elements are in place, employees are more likely to feel valued, remain loyal to your organization, and consistently provide the highest standard of patient care.
How can you tell if your healthcare employees are engaged?
We’ve talked about how engaged employees feel about their roles and the organizations they work for. But how is this expressed in their day-to-day work?
Engaged employees aren’t always smiling, stress-free, or happy to work extra hours. Instead, engagement can be seen in the small, meaningful ways they care for patients and their teams.
In practice, healthcare or hospital employee engagement may look like any of the following:
Escorting lost family members to the right place
Washing hands and checking IV lines without fail
Helping a patient back to their room after noticing their yellow “fall risk” bracelet
Listening patiently and actively as a patient asks for details about their medications
Being mindful of quiet times at night
Delivering meals while they’re still hot
Wheeling a resident outside to feel snow for the first time in years
Offering a hand or foot massage during a quiet moment
Why healthcare employee engagement matters
Engaged employees tend to be more satisfied in their roles. They experience lower levels of stress and better workplace relationships.
Achieve high levels of employee engagement at your healthcare organization, and you’re likely to see these other benefits, too.
Better patient outcomes
What’s good for staff is good for patients. Healthcare organizations with high levels of staff engagement are three times more likely to deliver a top patient experience. They perform better in terms of safety, too.
Engaged employees are more likely to hold themselves to the highest patient care standards, whether that means double-checking a patient’s medication list or sanitizing their hands more frequently.
Improved retention
Employee retention in healthcare is a major challenge. In the past five years, the average US hospital turned over an incredible 106.6% of its workforce. In the UK, 1 in 5 NHS workers is planning to leave within the year.
When staff leave, patient experience suffers. We know that for every 1% increase in employee turnover, patient experience scores drop an average of 2 percentiles.
Here’s the kicker. Disengaged employees are twice as likely to leave your organization as highly engaged employees. They’re also more likely to call in sick, adding even more strain to overstretched teams.
During a time of labor shortages and increased healthcare demand, boosting employee engagement is a critical healthcare retention strategy.
Costs fall and revenue rises
Turnover takes a financial toll on healthcare organizations. The British Medical Association (BMA) estimates that the cost of replacing a single doctor can be more than £300,000. Over in the US, the average cost of turnover for a bedside registered nurse (RN) is $61,110.
When employees are engaged, you reduce staff turnover and recruitment costs. And because familiar faces lead to higher patient experience ratings, you improve profitability too. Your organization enjoys customer loyalty, a better brand reputation, and increased referrals.
How to boost employee engagement in healthcare
To boost employee engagement in healthcare organizations, you need activities and strategies suited to busy frontline staff. Here are 9 strategies that work in healthcare settings.
1. Bring comms to the frontline
In too many facilities, staff still find out about shift changes or new protocols by wading through their emails, squinting at a faded noticeboard, or logging into a clunky intranet.
It’s not easy for busy frontline workers to get the information they need to do their jobs well. And seeking out resources takes them away from patients.
To reach every member of the workforce, internal communication in healthcare needs to be mobile and instant. It has to meet employees where they are.
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A quick update on the news feed. Shift information shared over group chat. A new safety protocol in the content hub. Make internal communication available on every employee smartphone and you keep staff informed and connected.
2. Put everything in one place
The right tech tools make employee communications easy to access — for even the busiest frontline worker. But you can improve engagement further by putting all workplace resources onto the same mobile-first digital dashboard.
Policies, contacts, shift schedules, pay stubs, PPE request forms, even quick links to other workplace tools, are all just a tap away. So your people spend less time searching and more time doing what they do best — caring for patients.
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3. Personalize the experience
What matters to the nurse on a night shift doesn’t necessarily matter to staff in the hospital kitchen or the team up in head office. So if you blast everyone with the same updates, it quickly turns into background noise.
To engage people with comms and organizational culture, you need to tailor the employee experience. Ensure employees in different departments, shifts, and roles see information that relates to them with the help of targeted alerts, segmented comms, custom dashboards, and shared-interest communities.
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4. Build co-worker connections
The emotional toll in healthcare is real. And without strong team connections, burnout hits harder. Worryingly, according to NHS workforce research, just 63% of employees say they feel a strong personal attachment to their team.
This is understandable. Building team bonds in healthcare can be tough. Teams are stressed and overstretched. Employees may work alone in patients’ homes or work shift patterns that rarely align.
The fix? Make space for camaraderie. Give people spaces to swap advice, share wins, or offer support after a rough shift. Those small moments of connection spark a sense of belonging, another powerful driver of engagement.
5. Lead by example
Engagement starts at the top. When healthcare employees are confident in senior leadership, trusting them to promote patient safety and demonstrating the organization’s values, they’re more likely to feel engaged in their work.
So leaders have to lead by example — and be visible to employees. That means showing up on internal communication channels, adopting an open style of communication, welcoming the input of employees, and consistently sharing the mission that drives your organization.
6. Celebrate your workforce
Too often in healthcare, the wins go unnoticed. Just 44% of NHS workers say they feel satisfied with the extent to which their organization values their work.
You can help staff to feel seen and valued — and inspire their loyalty — by making employee recognition an everyday part of organizational culture.
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Create a post in the feed thanking a team for their handling of a difficult case. Allow co-workers to nominate their peers for awards. Share a monthly rundown of standout employee moments.
You can also highlight positive patient stories. Regularly reinforce the link between an employee’s actions and patient outcomes and you remind your people just how much their work matters.
You may uncover a particular shift that struggles with understaffing or a unit where safety concerns are being ignored. Or find that critical comms simply aren’t reaching their target audience.
Give employees a voice and you gain valuable insight into the employee experience — and what you can do to improve it. Dive down into the data and act upon it to show employees that their opinions are shaping how the organization is run.
8. Prioritize employee well-being
42% of NHS staff say they have felt unwell as a result of work-related stress in the last 12 months. And 81% of healthcare workers in the US say that they will look for a workplace that supports their mental health in the future.
So train your managers in how to recognize and respond to signs of stress and burnout in their employees. Provide mental health and well-being support — and ensure employees know how to access it.
But — as healthcare workers know well — it’s important to address root causes, not just symptoms. Depending on your employees and their needs, that might mean:
Offering flexible work and shift swap options
Providing competitive salaries
Promoting a culture of psychological safety so employees can speak up and report issues
Ensuring workloads are manageable
9. Track healthcare employee engagement
If you don’t measure employee engagement at your organization, it’s all guesswork. You can implement healthcare engagement trends — but you can’t be sure if and how new initiatives are benefiting your workforce.
With the right employee engagement tools, you can track engagement over time, establishing benchmarks and KPIs, like absenteeism, turnover rate, and employer net promoter score (eNPS).
You also establish a link between employee engagement activities and business-boosting metrics like employee satisfaction, patient satisfaction, employee productivity, and retention.
Employee engagement in healthcare: the Blink perspective
Back in 2020, we ran a pilot program at one of the UK’s largest private hospitals. Employees across several departments — including nurses, porters, receptionists, cleaners, and security guards — used the Blink app to access internal comms.
Using Blink cost the organization £2 million less than building a native application. But it still gave all frontline workers an easy way to get the resources they needed while on the move.
The results? A 30% increase in engagement with internal communications, with patients receiving better, faster care from more engaged staff. Our easy-to-use mobile platform meant that employees could access all the information they needed, and leadership could share vital messaging without interrupting the flow of care.
Since then, we’ve partnered with many other healthcare organizations, including:
Children’s of Alabama. Blink has helped one of the busiest pediatric hospitals in the US achieve 78% app adoption in just a couple of months. The app is boosting connection and collaboration across the frontline.
Elara Caring. The 17,000+ carers at Elara now chat and receive updates via Blink, with 95% saying they feel more connected to the organization. This is a massive shift for a workforce that previously felt overlooked and undervalued.
Coastal Medical. At this healthcare transport company, the average employee opens the Blink app 5.7 times a day. The ambulance industry sees a turnover rate of around 20%, just for paramedics. At Coastal Medical, that figure is now less than 5%, thanks to a strong workplace culture, co-worker connection, and easy access to vital information.
Transforming employee and patient experiences with Blink
When healthcare workers feel engaged in their work, they provide a better standard of care for patients. They’re more likely to feel positive about their work and committed to your organization.
An inclusive and open organizational culture, employee recognition, easy internal communication, and staff well-being strategies are just some of the building blocks you need to put in place to boost employee engagement in healthcare.
And this is where Blink comes in. A single, secure app puts updates, resources, feedback channels, comms tools, and recognition into the palm of every employee. It’s a mobile-first solution, designed for the realities of healthcare work.
Frontline employee engagement is no easy task. Your frontline employees work varying shift patterns and spend limited time at head office. They don’t tend to get much downtime during their working hours. And they aren’t always kept in the loop when it comes to company comms.
These obstacles get in the way when you’re trying to connect frontline workers to company culture — and each other. And it’s why standard team-building activities usually fall short.
To make a success of your employee engagement strategy, you have to tailor activities to your deskless workforce. Otherwise, you risk disengagement, plus the productivity and retention issues that go with it.
That’s why we’ve created this list of 18 employee engagement activities. These ideas are suited to busy frontline workers and their schedules. They’re designed to boost engagement and offer meaningful benefits to your employees.
This can lead to lower levels of productivity. It can also cause increased staff turnover rates, which already tend to be pretty high in frontline organizations.
Employee engagement activities, like the ones we’ve included below, help frontline employees feel more connected to their company, role, and co-workers.
And, according to Gallup, improving your employee engagement rates can lead to a range of business benefits. Besides increased productivity and employee retention, these benefits include:
A reduction in safety incidents
A decrease in absenteeism
An increase in customer loyalty
An increase in profitability
Employee engagement is good for employees — and it’s good for business. So let’s take a look at the activities that will help make it happen.
18 employee engagement activities (that work for a frontline workforce)
To engage your frontline workforce, you can incorporate any of the following employee engagement activities into your work days:
1. Engage with employees from day one
2. Celebrate employee milestones and contributions
3. Incentivize goals
4. Create a mentorship program
5. Offer perks that boost employee wellbeing
6. Give regular feedback
7. Encourage group chat
8. Provide shift swap tools
9. Plan a money management month
10. Launch a poll
11. Create online communities
12. Offer professional development opportunities
13. Launch a competition
14. Use video tools
15. Organize a volunteering day
16. Hand the mic to your leaders
17. Run Lunch and Learn sessions
18. Measure employee engagement
Team engagement ideas for frontline workers are different than for other workers. With their variable schedules, you can’t arrange lunch dates or after-work get-togethers.
Here are a few employee engagement initiatives your frontline workers can benefit from.
You can start with employee engagement activities like:
Introducing new co-workers (digitally if it’s not possible to introduce everyone in person)
Supporting new hires to login and familiarize themselves with your engagement tech tools
Sharing a library of online resources that explain the company, their role, and company culture
Assigning them a buddy or mentor
New hires need regular guidance, especially from managers. So don’t assume your workers are done onboarding after a few days or weeks. Instead, design a process that lasts for at least 90 days.
2. Celebrate employee milestones and contributions
Employee recognition improves engagement. Everyone likes to feel appreciated and valued by their employer.
So make recognition a regular feature on your company intranet or newsletter. Celebrate birthdays, volunteer work, and project milestones. Recognize the hard work and successes of employees.
You can also encourage peer-to-peer recognition. 75% of employees say that giving recognition makes them want to stay at their current organization longer.
Get co-workers to nominate each other for awards, then hold an award ceremony. Or simply get them to appreciate each other by sending a message on the company news feed.
3. Incentivize goals
Gamify the work environment by offering rewards in return for meeting goals. When employees perform well and meet targets, give them a gift you know they’ll like. Company rewards can include gift cards, discounts, cash prizes, an extra day of paid vacation, or the option to give a charitable donation.
But don’t dive right in. Before you announce your reward program, it’s a good idea to survey employees. Ask them which rewards they’d prefer so you can be sure that workers will be motivated by the prizes on offer.
4. Create a mentorship program
Do you want your employees to engage with each other, learn valuable skills, and help each other at the same time? Try rolling out a mentorship program.
Assign frontline workers a mentor within your organization. You can pair people from different departments and different levels of the company.
Then, set a regular schedule of mentor meet-ups. Mentors and mentees might like to conduct meetings online to better suit their work schedules.
Also, offer guidance on how constructive meetings should be run. The aim is for mentees to set workplace goals and come up with a plan for achieving them.
5. Offer perks that boost employee wellbeing
A healthy worker is a productive worker. So encourage fun runs, offer free healthy snacks, and provide discount gym memberships.
Also, try to provide flexible scheduling when possible to give employees a better work-life balance. You’ll reduce employee stress and their risk of burnout.
To ensure frontline employees can access wellbeing activities, you can use a wellbeing app. Via this type of tool, you can provide employee engagement activities. Things like mindfulness and meditation sessions, nutrition planning, and health tracking, all via an employee’s mobile device.
6. Give regular feedback
Gallup research shows that 80% of employees who say they’ve received meaningful feedback in the past week are fully engaged in their work.
So schedule activities where employees receive regular feedback from managers. Make it constructive and useful for employees, so it’s not an appointment they dread.
Also, take a few hours each week to run an online open-door session. This is a time when employees can meet with managers digitally to ask questions and express any concerns.
7. Use the company news feed
A user-friendly employee app with a company news feed acts as a virtual water cooler. It’s a place where frontline workers, who may spend little time with co-workers, get to build stronger workplace relationships.
The comms team can support engagement by using the news feed to share a mix of essential and informal posts. They can announce news, celebrate birthdays, and share tips — encouraging workers to comment, like, and post.
Also, consider these engagement-boosting ideas:
A weekly challenge — a photo contest, a trivia quiz, or a step-count competition
Employee spotlight — highlight a different employee each week, describing their achievements, personal stories, and contributions
A survey — whether the topic is something fun or something more serious, surveys are a great way to engage your workforce
Health and wellness tips — share tips and articles related to physical and mental health, all suited to the demands of frontline roles
8. Provide shift swap tools
Frontline employees want greater levels of flexibility. It’s not always easy for frontline organizations to provide this when there are fixed shifts to fill.
But with shift swap tools, you make it easy for workers to achieve a little more work-life balance. They can swap shifts with co-workers without HR or managers having to get involved.
You can provide other self-serve tools, too. For example, via the Blink interface, employees can access their pay stubs, request time off, and view their shift schedules.
Automating HR tasks like this gives more control to your frontline workers and lightens the load for your HR team.
9. Plan a money management month
Money worries can affect an employee’s wellbeing and their engagement with work. And employee engagement activities are most effective when they provide real value for your workers.
So plan a money management month to help employees make informed financial decisions. Use quizzes and polls to engage employees in the conversation. Challenge employees to a low or no spend day. Provide money advice over 1:1 chats or via your company resource center.
This is exactly what they’ve done at supermarket chain, Tesco, where they recognized the strain that the cost of living crisis has put on employees. In response, they introduced a range of new initiatives:
Skills training activities so employees develop store-wide skills and can pick up extra shifts
A Pay Advance scheme that allows workers to access earned pay ahead of payday
Personalized videos explaining to every worker how much their pension will be worth
10. Launch a poll
Polls give employees a chance to share their ideas and opinions. It’s a way to make their voices heard.
You can launch polls online, with the help of a tool like Blink Surveys. This allows you to quickly and easily find out what frontline employees are thinking about your chosen topic.
You might like to ask questions related to internal communications, company change, employee engagement, or simply the layout of the break room. Using this insight, you can make changes that make a real difference to your employees.
Just be sure to keep them updated with poll findings and your plan of action so they know that you’re really listening to what they have to say.
11. Create online communities
It’s easier to build connections with co-workers when you have something in common with one another. Online communities — based around shared interests — make it easy for frontline workers to find like-minded work friends.
So create space on your intranet for these types of communities. Perhaps you have a group that loves to run in their spare time. A gaggle of gamers. Or a bunch of bookworms. An online community helps bring these co-workers together.
12. Offer professional development opportunities
Training is a great way to improve workplace engagement. 71% of frontline workers have a strong desire for more learning opportunities at work. But a third of workers say that employers don’t invest enough in their growth.
Try to make training more accessible to your frontline workforce. Remember that it doesn’t have to take place in a classroom. You can put training resources into the palm of frontline workers’ hands with the help of the right technology.
You can offer micro-learning modules that workers can complete on mobile devices during a break. And provide fun online courses, with competitive and gamified features.
Also, remember that a lot of worker engagement can be tracked back to your managers. So ensure that managers get the employee engagement training they need, too.
13. Launch a competition
Pit teams of employees against each other with a fun company-wide competition. For an engagement boost, link your competition to company goals and values.
For example, if you’re championing employee wellbeing, set workers a steps or fitness challenge.
If you’re focused on employee development, encourage workers to complete training modules by setting them a training challenge.
To highlight your commitment to a chosen charity, set a fundraising contest.
Alternatively, improve engagement on the company app with a quick photo caption competition.
Pick challenges that can be completed remotely, without teams having to meet up in person. Also, plan rewards for the winners and give regular updates via your comms channels to keep competitors engaged.
14. Use video tools
When you can’t meet face to face, video is the next best thing. You can film leadership updates, company events, and new product demos to give employees more insight into the organization and their roles.
Videos are a great option for town hall meetings. Post the video on your employee news feed and employees who can’t attend in person can watch the video back later.
Similarly, get new hires to film a video to introduce themselves and post it to the news feed. Their co-workers can comment on the post to say hello and help their new co-worker feel more at home.
15. Organize a volunteering day
Offering employees opportunities to volunteer is good for their wellbeing and engagement levels. You can make this activity more appealing to frontline workers by giving them paid time off to volunteer and by giving them flexibility over the days they choose.
Salesforce leads the way on this. They give employees seven business days every year to volunteer for one of the non-profit organizations that Salesforce formally supports — or one of their own choosing.
Jamie Olsen, senior director of Citizen Philanthropy at Salesforce says:
“These are the types of programs that people want and that are attracting them to companies right now. They better the community. They improve people’s happiness.”
You can ensure everyone is on the same page by conducting a virtual Q&A session with one of your leadership team.
This type of event gives employees direct access to leadership. It bridges the gap between the frontline and head office. It also helps employees make their voices heard, which makes them feel valued and motivated.
The prospect of a Q&A can be a little daunting for leaders. But remember, a moderator can facilitate the session, reading out pre-submitted questions and managing live questions.
Also bear in mind that there are huge benefits to be gained. These include frontline insights, improved communication, and a stronger workplace culture.
17. Run lunch and learn sessions
When employees have all the information they need to do their jobs well, they feel more engaged. So give employees access to an online library of resources, transferring any old paper documents to a digital format.
With this library, you can then run virtual Lunch and Learn sessions. This is where a group of employees watches or reads a selected resource. Afterwards, they discuss their reflections either over video call or via group messaging.
18. Measure employee engagement
The last on our list of employee engagement activities is one for your people team, not your frontline employees. And it’s a really important part of any employee engagement strategy.
Find out how you’re doing by tracking employee engagement KPIs. Track your employee net promoter score (eNPS), engagement with your intranet platform, or employee survey results.
You can then set goals and — by drilling down into the data provided by your platform analytics — find actionable areas for improvement.
Final thoughts: employee engagement activities and ideas
To make a success of frontline employee engagement, you need to:
Provide employee engagement activities that offer real benefits for frontline employees
Make these activities accessible to the frontline with the help of flexible, digital solutions
You then create a culture that employees can play an active part in, no matter their schedule or location. You also motivate frontline workers to engage with company culture out of choice, making time for it in their busy days.
Incorporating the activities above into your frontline workplace is much easier when you have the right technology. And an employee engagement app comes in very useful. It’s a way to put all content and communication into the palm of every employee.
By creating online spaces where employees can gather, chat, share knowledge, and connect with company culture, you extend employee engagement to your hardest-to-reach employees — those on the frontline.
42% of companies have increased their investment in cloud and unified communications.
And this trend has only grown stronger during the Covid pandemic. The virus has given unified communications a long-overdue seat at the table.
It’s not hard to understand why. As companies grow larger and employees become more remote, keeping track of all your communication channels and devices is a challenge. And unified communications, especially as a service (UCaaS), solves this problem.
Still, many companies are on the fence, with some not even familiar with this new approach. Instead of choosing the benefits of unified communications, they’re busy prioritizing other organizational needs. Big mistake!
In this post, we’ll explore the top reasons why your company should invest in unified communications. Whether you want to learn more for yourself or get buy-in from other leaders in your company, the following list is exactly what you need.
Let’s dig in.
What is Unified Communications?
Ensuring that workers can easily communicate, collaborate on projects, and share documents are critical to your business.
Yet in most organizations, voicemail, email, fax, video calls, and live chats have all been on different systems so far. And managing these disparate platforms has been time-consuming and messy.
Even if it wasn’t, the solution may not have led to any improvement in collaboration and productivity. In fact, 69% of employees waste more than 5 hours each week switching between different communications devices and apps.
Enter Unified Communications. It means connecting instant messaging, video conferencing, data sharing, email, and more in a way that you can fetch data from one into the other.
A solution based on unified communication integrates all your communication devices and apps in one central place. And when this solution is offered as a cloud-based service, it is known as UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service).
So instead of managing and switching between different places, employees need access to only one platform, streamlining communication and collaboration for everyone involved.
Benefits of Unified Communications
The definition alone should be enough to have you nodding in support of unified communications. Still, the following points will shed more light on why Unified Communications is important.
1. Watertight IT
When you look at how your company communicates, you may discover a number of solutions, with each implementation needing dedicated support and vendor management.
That means your IT department spends a lot of time troubleshooting, installing, updating, and providing support for these solutions. And every minute of time has a cost.
Wouldn’t this time be better spent on innovating proactive strategies that grow your business and meet corporate goals?
A unified communications solution helps free up IT resources by consolidating all communication in one place. So there’s only one system to manage and troubleshoot instead of several.
2. Reduced business costs
Maintaining multiple units of hardware and software licenses adds to your cost and overhead. In fact, you don’t just pay for the different platforms, but also for a person or team to supervise the whole system.
And don’t get us started on the time and budget you’ll need to allocate to train workers on how to use all the platforms. That’s a big waste of money — money that could have been used to grow the organization.
In contrast, with a unified communications solution, you pay only for a single platform. So your overall cost is considerably low.
3. Streamlined operations
Unifying communications in one place makes it easy for employees to do their jobs regardless of where they are located while saving time on routine tasks. For example, with a UCaaS solution, you can:
Route all incoming calls to a dedicated team member, app, or device
Redirect fax or voicemail to an email inbox as a PDF or audio file
You can set up many other automations and workflows to make remote work easy for your workers. And you can do all this without any special support from the IT department. This makes it easy to derive call center analytics on peak load, minimum load, first call resolution rates, etc. which will help with streamlining operations further
4. Improved collaboration and productivity
A survey has shown that companies adopting UC, on average, see a 52% improvement in workplace productivity and a 25% boost in operating profit.
Wondering how? Let’s take an example. Imagine you have a team spread out in five countries, with members trying to share and collaborate on crucial documents. And picture how chaotic it can be.
Now give the team members the ability to present via a virtual call and share documents through instant messaging after the call — all from the same system.
When your team knows exactly what communication platform to use for everything, they won’t spend countless hours searching emails and other apps.
The verdict is clear. With unified communications, employees can communicate on both internal and external communication channels quickly and reliably.
When your different systems can talk to each other, collaboration is a breeze, and you get things done fast.
5. Better customer service
Consumers of today are highly impatient. They expect quick and efficient support and services. If they don't get a response to their problem or question fast, they won’t think twice about switching to one of your competitors.
In fact, 58% of customers will end their relationship with a brand that gives them mediocre customer service.
So if you want to maintain an exceptional level of customer support, two things are essential:
Your employees should have a fast way to communicate with customers
Your employees should find it easy to share information among themselves
But both these goals are almost impossible to achieve if you have different, standalone communication services scattered all over the place. With such an approach, you also run the risk of crucial messages slipping through the cracks.
A unified communication solution goes a long way in offering a stable and predictable experience to customers, increasing their satisfaction and loyalty to the brand.
6. Improved security
Cybercrime costs businesses $2.9 million per minute, says research by RiskIQ. And the more disparity in your communication systems, the more vulnerable your organization will be.
So another advantage of UCaaS is better security. A unified communications solution can ensure that all your calls and communications are encrypted and less susceptible to risk.
7. Simplified remote work
Communication becomes even more important when your workforce is dispersed in several locations. And a unified communications system ensures that all the workers have proper access to your company’s network.
This way, employees can answer emails, attend calls, and share files while on the move. This level of connectivity is what makes a UCaaS solution a must-have.
Final thoughts: 7 Unified Communications benefits
Over the last few years, there has been a massive shift in how companies operate and how employees get things done. For many businesses, the days of large office buildings with the majority of your employees are long gone. Instead, companies today have a diverse workforce across several locations.
This makes unified communications essential for modern businesses. From improving productivity to facilitating remote work, and from delighting customers to reducing security breaches, unified communication has the benefits that make it a necessity for today’s workplace.
Switching to a UCaaS may seem like a big investment, but it can make a big difference in your organization’s future. Even so, if your boss and other senior managers are on the fence, show them this list!
Once upon a time, a company intranet that worked off a server in your office was enough to keep internal communication on track. But today, company needs have changed. And so have employee expectations.
We’ve entered the era of the digital workplace. Employees use a variety of different devices. Teams work remotely, across multiple locations. And beyond the world of work, everyone is now accustomed to intuitive, convenient, and personalized digital experiences.
Digital change has come quickly. And workplace software — like the intranet — hasn’t always kept pace. Traditional intranets feel old and clunky today. They’re affecting employee experience (EX) - and they could be doing more harm than good.
Thankfully, a new breed of intranet is now emerging. It’s fresher and more relevant to today’s workforce. It’s also built with digital workplace challenges front of mind.
A modern intranet holds the key to two-way communication and collaboration, better employee engagement, and an enhanced digital employee experience (DEX). And it could be a game changer for your organization.
Here, we’re going to take a look at the changing face of the company intranet and examine the features and benefits of a new and improved modern intranet.
Contents
Intranets: then and now
Why you need a modern intranet
Features of a modern intranet
How modern intranets impact the digital employee experience
Choosing the right modern intranet
Conclusion
Intranets: then and now
The company intranet has come a long way since it was first introduced back in the 1990s. Adapting to advances in technology and changing workplace trends, it’s taken on a variety of different forms over the years.
When talking about the modern intranet, it’s useful to compare the most cutting-edge intranet software to what has come before. So let’s step back in time and revisit each stage of intranet evolution.
Early intranets
Closed private networks were the first intranets to hit the office. They used local servers to host static web pages, meaning only computers based within the same geographical location could access them.
These early intranets provided limited interactivity and functionality. They were a place to share company directories, policies, and other documents. But because the setup and maintenance of early intranets required a lot of technical expertise, information was often outdated and badly organized.
Web-based intranets
As the internet went mainstream, web-based intranets made their way onto the market. These intranets were accessible via standard web browsers and had basic search functions, which helped users find what they were looking for. But these new intranets still had their drawbacks.
Internal communication remained one-way, with information traveling from the top of an organization down. Content was often poorly maintained because updates were complex. And there was very little opportunity for companies to provide personalized employee experiences.
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Social intranets
Social intranets were the first intranets to go mobile. Remote servers meant geography mattered less — and everyone within an organization, regardless of their location, could access the same information.
Inspired by social media platforms, social intranets prioritized communication, with features like user profiles and user-generated content. They were also designed to support team collaboration and productivity, with personnel services and project management tools built in.
Modern intranets
Modern intranets take the social intranet concept to the next level. They are a mobile-first solution with a focus on user experience (UX), designed to meet the expectations of today’s digital workforce.
Content creation is democratized in modern intranets. All members of an organization can access information and tools easily. And team leaders get the analytics and data-driven insights they need to improve employee engagement.
Interested in seeing a modern intranet in action? Preview Blink today with a short 2-minute video.
Why your frontline organization needs a modern intranet
So why should your frontline organization ditch its traditional intranet and adopt a modern software solution instead? There are several very good reasons.
Older intranet software can cause friction and frustration. Perhaps your intranet has become a dumping ground for outdated information. Or it simply fails to provide the intuitive, user-friendly, productivity-boosting features we’ve all come to expect.
We know that traditional intranets fail to live up to employee expectations. 67% of workers say that digital experiences in their personal lives are better than the digital experiences they get at work.
Many traditional intranets are built around the needs of desk-based teams, so they do your frontline workers a disservice. Frontline workers miss out on the communication and resources available to their desk-based peers.
A modern intranet, in contrast, helps you meet all of the following challenges head-on.
1. Employee engagement
According to Gallup’s State of the Workplace Report for 2023, just 23% of employees are engaged at work. But organizations should try to do better. That’s because high levels of employee engagement lead to happier employees, improved productivity, and lower rates of attrition.
Employee engagement is always a challenge. But engaging employees in a frontline organization can be particularly tricky. When your workers are deskless, how do you give them the connection, coaching, and support they need to thrive within your organization?
A modern intranet gives you all of the tools you need to engage your employees, regardless of where they work. You can count on a social feed, a content hub, employee recognition tools, surveys, and more.
With analytics too, you can see what is engaging your employees — and what isn’t — so you can improve your efforts going forward.
2. Communication
Open communication within a workplace is vital. It helps you inform, motivate, and engage your employees, while fostering an inclusive and supportive work environment. It involves top-down, bottom-up, and peer-to-peer communication, so everyone has a voice.
For frontline teams, maintaining open channels of communication within teams who don’t work face-to-face requires tailored solutions.
A modern intranet helps you build internal communication links between every member of your workforce — whether they’re based in the office, on the shop floor, or out in the field.
You don’t need to rely on emails or a company noticeboard. Instead, all types of internal communication are supported via your intranet app.
With better communication, you bring your teams together and you may find it easier to grow your company too. A Forbes study found that companies who involve 75% of their frontline in internal comms, achieved more than 20% growth over a year.
3. Digital access
Older intranet software is built around an outdated version of the workplace. It doesn’t prioritize the mobile experience and instead works best for employees who sit at a desk on a computer for the majority of each working day.
Newer intranets understand that the world of work has changed. Digital tools are a workplace essential. And frontline, hybrid, and remote teams should have equal access to the information and interaction that these tools provide.
That’s why the best modern intranets have a mobile-first design. Employees can access them as easily on a small smartphone screen as on a desktop computer. All workers across an organization are engaged and empowered, so no one misses out.
4. Collaboration
Traditional intranets are known for being slow and difficult to use, with low rates of user adoption. In fact, 57% of employees say they see no purpose in their company intranet.
This impacts collaboration. When employees avoid your intranet — because it isn’t intuitive to use or data is hard to find — knowledge sharing suffers and you risk creating organizational silos.
For frontline teams, this exacerbates an existing risk. Frontline workers spend time away from HQ, working different shift patterns, and managing a high workload. These factors already get in the way of team collaboration.
Luckily, this is another frontline challenge that a modern intranet can solve. The intranet allows people across your organization to share ideas and objectives via an easy-to-use interface.
Everyone can contribute, even those who work remotely, making your organization more productive, more innovative, and better able to solve problems.
Features of a modern intranet
We’ve touched on what makes a modern intranet different from the other intranet software available. But now we’re going to delve into the details. Here are features you can expect from the newest intranets and how they stand to benefit your business.
A central hub
A modern intranet acts as the gateway to your business. It’s the go-to location for company communication and knowledge sharing.
With a single, searchable hub, it’s easy for employees to find what they’re looking for, whether that’s essential documents, a directory of co-workers, or a list of the latest company events.
Importantly, information is stored logically and consistently. And the advanced search functionality of a modern intranet — thanks to keyword suggestions and content tagging — means it’s always clear what information is and isn’t available.
User friendly interfaces
Modern intranets are familiar to their users. That’s partly because they can be customized with employer branding. But it’s also because they have an intuitive, user friendly interface that mirrors many of the digital tools employees already feel comfortable using.
Employees don’t need a company email address to sign in. They can get notifications whenever important information is posted. And it’s easy to download intranet apps from the App Store. This means very little training is required.
Personalized experiences
Personalization makes the modern intranet even more engaging for users. Employees can personalize their dashboard and see content tailored to their role and department.
You can also program your intranet so it presents different information depending on where an employee is at in their career and how much time they’ve spent with the company. Someone who started working for you last week will get different intranet content to someone who has been working for you for years.
Communication tools
Managers can share important news and announcements. Teams can share ideas. An employee can wish a coworker a happy birthday. With a variety of communication tools based within the same intranet software, meaningful communication becomes second nature.
Employees don’t have to switch between different platforms for informal co-worker chat, essential C-suite comms, and knowledge sharing resources. They can easily find communications, and contribute to them too, all within the same interface.
It’s also easy for managers to highlight need-to-know information.Push notifications and mandatory reads ensure essential information never goes unread.
Real-time communication
Asynchronous communication is important for teams who work across different time zones or shift patterns. But real-time communication is also crucial for your organization. It allows employees to communicate as if they were in the same physical location — even when they’re not.
This allows for faster decision-making, improved problem-solving, and better collaboration. It also helps employees to feel more connected to one another — because real-time communication mirrors face-to-face communication in a way that an email thread just can’t.
Employee recognition
Employee recognition isn’t always easy when employees work disparately. Managers have to be intentional about praise and recognition because they get few informal opportunities to show their appreciation.
With built-in employee recognition features, a modern intranet makes it easy for you to motivate and incentivize your team.
Managers are prompted to recognize employee anniversaries and milestones. Peers can celebrate coworker wins. And some intranet software even provides recognition leaderboards and real-life rewards as further incentive for hard work.
Collaboration tools
The modern intranet makes collaboration a priority. It provides features that support collaboration for teams who don’t necessarily work in the same office.
From shared calendars to real-time chat, document sharing to task allocation, a modern intranet helps teams work together, even when they’re physically apart.
Mobile compatibility
Workers no longer have to be chained to their desktop computers in order to get the most from the intranet experience. Modern intranets are mobile responsive. They offer the same user experience and the same great features whichever device employees have access to during their workday.
This means frontline, remote, and hybrid workers enjoy the same intranet experience as their desk-based peers. And you create a joined-up organization in which all workers are treated equally.
Integration capabilities
Modern intranet software integrates with the digital tools and data sources you already use within your organization. It creates a seamless experience for employees.
They don’t need to log in to multiple platforms and deal with repetitive or conflicting information. Everything is available via the same intranet hub.
For your management team, integration makes everything more efficient. You don’t need to duplicate work over different tools, which means you improve data accuracy too.
Feedback functions
Good internal communication goes both ways. And with modern intranet feedback functions, it’s easy to find out what your employees are thinking and feeling at any given moment.
Surveys and forms are delivered in a user friendly format so a higher proportion of your employees is likely to respond. And with accurate insight into employee sentiment, you can create better employee experiences, making informed decisions based on what your workforce really wants and needs.
Security
When you opt for a modern intranet, security comes as standard. The best providers work by recognized cybersecurity guidelines.
They provide data encryption and data backup. Regular penetration testing ensures the system always provides a strong defense against cyber-attack. And access controls mean admin teams can choose with members of your organization can see sensitive information.
Analytics to optimize and measure
The best modern intranets offer analytics too, meaning you get real-time data on employee engagement and the employee experience.
You can track a variety of metrics — things like user activity, co-worker interactions, likes, searches, and downloads. And then you can view these results in a visual, easy-to-digest format.
Along with surveys and feedback forms, intranet analytics gives insight into how employees use the software and how it impacts their overall experience of the workplace. This empowers you to make data-driven improvements.
How modern intranets impact the digital employee experience
The digital employee experience (DEX) is how employees feel about the digital tools they use within the workplace. For optimal DEX, you need digital tools that support and streamline every employee workflow, without creating points of friction.
DEX comes under the umbrella of employee experience (EX). But we’d argue that, in a digital workplace, DEX isn’t just part of the EX picture. It’s integral to it. In fact, we can relate DEX to nearly all of the nine EX elements identified by McKinsey.
an employee’s sense of growth, purpose, and motivation
how employees feel about their productivity and efficiency
The company intranet is inevitably a big part of employees’ digital experience. And when you replace a traditional intranet with modern software, designed to meet the expectations and needs of today’s employees, you impact DEX in all of the following ways.
Enhanced communication
These days, we rely on digital communication tools to connect frontline, hybrid, and remote working teams. It’s important to EX that teams get the same level of connection and knowledge sharing, and the same sense of belonging, that they’d get working face-to-face.
Modern intranet software is built with team communication at its core. It understands that, in a digital workplace, informal water cooler chats aren’t always possible.
So it provides teams with communication tools that create a sense of physical togetherness, even when teams work disparately.
With Blink Chat, for example, employees can message each other in real-time. They can chat one-on-one or set up Group Chats for multiple team members. Within chats, employees can send messages, send documents, and even start online voice or video meetings, straight from the app.
But the modern intranet doesn’t just facilitate peer-to-peer communication. It also gives managers the communication tools they need to enhance the employee experience.
This is where the Blink Feed comes in. Via a familiar, social media-style feed, leadership can post company-wide communications. They can guide company culture and broadcast important news, motivating and informing employees in the process.
Employee techquity
Employee techquity is achieved when frontline workers have equal access to the digital tools, resources, and people they need to succeed. Older intranet systems tend to leave frontline and remote workers behind. They fail to address many of the key challenges faced by frontline teams.
This means frontline and remote employees miss out on the opportunities afforded to desk-based staff. They find it harder to advance in their careers, they don’t always have access to the same tools, tech, and training, and they can end up feeling disconnected from company HQ.
A modern, mobile-first intranet helps to create a fairer working environment. All employees get to use exactly the same functions and features, whether they access the platform via a desktop computer or a smartphone device.
A modern intranet is easy to use, so frontline workers can dip into internal comms during a busy work day. It also acknowledges the fact that many frontline workers don’t have a company email address, so provides alternative login methods.
By providing an equal digital experience for all workers within your organization, everyone gets the tools they need to do their job — and everyone enjoys a sense of connection and belonging.
Employees enjoy a better workplace experience when they feel they’re working to the best of their ability.
In a digital workplace, this means having the right information, along with the right collaboration and productivity tools. And this is another area of DEX that a modern intranet can help with.
A modern intranet acts as a content hub for your organization. But unlike old intranet software, this new style of content management system is well-organized and user friendly. It’s easy to find and read policy documents and to collaborate on files with co-workers.
Just take a look at the Blink Hub. It’s a content management system that puts policies, training materials, and manuals in one convenient, easy-to-access location.
A drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to add content. And because the Blink Hub is available via desktop and mobile apps, every member of your organization can access it.
A modern intranet can also provide self-service functions, another big plus for the digital employee experience.
When employees can book shifts, request annual leave, register for a training course, and access pay stubs all from the same platform, work admin becomes much less of a headache.
Employee engagement
Engaged workers feel emotionally connected to their work and co-workers. They feel aligned with company values and empowered to work productively.
A poor digital employee experience gets in the way of engagement. But there are lots of ways that a positive DEX — supported by a modern intranet — can enhance it.
The social features of a cutting-edge intranet — like social feeds, discussion forums, and employee profiles — help employees build meaningful connections with people at all levels of your organization.
Employee recognition and reward functions within the intranet also boost engagement. Employees understand their goals and how these goals relate to the overarching company mission. A culture of recognition and rewards — made easy with intranet tools — then incentivizes them to meet their objectives.
Another way that your intranet can improve employee engagement is with employee personalization.
Workers get to personalize the platform dashboard to make it more relevant and engaging. Admins can adapt content too, tailoring it to the needs of workers at each stage in the employee lifecycle.
Analytics and feedback
Modern intranets make it easy for you to gather information on the digital employee experience. You can launch surveys, send out forms, and dive into the analytics provided by your platform.
This is a huge bonus to your DEX strategy. Because you don’t need to stab in the dark. You have all the data you need to make targeted EX improvements.
View data on employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention. See what content performs best to improve your content management strategy. Understand how your teams interact, identifying co-worker relationships that need a little TLC.
A tool like Blink Analytics allows you to really drill down into the data. You can segment it based on team or location. So you understand exactly how your digital workplace is working for each member of your organization.
Simplicity
Some organizations have approached the challenge of digital transformation by acquiring tech tools for every business function. But this isn’t an effective way of doing things.
Gartner research shows that application sprawl (when workers are expected to use multiple digital tools) turns up the volume without improving communication.
Simplifying and streamlining the technology you use can therefore have a huge impact on the digital employee experience.
When workers have a single, go-to platform, there’s less friction. Employees aren’t constantly pinged with notifications from multiple apps. They don’t have to familiarize themselves with different interfaces. And it’s easy to find the information and tools they need.
Choosing the right modern intranet
We’ve covered all of the reasons that a modern intranet might benefit your organization. But with numerous intranet options out there, how do you choose the right one for your business?
Let’s take a look at a couple of questions you can ask when looking for intranet software that meets the needs of your organization and employees.
Is the software built to scale?
An intranet is a big investment of time and money. It also quickly becomes a central part of your company operations. So you don’t want to be changing it in a hurry.
When choosing an intranet, look for a solution that can grow with your business. Consider whether an intranet contender will continue to meet your needs if you experience a period of rapid growth and need to take on lots more staff.
Scalable intranets offer bespoke pricing for enterprise clients (per-user pricing can become unaffordable as your team grows). They’re also cloud-based, so you don’t have to rely on on-premise infrastructure when you need to expand capability.
Some other considerations to bear in mind? You need access controls suited to large teams, the option to create communication channels for each team or department, and the right level of security and support for a bigger organization.
Is mobile access a priority?
If you have any workers who don’t spend their workday sitting behind a desk, then a mobile-first intranet is the only logical choice.
On-premise solutions aren’t always accessible via mobile devices. You may even find that remote desk workers, using a laptop or desktop computer, have to jump through VPN hoops to access intranet content.
A mobile-first intranet is designed to work well — and provide the same features — over any device and from any location. So it’s particularly useful for frontline teams who need to access internal info on the go, using their smartphone.
Does the solution provide analytics?
The best intranet solutions give you the analytics and reporting features you need to measure the success of your new platform.
They provide data on employee engagement, content performance, user behavior, employee retention, and employee satisfaction. With real insight, you can identify areas for improvement and make targeted changes.
Only shortlist solutions that offer robust analytics functions. They should be able to provide data on a wide range of metrics, allow you to segment data by a variety of user groups, and provide real-time data. They should also present all data in a visual, easy to understand way.
Does the intranet integrate with your existing technology?
One of the key benefits of a modern intranet is its simplicity. It brings all of the communication and collaboration tools your digital workplace needs into the same platform.
The ideal intranet will meet your business needs in terms of two-way communication, content management, and collaboration. But it should also integrate with any of the tech tools you already use.
You need to know that any payroll, project management, or customer service software can integrate seamlessly with your intranet. And that these tools will continue to work just as well as before.
A new intranet shouldn’t negatively impact the adoption of your current tools. Instead, streamlining your digital tools should actually improve uptake.
Is the intranet user friendly?
An intranet only benefits your company (in all of the ways listed above) if your employees actually use it. So you need a solution that is intuitive and easy to learn, even if your team isn’t super tech-savvy.
Look for an intranet with a user friendly interface. It should feel familiar even if you’ve never used it before. Also, ensure it includes all of the self-service and search functions that make life easy for your teams.
User friendliness is particularly important for frontline teams. Working away from a desk, often with limited time for company comms, your intranet needs to be so easy and engaging that these remote, time-poor workers choose to open the app and check in.
When conducting your software search, it can be helpful to look at adoption and intranet usage stats. If other organizations, with a similar structure to yours, have managed to persuade their workers to use a particular intranet solution, then the platform will probably work well for you too.
Ever since its introduction in the 1990s, the intranet has been an integral part of company operations. But today, organizations are moving away from older intranet versions to embrace a newer, slicker, more effective modern intranet.
A modern intranet supports the creation of a truly digital workplace. It gives frontline, remote, and office-based teams everything they need to work happily and productively. Because it provides a beautiful interface, designed to meet the needs of digital workers, employees actually enjoy using it too.
Choose the right modern intranet and you’ll improve the way your teams communicate and collaborate. You’ll improve DEX and employee engagement, so employee retention gets easier.
You’ll also avoid some of the pitfalls of digital transformation, preventing application sprawl by making all tech tools available via the same user friendly dashboard.
For frontline organizations, the modern intranet really comes into its own. Mobile-first, intuitive design with a real-time communication focus, ensures everyone – whether they work on the frontline or in an office – has access to the tools and information they need.
If you’re ready to benefit your employees and your organization by adopting a cutting-edge intranet solution, take a look at Blink —– a platform designed specifically for frontline teams. Blink does everything a modern intranet does, and more.
Employees get a social feed and a content hub. They can access self-service functions, make their voice heard via company-wide surveys, and receive recognition for a job well done.
As an organization, you can count on analytics and top-notch security. Blink also integrates with many of the most popular workplace apps out there, so it fits seamlessly into your workflow.
Blink has all the tools you need to make your frontline organization more connected, collaborative, and successful. So why not book a demo to see Blink in action?
Employee engagement is a critical focus for People teams— or any other business leader. Learn what it is, why it’s important, and how to improve it in our complete guide.
Employee engagement is the difference between soaring productivity rates and a sense of stagnation. It’s fifty people applying for a single vacancy, rather than fifty vacancies and one applicant.
Yet for all its importance, companies frequently misunderstand what employee engagement is and what it looks like. That's why we’re here to help.
Whether you're looking to better understand the definition and importance of employee engagement, drive employee engagement in your organization, or simply understand examples of employee engagement, this complete guide to employee engagement has something for you.
What is employee engagement? A simple definition
Employee engagement is the ongoing process of ensuring your workforce feels satisfied with their job, aligned with your organization’s values, and supported enough to give 100% during work hours.
Research by SHRM defines the term employee engagement as relating to the level of an employee's commitment and connection to an organization, while Investopedia defines employee engagement as describing the level of enthusiasm and dedication a worker feels toward their job.
At Blink, we believe true employee engagement is a combination of two equally important parts:
Attitude - the commitment a worker feels toward the company
Behavior - the effort that an employee is willing to invest in their job
Whichever way you look at it, maintaining employee engagement is a key factor in determining how successful an organization will be. It also provides key insights into employee satisfaction and sentiment, which can help identify areas that may need improvement.
To better illustrate what employee engagement looks like, here are some of the key attitudes and behaviors of engaged vs disengaged employees:
What is employee engagement for employers?
HR is all about people. So it makes sense that, if that is your role, you want the best for your co-workers.
Still, there’s more to it than that.
Employee engagement is important because it affects the performance of your company. Think back to a job you’ve not enjoyed in the past — did you give as much to that role as you did to the ones you loved?
Now extrapolate this out across an entire company of unhappy, unmotivated workers. In toxic environments, productivity nosedives. Depending on the type of organization you work for, this could mean a lower output rate, poor customer service, an increase in safety incidents, reduced patient satisfaction, missed deadlines, or any other number of issues.
What is employee engagement for employees?
For employees themselves, engagement isn't so much a daily activity they schedule time for. It's a natural byproduct of a strong employee experience.
Engagement is directly correlated to a positive work environment; when people feel respected, appreciated, and valued for their work, they are more likely to be an engaged employee. It's about being part of something bigger than just your job title — it’s that sense of satisfaction and fulfillment when you know you are making a difference.
Different groups of employees have different engagement expectations — and when those expectations match the day-to-day experiences of their roles, employees are more likely to be engaged.
Whether it’s your dispersed, frontline teams or your first-line managers, it’s worth getting to know what your employees expect from their engagement experience.
Why is employee engagement important?
Employee engagement efforts don’t need to be expensive, but they do need to be intentional. Issues created by poor employee engagement practices can cost your company thousands.
These include:
Reduced productivity: people don’t work well when they’re unhappy. If teams are consistently falling short of productivity targets you know to be reasonable, there’s a good chance they’re unhappy at work
Absenteeism: unhappy employees stay at home and use more sick days and mental health days than those employees who enjoy their jobs and work environments
Presenteeism: Between May 2021 and November 2022 alone presenteeism rose by 18%. As the cost of presenteeism has historically been found to significantly outweigh the cost of absenteeism, this is one common challenge for engagement leaders to tackle.
High employee turnover: if someone is disengaged, it makes them more likely to leave. Replacing employees is super expensive (think six to nine months’ salary, plus up to 213% of the total annual salary depending on the seniority of the position). Along with being a cost drain, the extra workload will put pressure on your other, potentially unhappy, employees while you find a replacement
Employer brand damage: a stream of employees leaving your organization won’t do your reputation any good. Not only will you end up with a large list of vacancies, but you’ll also struggle to find people to fill them. With more job seekers than ever using online review sites, such as Glassdoor, to screen companies before they apply, a poor reputation for employee engagement has never been so damaging
This creates a cycle that your organization doesn’t want to slip into. Breaking it, or making sure that your company doesn’t start to slip down it, is an essential task that requires time and dedication to tracking — and improving key metrics.
3 core benefits of employee engagement
Gallup provides interesting insights on the benefits of employee engagement. Organizations with highly engaged employees experience:
As you can see in the employee engagement statistics above, there is a vast array of benefits to be gained from increased employee engagement. In the below sections, we’ve found some of the most compelling evidence for three core benefits of employee engagement:
Improved discretionary effort offered by engaged individuals is one huge benefit of employee engagement initiatives.
Those with high engagement levels often perform above expectations and develop meaningful relationships with their peers, contributing to improved outcomes for everyone involved. These efforts are what is known as ‘Discretionary Effort’.
The discretionary effort your employees put in directly impacts the success of your business outcomes, whether it’s your overall employee output rates, your patient safety outcomes and satisfaction levels, or a direct increase to your bottom line.
Improved job satisfaction
Employee engagement has the dual benefit of improving both organizational success and job satisfaction on a personal level.
This is because engagement initiatives themselves provide employees with more development opportunities, better recognition for good work, and better prospects for career growth. When employees reap these benefits offered to them by engagement strategies, they feel like they make a real impact on the success of an organization, and that what they are doing is meaningful.
Don’t underestimate the historic power of meaningful work on your employee satisfaction levels — nine out of ten employees would take a lower salary for more meaningful work.
Increased employee retention
Employees are more likely to stay with the organization when they are more satisfied and engaged.
Research by the IJECM (International Journal of Economics, Commerce & Management) found that job satisfaction is a reliable and relevant predictor of employee retention. Highly engaged employees develop a greater sense of attachment to the organization and become more loyal, resulting in up to a 43% difference in employee turnover according to further employee engagement research.
How to improve employee engagement
There are a number of ways to improve employee engagement, but, at Blink, we like to think of engagement efforts as being split into three key categories:
Delivering on the 10 key drivers of employee engagement
Identifying the employee engagement strategies and tactics that work for your employees
Ensuring the best employee engagement tools and software
Key drivers of employee engagement
In order to improve employee engagement, you must understand what drives it, and focus your efforts there. What coreexperiences and tools do you need to provide to your workforce in order to boost the overall employee experience and drive engagement?
By focusing engagement efforts on enabling these core engagement drivers, you will be much more likely to see significant engagement improvements.
Employee engagement strategies and tactics
An employee engagement strategy is the plan of action you take to bring about an increase in employee engagement levels. On the other hand, tactics are the individual steps and actions that will get you there. In the context of an employee engagement strategy, this means the tactics are the specific engagement actions your teams take to implement the initiatives outlined in the strategy.
Employee engagement strategies combine a number of tactics, such as the use of team-building exercises, offering career growth opportunities, providing more effective recognition for good work and positive behavior changes, or improving your internal communication processes.
In order to effectively craft an engagement strategy, it’s important to have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish, and how you plan to get there.
By having a clearly defined strategy, it is much easier to measure the success or failure of any engagement tactic you try. When you identify which tactics work and which don’t, you can adjust your future strategy accordingly.
Employee engagement tools
Employee engagement tools are products and tech solutions that enable companies to measure, manage, and improve employee engagement levels.
Employee engagement software comes in many forms, from survey software used to collect employee feedback and communication platforms providing a channel for discussion between teams.Engagement analysis tools can also provide insight into how your engagement efforts are faring.
However, if your staff are juggling a number of platforms and tools for different parts of their work, it will be inconvenient and you're not likely to see great engagement results. That's why an all-through-one engagement super-app is the best choice for any business wanting to consolidate engagement efforts.
A super-app brings together all of your employee communications, engagement surveys, recognition programs, and employee rewards into one, central platform.
This will not only make your life easier but will also ensure a more consistent experience for employees while enabling you to get an aggregated view of their engagement levels with just a few clicks.
Examples of employee engagement in action
How Go North West achieved 96% monthly active engagement app users
The challenge
Like many frontline organizations facing a digital inclusion gap, Go North West faced challenges when it came to digitizing processes and communications in their organization. Historically, their internal comms were split across various channels, such as emails, mail to drivers' home addresses, depot noticeboards, and unregulated social media platforms.
With so many paper-based operational processes, Go North West faced high levels of non-adherence and inefficiency. On top of this, they were also facing an industry-wise staff shortage in the wake of the Great Resignation and COVID-19, which made growth for the company more difficult to achieve.
The solution
The first solution to the engagement challenges faced by Go North West lay in using Blink’s Hub — the super-app’s central portal for accessing processes, documents, and tools. Go North West could now use this to share duties,schedule, and running boards for easy access and updating.
After this, the company had to ensure critical information such as route diversions could reach all members of staff quickly and efficiently. This was where the team used the Blink Feed — a company-wide, mobile-first communications channel, supplemented with the use of Chats to fulfill shift swaps and fills and ensure smooth service delivery.
The team at Go North West also needed to streamline how they provided drivers and other members of staff access to critical processes and resources. This was where Blink’s Digital Formsand Custom Apps stepped in to revolutionize how the organization worked.
By moving to digital processes from outdated paper-based processes, drivers were able to:
Request annual leave with a few taps from the app, made easier with functionality such as auto-population and validation
Access their schedules through one-click access to DAS-Web
Submit near-miss reports via a custom app on Blink, allowing them to log incidents quickly and easily, increasing the number of submissions to drive process improvement
The outcome
The outcome of this engagement tech overhaul was a resounding success. Engagement levels, retention, and digitization efforts were all improved.
What did this look like in terms of engagement? Well, alongside achieving 96% monthly active app users, Go North West also saw:
30,000 opens of DAS-Web per month
6,000 Chat messages per month
98,000 opens of Hub content
17 daily app opens per user
186 monthly app opens per user
What a result! Widespread success across the operation, with Go North West achieving its goal of higher engagement.
The use of Blink’s engagement super-app has enabled the team to move into a digital-first future and deliver an efficient service that allows them to better serve their employees — and customers. A win-win for everyone.
It’s not just something you need to focus on when employee morale is down and stop as soon as it reaches manageable levels… it should be a central part of the HR or People team’s day-to-day activities.
So, before implementing any of the below, ask yourself:
How much time should we dedicate to this a week?
Who should be in charge of this area?
Who can manage the on-the-ground responsibilities associated with this?
Are there any tools (e.g. a new employee super-app) that could help us manage this workload?
In terms of exactly what to measure and how to measure it, there are two key areas you need to focus on:
The data that already exists in your company
Data that you actively go out and collect.
Measuring employee engagement using existing data
This is data that your HR team won’t have to set up any new processes for; it (should) already be monitored by various departments. The key here is collating it, as there’s a good chance that inter-departmental silos mean that you won’t necessarily be able to access it right away, let alone see the big picture.
We’re talking about:
Absence rates
Employee turnover
Number of complaints to line managers
Number of complaints to HR
eNPS scores
Customer reviews
Customer retention
Sales
Turnover
Social media engagement
There could be a myriad of reasons why customer satisfaction has dipped, so take a look at it alongside some of the other metrics listed, over an extended period of time.
For example, do eNPS scores dip when employee turnover is highest? Do customers write poorer reviews when absence rates are particularly high? Start to compare ‘result’ metrics (like sales, turnover, customer satisfaction, and customer retention) with employee wellness to see whether you notice any patterns.
From there, measure, measure, measure! Set up dashboards with all your chosen metrics so that you can track and compare them at a glance. You can then monitor employee engagement via its direct consequences — absence rates going down and productivity going up is a sure sign that your efforts are working.
To assess your current data, an engagement analytics tool can help. It will look at the data you already have (like those mentioned above) to identify how engaged your people really are and provide real-time insights into what might need improvement.
All of the above help to paint a picture of where you are with employee engagement, but they aren’t the only weapon in your arsenal. So, once you’ve got those dashboards up and running, move onto…
Measuring employee engagement by collecting new data
What’s the best, most efficient way of understanding your employee engagement levels?
Just ask them.
Regular, anonymous employee engagement surveys are the most efficient way of doing this. You might see these referred to as “pulse” surveys, and they are so much better for measuring engagement than the traditional annual long-answer survey for the following reasons:
Response rates tend to be higher. It’s much easier to encourage employees to complete three quick “rate on a scale” questions with an optional “any further comments” box than three pages of long-answer questions that they don’t have time to do.
You can keep them focused on one single issue each time. This gives your HR team a much better chance of addressing feedback successfully and sharing what they’ve done to address their co-workers’ concerns.
They encourage constructive feedback. The issue with running an annual survey is that employees see it as their single opportunity to get everything off their chests.
It’s difficult to respond to 12 months of input from an entire company in any meaningful way, particularly if the topics covered range from disagreement with the company’s strategic direction or low staff retention to dissatisfaction with the options offered in the cafeteria.
How to use your employee engagement data
Whether you’ve noticed that your absence rates are soaring way above your industry average or carried out a highly targeted pulse survey, you need to take action from this data. Understanding exactly how to use your employee engagement data is therefore crucial.
Align key stakeholders with a plan of action
First, sit down with all relevant stakeholders and agree on a workable course of action. Involving stakeholders here keeps things grounded — it’s tempting to offer your workforce the moon on a stick when they’re unhappy, but this isn’t realistic. Avoid promising things you can’t deliver on — broken promises won’t be taken well by your employees, no matter how ambitious they are.
If, for example, your employees have stated they want better quality break rooms or equipment, it’s wise to take the time to align with the leadership suite on whether they have the resources to help with this before you promise a tech overhaul or new break room to your workforce.
Track improvements in data with KPIs
Second, it’s super important to track these improvements against realistic employee engagement KPIs. Change in organizations is gradual, so make sure your targets reflect this and avoid the temptation to try and go from 0 to 100 in three months.
If none of your employees are having regular one-to-one contact with their line managers, an example target structure could look like this:
3 months in: 20% of all employees having regular catch-ups
6 months in: 40% of employees
9 months in: 60% of employees
12 months in: 80% of employees
You could also consider how you roll this out. It’s much easier to coordinate regular catch-ups for office-based positions, so you could focus on getting a full 100% in the first three months for office-based teams as a quick win. Whilst you do this, you can sort out the infrastructure for deskless and dispersed teams to be able to do this further down the line.
Consider new tech
Finally, think about any tools that might help you meet these targets and/or address employees’ concerns.
There’s now plenty of workplace tech to help with a range of issues, like employee apps to help communication, productivity software to help meet targets, and advanced CRM features that make meeting customer needs much easier for frontline employees.
Check with your leadership team to see what sort of support they could offer here. They’ll be looking for a solid return on investment and plan before giving the green light, so make sure that if you’re making a direct request for new software, you build a solid business case about why you need it.
The golden rule: never assume that your workforce will notice your efforts to improve things without you communicating it.
Your workforce is busy, and meaningful change takes time — so you’re not going to make everything perfect right away. To really show your employees that you’ve taken their feedback on board, you’ll need to be explicit.
Include announcements about your planned improvements into your internal communications strategy. If you’ve conducted a pulse survey, share the results. This is a gesture of transparency that people will really appreciate—and emphasizes that you’re taking employee feedback seriously.
When announcing any improvement plans, consider:
The channel that would work best: would more people see it via email, on a noticeboard, or via a mobile-first employee app?
The frequency of your communication: how frequently should you update your employees on the progress you’re making towards these goals
You could also consider providing updates in person at company meetings, as this adds a welcome personal touch.
Remember the small things alongside big things
Big, organizational changes take time, but there are smaller things you can do for your workforce in the meantime.
Reworking the employee journey so there are more obvious routes for internal promotion takes time. Easier things like upgrading the coffee machine, setting up a couple of lunchtime clubs, or getting a pool table for the break room does not.
Implementing a couple of easy-to-manage changes (either that your workforce has specifically asked for, or just off your own back) emphasizes your commitment to improvement while you’re working towards the more structural stuff. It’s not a substitute, but it is a good reminder to your workforce about what you’re trying to do.
Blink. And your employee engagement strategy takes shape.
Blink is the all-through-one engagement super-app that your business needs to make sure employee engagement isn’t an extra task on your list, but part of a holistic approach to people management.
Our platform includes all the tools you need for effective employee engagement, from surveys and feedback loops to recognition programs and rewards. We also provide comprehensive reporting dashboards and insights to monitor progress, track performance, identify problem areas and create actionable plans.
When it comes to employee engagement, Blink is the perfect solution for businesses of all sizes.
No matter where you are in your engagement journey, we’re here to help you create the best possible experience for your employees and drive maximum success for your business.
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