Employee spotlight: Theo Booth

While some things from the 90s are coming back into style - extra baggy jeans, cardigans, bucket hats -  there are also some things that never went out of style that should have, like your employee intranet. In this era of digital transformation, old school intranets are having an (often negative) impact on employee engagement from the office to the frontlines. 

For most HR and Comms teams, relying on a traditional intranet system that came out at the same time as the Playstation 1 to fuel their employee engagement strategy won’t cut it anymore. Let’s dive into the reasons why and what to look for when searching for a better alternative. But first…

What is an intranet?

The advent of a computer and internet-powered workforce in the 1990s made working faster with global teams a reality, but it introduced a new problem: how do you make information accessible to employees without relying on the nascent, unsecured web?  

The intranet solved that problem by giving companies a local, private network for employees to store and share information. Traditional intranets are secure and cost-effective ways to manage sensitive company data, but it comes with many limitations and disadvantages for today’s workplace.

Traditional intranets are sprawling digital file cabinets. With so much information, from policies and benefits packets to corporate updates, it can be hard to find and keep things updated. And because most are relics of a different era, mobile access for frontline employees can be difficult, if not impossible. In short—traditional intranets aren’t doing HR and Comms teams any favors when it comes to getting critical information out to the entire organization.

We’ve broken down the advantages and disadvantages between traditional and modern intranets if you want to learn more. But since you’re here, it probably means you’re familiar with many of the challenges with a traditional intranet because you’re seeing the end result: employees aren’t using it. 

To fix that problem, HR and Comms teams have to understand what’s driving the (lack of) behavior. Then, you can properly search for a solution that addresses the root of your employee engagement challenge. 

7 reasons why employees don’t want to use your intranet

The intranet was designed to be the end-all-be-all source of information at every organization. Over the last three decades of digital workplace transformation, that perception has changed. Now, according to our research, nearly one-fifth of employees don’t use their intranet and a worrisome two-thirds of those are not even sure how to log on. 

With emails and instant messaging tools dominating communications and employees relying on dozens of SaaS-based apps to do their jobs, even the HR and Comms employees who are using the intranet aren’t keeping it up-to-date. There’s just not enough time to manage everything, and oftentimes this means the intranet becomes an afterthought. 

Here are the 7 key reasons that your traditional intranet is no longer living up to your employees’ needs and expectations. 

1. Lack of user-friendly design

Ask your employees to describe your intranet and you’ll probably hear words like clunky, frustrating, and useless. In fact, research shows that nearly half (47%) of workers find their company intranet difficult to use. 

When held up to the standards of modern business tools, traditional intranets fall short in every category. Everyone, from Boomers to Gen Z, is frustrated by the confounding search function, the not-from-this-century navigation, and the top-down, one-size-fits-all approach to organizing and presenting information.   

As a result, users are choosing friendlier, more siloed options whenever possible and leaving the intranet behind.

2. Irrelevant or outdated content

Whether you’ve had an intranet for three years or thirty, it is likely filled with an immense amount of content. And most of that content is not relevant to most people. Keeping your old intranet up-to-date is a monumental task, but it rarely belongs to any one person or organization in particular. As much as HR and Comms teams try, some information must remain there for historical or compliance reasons, further complicating efforts to provide a good information experience. 

However, since traditional intranets struggle to deliver a good search experience for documents and lack the deep personalization of modern apps, many employees skip the intranet and instead just ask others for help finding the information. Or, if the content is able to be found, it can result in redundant work being done.

3. Lack of mobile accessibility

Mobile devices are now a staple for any worker to stay connected and productive. In fact, 87% of companies have policies that encourage personal device usage for work activities. Traditional intranets, however, are not designed — let alone optimized — for smartphones. 

For frontline workers who often rely solely on mobile devices to stay connected, this can mean accessing and using the intranet while at work is impossible. As more work gets done on mobile devices, traditional intranets will fall further out of use in your organization. 

4. Insufficient training and onboarding

Many organizations are caught in a vicious cycle when it comes to user adoption for traditional intranets. As the old intranet becomes less useful for employees in your organization, it becomes less of a focus during training and onboarding, making the intranet less useful for a new round of employees who will then train…. Ah, you get the idea.

Since the clunky interface and search make it difficult for employees to just pick up the intranet on their own, training and onboarding are more important for it than more user-friendly, modern tools. But in reality, that time is being spent on training elsewhere now on other, more relevant things.

5. Limited integrations

At one point, the traditional intranet was the pinnacle of connection in the enterprise. But, as every company has added dozens (if not hundreds) of apps to their tech stack, your old intranet is no longer the center of the corporate information universe. HR, IT, and Comms teams now rely on a variety of tools where employees can access critical information and functionality. 

Without deep integrations with these tools, the intranet becomes just another — even less useful — tool for employees to remember their login for. 

6. Lack of engagement and social features

If an intranet is going to have an impact on employee engagement, it needs to be equipped with features that actually promote engagement. Traditional intranet solutions lack chat, social feeds, and surveys. Without those integrated alongside the content, employees will stick to the channels where they can actually collaborate with peers and stay engaged with leadership. 

The further behind traditional intranet solutions fall behind modern communication apps in engagement and social functionality, the less useful it will be for employees, HR, and Comms teams. 

7. Poor leadership endorsement

Executive teams are driven by high-level goals and KPIs. As the intranet becomes less useful and relevant to everyday life, it becomes less relevant to those goals and KPIs. That makes getting executives to buy-in and endorse using the intranet more difficult. 

It’s the final nail in the coffin for any technology. But a new era of intranets is changing the perception of the technology for employees and executives alike. 

What’s happening in the new “era” of intranets 

The business needs behind the traditional intranet haven’t changed — companies still need a way to securely share information and collaborate across different headquarters and work sites. In fact, the challenge is even greater now as more and more digital content is being created across the organization. Since traditional intranets can’t keep up with the need, they’ve fallen out of favor and into disrepair. 

Without a modern intranet to replace the traditional intranet, employees will find a more fractured information landscape, with documents and information stored in different apps and accounts — if it is accessible at all. In many organizations, email has become the lowest common denominator place for HR and comms teams to share information. But for organizations with frontline workforces, many employees lack a corporate email, which makes sharing sensitive information and corporate updates even more complicated.

The expectations for critical business tools like the intranet have evolved. Traditional intranets were purposely siloed away for security, but workers today expect their digital tools to be easy-to-use, connected, and be accessible anywhere. Most importantly, it should feel like an integrated part of their digital workplace, not a relic or an afterthought. 

Despite the power of today’s digital solutions, employees are increasingly disengaged at work. According to Gallup’s State of the Workplace Report for 2023, just 23% of employees are engaged on the job. Modernizing the intranet experience for your employees is not the only solution, but it is low-hanging fruit if you want to reverse that trend.

Delivering a modern intranet solution that is engaging and accessible to the entire organization is exactly why there are employee apps like Blink. The new era of employee intranets is not only aiming to solve the information problem of yesteryear — it is solving the challenges of the modern workplace. From working remotely on mobile devices to simplifying the number of digital tools needed to do the job, employee apps are revitalizing the intranet as a true, one-stop-shop for communication and collaboration.

What to look for in a modern intranet solution

When selecting an employee app to replace your aging, traditional intranet, there will be some familiar functionality to look for (how content is stored and searched for). But there will also be new features and functionality to consider that make an employee app more relevant to frontline and office-based employees. 

Here’s a breakdown of the key areas to consider when choosing the employee app to improve the impact of your employee engagement efforts.

Design

Often overlooked, a good design can seriously boost engagement. In particular, the design can make adoption easier, ensuring the initial onboarding phase goes smoothly at launch and in the years to come. 

The design of your modern intranet solution should be:

• User friendly: can everyone from the most to least tech savvy employees use it?
• Familiar: is it customizable with your brand look and feel?
• Easy to learn: can anyone pick it up and successfully navigate, search, and engage with others?

Content

One of the biggest challenges of traditional intranets is the clunky content experience for producers and consumers. Your replacement should make it easy for HR and Comms teams to keep content fresh and up-to-date without becoming overwhelming. On the other hand, the employees reading and watching the content should only see what’s relevant to them. Make sure your employee app allows for personalization of the content experience by role, location, etc.

Accessibility

Every employee app needs to be designed for mobile access. Whether you have a frontline workforce or not, every employee should have access to the intranet. If your new intranet solution requires a desktop to use fully, the adoption and engagement rates will suffer as more people access work content and apps on the go. 

Usability

For something as important as an intranet, ease-of-use needs to be a top concern. Your employee app should be intuitive enough that anyone can use it. Apps that cater to tech-y power users can be fun, but everyone from the Gen Z cashier to the semi-retired Boomer bus driver need to feel as confident in using the employee app as the head of IT.

If your future employee app requires a lot of training on just how to use it, it may not be the right fit for a dynamic workforce. 

Integrations

Let your new employee app be a cure for app fatigue. In the SaaS era, employees are being asked to use and remember logins for too many tools. With deep integrations and secure single sign-on, your employee app can be a one-stop-shop tool for everything they need — from the content in the intranet to payroll, timekeeping, benefits and IT tools. 

We call this the “digital front door,” because everything employees need to be successful can be housed in one app. This approach not only makes your intranet adoption skyrocket, but it also boosts the usage of all those other tools as well. 

Flexibility

Your company has unique needs, so your employee app should be flexible. For those with frontline organizations, having features like secure group and individual chats, social-media style news feeds, and built-in surveys gives HR and Comms teams many more ways to engage and inform workers who might otherwise not have access to email or other communications tools. 

The flexibility also allows employees to interact with and engage others in their preferred ways — whether that’s through likes and comments on posts or individual messages to peers. 

Executive buy-in-ability

Replacing something as ingrained as an intranet will need executive buy-in and sponsorship. Your new employee app needs to deliver greater ROI than a traditional intranet to justify the investment and the change in their eyes. (So make sure your next employee app features powerful analytics to measure adoption, engagement, and other KPIs.)

If you’re looking to improve the employee experience by upgrading to a modern employee app, we’ve put together tips to get leadership onboard. Download “The essential guide to executive buy-in for frontline employee experience” now.

Trade in your old intranet for a modern employee app

The intranet still matters — employees still need to securely access and share content internally — but traditional intranets are clunky, siloed relics of a bygone era. Neither employees nor the content are being set up for success today. What was once intended to be a source of truth is now just a source of frustration.

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Blink’s modern employee app gives the intranet a new lease on life. With a mobile-first, user-friendly design, everyone from the frontline to the boardroom can access it anytime. By pairing the intranet’s functionality alongside social features, integrations with other tools, and single sign-on security, Blink simplifies the digital employee experience into one app with one login.   

For HR and Comms teams struggling to keep frontline workers engaged and informed, Blink makes staying connected easier than ever. See it in action with a demo today.

You’re in the market for a new internal communications platform, but which is better: Staffbase vs. Blink?

The answer depends on what exactly you’re looking for. Both offer several similar features, but their execution is different. Let’s dive into the specifics to see which communication tool is right for you.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Staffbase vs. Blink — quick facts
• Staffbase vs. Blink: How they’re similar
• Staffbase vs. Blink: How they’re different
• Staffbase vs. Blink: pricing
• Final thoughts: Staffbase or Blink — which should you use in 2022?  

Staffbase vs. Blink — quick facts

The Staffbase employee app works best for big corporations, while Blink’s simpler format lends itself to on-the-go workers.

If a good portion of your team comprises frontline employees, Blink is the internal communications platform for you. Their mobile-first design and seamless app integrations are ideal for keeping deskless workers engaged.

Staffbase offers more robust customization features as standard with each product launch, including a custom logo and font.

A user said, “I love the look & feel of the app and the option to personalise the app for (conditional) user groups.”

But for those looking to customize their employee intranet software’s overall function and employee experience, Blink brings more flexibility, with deep integrations with existing apps inside the platform.

Within this, Blink brings existing apps to the platform via Single Sign-On integrations, while Staffbase offers more functionalities out of the box.

For example, Staffbase comes with a basic payroll function, while Blink has an end-to-end integration with Workday.

Comparing Blink vs. Staffbase on history, Staffbase has been around longer, making it a more established product with tried-and-tested service offerings. It is well-respected as a quality option.

As a newer company, Blink offers more innovation and cutting-edge features. 100% of the product roadmap is written based on customer requests, and it’s to provide feedback on the functionalities they want with each update.

The right solution for you depends on if you’re looking for a one-stop solution or something to complement your existing software.

Staffbase vs. Blink: How they’re similar

Mobile content

Comparing Staffbase vs. Blink on mobile compatibility, you’ll find both offering well-optimized mobile platforms. That means your deskless employees will have the same access to information, documents, and community as those in the office with either platform.

But some G2 reviews suggest that Staffbase’s “Admin access on smartphones is very limited with basic functionality.”

Support for XL enterprises

Both internal communication platforms are robust enough to support enormous organizations. The intranet, news, and key features are designed to aggregate and organize a large content volume across many different functionalities.

But Staffbase is best used by large corporations, while Blink also works for companies with a large frontline workforce but smaller desk-based teams. Blink’s platform requires less time to implement and works with a hands-off IT experience.

Centralized intranet solution

Staffbase and Blink are good options for those searching for an employee intranet replacement. While peripheral features differ, both offer a solution to disseminate updates, provide access to company policies, spark conversation, and track insights about employee engagement.

Although the search in Staffbase works fine for a mobile app, those using Staffbase intranet will find the lack of filters, document management, and content management tools limiting them from creating a proper knowledge base.

Staffbase vs. Blink: How they’re different

When comparing Staffbase vs. Blink at a high level, it may seem like they share many features. But the execution of those features varies greatly.

Customer input

Blink serves fewer customers, which means they can have a much closer relationship with their customers — we’re talking on a first name basis.

Blink relies heavily on customer feedback to craft its product roadmap and even maintains a Product Portal to allow customers to request features and vote on what they want to see next.

In contrast, users say that Staffbase “aren’t quick to take on board and prioritise client feedback/requests for development.” Overall, Staffbase’s updates and features implementations are less agile.

Email

One notable feature that Staffbase offers that Blink lacks is email building. Through their merger with Bananatag, Staffbase lets you create engaging newsletters, send targeted emails to subsets of employees, and measure the impact of your internal email strategy.

Since frontline workers don’t have company email addresses, email is less of a focus at Blink, although it is accessible via integrations with Gmail and Outlook.

Employee generated content

Blink focuses on decentralizing employee communication so that every employee has a voice.

Blink champions employee-generated content through a live user feed and omni-directional chat features. For organizations that want to revitalize their outdated top-down team communication structure, Blink is a great choice.

Staffbase does not make it as easy for users to share content with other users. To upload a photo, users must send a submission form to the admin — who then creates the post themselves.

This setup is ideal for companies looking for greater control over who can share news. A user appreciated this feature, saying, “It’s very easy to make someone editor of a news channel so for example a Team Leader can communicate to his own team without giving him administrator rights of the whole app.”

Integrations

Blink offers a wider range of integrations with thousands of apps via Single Sign-On. Employees can access niche industry tools, Microsoft teams, and Sharepoint without ever leaving the app. The Blink team also takes care of the dev work, making it an all-in-one solution.

Staffbase integrations are more limited. They offer integrations with Microsoft 365 and SAP. This could only work well for a company that uses other enterprise applications or has a dedicated team to customize Staffbase through their APIs. Users said, “Currently, no local programs can be integrated into the launchpad.”

Notifications

Blink offers an array of real-time and schedulable push notifications to keep employees in the loop and engage with the app frequently.

Besides regular notifications, admins can create priority posts to catch everyone’s attention or create mandatory posts that users must acknowledge. Users can switch notifications on and off and follow certain posts.

Staffbase employee app’s push notifications are less customizable, focusing only on basic functions. Users say notifications “need improving,” and “There is no way to control push notifications separately for each channel.”

Chats

Blink’s chat is designed for both socializing and collaboration — wherever you are. Advanced features like saving messages and file sharing elevate the chat as a tool for getting workflows done rather than just a social media feature.

Staffbase offers an instant messaging feature as an add-on to advanced subscriptions. The chat supports one-on-one and group chats with a 128 user cap.

Users can only send images or videos on the Apple and Android apps, rather than documents. This leads to users calling Staffbase’s chat function “very basic.”

Here’s what Staffbase supports:

Frontline focus

Blink’s core principle is that they improve frontline workers’ lives. As a result, engagement with the app is remarkably high, with an average of 10 opens per user per day.

While Staffbase is also targeted at frontline workers, many features aren’t carried through to the mobile interface. Reviewers say, “The biggest obstacle for us is to get non-desk users excited about the app and to integrate them.”

Content moderation

In Blink, administrators can assign content moderators who have complete power in managing content.

But Blink offers omnidirectional communication: User-generated content does not have to undergo a review before getting published, but any user can report and flag inappropriate content.

At Staffbase, admins have more direct control over moderating content. But there are some functional limitations around offline viewing and flagging inappropriate content which is surprising in an otherwise full-featured app.

Staffbase vs. Blink: pricing

Blink offers four levels of paid service based on company size, while Staffbase structures its pricing based on the number of features you use.

Blink levels:

• Essential: $3.40 per person, per month
• Business: Price on application
• Enterprise: Price on application
• Enterprise Plus: Price on application

Staffbase levels:

• Employee app
• Employee app + Intranet
• Staffbase NOW

Final thoughts: Staffbase or Blink — which should you use in 2022?  

Staffbase is a highly customizable internal communication software ideal for large corporations with a clear idea of what tools they need to round out their digital workplace.

Blink is ideal for businesses large and small wanting a complete out-of-the-box solution to engage frontline workers and facilitate more communication across their organization.

If you’re not sure, try a free demo of Blink and see for yourself the technology that drives a 330% increase in engagement for its users.

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Another week, another Life at Blink! This week we are highlighting Ben Willder, a Senior Sales Development Representative located in our London office. This edition comes just in time to celebrate Ben’s one-year anniversary at Blink. Ben describes Blink as a proactive, collaborative and curious place to work.

Now, let's explore Ben’s path at Blink.

What is your position at Blink?

My focus is working within our Sales team as an Enterprise SDR, identifying some of the more critical employee inclusion and enablement challenges for Blink to solve across the largest organizations. 

Another area I’ve started to dig into is our Partnerships team. This is a really fast-evolving function at Blink, and I’ve spent a lot of time building relationships with core partners like Workday in Europe, as well as collaborating closely with some of the leading Meta Consultancies off the back of the news from Workplace. This has been a pretty rewarding passion project and I am excited to have the chance to dive into this more.

What initially attracted you to join Blink?

My previous company also focused on helping frontline employees. I think fundamentally I became aware of the countless challenges facing the frontline worker, and I love how tangible the positive impacts can be.

I want to sell something that I genuinely believe makes a difference. Whilst I know that’s obvious, I do think it’s hugely important, and I love the scope for impact that exists at Blink.

‍What's a project you are proud of from your time at Blink?

Apart from the incredible work myself and my colleagues have done on reinventing what’s possible with the Lavazza to froth a good coffee, I’m very proud of the Partnerships work we’re doing. 

We’ve really encapsulated the people-first approach that’s needed to differentiate ourselves in the market, and it’s set to be incredibly enabling for the company when you think of the scope for support, opportunity and collaboration it provides. More to come here, too!

What's one thing you're excited about for the future of Blink?

In my opinion it would be optimizing our partnerships with venture partners like Workday. There’s so much scope to support these partners with collaboration and co-creation, and I want to leverage this to ensure we maintain our agility in developing the product, extending our reach and getting as many frontline employees digitally enabled as possible.

Can you tell us about a recent initiative or program launched at Blink that you found particularly exciting?

It would have to be our employee intelligence. The scope for businesses to assess business problems at such a granular level through a lens that has never existed (a digitally enabled deskless workforce) is pretty exciting. 

As we conclude this edition of Life at Blink, we're inspired by Ben’s dedication to solving critical challenges for enterprise clients and forging impactful partnerships across Europe. Ben's passion for innovation, from redefining coffee experiences to pioneering initiatives like employee intelligence, reflects Blink's commitment to empowering frontline workers. When asked why he works for Blink, he responded with:

“I like selling a product that has a tangible impact that genuinely makes sense to me.”

Here's to celebrating Ben's first year with us and the exciting milestones ahead at Blink!

Join us in shaping the future of technology and impacting lives. Explore career opportunities at Blink today! https://www.joinblink.com/careers

An intranet is a private internal network a company uses to share information, tools, and documents with its own employees. It looks and feels like the public internet, except only people inside the organization can see it.

Here's the catch. Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2025 puts employee engagement at 20% worldwide, the lowest since 2020, and most workers, especially the 80% who don't sit at a desk, still can't reach the information they need when they actually need it. A modern intranet is how you close that gap.

This guide walks through what an intranet is in 2026, how it differs from the version your IT team built a decade ago, the features that actually matter, and why most intranets still quietly fail the people who need them most.

What is an intranet?

An intranet is a private digital workspace for employees. It holds company news, policies, HR documents, team directories, knowledge bases, and internal chat in one place, behind a login only employees can reach. Think of it as the company's internal version of the internet: the same browsing and search experience, restricted to your organization.

A modern intranet runs in the cloud, works on mobile, and plugs into the tools employees already use, from payroll and scheduling to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. It gives people a single place to find what they need, sign off on policies, and stay in the loop on company news.

Gallup's 2025 research ties engagement directly to whether employees feel informed and connected, and 31% of US employees are engaged, the lowest in a decade. An intranet that actually gets used is one of the fastest ways to move that number.

Types of intranet: Which one fits your company?

Most intranets fall into one of four categories. The right choice depends on who needs to use it and how they work.

The last category is the newest and the fastest-growing, mostly because the others were built for people at desks. If your company is mostly frontline, deskless, or multi-site, anything other than a mobile-first intranet will underperform on day one.

How does an intranet actually work?

Under the hood, an intranet is a secure web application. It lives on a server, either on-premises or in the cloud, and is accessible only to authenticated users inside the organization. Employees log in through a browser or mobile app using single sign-on, a company password, or, for frontline workers, a phone number-based identity that doesn't require a corporate email address.

Content is organized into spaces: company-wide feeds, team channels, knowledge bases, policy libraries, and directories. Admins control who sees what by role, location, shift, or department. Search pulls results across everything, and integrations surface data from HR systems, payroll, rota tools, and document stores.

The main thing that separates a 2026 intranet from a 2006 one is identity. Older intranets assumed every employee had a work email. Modern ones don't, because most frontline workers don't. That one architectural shift is why mobile-first intranets reach adoption rates the older generation never could.

What are the key features of a modern intranet?

Features matter less than the question they answer: Would every employee, even the ones without a desk, actually use this? Strip it back to essentials.

• A personalized news feed. Company announcements, team updates, and peer recognition, filtered by role and location.
• A searchable knowledge base. Policies, how-tos, benefits, and training in one place, findable in two taps.
• Team chat and group channels. Direct messages, team chats, site-specific groups.
• Policy sign-off with audit trail. Read receipts, confirmations, timestamps.
• Integrations with HR and payroll. Pay slips, shift rotas, holiday requests.

In theory, everyone loves employee empowerment. Empowered employees are more productive and engaged, more likely to trust senior leadership and more likely to approach situations. What’s not to like? 

Equally, that initial process of letting go can be hard – and that’s nothing to be ashamed about. Employee empowerment is a relatively recent philosophy, and many of us will have progressed our careers with a top-down approach to workplace management. 

With the huge rise in remote and hybrid work, this approach is crumbling. As many workplaces are set to remain remote, and many others are losing employees in droves due to lack of career progression and low pay, it’s not a viable long term strategy. 

Your managers can add huge amounts of value to your business in the projects they oversee and the bonds they build with their teams. Micromanagement is wasting them as a resource.

Staff empowerment involves trading some control over various aspects of your work environment for higher productivity and greater job satisfaction. Here’s how to embrace letting go in return for these tempting performance gains. 

What is employee empowerment? 

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

“Employee empowerment is a management philosophy that emphasizes the importance of giving employees the autonomy, resources and support they need to act independently and be held accountable for the decisions they make.” 

“Autonomy, resources and support” encompasses a range of things here, and could include: 

• Offering employees freedom over where they work (e.g. remote or hybrid working arrangements). 
• Offering employees freedom over how they work by building managerial trust and avoiding micromanagement. 
• Providing resources for skills development and career progression
• Structuring your organization in a way that allows employees some say in how it’s run, for example employee voice initiatives and shareholder schemes. 

Employee empowerment, engagement, and satisfaction…what’s the difference?

Employee engagement is the strength of the mental and emotional connection employees feel toward the work they do, their teams and their organization.

Employee satisfaction is a measure of how happy an employee is in their role, and with their place of work in general.  

Employee empowerment is providing the resources and support needed for your employees to act independently. 

If you’re the type for metaphors (don’t blame you, they’re super useful!), consider employee satisfaction and employee empowerment as two key building blocks for employee engagement. 

High employee engagement is the ultimate goal – companies with engaged employees are 21% more profitable than companies that aren’t. Workplace satisfaction and empowering employees with control over how they work are essential contributors to this. 

The benefits of empowerment in the workplace

Your workforce is more flexible

Empowered workforces can work across locations and time zones, innovate more, and find solutions to problems quicker. That’s a real asset across your business – you can create better products, offer a vastly improved CX and build watertight internal processes. 

Your workforce is more productive

Employees who feel trusted are more likely to get more done in the same space of time. This is partly because it’s easier to feel driven when you have autonomy over your work, and partly because micromanagement is a major time drain. Free your colleagues from this over-hierarchical hellscape and they’ll be more willing to go the extra mile. 

Your workforce trusts leadership more

Trust is a two-way street. You’ll find that if employees are trusted to manage their workloads and have a say in how your business is run, they trust senior leadership to make mutually beneficial decisions as a result. 

Research by the Great Place to Work Institute and Fortune suggests that trust between managers and employees is the main factor in the world’s best workplaces. Workplaces with the most mutual trust beat the average annualized returns of the S&P 500 by a factor of three.

How to empower employees in the workplace

Employee empowerment isn’t a bandaid that you can tack onto your existing workplace to make it better. It needs to be woven into the fibers of your company culture. 

Bad news: this takes time and effort. 

Good news: this investment will absolutely pay off in the long term. Creating new management practices, investing in new ways of working, sharing feedback regularly and creating a culture of recognition all help you maximize the value you get from employee empowerment as a business. 

Feedback: give it and receive it

The more feedback you give on performance, the more you empower your employees to work dynamically, creatively and independently. 

The more feedback employees share with you about the workplace, the more your workplace can meet their needs – and the more likely they are to stay. 

Recognition: little and often is key

Did you know that a simple ‘thank you’ just once per month to your employees doubles employee engagement, halves the risk of them leaving and triples the likelihood of them sticking with you in the long term?

By all means celebrate the big milestones, but don’t forget to create a supportive, encouraging atmosphere day to day as well. Self belief is empowering – let your employees know that they’re doing a good job and watch performance improve. 

Career development: make sure employees are working towards something

Career development motivates employees to act independently. Why take the risks that come with autonomy and decision-making responsibilities if there’s no payout? 

In a recent survey 63% of workers cited lack of career opportunities as a reason why they left their position – the joint most popular response alongside ‘poor pay’. To create an empowered workforce motivated to stick around for the long-term, take a look at your career progression structure. What could be improved? Or, if you haven’t got any formalized structures in place, how could you design them to support the needs of your workforce? 

Communication: two-way, not one-way

Watching your employees’ every move makes your workforce resentful and erodes trust. Instead of monitoring behavior, start thinking about how you can facilitate meaningful two-way communication between managers and employees. 

As well as the right software – employee apps, instant messengers and project management software are all useful here – take a look at shifting your concerns away from regulating behavior and more towards focusing on results. 

Responsibilities: avoid making things too top heavy

The classic scenario: managers are expected to maintain a huge degree of control over their teams, resulting in time pressures, delays and a lack of feedback for frontline teams. 

By sharing responsibilities across employees and teams, you reduce this pressure drastically and encourage employee autonomy. You also avoid gradual erosion of trust and performance stagnation, as you empower your managers to spend time with their teams and invest time in employee development. 

Barriers to employee empowerment and how to overcome them

Stuck on building a naturally empowering workplace? Check these common barriers to employee empowerment. 

Your remote employees can’t communicate

To empower employees in a remote environment, your communications strategy needs to be stronger than it’s ever been. 

If performance is suffering and deadlines are being missed due to confusion, invest in remote employee communication tools and make sure your managers are checking in at least daily. 

Fear of position loss

If your employees are increasingly autonomous, what’s in store for middle to lower management positions? 

Ease your managers’ concerns about this by communicating new expectations for different roles. If they know that employee empowerment is as much about reinvesting their time in meaningful work as empowering the workforce, they’re significantly more likely to get on board. 

Lack of clear goals

“Be empowered” won’t cut it. To maximize returns on your employee empowerment strategy, you’ll need to be specific about what these goals look like. This could include: 

• Employees handling specific tasks on their own
• Employees contributing regularly to strategic discussions
• Employees shaping their workplace via employee voice initiatives

Employee empowerment in different industries

Not all industries work in the same way. What empowers employees in one industry might be impossible in another. Your healthcare workers might not be able to work remotely, for example, or there may be a particularly rigid professional hierarchy in place that you need to work around.

No matter your sector or organizational structure, there are ways to empower your employees. If flexible working is difficult, or there are real limits on the responsibilities you can share, try focusing on: 

• Employee voice initiatives like surveys and focus groups
• Career progression – if your industry is hierarchical, work with it!
• Recognition – a little ‘thank you’ never goes awry

Employee empowerment resources

There’s no such thing as being “too nerdy” about the wellbeing, productivity and performance of your employees. If you’re up for a bit of further reading, take a look at these resources. 

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

Examples of employee empowerment (Chron)

Source: theinvestorsbook.com

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

Employee voice in the workplace

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

A complete guide to employee recognition programs

Managing remote teams: best practices and tips for virtual leaders

How to create a remote work policy in 2022

Why & how to empower frontline employees

And, don’t forget to check out our Frontline of the Future podcast! Listen here. 

Employee empowerment examples

Need some real-world empowerment inspiration? Take a look at how these three businesses encourage their employees to reach their full potential. 

Timpsons

British service retailer Timpsons is a renowned example of what happens when you trust your employees. 

The business’s ‘upside down management’ philosophy was borne of owner John Timpson’s realization that “the only way to provide truly great customer service is to trust our customer-facing colleagues with the freedom to serve customers the way they know best.”

Timpsons’ frontline team members are encouraged to do whatever they can to provide a brilliant customer experience, including changing prices, rejigging displays and paying up to £500 to settle a complaint – without having to justify themselves to anyone senior. 

John Lewis

If you’re looking for the ultimate employee empowerment strategy, look no further than employee ownership. Your employees become shareholders in your business, and get a share of annual profits and a say in how the business is run. 

It’s definitely a commitment, but UK department store John Lewis makes it work. According to recent figures, 84% of John Lewis retail partners recommend John Lewis as a great place to work and 86% of customers feel valued when they shop with John Lewis outlets. Positioning their workforce as partners rather than employees drives empowerment; the retailer regularly tops ‘best workplace’ polls as a result. 

Google

It’s no surprise that worldwide innovation leader Google expects the best from its employees. To facilitate this, Google invests a lot in building a creative work environment where employees are empowered to develop new skills at every turn. 

Google Cafes encourage employees to build connections across the business, whilst the Google Moderator management tool draws a wider audience into meetings with a range of interactive features. 

Google also allows its engineers to spend 20% of their working week on projects that interest them but show no immediate promise of paying dividends. Employees have the chance to develop new skills and work with their interests, whilst Google keeps ahead of the pack on long-term innovation. 

Employee empowerment: final thoughts

As how we work continues to change, employee empowerment is becoming essential. Your teams need to be flexible, adaptable and engaged if you want to remain competitive – particularly right now, as open vacancies soar and workforces are asked to do more with less. 

Employee empowerment will look different in different workforces. For example, you might not be able to offer flexible working, but you can still allow employees control over their processes and a say in how the workplace is run. Or, you might have strict protocols that need to be followed, but be able to offer some degree of time and location flexibility. 

Whatever staff empowerment means for you, encouraging meaningful communication between managers and employees, setting clear expectations and building a culture of mutual trust is essential to success. 

Blink is an employee app that enables two-way conversations, builds trust and empowers employees as a result. Get your free demo today!

For IT leaders, SharePoint can feel like a safe bet

Microsoft tools already power your organization. So why wouldn’t you use SharePoint as your employee intranet?

The truth is, while it can seem like a quick-fix solution, SharePoint has its drawbacks. It’s complex to learn and use. It doesn’t support frontline access or employee engagement. It simply isn’t built for every employee or every intranet task.

The upshot? SharePoint lands your organization with a hidden IT tax — in the form of resources, consultants, workarounds, and additional software. It can quickly become a drain on your IT team’s time and budget. 

So here, we look at exactly where SharePoint falls down — and explore modern intranet alternatives that make life a whole lot easier for your IT crew. 

The promise vs. the reality of SharePoint

SharePoint is marketed as an “all-in-one” employee intranet and internal communications solution. File storage. Team sites. A knowledge base. A communication hub.

But the practical reality is a little different. The fundamental role of SharePoint is to store files. So, as an intranet, supposed to go way beyond file storage, there are some key ways that SharePoint fails to deliver: 

• Top-down communication. SharePoint prioritizes corporate broadcasts over peer-to-peer interaction. Without additional software, teams miss out on the human connections that drive satisfaction and retention.
  
  
• Limited personalization. No intuitive dashboards or role-based filters here. So employees have to wade through irrelevant content to find the information they need. This is bad for intranet engagement and employee productivity.
  
  
• An outdated user experience. In a world where TikTok and WhatsApp set the standard, SharePoint feels like a dusty corporate archive. Employees expect simple, fast, consumer-grade experiences — and SharePoint simply isn’t up to the task.

And those are just the headlines, not the full story. Beyond these issues, SharePoint poses problems for two key segments of your workforce — the IT team tasked with implementing it and the frontline workforce struggling to access it.

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The IT tax of SharePoint explained

First, let’s look at SharePoint from the perspective of your IT team. What does using SharePoint as an intranet platform mean for the people tasked with running it?

#1. Complex customization and integration

Configuring SharePoint isn’t a case of plug-and-play. Setting up permissions, workflows, and integrations requires specialized IT knowledge. Even small changes — like tweaking layouts — become time-consuming tasks.

Yes, SharePoint is customizable. But for many, that flexibility comes at a cost in the form of heavy technical requirements. Developers are essential to get just the basics working smoothly.

#2. Ongoing maintenance and updates

SharePoint setup is never “done.” Updates, patches, and version issues all demand ongoing IT oversight. This can be a huge burden for small IT teams and another cost to consider if you have to outsource this maintenance work.

#3. Reliance on consultants

Most organizations don’t have deep SharePoint expertise in-house. That means relying on external consultants for custom builds, integrations, and even routine maintenance. This can drag out timelines and inflate your IT budget. 

#4. Extensive training

Training existing staff is an alternative to getting in the consultants. But it’s, again, expensive and time-consuming. It can take months of training to ensure that teams are proficient, and across a large IT team, getting everyone up to speed turns into a long-term project.

#5. Managing additional software

When you use SharePoint as your employee intranet, there are inevitably going to be gaps. IT has to find software that supports employee engagement, mobile access, and custom notifications.

This can bring its own problems. Your IT team shoulders the burden of keeping all software updated and integrated. And when employees have to navigate a complex tech stack, juggling multiple logins and passwords, tickets start to mount.

#6. Constant employee support

SharePoint’s complex infrastructure makes it hard for non-technical users (like your comms team) to create, update, and manage the intranet. Routine tasks turn into IT tickets, creating delays and frustration.

Comms teams can’t publish updates quickly, employees wait a long time for information, and IT is stuck in helpdesk mode. Instead of driving innovation, your tech team only has the bandwidth to wade through support requests.

#7. Adoption issues

Employees are used to fast, easy, and convenient online experiences. And SharePoint doesn’t live up to their high expectations. Intranet adoption suffers. Your IT budget is spent on an intranet platform that a large proportion of your employees avoid using. 

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How SharePoint falls down for the frontline

SharePoint causes problems for another segment of your workforce — frontline employees. The platform was never designed with deskless workers in mind. So, if you choose to use it as your only intranet platform, your frontline experiences the following. 

A clunky mobile experience

SharePoint’s mobile navigation is awkward and slow. For employees on the go, employee communications are hard to access. This damages internal communications and the frontline employee experience.

The need to “go seek” information

Without real-time notifications, role-based alerts, or clearly defined communication channels, SharePoint forces employees to hunt down updates. For busy shift workers and deskless teams, this means critical comms are often missed. 

No support for asynchronous work

SharePoint emphasizes live chats and video calls but ignores the reality for employees working shifts or across different time zones. If frontline staff aren’t online at the right time, they struggle to keep up with organizational updates. 

A disconnected culture

Without a central, easy-to-use space for celebrating wins, sharing knowledge, or connecting co-workers, frontline employees are excluded from the company conversation. They miss out on the camaraderie that boosts engagement.

A digital divide

SharePoint creates a digital divide. Your desk-based employees can use it to access comms and resources online. Frontline employees have to make do with word-of-mouth messaging and the chaotic memo board. This two-tier approach leaves deskless workers feeling undervalued and less loyal to your organization.

And — in another bit of bad news (sorry!) — frontline accessibility issues spell further problems for IT. 

Your IT team spends a huge amount of time troubleshooting accessibility gaps, finding workarounds, third-party plugins, and manual fixes. All the while, comms go unread, resources go unused, and the cost and complexity of your intranet ecosystem spiral higher.

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The alternative? A modern employee intranet

Let’s give SharePoint its due. It’s a powerful document management system, deeply integrated with Microsoft 365. For compliance-heavy workflows and content storage it does the job.

But here’s the issue. SharePoint was never built to be an all-in-one employee intranet. And in 2025, an intranet needs to do far more than simply manage files.

An employee intranet has to work for all members of staff, including those hard-to-reach employees on the frontlines of your organization. It needs to support information sharing, employee engagement, and company culture. And it needs to alleviate the pressure on your IT team, rather than adding to it.

If you want an intranet that does all of the above, SharePoint isn’t the answer. Instead, you need a modern intranet solution, with the following intranet features:

• Mobile-first design. A modern intranet is designed to work beautifully across all devices. It provides real-time notifications, offline access, and easy login — even for employees who don’t have a corporate email address.
  
  
• Easy admin. Comms teams can post updates, share resources, and customize dashboards without sending a single IT ticket. With user-friendly drag and drop controls, they can tailor the platform to fit their needs without complex back-end development.
  
  
• Culture-building tools. Modern intranets aren’t just information repositories. They’re engagement platforms — places where employees can share successes, receive recognition for a job well done, connect with peers, and feel part of something bigger.
  
  
• A consumer-grade experience. The best modern intranet solutions are as intuitive and engaging as the comms apps employees use away from work. They feature social media-style tools, deep integrations, and single sign-on technology. So employees can access all workplace tools in a few easy clicks.

Bear in mind that a modern intranet doesn’t have to replace SharePoint altogether. It can integrate with it, pulling through documents, policies, and resources, while layering on the communication and engagement features SharePoint lacks.

That way, IT gets to keep Microsoft compliance and storage, and employees get an interface they’ll actually use — all without the associated implementation headache.

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SharePoint isn’t all bad — it’s just not enough

SharePoint is perfect for storage. But it’s not built for connection.

If you want a true intranet — one that engages frontline employees, strengthens culture, and reduces IT overheads — you need a modern platform, designed for today’s workforce.

That might mean ditching your current setup and opting for a SharePoint alternative. Or it could mean layering a digital front door on top of SharePoint, retaining the software’s good points while fixing its flaws.

An intranet like Blink is the perfect solution. Think mobile-first design, a consumer-grade user experience, and deep integrations with the workplace tools you already use.

With Blink. comms and employees can publish updates, share resources, and customize dashboards without waiting on IT — and IT finally gets to step away from firefighting SharePoint problems to focus on strategic projects.

The result? No more workarounds. No more time and money spent on that hidden IT tax. Just an employee intranet that works for everyone — from HQ to the frontline to your IT team.

Blink. And go beyond SharePoint to discover what really works for internal comms.

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