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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:

1. Greater discretionary effort
2. Improved job satisfaction
3. Increased employee retention

Greater discretionary effort

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:

1. Delivering on the 10  key drivers of employee engagement
2. Identifying the employee engagement strategies and tactics that work for your employees
3. 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 core experiences and tools do you need to provide to your workforce in order to boost the overall employee experience and drive engagement?  

Key drivers of employee engagement include but aren’t limited to: 

1. Safe, dedicated working environment
2. Tools and processes
3. Feeling valued and involved
4. Psychological safety
5. Fairness
6. Ownership
7. Autonomy
8. Progression
9. Leadership
10. Work-life balance.

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 Forms and 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.

Want engagement results like these? Book a free Blink demo today.

How to measure employee engagement

Measuring employee engagement should be a continuous process.

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:

1. The data that already exists in your company
2. 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.

Download: the essential guide to executive buy-in for frontline employee experience

Communicate your plan of action

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.

Get started with Blink today.

On the hunt for the perfect comms solution for your organization?

Whether you’re looking for a tech to engage a frontline workforce or a modern intranet that puts your organization’s knowledge at your fingertips, we’re comparing techs that can take your internal communication to the next level. 

Today we look at Interact vs. Blink to see which is right for you.

Interact vs. Blink — quick facts

Blink and Interact are modern internal communication solutions suited for enterprise and small organizations. Their intuitive user experience and mobile applications lend themselves to a frontline workforce. 

However, Interact is mainly an intranet replacement with various social employee engagement features. It is an older solution, and some feel that its features are a little old-fashioned. That includes an inclination towards top-down communications and static intranet pages. 

In contrast, Blink packages an intranet with chat, micro-apps, and interactive content management to create an open, engaging digital experience. The priority is on encouraging all employees to participate in discussions and voice their contributions. 

How they’re similar

Mobile-focused

Blink is designed with the mobile frontline worker in mind. That means you can reach everything you’d expect to have access to as a desk worker straight from your phone. The features and design flow seamlessly, no matter the screen size, to unite your organization with one application. 

Similarly, Interact also caters to companies with a significant number of frontline workers. The intranet software is fully responsive and works on both iOS and Android.

Targeted posts

Both internal employee communication tools recognize that the most effective messages are tailored. 

Interact uses “personas” you can define based on qualities you set. More than just dividing workers by role, you can segment your messages based on the training they’ve already received, location, and more. 

Blink also allows you to target posts based on certain teams and work functions. The live feed of employee posts, company communications, and important real-time notifications are 100% customizable for each individual. 

People directory

Both Blink and Interact make it easy to discover and contact any other member in your organization, breaking down communication barriers. 

Blink’s People Directory consists of each team member's photographs, role, time zone, and location.

Interact’s directory adds a bit more content to this directory with customizable bios, interests, and expertise. 

How they’re different

Many features set each communication management software apart. Let’s take a look: 

SMS

Interact adds multichannel broadcasts that include the option to send a text to employees. One reviewer notes how “beneficial a feature like this would be during a pandemic.”

Although Blink can push notifications to each user’s phone, there is no out-of-the-box feature that allows SMS texting. 

Chat

When comparing Interact vs. Blink, one large difference is Blink’s native chat function. Users can start secure group or one-on-one chats. Document-sharing and emoji capabilities also mean your employees have the tools to get their message across, no matter the subject. 

In contrast, Interact only has a tagging function to start conversations and, more often than not, will need to integrate with third-party chat platforms. 

Digital signage

The Interact software includes built-in digital signage capabilities. That gives your team the ability to display updates, company news, and other useful information in break rooms, conference rooms — anywhere with a screen. 

Blink does not offer a feature to create and display digital signage natively in the app but can be configured with integration to serve this purpose. 

Micro-apps

Blink offers deep integration with thousands of apps, acting as your one-stop solution to digital workplace technology. Blink also lets you build out integrations for any app you need through customizable micro-apps.

When comparing the customization of Interact vs. Blink, you are slightly more limited with the latter. Although it also offers several integrations, the Interact intranet does not offer a way for users to add ample features themselves. 

Extranet

Interact offers additional extranet services that provide a communication platform for business partners. External parties can access FAQs, product pages, blogs, answer surveys, and more through a simple login page. 

Blink’s product offering is more narrowly focused on internal communications, so if your team is not looking for an extranet solution, a platform with features solely designed for internal teams may serve you better. 

Feed page

Blink’s feed page provides an engaging, personalized experience that enables a sense of connectedness and omnidirectional communication. 

When comparing Interact vs. Blink’s newsfeed, Interact’s is more focused on activity updates. For example, when a document is updated or a user joins a new group. 

Although users can like and comment, the social aspect is not as prominent. The platform’s forum allows more back-and-forth conversations but does not encourage frequent participation.

Ease of use

Blink takes most of the burden of onboarding and IT off your hands, making it an ideal solution for enterprise companies and lean teams alike. The features are intuitive, requiring little to no training, and once you’re onboarded, Blink handles all the behind-the-scenes IT to keep your hands free. 

On the other hand, learning to use Interact’s intranet does take a bit more time. User reviews say, “Its functionality is difficult to administer and labor-intensive. It is also not very intuitive.” 

One feature that is consistently said to be difficult to use is its forms. “Forms are a great feature to have, but we've found them cumbersome to create and maintain.”

Interact vs. Blink — pricing

Blink offers four levels of paid service based on company size, while Interact’s pricing structure is a bit more opaque. They offer individualized pricing based on your organization’s exact requirements, so you’ll have to request a quote to see how much it may be for you. 

Here’s a look at Blink’s pricing:

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

Interact vs. Blink — final thoughts

If you’re looking for a comprehensive, modern intranet with social features, want to maintain a more traditional communication structure, and have the resources to spend a little more time learning how to use the product in the backend, Interact may be the right choice for you. 

However, if you want an intranet with engaging, intuitive features that refresh your internal communications with open dialogue, and you want to be able to fully customize your solution’s features, Blink may be your go-to. 

Determine if Blink is the right solution for you by booking a demo. Try it free for 14 days. 

Looking for more comparisons? Check out Blink Vs Beekeeper

By Lauren Burns, Chief Operating Officer, Blink

‍

Big news for small businesses

At Blink, we believe every worker — not just the ones glued to a desk — deserves to feel connected, in the loop and part of something bigger.

Until now, Blink has been the go-to for massive organizations keeping their frontline teams buzzing.

But today, we’re flipping the script. For the first time, everyone can try Blink free right from our homepage.

That’s right: no red tape, no long sales calls, no IT headaches. Just instant access to the same platform trusted by retail and hospitality giants, healthcare heroes and transport legends around the world.

Why this matters

If you run a small or midsized business, you know the struggle:

• Important updates vanish into the black hole of your email inbox
• WhatsApp groups spin out of control, with current employees frustrated with the lack of work-life balance and ex-employees still lurking in the wings
• Your “intranet” is basically a dusty folder no one dares to open

Meanwhile, your people — especially those on the frontline — are ready for a better way to communicate. They live on mobile, expect apps that feel as easy as Instagram, and they hate feeling disconnected.

That’s exactly why we built Blink. And you don’t need enterprise money to experience it.

What you’ll unlock in your free trial

Sign up today and you can start building your employee communications hub — via an intuitive set-up experience — in minutes:

• A social-style news feed that people actually read and post to
• Secure chat and groups that replace rogue WhatsApp chains
• Fully branded and personalized so your intranet reflects your brand at every touchpoint
• Everything in one place with a one-stop shop for policies, shifts, training, and more
• Recognition and surveys to keep morale sky-high

All of it designed for quick adoption and lasting engagement. And the best part? Your team already knows how to use it.

A big moment for small businesses

Here’s the truth: The future of work isn’t just for enterprises. When every team, no matter the size, gets world-class communication and collaboration tools, big things happen. Morale grows. Operations run smoother. And the culture you’re building has a digital home that matches the energy of your people.

But this is just the start. What comes next is even more exciting: unlocking the potential of your people. 

Our Blink for Everyone team is driven by one simple mission: to make it easier for people to find, try, and love Blink. So I want to also take this opportunity to thank all of our founding Blink for Everyone customers, some of whom are celebrated on our Customer Wall of Love. 

There’s nothing to hold you back. The same tech trusted by global enterprises is now in your hands — free to try, starting today.

‍Blink. And start your free trial today.

In 2025, the frontline workforce underwent a significant generational shift.

For the first time, Gen Z passed Millennials as the largest generation in the shift-based workforce.

Whether you’ve realised it or not, this generation is already on your shop floors, in your restaurants, and working your distribution centers. And now is the perfect opportunity to revisit your internal comms strategy.

Why? Because if your frontline communications only work for employees who tolerate email, check notice boards, and don’t expect much from their employer’s technology stack, you’re already falling behind.

Here’s what the Gen Z frontline workforce expects from your internal communications — and how you can develop a strategy that supports this, now dominant, frontline cohort.

The Gen Z workforce in numbers

Gen Z — those born between 1995 and 2009 — make up 22% of the global population. They now comprise 27% of the global workforce — a figure that will rise to 30% by 2030.

In the frontline workforce, a bigger shift has already taken place. Gen Z workers now make up 41% of US shift-based workers — slightly ahead of Millennials at 40% and way ahead of older Gen X and Baby Boomer generations.

Frontline organizations are feeling this shift first, because Gen Z has been hit hardest by the rise of AI and a cooling entry-level jobs market, and frontline roles have a low barrier to entry.

So what does this mean for your organization? Simply put, the employee communication strategies that worked for previous generations won’t work for Gen Z. That’s because Gen Z is bringing different priorities and expectations to the workplace.

What makes Gen Z workers different from older generations?

Understanding Gen Z internal comms starts with understanding what this generation actually expects from work.

• They grew up mobile-first. Gen Z is the first generation to have grown up with smartphones as their primary communication device. They’re used to consuming information in a fast, succinct, very visual format. For Gen Z frontline workers, a company that communicates through printed notices and manager cascades isn’t just behind the times — it’s an organization that doesn’t respect their time or preferences.
  
  
• They expect transparency. Gen Z employees want to understand not just what they’re being asked to do, but why. They expect leadership to communicate openly about company direction, decisions, and challenges. Organizations that broadcast information without context — or leave employees in the dark — lose Gen Z trust fast.
  
  
• They leave faster when expectations aren't met. Gen Z has a lower tolerance for poor employee experience than previous generations. A role that doesn’t deliver on the experience promised during recruitment, offer a visible path forward, or treat them as valued members of the organization won’t hold them for long. Their loyalties are also divided, with two in three poly-employment workers (those working multiple frontline jobs) falling into the Gen Z generational bracket. 

Where most frontline orgs get Gen Z internal comms wrong

The gap between what Gen Z expects from workplace communication and what the average frontline operation delivers is significant.

Paper schedules. Email-only company updates. Manager phone calls. A feedback survey that appears once a year and produces no visible response. An intranet that doesn’t work on smartphones.

This is a communication infrastructure designed for a different era. And for the Gen Z frontline workforce, it has a negative impact on employee engagement, motivation, and retention.

The organizations retaining Gen Z on the frontline are the ones that have recognized this gap and have closed it deliberately. Here’s what that requires.

The Gen Z internal comms readiness checklist

Find out if your internal comms meet Gen Z expectations. Here are five practical questions HR and comms leaders can ask right now.

#1. Can every worker access company updates on their phone?

For Gen Z frontline workers, mobile access isn’t a preference — it’s the expectation. If company news, policy updates, and operational information require a desktop login or a trip to a shared terminal, you’re not communicating with this cohort effectively.

(One important caveat: mobile access alone isn’t enough. 58% of Gen Z report digital fatigue — feeling overwhelmed by constant alerts and too many platforms. The goal isn’t more channels. It’s one well-designed channel that consolidates communication without adding noise.)

#2. Do they have a voice?

Gen Z expects two-way communication. They want to ask questions, share opinions, leave comments, and see their input influencing decisions. An annual engagement survey doesn’t meet that expectation. Reactive, visible, two-way channels will help to build trust.

#3. Is recognition immediate and visible?

Lack of recognition is a primary driver of Gen Z workplace stress. For frontline workers who rarely interact with senior leadership, peer-level and manager-led recognition delivered through a shared digital channel is essential. It shows that their contribution matters.

#4. Are onboarding and training mobile-friendly?

1 in 3 Gen Z frontline workers feel bored, unprepared, or left behind by the training they receive. 

Gen Z learns best through short-form video, interactive content, and mobile-accessible resources they can return to at the moment of need. They need onboarding and training delivered to mobile devices in a way that keeps them engaged and informed.

#5. Can employees connect with co-workers?

Gen Zs with close workplace friendships are 15 points more likely to stay with their organization for more than five years. 

In shift-based environments where workers may rarely overlap with the same colleagues, those relationships don’t form by accident. 

Communication tools that support peer connection — group chats, communities, shared social spaces — are vital comms infrastructure.

Read more: How to engage Gen Z with employee communications

What good Gen Z communication actually looks like: Domino’s x Blink

Domino’s is a good example of what happens when a frontline organization commits to meeting frontline employees where they are.

With a workforce that skews heavily toward Gen Z, Domino’s needed a communication approach that worked for employees who don’t sit at desks, don’t have corporate email addresses, and expect a consumer-grade digital experience from their employer.

After implementing Blink as their frontline communication tool, Domino’s was able to transform Gen Z internal comms.  

Store employees had a single place to access company news, operational updates, training resources, and peer recognition — all in an engaging, interactive, multimedia format, and all from the smartphone already in their pocket.

The Blink app is now part of daily life at Domino’s, with 94% platform adoption and more than 8 in 10 employees actively using the platform every month. It’s transformed company culture, giving every team member access, ownership, and a stronger connection to the brand.

Read the full Domino’s x Blink case study.

Managing Gen Z employees on the frontline: Five quick wins

• Lead with purpose. Gen Z wants to understand how their work connects to the bigger picture. Build context into your communications — not just what's happening, but why it matters.
  
  
• Communicate in their format. Avoid walls of text. Instead, create Insta-worthy internal comms — short-form video, visual content, interactive polls. It’s engaging for Gen Z and helps to build trust.
  
  
• Make feedback loops visible. When Gen Z employees raise an issue or respond to a survey, show them what happened as a result.
  
  
• Don't make them ask their manager for everything. Self-serve access to schedules, payslips, policies, and shift swapping removes friction from daily work and gives workers a sense of autonomy.
  
  
• Recognize early and often. Don't wait for milestones. Regular employee recognition — particularly for new hires finding their feet — is an incredibly effective Gen Z employee engagement strategy.

Are your comms future-ready?

Your Gen Z frontline workforce isn’t waiting for your internal communications strategy to catch up.

Staff are already making daily judgments about whether your organization is worth sticking with — based largely on the quality of communication and connection they experience on shift.

The good news is that improving Gen Z internal comms doesn’t require radical changes.

A mobile-first platform that consolidates communication, supports two-way dialogue, makes recognition visible, and gives every employee self-serve access to the information they need addresses most of what this generation expects.

Blink’s mobile-first app is built for exactly this. It’s a consumer-grade platform Gen Z frontline workers love to use — because it’s designed for the way they love to work.

Blink. And start speaking Gen Z’s language.

This article is part of Blink’s “frontline first” series: content created specifically for leaders of deskless or distributed teams. We know that the job of frontline leadership is entirely different from managing ‘desk-based’ teams, so this is for you and your unique set of challenges.

Every leader in an organization that has frontline workforce has likely experienced the 'Frontline Connection Gap' - it's the root cause of thousands of wasted hours and measurable negative impact on key business metrics like retention and productivity.

But what exactly is this 'gap', and how do you know if your organization is one of the ones experiencing it? And if it turns out that you are, how do you go about closing it (and is it even worth the effort)? In this article, we'll explore all of those questions and give you some simple answers.

What is the Frontline Connection Gap?

In a nutshell, the Frontline Connection Gap is the failure to enable frontline workers to communicate with the same ease, scale and speed as desk-based workers.

If it sounds simple, that's because it is. Think about how the average desk-based worker gets to communicate at work:

• Easy access to their co-workers via email, work apps such as Slack and video conferencing tools such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams
• Easy access to key information and updates via intranets and cloud-based drives
• Easy access to key HR processes such as booking time off and downloading paystubs through tools such as Deel or Workday
• Easy access to learning and development through dedicated Learning Management Systems
• Easy access to other parts of the organization (including leadership) through shared directories
• Easy access to feedback portals through tools such as CultureAmp or Peakon

There's more where this came from, but the key point is that desk-based workers have access to a wealth of people, processes and information within just a few clicks.

For deskless workers, the picture looks very different - let's look at those same areas again:

• Limited access to co-workers beyond those in the same physical space, often leading to isolation
• Limited access to key information, often still delivered through paper memos as many frontline workers don't have access to a company email address.
• Limited access to key HR processes such as booking time off and arranging shifts, which often requires making phonecalls or messaging managers via text and WhatsApp. Processes such as claiming expenses often still involve using paper forms.
• Limited access to learning and development, as access to computers is infrequent
• Limited access to management and leadership, leading to disengagement
• Limited ability to deliver feedback or whistleblow on critical problems

The stark difference in these two worlds all comes down to communications infrastructure (or lack thereof): without continuous access to computers and email addresses, frontline workers are in a world that desk-based workers haven't experienced in more than twenty years.

The impact of the Gap

The way to know if your organization has a Frontline Connection Gap is by seeing if anything 'disappears' into it.

For the best examples of this, look to what your Human Resources team are doing. Let's take Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs as a key case - these critical initiatives are often planned and tracked at board level, and in order for them to be effective they need to impact every single member of an organization. The roll-out of these will often work well for desk-based teams thanks to regular communications such as emails, chat groups, in-person Employee Resource Groups and video calls.

However, getting to the frontline is a different matter. Without reliable channels for communications, People leaders will often find that promoting DEI programs is restricted to a flyer on a noticeboard, curtailing awareness and participation from the very start. In other words, the DEI program has fallen into the Frontline Connection Gap.

So we see just how big a problem the Gap can be: company policies and programs might as well not exist, for all the frontline are able to engage with them. As a result, the impact of the Gap can be felt on almost any core business metric - for example:

• Retention drops because frontline employee engagement is low
• Recruitment faces challenges as the organization is unable to offer an ideal employee experience
• Customer experience is impacted when employees are ill-informed and disengaged
• Productivity drops through inefficiencies in processes such as filling empty shifts and inconsistent onboarding and training
• Safety is put at risk through failures to communicate critical information at scale
• Employee wellbeing suffers as a result of isolation and inability to access support

The list could go on - and it does. If any one of these key metrics looks different in the frontline part of your organization in comparison to the desk-based part, then the likelihood is that you have a Frontline Connection Gap to bridge.

How to close the Frontline Connection Gap

It's important at this point to remember that the Frontline Connection Gap is rarely caused through neglect or intention - in fact, many organizations have tried (and are still trying) to close it. The problem is that the strategies that they employ usually fail, and it's for one important reason: the kind of communications infrastructure that works for the desk-based will not work for the frontline.

A key example of this is using intranets. Many organizations find intranets to be a useful means of sharing information with their desk-based workers, and so attempt to roll these out to their frontline workers through a mobile-based approach. In theory, this should work: most frontline workers have access to a smartphone and are confident enough in using them to download an intranet app.

However, this strategy comes across a number of roadblocks:

• Firstly, it requires frontline workers to remember a new login and password (IT teams often find themselves facing high volumes of password reset requests as a result).
• Secondly, engagement with intranet apps will usually be disappointingly low - but the reason for this poor uptake will help you unlock the secret of successfully crossing the Frontline Connection Gap (keep reading to find out).

To close the Frontline Connection Gap, there are three simple principles to follow:

• Go mobile. With smartphone adoption having reached a critical tipping point, this is a no-brainer.
• Consolidate where you can. The more systems and apps you ask a frontline worker to instal, the more you dilute your success. If you're asking your frontline to download and login to separate systems for accessing paystubs, receiving communications, giving feedback and arranging shifts, you're adding friction with every step. Create a single point of access wherever you can.
• Put daily value at the centre of your solution. This is the crucial secret behind adoption, and the last mile of closing the Frontline Connection Gap. Busy frontline workers need a reason to engage with HQ, and that's the problem with simply rolling out an intranet on mobile: there's little in it for a frontline worker, so even if they have an app in the palm of their hand, they'll rarely take time out to log in. Success lies in inverting this, by making sure that at the heart of your communications infrastructure are processes that the frontline always need - for example, access to shifts and paystubs. By placing value at the heart of your system, you get the consistent engagement you need to close the Gap (we call this 'Chips and Dip theory'.

Despite the seriousness of its impact, the Frontline Connection Gap is actually a relatively simple problem - which thankfully means relatively simple solutions. If you're ready to get started, check out some of the best solutions on the market over here.

9 ways to boost employee engagement in manufacturing organizations

The manufacturing industry has an engagement problem. Just 25% of manufacturing employees are engaged at work, making it one of the least engaged occupations in the US.

Employee engagement is the extent to which workers feel satisfied with their jobs and are aligned with organizational values. It also influences how able and willing they are to give 100% to their work. 

So the stat above is worrying. But it also presents an untapped opportunity for forward-thinking firms.

When you improve employee engagement, you create a stronger connection between employee and organization. This leads to better retention, productivity, and business results.

With Deloitte’s 2024 Manufacturing Industry Outlook listing skilled staff shortages as one of the industry’s primary challenges over the coming year, there’s never been a better time to put an employee engagement strategy into action.

Take a look at our ideas for manufacturing employee engagement to swim against the tide, attract additional employees and motivate the ones you already have.  

The importance of employee engagement in manufacturing

It is without question that employee engagement is important to every organization in every industry.

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Engagement has a direct impact on talent acquisition and retention. Staff are less likely to take time off sick and productivity sees a 14% uptick. Happier, more satisfied staff produce better, more cost-effective results for your company.

But in manufacturing, employee engagement can help you to overcome a range of industry-specific challenges. There’s a link between manufacturing employee engagement and all of the following:

• Quality management – engaged employees care more about company goals – they’re more likely to spot and report quality issues
• Safety and risk management – engaged employees pay more attention to the critical comms sent out, which can often include safety and risk management documents. Engaged employees also hold themselves accountable for their impact on the team and work environment, which will lead them to paying more attention to health and safety. 
• Customer experience – there’s a link between employee experience (EX) and customer experience CX) – engaged employees manufacture better products and provide a better service
• Business results – when quality, safety, and CX improve, you improve overall business results – costs go down, sales go up

Key factors influencing employee engagement in manufacturing

If you want to improve the manufacturing employee experience at your organization, you need a strategy. This plan sets out how every part of your company – not just your HR team – is going to work together to improve engagement.

Your strategy should also consider the key factors that affect employee engagement in the manufacturing workplace.  

Communication

Internal communication within a manufacturing organization can be tricky. 

To start, the majority of manufacturing frontline employees don’t have business emails. This creates an initial barrier to cross —of how to even communicate with these workers. 

Then you have teams in the office and on the factory floor, plus a variety of login, language, and time constraints. To give updates on safety protocols and equipment issues, and to share company culture, you need communication channels that deliver the right information to every employee.

The physical work environment

Your workplace should be a safe and comfortable environment for employees. Equipment and protocols have to support the physical wellbeing of workers. And staff need easy-access communication channels so they can report hazards and safety concerns.

Training and development  

Training and development are key in a fast-changing sector like manufacturing. So employees can deliver products to the expected standard. And so you can retain more of your workers by giving them new challenges and a clear career path.

Manufacturing employees are often responsible for repetitive tasks. And it can be hard for them to see how their work fits into the bigger picture. Workplace leaders bring meaning to employee work by recognizing their efforts and sharing company goals and values.  

9 ways to improve employee engagement in manufacturing

Looking to improve employee engagement at your manufacturing firm? The following ideas will help you enhance the employee experience and reap business rewards.

1. Invest in technology

AI, automation, robotics – manufacturing tech is coming on leaps and bounds. But technology doesn’t just improve manufacturing processes. You can use it to boost employee engagement, too.

An employee app like Blink supports easy communication across your organization. As a mobile-first solution, available via smartphone, you can put mandatory reads, new safety protocols, and essential company updates at the fingertips of every employee.

You also bring together the tech tools your teams already use. With next-level integration capabilities, Blink puts information and resources in one easy-access location. You provide a friction-free, user-friendly interface that your employees enjoy using.

Technology streamlines work – and keeps employees in the loop. Just be sure to choose tools suited to both frontline and desk-based workers, and accessible for those with a company email or without. In doing so, you create an equitable working environment and raise the engagement bar for everyone.

2. Open communication

In workplaces that prioritize honesty, personal openness, and mutual respect, workers are 80% more likely to report high emotional wellbeing. Open communication helps keep employees happy.

Image source

You can put the rumor mill out of action and adopt a more open communication style by letting information move freely between all members of your organization:

• Leaders keep employees in the loop, sharing key updates and supporting workers to understand the bigger picture.
• Managers have an open-door policy and regularly connect with their employees, offering feedback, updates, and – crucially – listening to what they have to say, too.
• Workers are encouraged to contribute – they collaborate with each other and feel comfortable raising issues and ideas with decision-makers

So how do you make this kind of communication a reality within your manufacturing organization?

Firstly, you need the right communication channels. These should be suited to your way of working and link every member of the workforce. In a large, modern workplace, a noticeboard crammed with paper memos simply won’t cut it.

Secondly, leaders need to leave egos at the door. Open communication means sometimes hearing things you don’t want to hear. Remember that negative feedback is often more valuable than good as it highlights areas for improvement. And encourage managers to lead by example.

Lastly, bear in mind that open communication can be taught. So train employees in information sharing, active listening, empathy, and teamwork. Teach them which communication channels are the most appropriate – and how often they should be using them. 

3. Translation capabilities

Most manufacturing organizations have a diverse, multinational workforce. And many frontline employees don’t speak English as a first language. So if you’re not already translating company comms, this is a really easy way to boost employee engagement across the board.

Resources, information, and internal communication should be available in the languages your workforce speaks. That way everyone receives the same message and enjoys equal access to information. This also eliminates the bottleneck that managers create, having to be the translator themselves and spending their hours on managing the communication channels that their employees don’t have access to.

For example,The Blink app supports over 100 languages. Contributors can translate posts and resources at the click of a button, making all of your content accessible to everyone on your team, regardless of the language they prefer to use.

With effective, accurate translation, you get everyone on the same page – and include everyone in your company culture.

4. Recognition programs

Recognition makes employees feel valued. When you appreciate and reward employees who go above and beyond, you motivate them and inspire other employees to follow suit.

So when an employee hits a professional or personal milestone, when someone highlights a safety issue before it becomes a hazard, or when a team consistently meets their targets, give them the public recognition they deserve. And encourage co-workers to praise one another, too.

You can give recognition in company meetings, on the blog, or in the newsletter. Or ensure you reach every member of staff with recognition updates by using a digital solution like Blink.

With Blink’s recognition feature, you can post instant, personalized messages to highlight staff achievements. You add a recognition post to the company news feed and start building recognition into your company culture in just a few clicks.

Praise goes a long way. But you may also like to consider perks and prizes. Gift vouchers, an extra paid day’s leave, or a catered team lunch can all incentivize your teams. For manufacturing firm, JFE Shoji Power, sweepstake competition prizes helped them to fill overtime shifts.  

But before you put a reward program into place, survey your staff. Find out what they really want in terms of recognition and reward. That way your recognition program stands to make the most impact.

5. Opportunities for advancement

It’s not just your office-based team who are keen to advance in their careers. 70% of frontline employees have applied for advancement opportunities. But this group doesn’t always get the resources or support they need to move up the career ladder.

When you’re looking to improve employee engagement in a manufacturing organization, allowing all employees to learn and advance within their roles is crucial. It gives employees something to work towards and feel excited about. And it makes them much more invested in doing a good job.

There are lots of things you can do to support career growth.

• Map out clear career goals with employees, offering training and mentor support to help them achieve them
• Give workers more responsibility during the standard work day, encouraging them to take ownership and make decisions where appropriate
• Cross-train and rotate jobs to bring variety to an employee’s workplace experience
• Ensure everyone is aware of training and career opportunities within your organization, highlighting typical career pathways and the perks of promotion

6. Regular, two-way feedback

As we mentioned earlier, open communication is an important part of employee engagement. You can facilitate this type of interaction by providing regular opportunities for two-way feedback.

Regular 1-to-1s between employees and managers help to maintain open lines of communication. These meetings are an opportunity to align goals, resolve conflicts, and identify areas for development.

Crucially, employees get the chance to raise queries and issues, too. They can provide insight into the manufacturing employee experience and any challenges they’re currently facing.

Just remember, this type of interaction needs to take place regularly, not just once or twice a year. To build trusting, open relationships, you need to build this type of communication into every single week.

That means managers spending time on the factory floor, seeing for themselves what excites, challenges, and frustrates workers. It means creating impromptu feedback opportunities. And it means using digital solutions to make feedback and communication easy, even when managers and workers aren’t based in the same location.

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7. Create a safe environment

The manufacturing industry in the US has some of the highest rates of occupational injury and illness. But you don’t get high rates of manufacturing employee engagement unless staff feel safe at work.

When employees feel safe:

• They can focus on their work
• They feel a greater sense of morale
• They feel valued and supported
• They trust in workplace leadership

Prioritize workplace safety and you also create a virtuous circle. Safe environments lead to better employee engagement. And engaged employees help to improve workplace safety going forward. There are 70% fewer safety incidents in the most engaged workplace environments than there are in the least.

Leaders and managers should regularly reassess the safety performance of equipment and protective wear. Careful plant design can help to mitigate safety risks, while clear risk assessment and safety protocols help workers identify and rectify issues before they lead to a safety incident.

But workplace safety isn’t just about having the right equipment and protocols. It’s about fostering a company culture with safety at its core.

To do this, you need psychological safety in addition to physical safety. This is where people feel safe voicing their opinions because they’re not worried about being judged, blamed, or punished.

Give employees a sense of psychological safety – and the right communication tools – and they’ll be more likely to report safety issues. Digital tools, rather than pen and paper methods, help safety information to travel both ways, reaching decision-makers and factory floor workers quickly.

8. Invest in training and onboarding

Manufacturing processes are prone to change. Employees need to keep their knowledge of tech and equipment, as well as their skills, up-to-date. This helps to create a safe environment for everyone working on the manufacturing team. And it boosts employee engagement, too.

Research from 2023 reveals that:

• 71% of manufacturing employees say that training and development is important to them in their work life
• 35% say they aren’t getting the quality of training and development they expect
• 28% said they would leave their employer soon because of poor training and skills development

Onboarding is not to be overlooked either. When new hires start working for a company, there’s lots to learn. Safety protocols. How to use equipment. Company values. Who they can turn to for feedback and support.  

Some organizations, lacking manpower, don’t put enough time and effort into onboarding. But this is where you lay the foundations of employee experience. And it can make or break an employee’s engagement with your firm.  

You can maximize onboarding benefits without spreading their staff too thin, with the help of a digital onboarding process.

Employees access guides, rules, and resources via the company portal. They can refer back to resources as and when they need them. It’s also easy for your teams to update resources with the most up-to-date information.

Managers and co-workers can then supplement this online learning with face-to-face input ensuring a positive experience for new employees.

9. Implement employee surveys

You can never really be sure how your staff are feeling unless you ask. So before you implement an employee engagement strategy for your manufacturing organization, it makes sense to conduct surveys.

As well as listening to employee concerns during manager 1-to-1s, surveys allow employees to give feedback on specific aspects of their role and on what they feel could be better within the organization.

Follow up with a regular schedule of surveys and you build a complete picture of the employee experience:

• Annual surveys give you insight into employee engagement progress
• Quick and easy pulse surveys give you an up-to-the-minute snapshot of employee sentiment
• Lifecycle surveys help you understand the challenges facing employees at each stage in their journey

To get feedback from as many employees as possible, you need to communicate openly. Tell employees about the insights your surveys have uncovered. And share your plan for acting upon their feedback as well as any results.

By engaging employees in every stage of the feedback process, they’re much more likely to respond next time you send out a survey request.  

You’ve read the tips. Now get some real-life inspiration! Aggregate Industries has already put these employee engagement tips into action. Find out how this manufacturing firm improved digital engagement across their frontline with Blink. Watch the webinar now.

In conclusion

In manufacturing, employee engagement can be transformational. When you improve the employee experience, you improve product quality, workplace safety, and customer service. You also find it easier to attract and retain staff in a tough labor market.

In an engaged workplace, information flows between all members of your workforce. Work is more meaningful thanks to clear company values and a sense of the bigger picture. Employees are empowered to do their best work, every day.

Getting to this point may feel like a challenge, particularly if you haven’t given much thought to employee engagement up to this point. But it’s a lot easier to make engagement improvements when you harness the power of technology.

With the help of a mobile-first employee app, you connect every employee, from your HQ office to the factory floor, regardless of their access to a company email or not. You can conduct surveys, give recognition, and provide easy-access training resources. You can translate information into a variety of languages.

Get an employee app on your team and you’ll find it easy to reach and engage every member of staff, whatever their preferred language and whatever their role.