12 Best Firstup Alternatives for Internal Comms (2026)

Internal communications can’t fix what it’s not part of

Internal communications (IC) has long been viewed as a support function — a team responsible for delivering messages, not forging strategy.

Gallagher recently surveyed 2,300 comms professionals. 27% said they lacked leadership buy-in and were left out of decision-making. They said that their business leaders were failing to recognize the value and importance of internal communications.

This approach is way out of date. Today’s workforce expects more from employers — more transparency, more connection, more purpose. And all of that stems from how you communicate internally.

A good internal comms plan goes beyond messaging. It’s all about employee experience, engagement, retention — the foundations upon which any successful business is built.

So, for those who still need convincing, here are all the reasons IC should be integrated into the strategic conversation from the very start.

Beyond messaging: The case for internal communications as a strategic partner

#1. Drive company-wide alignment

When internal communicators have a voice in strategy, you connect employees to the bigger picture. Your IC project team can get a clearer understanding of organizational goals and relay them to the everyday work of employees more effectively.

Without that link, strategy can feel abstract — or worse, irrelevant. Employees don’t understand the what, why, and how behind their work. There’s ambiguity. Expectations are unclear. So motivation and productivity suffer.

An informed and empowered internal comms team is your most effective tool to align the workforce behind business objectives. And by giving internal comms a seat at the table, you create synergy across the C-suite too.

Internal communications often share business KPIs with other teams. Think strategy awareness, employee advocacy, policy compliance, and talent attraction. By collaborating with leaders at the highest levels, internal comms have a much better chance of achieving those essential business goals.

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#2. Create a unified voice across departments

If HR, IT, marketing, and operations are all pushing updates on different platforms, employees don’t know who to listen to. Siloed comms can lead to inconsistent messaging, so employees view internal updates as unreliable and tune out.

The internal communications team can fix that. But only if they’re looped in early enough to create a cohesive narrative across all departments.

They can guide leaders on the best timing, tone, and platform to use. They’re skilled at simplifying complex messages. And they can ensure that employees receive consistent and personalized communication across key topics — like benefits updates, policy changes, and leadership announcements.

This level of collaboration between departments benefits employees. And it helps your internal comms team achieve more: According to Gallagher’s 2025 Employee Communications Report, strong interdepartmental relationships improve the ability of internal comms to use data and meet KPIs.

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#3. Bring corporate culture and values to life

Imagine you’re a bus driver who spends your days on the road. A trip to the depot is sometimes factored into your schedule. But, on the whole, you have little time with coworkers or managers and only receive patchy communication from HQ.

Ask yourself: Do you feel part of company culture? How connected do you feel to your organization and your peers? What are the ties that keep you working for this company instead of another? 

Internal communications play a critical role in shaping and sharing company culture for your frontline employees, office-based staff, and remote teams. The messages employees receive — and the peer-to-peer connections they’re supported to make — help to build a sense of belonging that fosters engaged employees and boosts retention.

But this doesn’t happen by accident. You need consistent, engaging, and transparent communication strategies. You need inclusive internal communication tools. And you need to turn cultural buzzwords into a lived experience.

If IC isn’t involved in core strategy from the start, this is a tough ask. Your internal messaging can do a lot of the heavy lifting. But for messages to stick, they need to reflect a cohesive corporate culture. And, for that, you need buy-in from the entire organization. 

Managers, workers, and leaders have to understand and embody your values day to day. When IC gets a seat at the table, they can coach leaders on the importance of community, leadership visibility, and psychological safety. They can create the essential foundations on which a vibrant and engaging company culture is built.

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#4. Play a crucial role in change management

Change is a constant challenge in today’s workplace. But just 32% of comms professionals say they’re treated as strategic advisers, deeply involved in how change is communicated.

Teams are having to play catch-up, crafting internal communication strategies after decisions are made. They sometimes struggle to control the narrative, with different departments launching their own change initiatives at the same time.

Employees receive confused communications, sometimes from multiple stakeholders, each introducing their own change agenda. Without centralized leadership, crisis comms can easily become overwhelming for your workforce.

This is a major problem. Good change communication is key to overcoming resistance, preventing change fatigue, and ensuring a smooth transition. It’s the difference between trust and turmoil. And IC is the best team for the job.

Your internal communications team is skilled at sharing information transparently, reassuring employees, and creating space for feedback. They’re pros at communicating clearly and empathetically. 

With a role in the strategic discussions and planning that lead up to a big change or announcement, internal communications can explain the why — not just the what — to employees more effectively. They can preserve trust, mitigate risk, and sustain employee engagement during challenging times.

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#5. Connect the boardroom and the breakroom

In a medium- to large-sized organization, senior leaders don’t have daily contact with employees. So it’s up to internal communication to act as a bridge between boardroom and breakroom.

IC can launch surveys and polls, view data on sentiment, and gather employee feedback that leaders might otherwise miss. They can surface the issues that matter most to employees — and help the C-suite to act on them.

These formal channels of open communication, forged and maintained by IC, don’t just highlight employee problems. When employees feel empowered to share their thoughts, bright ideas can more easily make their way from the frontlines to the C-suite. This means your leadership team gets more valuable insight that can help to grow the business. 

It goes the other way, too. We know that the workforce is generally mistrustful of the boardroom team, with just half of employees saying they trust their organization’s most senior leader. Internal communications can change that perception by working in close collaboration with the C-suite. 

Internal comms can be a powerful tool to help leaders build visibility and trust. Prioritizing transparent communication, storytelling, and regular updates can help make leadership more human and accessible. 

When they have direct access to both parties, internal comms teams can facilitate a dialogue. They can create a culture of two-way communication that’s better for everyone than top-down communication. Employees feel listened to — and C-suite can make more informed business decisions.

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#6. Power an engaging employee experience

Employee experience is how employees feel about their work and workplace. It’s how they’re treated and the extent to which they feel valued. It’s their sense of purpose and community.

Internal communications play a central role in shaping employee experience. A good messaging strategy keeps employees informed and helps them feel connected to the wider organization. 

With a seat in the boardroom, IC can go further, championing initiatives that support a positive employee experience. They can highlight the value of recognition, belonging, transparency, and employee voice to leadership — then weave these values into company messaging. 

Internal comms can also take a birds-eye view of the company comms ecosystem. They can implement more effective communication channels so the entire workforce — including frontline, hybrid, and remote employees — gets an experience that is more equitable and enjoyable. 

Involving IC in conversations on corporate strategy helps them turn open and effective communication into a cornerstone of the employee experience. Which means happy employees, increased employee engagement rates, and improved loyalty. 

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Internal communications are so much more than a megaphone

Internal communications isn’t just a messaging tool. It’s a critical component of employee experience, company culture, and operations.

With IC at the strategy table, organizations gain a clear understanding of worker needs. Good internal communications strategies help communicate change and build trust. They can create a workplace community that meets the expectations of today’s employees. 

This leads to improved employee engagement, productivity, and retention. Because internal communication is about so much more than sharing info about the next away day or your updated company policy. It’s about building a workforce that feels informed, connected, and valued. 

Ready to unlock the full potential of internal comms? It’s time to promote IC from messenger to strategic partner. Your people — and your business stakeholders — will thank you.

‍Blink. And discover why internal communicators will power the future of work.

How engaged your frontline employees are directly impacts how successful they are as a team. If you can encourage engagement then productivity, quality, care, commitment, and retention surely follow.

Yet, no matter how clear the correlation is, it’s not always as clear how to achieve frontline employee engagement.

In this guide, we share expert insights for your employee engagement strategies — helping you create a positive working environment that inspires satisfaction and success.

From understanding the importance of communication and collaboration across the organization to leveraging technology for better team performance, this guide will cover the activities and tools needed to foster an engaging frontline culture.

The current state of frontline employee engagement

Recent employee engagement statistics tell us that only 21% of employees are engaged at work.

The percentage is likely lower when it comes to the frontline.

That’s because frontline employee engagement is often handled as an afterthought. There’s a misconception that when workers are out in the field, then they don’t ‘need’ to feel connected to the wider business. Or that because their role doesn’t require a computer, they won’t want digital tools to improve their experience.

We see from our work with frontline organizations that these assumptions are wrong, and that frontline employees do want to feel engaged.

Communication starts to flow much more freely when the right tools are in place (as much as 10x more for certain Blink customers); frontline staff are more willing and able to provide feedback (survey responses increase by 300%); and you can help almost every employee to better connect with the company’s mission and vision.

So why do so many attempts at frontline employee engagement fall flat?

Workers might resist not because they don’t want to engage, but because they have become wise to empty frontline engagement projects and initiatives. The programs that fail are the ones that misunderstand what frontline workers need to succeed — or that ask too much of them while delivering too little.

“Great, another thing to remember”

“It’s not a natural part of my day”

“It’s a one-off thing”

“It’s too hard to use”

To help create frontline employee engagement initiatives that work, we first have to understand why these employees have become disengaged in the first place.

Why frontline employees become disengaged

1. Lack of the right technology

According to Blink research on the health and social care space:

• Over one-third (34%) of employees can’t easily access workplace systems on their mobile
• Nearly 20% aren’t using their company’s intranet
• … and two-thirds of this ~20% aren’t even sure how to log on

Disengagement with — or lack of access to — company platforms leads to missed information and feelings of isolation. At best, this can impede a frontline worker’s ability to do their job (maybe they miss an important update or never receive new guidance). At worst, it distances them so much from the rest of the business that they exist in their own, dissatisfied silo.

52% of frontline workers say they would leave their job over tech tools, making leveraging the right technology a very easy win for keeping your frontline engaged and retained.

But we can’t take the same tech stack that desk-based workers use and apply it to the frontline.

As Ian Gordon, former President of Administrative Operations at Elara Caring, told us in an interview:

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

The ‘right’ technology for frontline engagement will:

• Be intuitive and frictionless
• Allow the most essential, day-job-critical messages to cut through
• Facilitate the workflows that are most important to the ‘deskless’ front line: shift swapping, accessing pay stubs, providing feedback, and so on.

If your frontline tools don’t deliver on the above, then your frontline employee engagement efforts will be wasted.

2. No sense of belonging

Frontline disengagement can also result from a lack of community.
80% of frontline employees say that they are afforded few connection opportunities at work, according to McKinsey research.

And even if these opportunities exist, frontline workers aren’t always engaging with them. McKinsey found that frontline workers were taking part in the below methods of community and connection just once a month or less:

• Internal corporate communications (e.g., town halls)
• Watercooler talks with co-workers
• Employee resource groups
• Other work-related events

Touchpoints like these are all essential for building team spirit and rapport within frontline teams. And if workers aren’t engaging with them, then this speaks volumes about the types of community events that frontline leaders should invest in.

The best way to learn what works for your frontline is to ask them.

We touch on the concept of outside-in thinking in our whitepaper, ‘The frontline engagement roadmap: A step-by-step guide to driving transformative change’. Download your copy today.

3. No clear development opportunities

If you think that all engaged frontline workers are ‘rockstars’ — satisfied with mastering the job they have today rather than looking to step up — then think again.

There’s a very good chance you have ‘superstars’ in your frontline workforce as well. When engaged in a role, these employees are further motivated by the idea of career progression and will actively seek out opportunities to advance and develop. 70% of frontline workers apply for advancement opportunities when they are offered, seeking greater financial security, learning, and development.

But how easy is it for these employees to find this professional development?

Lack of development opportunities came up as a theme — and a reason for leaving a role — among the health and social care workers we spoke to in 2021. Further research has found a similar trend in the retail space, where 32% of frontline workers cite a lack of career development as a turnover factor.

“The vast majority of deskless workers (97%) report that they would stay in their current roles if their conditions improved. Such conditions go beyond a pay rise, meaning that HR needs to offer deskless workers the same opportunities as their deskbound counterparts.”

Frontline leaders should strive to offer clear development opportunities to frontline workers, plus training and learning resources wherever helpful. This could include anything from providing access to relevant training courses and a Hub for training materials, or offering them direct opportunities to move into managerial roles.

There’s also something to be said for training and empowering first line managers to help frontline workers develop. 73% of frontline employees agree that having a manager who supports their career progression is key to career advancement.

4. They don’t feel listened to

The 2021 Blink research we mentioned earlier was called our Listen campaign. And it got its name for a reason.

In it, we surveyed 1,000 frontline UK health and social care workers to find out how their day-to-day lives could be improved. And one word cropped up again and again: listen.

Over one-third of the frontline workforce feels their organizations would fail to act on employee feedback — and that needs to change if we want them to keep providing it. To truly empower your frontline employees, you need to show them that you value what they do and that you hear what they say.

No more out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality. No more assuming your frontline is ‘getting on just fine’. If your frontline workers don’t feel heard, your engagement strategy isn’t working. It’s as simple as that.

5. No culture of, or channels for, recognition

Nearly 4 in 10 (37%) frontline workers don’t feel as valued as their desk-based counterparts. We were saddened to learn this from our Listen research, but not all that surprised.

After all, the recognition strategies that work for desk-basked employees can’t be efficiently deployed for the front line. A line manager can’t send a team-wide or company-wide email celebrating someone’s contribution. You can’t all get together at 5pm on Friday to toast the week’s achievements.

As with the tooling and community-building tactics we looked at above, frontline recognition requires a unique approach. How can you bolster both technology and community to give credit where credit is due?

It’s also important to make sure that feedback is given as soon after the event as possible. So ask yourself: what are the platforms that allow a quick turnaround of employee recognition in a fun, engaging way?

Help employees feel valued with Blink

Frontline employees deserve to be recognized for the hard work they do: for being the backbone of an organization’s success.

Without this, it’s no wonder they become disengaged.

6. Inefficient communication strategies

In our research, almost one-fifth of workers state that they don’t receive relevant internal communications from their employer organization.

An effective comms strategy combines group and 1:1 Secure Chats, regular Feed updates, engaging company news announcements, and more — all wrapped up and delivered in a platform or platforms that frontline workers want to engage with.

Given anything less than this, frontline teams can feel left out of the loop and unable to participate fully in their organization’s culture.

Get your frontline-centric communication strategy right and you can expect to see frontline employee engagement pay off in a myriad of ways.

Blink’s best advice for frontline employee engagement

Use tools that work for them

Your frontline staff need digital tools that work for them: where they need them and when they need them. From seamless integration with your current tech stack, to push notifications, single sign-on capabilities, and more, there are a number of tools that make it easy for frontline employees to engage on the go.

A frontline engagement app like Blink allows your workforce to easily access everything from one single platform. We’re talking company news, training materials and resources, inter- and intra-team communications, feedback surveys — the list of features keeps growing.

No more complex systems to navigate or multiple passwords to remember. Blink provides you with a simple, intuitive mobile app that gives your frontline employees the power to stay connected and engaged.

Book a free demo today

Conduct regular pulse surveys

Your frontline staff are the eyes, ears, and face of your organization. Listen to what they have to say, and you can learn more than you’d realize about your product or service, how happy customers are, and how well your processes are working today.

Pulse surveys offer up a consistent and user-friendly way to gather frontline feedback, no matter where your teams are working.

The data you gather can help identify areas of improvement — both internal and external to the business. This, in turn, will have a positive impact on all the essential metrics: frontline employee engagement, customer satisfaction, plus revenue and ROI.

💡 Learn more about How To Conduct Your First Employee Engagement Survey today.

Listen to and action feedback

Remember that statistic about frontline workers not believing their feedback will be actioned? Now is your time to win back their trust.

Remember, employee engagement should be earned. It won’t be given freely.

As a frontline leader, making sure that feedback is heard and put into action should be an essential part of your wider engagement strategy.

Be open and honest with the results of your surveys — and communicate what you’re doing as an organization to action this feedback.

Never present results as better or worse than they actually are, and always encourage an open dialogue about the outcomes of feedback initiatives. If you want your employees to offer their feedback on an ongoing basis, you need strategies that communicate to them how you’re hearing what they say.

You could even share your survey findings in a company-wide Feed announcement, along with specific objectives the organization has taken from the results and when these new initiatives will be put into place.

This doesn’t add any extra pressure to your frontline, but it does make your employees feel heard and valued.

Create engagement champions

Setting off on a frontline employee engagement transformation isn’t easy — or, it doesn’t feel easy at the start, at least.

We look at the power of allies in our frontline engagement roadmap and Ian Gordon also referenced how influential they can be:

“You need to find someone who has the energy, passion, and is empowered enough to lead the initiatives. That person could be the project lead, but preferably it’s someone from the frontline or with frontline experience. The frontline needs to have that relationship with management all the way up and be comfortable to share their concerns.”

Ian Gordon, Former President of Administrative Operations at Elara Caring

These allies, or engagement champions, can help drive initiatives both top-down and bottom-up, facilitating two-way communication between management and staff. They can also support the adoption of new tools, ensuring that frontline workers are comfortable and engaged as new technologies are implemented.

Blink Champions are the cornerstone of a successful launch with the frontline’s leading engagement app. Their role includes:

• Working with other Champions to ensure the launch is a success
• Raising awareness of Blink
• Encouraging others to use the app
• Being active in the Feed
• Educating their team on how to use the app
• Being an advocate for Blink
• Becoming an expert on Blink

Get commitment from every level of management

Ideally, you’d have engagement allies from the front line to your C-Suite.

If your company’s mission is to boost frontline engagement, then every staff member in an authority position needs to show their support. Yes, engagement should be enabled by managers buying into the right digital solutions, but it should also be held up by your company’s values and all aspects of your leadership.

Our research also demonstrates that frontline staff want senior management to listen to them, communicate with them, and respond to them. A simple, yet frequently forgotten, task.

First line managers could be a particularly interesting group to engage with: making up 50% – 60% of a company’s management and directly supervising as much as 80% of the frontline workforce.

When employees interact with their first line managers daily, it’s essential that those individuals set an example and demonstrate engagement through their behavior.

Managers should also be available to listen to frontline workers and act upon any issues they identify. This will help drive the desired engagement from the bottom up, inspiring the workforce to keep engaging regularly.

Recognition and reward

Forward-thinking companies are already investing in co-worker recognition tools. This helps deliver meaningful recognition and rewards to their employee base, reminding employees how valued they are.

Such approaches can quickly encourage motivation, nurture employee wellbeing, raise employee morale, and boost engagement levels across the board.

You should also consider directly rewarding engagement (interactions with your employee app, for example) to reinforce and reward the behavior, creating a positive ripple effect to inspire more engagement.

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What your business stands to gain

Frontline employee engagement = fewer absentees

Teams within the top 20% of employee engagement scores realize a 41% reduction in absenteeism. Imagine what your frontline organization could do with fewer empty shifts and less time spent finding staff to cover sickness — plus the additional revenue this will inevitably create.

Frontline employee engagement = lower turnover, higher retention

The cost of replacing an employee can range anywhere from 50% – 250% of their annual salary. So it’s no surprise that 87% of HR experts consider employee retention one of their highest priorities.

Why are we telling you this in an article about employee engagement? Because engaged workers are more likely to stay with their employers.

Disengaged workers will either be in an active search for their next role or much easier to sway should a desirable opportunity arise elsewhere. If you can create an engaging employee experience, however, you’ll retain your best talent.

Frontline employee engagement = a healthier bottom line

Engaged frontline employees deliver better quality of service, leading to customer satisfaction and loyalty.

92% of business executives believe that engaged employees perform better. And with engaged frontline workers performing at their best, better business outcomes are a natural development.

Bottom line improvements for highly engaged organizations include:

• 10% higher customer ratings
• 18% higher sales
• A 23% difference in profitability

In this way, an increase in engagement from frontline employees can be felt by every stakeholder, in every department, and at every level of the business.

What now?

Achieving operational excellence is a challenge on its own. Doing so while also investing in employee experience can leave frontline management teams feeling overwhelmed.

So let’s break it down into simple steps.

If you understand why frontline employees disengage, what motivates them, and how to keep them engaged, then you can establish a frontline engagement strategy that truly works.

Companies can unlock tremendous value from their workforce, demonstrate a real commitment to their employees, and drive positive business outcomes — all by leveraging the power of frontline employee engagement.

How can Blink help?

At Blink, we understand the importance of engaging with frontline employees. We’ve helped over 250 frontline organizations increase engagement and performance throughout their frontline.

Our frontline engagement app helps you measure and manage employee engagement in real-time to drive sustained improvements across your business. With our advanced analytics and tailored solutions, you can quickly identify problem areas, create action plans, and keep your employees engaged.

With our comprehensive suite of solutions, we’ll help you unlock the power of your frontline and achieve the results you’re looking for.

Get started with a free demo

With the news that Workplace by Meta will be shutting down within a year, there are going to be thousands of companies looking to replace their employee experience platforms soon.  Sure, finding a new solution for internal communications with the right features and functionality is important, but just as important (and not talked about enough) is the implementation and rollout experience for employees. 

In my mind, a great product implemented poorly is no longer a great product.  So, what does a great implementation process and experience really look like? 

Whether you’re looking to upgrade your employee app before Workplace from Meta shuts down or you’re just curious to learn more about Blink, here is my take on what a great implementation experience should look like. 

I’ve spent over a decade in the implementation space and know how common it is to hear that a vendor will “go the extra mile” for a customer during the crucial time between signing the contract and launching the technology. 

Rarely, though, is the extra mile enough; sometimes, what it takes is the extra 1,600 miles. 

Prior to my role as Head of Implementation at Blink, I spent the first 8 years of my career in technology consulting working at large firms like Aon and Accenture. In that time, I travelled to 30+ countries and learned how to deliver business value through broader people and technology transformation at multinational enterprise companies. 

In all that time, I have never worked in an organization that goes so far above and beyond as Blink. This is truly a whatever-it-takes company, even when it takes a 1,600 mile road trip through 8 states to visit 6 different plants to ensure one of our customers launches the right way. On this particular trip, we met with Plant Managers, HR, Production Managers and more, to build out a use case strategy, run training sessions, and hold focus groups to ensure we were delivering a comprehensive roadmap for their new employee app.

This hands-on approach is why we have an industry-leading user adoption rate of 90% across all our customers. But it’s more than just our willingness to traverse state lines that creates a great implementation experience. 

The values that drive our implementation process

I know two things to always be true about implementation: first, customers are busy.  Since launching an employee app often involves a lot of contributors and stakeholders, sometimes getting everyone on the same page is the biggest barrier to launching on-time. 

Second, and most important, we’ve only got one shot to launch your platform right.  Change is often met with scepticism or some resistance, so we bend over backwards to set you up for the best first impression on launch day, from a seamless onboarding experience for employees to quick, demonstrable value for your executive stakeholders.

Our approach and our values that drive the team are done with these two things in mind to ensure each customer sees a high adoption right out of the gate. 

So what goes into our process that makes it so successful? There are five things I’d like to highlight:

The experts

When you sign up with Blink, you’ll be guided through the implementation process by an experienced team spread across the US, UK, and Australia. All of our implementations are done solely in-house.  Over the years, we’ve developed a playbook of best practices to follow and accumulated deep industry knowledge to recommend the best course of action for your unique needs. 

Once you’ve launched, the Implementation team is still there with you. Not only are they helping ensure a smooth transition to your Customer Success partner, they’re helping gather metrics and feedback on the launch and supporting your efforts to hit the user adoption target in those early days. 

Our employee-focused strategy

Whether you’re rolling out your first employee app or you’re replacing an old solution like Workplace, getting your employees to buy-in to Blink (or any new technology) is so important at launch.  For companies with deskless workforces, where communication is a challenge, in particular, getting that early buy-in is a virtuous cycle where the employees start telling their colleagues about Blink. 

When Stagecoach, one of the largest transit providers in the UK, rolled out Blink, their post-launch survey found 100% of the drivers would recommend the app to their peers.  With 21,000 bus drivers across the country, word of mouth helped accelerate adoption as much as any top-down messaging.

That’s why, when we plan for a launch at your organization, we ensure there is functionality that your employees want to help get them invested early on.  We’ve got an extensive catalogue of integrations that give them easy access and notifications for paystubs, time-tracking, vacation requests, IT help desks, and more. Pair that with Single sign-on, and employees will be doing all these things with one-click access through Blink.  

The result of providing quick value to your employees is a high usage and adoption rate.  Stagecoach, for example, has an average of 6 app opens each day from 89% of their drivers. That level of employee engagement and communication is critical to keeping everything running smoothly.

‍Rollout success you can measure

Everyone who implements Blink will know exactly what success looks like. We outline the six key pillars to a successful rollout early on so you have a benchmark for what to expect:

1. We’re going to get the leadership team aligned around the opportunity driving the rollout
2. We’ll determine the key metrics and KPIs for success with you so everyone is working towards the same goals
3. We’ll help you build your company’s digital front door—turning Blink into the single point of access for everything they need—to maximise adoption
4. We’re going to ensure the look and feel of the app matches your company’s brand to build trust in the early adoption phase
5. We’re going to build a comprehensive activation strategy to reach every employee, while taking into account the unique challenges posed by disparate and diverse workforces  
6. Lastly, we’re going to help you build out and optimise the app after launch by introducing new functionality and soliciting user feedback to guide the improvements

Our clear roadmaps

With a feature-rich solution like Blink, unleashing the full experience is like asking employees to drink from a firehose. 

To avoid overwhelming people, we help you develop a clear roadmap for the long-term experience. It starts with the Day 1 MVP that’s focused on addressing the most pressing needs and quick wins for the employee experience. From there, we help you bring new functionality to the employee experience in a way that boosts adoption without overwhelming users. 

Every roadmap is tied to the KPIs you outlined earlier, so there is a definitive business value for each phase. If, like many Blink customers, you’re trying to save money by modernising outdated processes, that KPI can be tied to functionality like payslips being put into the app instead of being mailed out. 

That simple change saved one Blink customer $300,000 per year on mailing and printing costs—and we were able to measure that impact because of the KPIs we had established early on.

Low-lift launch

We understand how busy our customers are, so we want every app to be launched quickly—but with as little effort on your part as possible. While you and your team are going to be involved, we keep as much of the work behind the scenes to minimise the disruption to you and your team. 

When you combine our expertise with the out-of-the-box functionality and pre-made assets, getting to launch day is simple and fast. We measure implementation in weeks, not months and quarters. You can have users onboard in as little as 6 weeks, while still delivering a compelling first impression with your new employee app. 

These five pillars can't capture all of the hard-work and care that the Implementation team has here at Blink. That doesn’t happen without having a team that’s willing to go above and beyond for every single customer.

Change management while implementing Blink

The implementation journey is an intense period for the stakeholders. It’s a lot of work to do quickly, and one of the ways we help ensure you’re staying on course is through our comprehensive Change Impact Assessment. 

With so much change, it is easy to lose the forest for the trees and get lost in the day-to-day minutiae of the launch process. The Change Impact Assessment is designed to keep you on track by helping you understand how Blink will affect the following areas:

• ‍Operations: How will Blink affect current workflows, and what adjustments are needed to seamlessly integrate it into your existing processes?
• ‍Company culture: What changes in team dynamics and communication can we anticipate? How will this software align with your corporate culture?
• ‍Resource allocation: What are the costs, both financial and time-based, for training, implementation, and long-term management of the platform?
• ‍Technology integration: How does Blink fit into your existing technology landscape? Can we integrate into and leverage compatibility with existing systems?
• ‍Return on investment expectations: How does introducing Blink to ADQ map into your business goals? We’ll establish metrics to measure the effectiveness and ROI to ensure change is actively happening and tracking to your business goals.

Hands-on support, on-site or online

Some of the most memorable moments for us come from our on-site, white glove support for the implementation process. Whether we get to visit a corporate headquarters in Chicago to run use case discovery workshops or trekking out to a distribution centre to train frontline managers to use the app to communicate with their team, we’re always hyped to work alongside our customers. 

Even if we’re not spending weeks on end at your office, we’re shooting for the same launch experience with every customer. Our job is to ensure you’re going to be successful in delivering enough value to your employees that they fall in love with the Blink app. 

So, virtually or in-person, you get hands-on support experience from us. We’ll help you find, train, and empower a network of advocates and experts within your organisation who will help ensure launch-day communication is on point. 

Adoption drives feedback drives adoption

Launch day success is not the end for us. Once your employees are onboard, we’re going to canvas for your people’s first impressions to understand what’s resonating and what’s missing the mark. 

Getting this survey feedback early on helps us course correct, if necessary, to take you from 70% user adoption at launch up to the 90% user adoption rate we want for all of our customers.

The surveys are rarely surprising, though, because of all the work that went into the implementation journey.  From getting stakeholders aligned on KPIs to running frontline focus groups, we know the value is going to be felt from day one.  

Blink. And you’re set up for success.

When I take a step back and think about everything that goes into launching each company’s employee app from the people—executive sponsors, project managers, Comms, IT, Operations, managers—to all the planning, content creation, and communications efforts, it’s amazing to think about how all that work leads to something as simple as a text or email invite on launch day. 

All the hands-on work that we do prior to launch is to ensure that your employees have a seamless experience from day one. That starts with the invitation to download the app and login to their “digital front door” for the first time.  From there, they’ll be able to communicate with secure chat, post in the Feed, search for policies and documents in the Content Hub, and access important information like payslips, vacation requests, and scheduling—all without leaving the app or having to enter another login.

Our job is to make getting to launch as effortless as possible. Because, we know, once your employees login to Blink, they’re going to be more engaged, more informed, and, ultimately, more likely to stick around. 

Employee communication and engagement is more important than ever in the remote-work era and for the frontline. You can put your trust in my team’s experienced, hands-on approach to help you deliver the most value to your employees. It’s what we’re so passionate about and what we do best.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves: the first step is signing up for a demo today to learn more about the Blink platform.  

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URGENT: Is email holding back your internal comms?

What’s that ping? Another email landing in an already overflowing inbox? 

If you still rely heavily on email for internal communication, it’s time to rethink. 

With a wealth of other digital tools available, email is no longer the de facto king of workplace comms. And if you have frontline employees working for your organization, there’s no doubt that email is falling short.

A retail assistant, a hospital nurse, a warehouse worker — these employees don’t have time to check their emails regularly. Some deskless workers don’t even have a company email address or corporate device, making them even harder to reach via traditional email communication.

So what’s the solution? Let’s take a closer look at why, in 2025, email can’t be your only internal communications strategy — and what makes for a standout alternative.

The pitfalls of email-only communication

Email-only communication is bad news for your business. Here’s why.

Information overload and inbox fatigue

Employees receive hundreds of emails every day, meaning it’s easy for important messages to get lost in the noise.

Critical updates compete with meeting invites, company newsletters, and automated system messages. There’s no clear message hierarchy and things can get pretty messy, pretty quickly.

The result? Employees end up missing essential communications so it’s hard for internal comms teams to keep everyone on the same page.

Poor engagement

Harsh but true: In a world of social media interactivity, emails are dull and uninspiring.

These text-based messages don’t tend to include eye-catching graphics, images, or videos. And they’re not particularly good at engaging employees.

This means workers have less incentive to check their inbox. And your internal communications do very little to boost employee engagement and the employee experience.

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The frontline connection gap

Frontline employees don’t have regular access to email. They work in hands-on roles that involve limited screen time, if any.

Unlike office-based staff, these workers aren’t sitting at a desktop computer being alerted to the latest inbox arrival. Instead, they rely on mobile devices and personal email accounts to check in with internal communications as and when they can.

This makes email a poor fit for real-time, relevant, on-the-go updates. Emails from HQ are lost among personal messages. Information can be outdated by the time workers see it.

You end up with a frontline connection gap that harms the employee experience and increases the risk of poor communication or miscommunication across your organization.

Delayed and one-way communication

A company-wide email is a monologue. You send it on behalf of senior management and everyone else (hopefully!) reads it. Employees are forced into a passive role — they don’t have the opportunity to reply, share their ideas, or ask questions. It’s the ultimate form of top-down communication.

Even one-to-one emails have their flaws. There’s often a delay between receipt of an email and a reply, which can make collaboration with remote workers challenging.

In a world that thrives on instant responses, interactivity, and two-way communication, email feels increasingly outdated. And it’s failing to deliver the employee engagement and culture-building benefits offered by modern internal communication tools.

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No analytics, no insights

When sending messages via email, you’re in the dark. There’s no way to track if employees have read or engaged with key messages. So it’s hard to know if emails serve as effective communications or if there's a better channel to use.

This makes it challenging to gauge employee feedback and make improvements. If you don’t know how your messages are landing, how can you make meaningful changes to your internal communication strategy?

The multigenerational workforce has different communication needs

Email was once a logical first choice for company communications. But times have changed.

Millennial and Gen Z workers — who now account for over 50% of the workforce — prefer mobile-first, instant communication. Think WhatsApp, Slack, and social media-style updates.

Gen X and Boomers may still be comfortable with email. They didn’t grow up with social media and the internet in the same way as younger generations. 

But now that they too use social media apps in their personal lives, they’ve grown accustomed to the instant messaging experience — and they appreciate fast, direct access to critical information, just like their younger coworkers.

When looking at alternatives to email, you need to pick an internal communication tool that is accessible, engaging, and inclusive for all generations within the workforce. A mobile-first employee app can help you cover all the bases.

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Why a mobile-first app is the answer

A mobile-first ‍employee experience platform brings internal communications to every employee smartphone. In just a couple of taps, they can access the latest company news, chat with coworkers, sign up for shifts, and track down that policy doc they’ve been meaning to reread.

An app beats email hands down. Let’s take a look at all the ways it can improve your internal communications.

Clearly defined communication channels

Over email, news about the latest company event, critical safety updates, and messages from coworkers are jumbled together.

You can flag important messages or write URGENT in dreaded capital letters. But as new messages still push emails down an employee’s inbox, there’s a good chance things will be missed.

An employee experience platform gives you defined internal communication channels. Depending on the needs of your company, this might include:

• Essential updates that have to be acknowledged by employees before they disappear from the dashboard
• A news feed, where employees can find company updates, culture, and connection
• Instant messaging tools for group and one-to-one chats
• A content hub, where you can keep documents like policies, FAQs, and safety guidelines
• Digital forms that make it easy for employees to contact HR about their next vacation or their shift availability
• Communities, where like-minded coworkers can connect over projects, interests, and hobbies

By putting everything in its place via a multi-channel approach, it’s easier for employees to see essential messages and find the information they need.

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Instant, real-time communication

Instant messaging tools are a standard feature of employee experience platforms. These social tools support real-time, remote conversations. And they can be used to replace emails and the unauthorized shadow IT, like WhatsApp, that frontline teams often resort to using.

In addition to real time chat, you can share fresh and relevant updates over the news feed, segmenting employees so they only see news that relates to them. You can also use push notifications to highlight time-sensitive information and ensure nothing is missed. 

Better reach and accessibility

Employees can log into an employee experience platform without a company email address. This — along with the fact that the app is available via smartphone and doesn’t require a desktop computer — means that all employees, even those working on your frontline, have access to vital employee communications.

Sharing critical messages — think crisis communications, or timely updates to business goals — with everyone gets easier. But there are other benefits to improving internal communications for frontline workers. You also improve frontline employee engagement, boosting satisfaction and loyalty among a traditionally hard-to-reach, hard-to-retain group of workers.

More interactivity and engagement

Employee apps are built to offer an interactive experience. You can launch polls and employee surveys. Employees can comment or leave emoji reactions on news feed posts. With your permission, workers can even post their own content. Peer communication has never been easier.

Multimedia content is also a must, meaning you can move beyond text-based email communication to embrace Insta-worthy internal comms. You can use infographics, videos, and photos to distill complex messages into digestible, engaging content.

Easy-to-access analytics

Over email, it’s hard to keep track of who has read and responded to your messages. And it’s near impossible to understand how you’re doing in terms of employee engagement.

With an employee experience platform, you get access to the effective tools you need to make meaningful changes to your internal communications strategy and the wider workplace experience.

You can use analytics to understand how employees use your app and consume internal comms. You can track engagement trends and drill down into the data to find teams or locations where messages just don’t seem to land.

Armed with this insight, you can identify areas for improvement, setting internal communication KPIs and using data to make more informed decisions regarding your internal communication plan.

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Is it time your organization moved beyond email?

Email alone is no longer enough to drive an informed and engaged workforce. For a truly successful internal communication strategy, you need an internal comms tool that is:

• Instant. Everyone gets messages when they matter most.
• Interactive. Employees can engage, react, and be part of the conversation.
• Inclusive. Deskless and office-based workers should get equal access to internal comms.
• Insightful. Analytics help you understand what’s working and what isn’t.

The best employee apps support a strong company culture of connection and are built on bottom-up communication. They help you keep pace with the latest internal comms trends and put all the internal communications tools you need in one place.

By relegating email and elevating an employee experience platform, you create a single source of truth, where everyone can instantly access company news, share peer-to-peer communication, and collaborate with each other — right from their smartphone.

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Blink. And replace outdated email comms with a modern employee experience platform.

Supercharge engagement across your employee intranet

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

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

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

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

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

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How to turn your employee intranet into a hub of engagement

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

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

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

Some other must-have intranet homepage elements include:

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

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

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Make it personal: Tailor the experience for every employee

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

What do you expect to see on your dashboard?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post content regularly

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

Find your comms cadence

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

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

Harness employee-generated content

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

Commit to regular content maintenance

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

Take inspiration from social media managers

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

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

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

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

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

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

Measure and adapt: Continuously improve the employee experience

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

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

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

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

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

Build an employee intranet your workforce will love

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

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

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

So what should you do first?

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

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

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

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.