Your frontline workers are checked out. Here’s how an employee experience platform can help.

We’ve rounded up the seven top training programs that will help boost morale, foster collaboration, and increase productivity for your staff. From interactive workshops to online employee engagement courses, these programs offer something for everyone.

Whether your team is new or experienced, office-based or deskless, there are plenty of options available to help create an engaged workforce.

So let's dive into what the best employee engagement training programs are, what they offer, and how they can benefit your organization.

Choosing the best employee engagement training courses

A great employee engagement course should provide teams with a comprehensive understanding of how to create an engaged workplace environment. 

It may include a range of topics covering effective communication practices, problem-solving strategies, team-building exercises (that don’t make employees squirm), and more strategies that create highly engaged employees.

They may also offer special features such as a dedicated tutor support service, unlimited online email support, certification upon completion, real-time feedback on learning, resources to help employees create tangible goals and objectives, and interactive tools that can be used in the workplace.

To choose the right employee engagement program for your organization, you should assess and compare who the course is made for and what the content of the course is, alongside the:

• Cost
• Length
• Location
• Credit awarded

By assessing these four elements, you can make a more informed decision about which program is best suited to your team’s needs.

What to look for in employee engagement training for managers

Before you can select a training program for managers, it’s important to know what factors to consider for your leadership team. Employee engagement training is essential for even the most high-performing managers, especially frontline managers, as their impact has the unique advantage of cascading effects throughout their entire team. 

Cost varies greatly, especially given the number of remote learning and development options available. While eLearning courses are typically more affordable and easily worked into a manager’s schedule, in-person courses offer the benefit of interaction, personalized feedback, and, often, more in-depth practice.

It’s also important to consider whether you, your C-suite, management teams, and HR professionals value certification or credit hours for the time undertaken. The accreditation may add value and incentive for course engagement, as well as the name of the institution offering the training. 

Two common HR management organizations that accept credit hours for professional certification are SHRM and HRCI. 

You should also consider whether your managers will feel more compelled to complete the learning experience offered by a big name like Harvard to make up for the additional expense.

Additional considerations for choosing an employee engagement program

If you have a frontline workforce, be sure to look for a program that can be easily accessed on mobile devices or through an app with audio lessons available. This will ensure employees can access the course anytime, anywhere, helping you bridge the frontline connection gap.

Additionally, consider the size of your organization and budget. If you have a large team, you may want to look into programs with bulk discounts or offering free training resources. On the other hand, if you’re a smaller business without many resources, eLearning courses may be more cost-effective due to their convenience and lower investment needs.

With digital inclusion now crucial to the modern workplace, it's important to assess the ease of use and accessibility of any courses you choose. Are they easy for team members to access and navigate, or do they require any specific software?

Now that you know what to consider before selecting a program for management let’s go over some of the best employee engagement training programs available today.

The 7 best employee engagement training programs

1. Gallup engagement champions

Workplace advisory and polling group Gallup offers a Creating an Engaging Workplace for Engagement Champions course to help anyone in a leadership position foster a more engaging workplace and support higher productivity. 

The course's primary focus is educating higher-level leadership on how to best help their mid-management increase team engagement. There are also practical takeaways for HR professionals or managers themselves.

Cost: $3,000. 

Length: Two days.

Location: In-person and virtual.

Credit: The in-person course earns professional credit hours from HRCI (14.5) and SHRM (14.5).

2. Dale Carnegie

Dale Carnegie is a well-known continuing education provider that offers several management courses, including a virtual course called A Manager’s Guide to Sustainable Employee Engagement. 

The six-hour course focuses on actions managers can undertake that inspire workers to put forth their greater discretionary effort. The emphasis is on practicing emotional empathy that delivers a long-lasting culture of engagement.

Cost: $699.

Length: Three two-hour sessions.

Location: Virtual.

Credit: It offers professional credit hours — 5.5 HRCI (5.5) and SHRM (5.5).

3. LSA Global

LSA Global’s employee engagement training personalized course focuses on accountability, change-readiness, and engaging purpose (ACE) as the foundation for a greater level of engagement and business clarity. 

Cost: Available upon request.

Length: Two-day workshop.

Location: In-person.

Credit: None.

4. DecisionWise

Engagement technology provider Decision Wise offers an online engagement training program called Engagement Magic. 

The training covers the importance of employee meaning, autonomy, growth, impact, and connection for engagement and educates learners on fostering these attributes through various employee engagement strategies. 

Cost: $150.

Length: One day.

Location: In-person and virtual.

Credit: None.

5. Harvard Professional Development 

Harvard’s The Positive Workplace: Building Employee Engagement and Satisfaction course focuses on giving managers the tools to help workers through times of stress. 

There is a large emphasis on building positive company culture through effective communication and conflict resolution. 

Cost: $2,895.

Length: Two consecutive days.

Location: In-person.

Credit: Credit towards Harvard’s Certificate of Leadership Excellence in Leading Teams.

6. eCornell

Cornell’s online educational division strategic engagement course is ideal for managers looking for more training in the quantifiable aspects of employee engagement. 

The course teaches methods of measuring employee engagement, like employee engagement surveys, and guides managers through building engagement initiatives to combat disengagement based on organizational data.

Cost: Available upon request.

Length: Two weeks, two-to-five hours per week.

Location: Virtual.

Credit: Credit towards Cornell’s Strategic Human Resources Leadership Certificate.

7. LinkedIn Learning

LinkedIn Learning offers various employee engagement training courses for managers through its catalog of user-generated lessons. 

Self-paced pre-recorded lessons like this one on Employee Engagement are a highly accessible training resource for organizations of all sizes. 

Cost: $34.99 for a single course or $19.99/month.

Length: Varies.

Location: Virtual.

Credit: Online certification and continuing education credit to SHRM (1.25) and HRCI (1.25).

The value of employee engagement training for managers

According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report, just 31% of employees in the US and Canada are engaged – and that's the second-highest in the world! As such, it makes sense for implementing engagement strategies to be one of your organization’s largest retention priorities. 

Typically, most think of across-the-board engagement tactics like benefits, salary, and advancement opportunities. But when it actually comes down to increasing everyday engagement and profitability, as Gallup explains, the best bet is focusing on some of the most critical players in your team: your managers. 

They understand each employee’s career goals, strengths, and opportunities for improvement. Managers help shape the culture that can make or break an employee’s experience. 

Despite their essential role in increasing the number of engaged employees, few managers are naturally good at navigating the nuances of managing people. 

Why? Well, we know that many managers make their way to a management role because of experience in their industry (as practitioners) rather than their experience leading people. 

They might be a very experienced warehouse manager, but if they haven't got years of experience managing other warehouse managers, then this kind of training can add a huge amount of value in increasing team-wide employee engagement.

With nearly 70% of frontline leaders expressing interest in developing their leadership skills, a lack of this training can cause growing leadership development gaps in your organization. 

On top of this, without training to improve the specific leadership skills required to be a strong manager, there can be potentially disastrous consequences when it comes to engagement and overall employee retention. 

In fact, after surveying 3,000 American workers, GoodHire found that 82% of them said they would potentially quit their job because of a bad manager. For that reason alone you may want to consider management employee engagement training as part of your wider L&D efforts.

After all, if you can train managers to increase employee engagement, then you can unlock all the key business benefits that come from having a more engaged workforce, making employee engagement training for managers well worth the investment.

What’s next for frontline managers? 

Choosing the right employee training method and investing in the right technology are crucial actions for business leaders wanting to boost engagement.

Hopefully, this guide gave you a better understanding of the considerations to keep in mind when selecting an employee engagement training program and highlighted some of the best ones available today.

After equipping your employees with the right training programs, the next step is to seek the best tools in the industry. Blink’s mobile-first frontline engagement super-app is the perfect all-through tool for any organization wanting to boost employee engagement.

With a suite of features designed to connect your entire workforce, Blink can help your business drive optimal performance and engagement from every member of your team.

With Blink’s Content Hub, employees and managers can access any training documents and company procedures from the palm of their hands, making any employee engagement training initiatives more effective and accessible for you in the long-run. 

Get started today with a free demo.

London, 1 November 2023 – Bus operator Abellio London has rolled out Blink, a mobile app that connects management with frontline, or deskless, workers.

Abellio, which operates bus services on behalf of Transport for London and serves 430,000 customers across Greater London every day, will connect its 2,800 employees across six depots and Transport UK Rail Replacement services through Blink’s super-app. Employees can connect, share information and communicate with each other wherever they are which, until now, had been impossible.

Abellio’s investment in Blink gives every worker digital connectivity to the organisation and each other, improving convenience, flexibility and inclusion. This investment forms part of Abellio’s ongoing initiatives to support inclusion within the business and tackle the national bus driver shortage. Transport for London recently revealed they were operating with a shortage of 2,510 drivers, and nationwide, many operators are still experiencing significant staff shortages, with bus vacancy rate at 6.8%, resulting in recent calls for bus drivers to be added to the Shortage Occupation List so operators can recruit drivers from abroad.

Due to the nature of their work, frontline teams – such as bus drivers – are often subject to manual processes and paperwork. They might not have immediate access to some of the tools or information that support them to deliver a positive experience to customers. Across the UK, frontline teams can feel disconnected from the rest of the workforce and, in some cases, undervalued: recent research found that only 39% of frontline workers feel heard, and that 42% are considering quitting their job.

Blink tackles these issues head-on. Beyond communication, the Blink app provides seamless, always-on access to external applications across any device. Abellio’s bus drivers only need to sign into Blink once via secure Single Sign On in order to gain access to all the key systems and information needed for their roles, including the driver allocation system (DAS); payslip information and payslips; and company updates and information that have traditionally been shared by depot notice boards, social media groups or via their line managers.

Previously, drivers needed to access multiple systems to complete certain aspects of their role which was time-consuming and required  different passwords and/or access to a computer. Mobile-first with desktop capabilities,Blink brings everything together in one super-app for Abellio’s drivers and management team. Drivers can complete their day-to-day tasks or reports via their phones in real-time and are kept in the loop at the same time as everyone else in the organisation. Crucially, they are able to directly communicate and share feedback with their senior leadership team, giving them a greater say in what’s happening.

“Abellio actively champions inclusivity, as a business that employs 43 different nationalities,  we have always prided ourselves on our inclusive culture,” commented Abellio Operations and HR Director, Lorna Murphy. “Differences are very much valued, and our company's success depends on it.  We needed an inclusive and simple way to bring our teams together and wanted to offer greater access to information and process for our frontline drivers.

“Blink fosters inclusiveness because everyone in the organisation has a mobile phone, meaning they can log in and access everything they need from wherever they are. It enables two-way conversations and brings connectivity to everyone in the business.”

Sean Nolan, CEO and Co-Founder of Blink, added: “Abellio London is on a mission to put a stop to the frontline worker gap and bring a sense of belonging to employees wherever they are. It recognises just how much an engaged frontline directly impacts how successful they are as a team. Amongst our customers we have seen that by fostering a more engaged and inclusive culture, productivity, quality, care, commitment, and retention will surely follow.

“The company is doing this by putting better company information at their drivers’ fingertips, while giving managers real-time access to frontline intelligence on employee performance and engagement. This will save them hundreds of hours, which they had been previously losing to disparate communications channels.”

The Blink app will also replace all the paper-based forms that currently require drivers to return to depot to complete. Thanks to the app’s intuitive interface, drivers can manage their schedules, payment information, and form-filling from wherever they are and whatever their technical ability.

Murphy added: “Using Blink, Abellio bus drivers can access a system of simple pathways that makes it easy for them to report issues, start a conversation with management or colleagues, or go about their day-to-day tasks such as checking shifts and accessing payslips, reconnecting them back to the organisation they work for via one simple, easy-to-use app.

“At a time when recruitment and retention in the industry is paramount, we hope that Blink, and tools like it, will support teams to feel connected to the business. Blink will help us to create a vibrant and open culture that champions better employee engagement, and give our drivers a channel through which they can voice their queries, ideas and concerns.”

As well as providing company-wide communications, Abellio can use Blink to create specific groups for supported work conversations, something that has been proven beneficial for employee wellness. Blink’s frontline intelligence and analysis capabilities will also help the leadership team to understand what employees need to perform, and how best to deliver it.

Blink has been proven to reach 95% of employees and reduce employee turnover by 26%. It also triples response rates, sees five times the number of adoption of tools thanks to its single sign-on(SSO), and gets a nine out of ten ‘ease of use’ rating from end users.

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Press contacts

For more information or interviews, please get in touch with kate@transatlanticent.com | 07980 921961.

About Abellio

Abellio London is part ofTransport UK and operates 55 bus routes in the capital on behalf of Transport for London (TfL), plus rail replacement and event services across the UK.

The business operates around nine percent of London’s bus network, running over 800 vehicles and employing 2,500staff across six depots in Central, South, and West London. Abellio is a pioneer in EV public transport, operating over 100 no-emission fully electric buses in London.

Abellio London was a double winner in the 2021 Bus and Coach Awards and is a finalist in the British QualityFoundation’s EFQM Excellence awards, following a 5-star rating in the BQF Recognised For Excellence assessment. In 2020 it was named Operator of the Year at the London Transport Awards and also helped bring the first Caetano electric single-deck buses to the UK, which were the safest in London with the inclusion of TfL Bus Safety Standard measures. Since 2019 it has held Earned Recognition status with the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), which recognises it as an exemplary operator, and in 2023 earned ISO 45001 accreditation across all six depots.

About Blink

Blink is the world's best super-app for deskless workers, with a mission to revolutionise work life for the frontline, closing the digital divide and enabling distributed organisations to communicate effectively and engage together like never before. Blink is used by over 200,000 frontline workers at industry-leading companies including Stagecoach, Elara Caring and Domino’s. Each user opens the app an average of seven times a day, helping lower frontline attrition by up to 25%.

Founded in 2015 and with offices in London, Boston, and Sydney, Blink is a Leader in the G2 Grid® for Best EmployeeEngagement Software and named in the 2022 Deloitte Technology Fast 50.

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Supercharge engagement across your employee intranet

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

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

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

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

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

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How to turn your employee intranet into a hub of engagement

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

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

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

Some other must-have intranet homepage elements include:

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

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

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Make it personal: Tailor the experience for every employee

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

What do you expect to see on your dashboard?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post content regularly

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

Find your comms cadence

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

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

Harness employee-generated content

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

Commit to regular content maintenance

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

Take inspiration from social media managers

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

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

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

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

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

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

Measure and adapt: Continuously improve the employee experience

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

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

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

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

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

Build an employee intranet your workforce will love

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

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

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

So what should you do first?

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

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

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

The most common communication challenges in organizations from big enterprise businesses to small startups are so widespread that dealing with them can start to feel normal.

It’s easy to forget that internal communications issues can have a big impact. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can safely back burner internal comms because communication challenges and barriers are so widespread.

The fact is that poor internal communications can seriously harm your business. It’s a domino effect of frustrating communication, poor morale, lower productivity, higher absenteeism leading to higher employee turnover, and finally, higher costs and smaller profits.

Of course, when you’re in the thick of things, the relationship between poor internal comms and your bottom line might not be very clear. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that communication was thought of as a nice but not necessary soft skill.

We put together this article to lay out some of the ways communication challenges and barriers can sap a company’s resources along with strategies for making your internal comms more effective (also see the best way to improve internal communications).

The deep impact of communications challenges in organizations

The idea that internal communications problems can make a business less profitable can seem overblown.

The statistics, however, show that having a weak internal comms strategy (or having no strategy at all) can have a detrimental impact on everything from employee engagement to your business's bottom line.

Here’s how communications challenges in organizations affect success.

Communication challenges and barriers lead to increased employee turnover

Studies looking into the real cost of employee turnover often show different results.

Some studies show it costs employers 33% of a worker's annual salary to hire a replacement while other research suggests that it costs three times that salary.

What all of the data has in common is that employee turnover definitely costs companies big bucks.

Employee retention and profitability go hand in hand, and the good news is that research shows that 75% of employee turnover is preventable.

Relationships suffer when communication is a problem

Two heads are better than one, but whole teams of heads are necessary for long-term success.

When people can’t communicate with one another effectively because of technical barriers or, worse, can communicate but feel uncomfortable doing so because there’s not a culture of openness at a company, collaboration may slow or even stop.

That means innovation can’t happen and problems languish with no solutions. Your employees just can’t be as productive when relationships with colleagues are strained and everyone feels like they’re working in isolation.

Less productivity means less profit.

Customer service suffers when there are communication challenges

Internal communications and external communications are inexorably linked.

Employees need access to information to answer customer queries, respond to sales inquiries, or help customers get what they need.

When they can’t get that information easily, they’re apt to feel a strong sense of disengagement that can actually lead to everyone—workers and customers alike—feeling frustrated and dissatisfied during encounters.

Dissatisfied employees leave, and as we’ve shown above, that costs money. And dissatisfied customers take their business elsewhere, costing you even more.

Poor communication = stress = higher healthcare costs

This might seem like a stretch, but stress costs the United States $300 billion every year—a figure that includes costs shouldered by businesses that provide insurance to their employees.

While there’s no way to show a hard and fast causal link between frustrations caused by comms issues and increased healthcare costs, it’s worth mulling over the idea that the communications challenges in organizations that stress workers out may also be contributing to expensive physical and mental health issues in those same employees.

Healthcare is expensive, after all, and effective internal comms is cheap in comparison.

Internal communication problems can be a motivation killer

Workers who don’t feel like they have an important role to play, who don’t understand what is expected of them, and who feel like they don’t have a voice literally can’t give their all.

Time that would otherwise go toward productive (and profitable) work is instead spent trying to navigate a confusing company culture or to figure out what that company’s priorities are. There’s no passion among employees because they feel totally disengaged from their tasks and their teams.

The Gallup State of the American Workplace report put it succinctly: “Actively disengaged employees aren’t just unhappy at work—they are resentful that their needs aren’t being met and are acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers potentially undermine what their engaged coworkers accomplish.”

Communications challenges in organizations lead to mistakes

Workers who have access to the information they need to really contribute to a company make fewer mistakes because they feel comfortable concentrating on the work in front of them.

Employees who are focused on trying to figure out what their priorities should be or simple emotional management are more prone to error.

In a retail environment, the result of this kind of disengagement may be fewer sales. In industries like healthcare, however, mistakes can lead to hugely expensive regulatory issues or even injury and death.

Poor internal communication makes boosting employee satisfaction impossible

You can’t boost your workers’ overall satisfaction if you don’t have a clear idea of what employees like and don’t like about their day to day.

At companies with strong internal communications strategies, managers regularly touch base with employees to get a sense of what’s working and what isn’t. When comms just isn’t a priority, chances are slim to none that workers will open up about what changes could make your business better.

Absenteeism rates are higher when communications is an issue

Employees who can’t jump ship at the moment may show their communications-related dissatisfaction by simply not showing up.

A Gallup study conducted in the UK showed that disengaged workers miss 10 more working days each year compared to peers who feel a strong connection to the company vision and are clear on what’s expected of them.

The biggest challenges facing internal communications teams

The factors that have contributed to the biggest communications challenges in organizations are well documented at this point. Lack of clarity, platform. and targeted messaging.

The main problem that companies have faced has always been how to address those factors effectively and economically. Email and Dropbox alone are outdated.

Just having a clear vision doesn’t necessarily mean it is easy to share and then reinforce that vision. A company intranet portal that provides a platform for internal comms may not actually facilitate good communication. And getting the right information into the hands of the right people has always been tough.

Luckily, solving the big communications challenges in organizations has become easier with tech tools like an internal communications tool. Intranets have evolved over time from simple information repositories to a kind of mobile base of operations where business happens from anywhere.

Blink, for instance, can help you communicate administrative and benefits information, but is also a platform for collaboration, a place to store and search for data, a way to solicit feedback (including anonymous feedback), and a social hub for employees to share with one another.

It lets internal comms teams curate messaging so employees stay on the same page without getting overwhelmed by emails, meetings, memos, and Slack chatter.

Up-to-date internal comms tools like Blink’s employee app are even more important for businesses with a lot of frontline workers—especially now that nontraditional employees like remote workers and long-term contract workers make up such a large percentage of the workforce.

By automating paper-based processes, microapps like this help increase productivity overall.

How effective internal communications will change your business for the better

Curious about what effective internal communication can really do for your bottom line? Here are some statistics that might surprise you:

• Companies that communicate effectively are 50% more likely to report below average turnover levels.
• A 5-point improvement in employee attitude results in a 1.3% increase in customer satisfaction and an increase in company revenue.
• Higher engagement can mean a 40% reduction in absenteeism.
• Employees who feel fully informed and more engaged may be 21% more productive.
• Companies with effective communication strategies see 47% higher total returns to shareholders.
• Poor communication is cited as the main cause of failure for IT projects.
• 69% of employees say they’d work harder if their contributions were recognized and praised.

Knowing what you know now, we also want to offer you a quick list of steps you can take right away to gauge how your internal comms is currently working and to enhance your internal comms strategy.

1. Assess your current strategy — Assuming you have one, that is. If not, you’ll want to make one. But if you do, take the time to consider your internal communications objectives, who has ownership of comms, if the tools you are using are effective, and whether your current strategies are really getting the job done.
2. Poll your employees — Do they feel like they have a voice in your company? If they have an idea, can they easily share it? When they have questions, can they find answers quickly and easily? Does dealing with administrative tasks take up way too much time? Do they like your communications tech? Let workers answer anonymously and adjust your comms strategy accordingly.
3. Put everything in one place — Make this the year you finally commit to storing your company data in one place so tracking down a file is never again a half-day affair. When you use Blink to store the information your employees need—from HR docs to project guidelines—they can easily find it all.
4. Stop sending so many emails — Lengthy, reply-all type email threads are frustrating and, frankly, easy to ignore. Worse, they interrupt the flow of work and often contain irrelevant information leaving workers feeling resentful instead of informed.
5. Send information to the right people — Use a comms platform like Blink that lets you send information to specific employees and teams instead of the entire company. You can even label posts priority and check to make sure that your messages were received and read by recipients.

The bottom line is that employees at every level of your company will be happier, more productive, and more passionate about their work if they feel informed.

The internal communications strategy you put into place now will not only make it easier for your employees to do their jobs, but will also make your company more profitable in the long run.

Blink makes it easier to overcome the most common organizational communication tool challenges in organizations. Are you ready to tackle the challenges facing internal communications at your company?

We’ve all seen those Instagram posts.

Image one. The stereotypical Insta shot, filtered and framed to perfection. Maybe a deserted white-sand beach. 

Image two. The reality. An overcast sky, a wailing toddler, and barely enough space to lay down your towel.

It’s easy to buy into the idealised version. To imagine that everything is blue skies and palm trees. Your internal communication strategy can fall into the same trap.

From where you’re sitting, comms KPIs look good. Content is polished. Leadership is happy. But look a little deeper and you may find an internal communications blind spot: your frontline workforce.

Here’s the kicker: 83% of frontline employees don’t even have a company email address. That means your beautifully designed internal newsletters and “all staff” blasts aren’t landing with the majority of your people.

While HQ is sending out on-brand messages, the frontline is living a different reality. One of shift chaos, patchy comms, and the repeated refrain: “I’ll read it later.”

The gap between the Insta version of internal communications and the reality on the frontline is bigger than you might think. That means frontline employee engagement is also taking a hit.

Here, we look at why that’s the case — and what you can do about it.

The “Insta” version of internal comms

From a leadership or internal comms (IC) perspective, everything looks great.

Campaigns are on-brand. Graphics pop and copy sings. Your intranet homepage is a thing of beauty. You’ve sent your latest company round-up as an email to “all staff”, and open and read rates look good.

On desktop, your comms land well. Those in marketing, finance, or admin are seeing messages exactly as intended. This can lead IC to make a false assumption — that because it works for desk-based teams, it works for everyone.

Here’s the reality check: Success in desk-based comms doesn’t automatically translate to the frontline. Let’s explore the reasons why.

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The reality of frontline communication

Beautiful comms campaigns mean nothing if a segment of your audience never sees them — or can’t act on your messages in the moment. For frontline workers, four employee communication problems crop up again and again:  

Channel mismatch

If your primary comms channels were designed for desktop, you’ve already lost your frontline audience. Most frontline workers don’t have access to corporate email platforms. They rarely log into your intranet platforms — and if they do, it’s from a shared terminal with a queue building up behind them.

So, the frontline gets updates in a piecemeal fashion. A memo taped to the breakroom wall, a hurried briefing from a supervisor, an easily overlooked message in the team’s unofficial WhatsApp chat. The result? Messages get missed or misunderstood. And IC has very little control over the cascade.  

Bad timing

That live stream of your town hall meeting? It goes live mid-shift for the warehouse team. Those critical leadership updates? They’re buried below a sea of new intranet content before the night crew has time to check in.

Frontline shifts don’t always align with head office hours. So frontline workers get a disjointed and inconsistent comms experience. They have to catch up with conversations that are already in full swing.

Lack of frontline context

Too often, comms are written from a desk-based point of view. They contain information that’s irrelevant to store, depot, or on-site teams. To get to the good stuff, frontline workers have to wade through messages that have little bearing on their roles.

But that’s optimistic. Most frontline workers don’t have time to sift through internal comms in search of relevant info. So if your messages don’t answer the question — “What does this mean for me, right now?” — they’re likely to be ignored.

A disjointed employee experience

Even when employees do see and engage with internal messages, they find it hard to act on them. That’s because most workplace software is built around the needs of office-based staff.

Take Workday. For desk-based teams, it’s a breeze — HR info, payroll, scheduling, all in one place. They can read an internal message from HR and act upon it in just a couple of clicks.

For the frontline? It’s another story. Deskless employees struggle to access software via their smartphones. They may have to download an app update, request a password reset from IT, and cross their fingers that the Wi-Fi holds out, just to complete a simple task.

The process is clunky. So HR tasks get delayed or dropped. Not because people don’t care — but because workplace systems don’t fit the frontline reality.

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What frontline communication could (and should) look like

Now for the good news. If a focus on the “Insta” version of internal comms has blinded you to the frontline reality, you can fix it. You can make frontline comms as seamless, engaging, and actionable as desk-based comms. How? By building the following principles into your internal communication plan.  

Mobile-first delivery

Mobile-first internal communication tools deliver messages straight to an employee’s smartphone.

But you can’t pick software designed for desktop and simply shrink the experience down for mobile. This approach results in a cluttered interface or reduced functionality. And a poor user experience means frontline employees are unlikely to embrace your new tech.

A mobile-first communication platform considers the smartphone experience first, then scales up for desktop. You get clean layouts, buttons that are big enough to tap, and a system designed to meet the needs of mobile users.

Short, scannable updates

Your frontline workers are busy. They don’t have time for a multi-page PDF or a 600-word internet post. They're used to the most engaging mobile platforms — social media.

To get key messages across, you need to keep things short and snappy. That means headlines, bullet points, visual content, and one clear action point per message.

Longer messages are split over several shorter posts. Text-heavy posts are transformed into engaging video content and infographics. Your frontline receives bite-sized morsels of information. So it’s much easier for them to process what you’re saying — even during a hectic shift.

Personalized messaging

One-size communication doesn’t fit all. The best communication tools allow you to segment your audience based on their role, location, team, and tenure — then, create a personalized comms experience.

Retail workers might get updates on your flash sale or tips for upselling a new product line. Drivers receive route changes and safety reminders. Maintenance teams see shift cover requests and equipment FAQs.

Everyone gets relevant information, so they see the value in your internal channels and are more likely to check in.

Content created by the frontline

Want your internal comms to resonate with frontline employees? Then amplify employee voices from the frontline. Employee-generated content (EGC) makes communication feel more relevant, relatable, and human. It gives workers across locations and departments a glimpse into each other’s worlds.

Work hacks from a member of the retail team. Day-in-the-life video messages from your warehouse workers.

This authentic content can generate more employee satisfaction than a polished post from head office. And when frontline workers see themselves reflected in internal comms content, they’re more likely to engage with your communication channels and feel part of company culture.

A seamless software experience

With integrations and single sign-on technology, you can make workplace software available via smartphone and via the same user-friendly dashboard. Frontline employees can then read messages and take action right away.

Blink’s integration with Workday is a prime example. A frontline worker using their smartphone gets the same information, forms, and updates as a desk-based worker. As long as they have the Blink app, they don’t need to manage extra downloads or separate logins. And they don’t have to hop between apps to complete HR tasks. 

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Quick frontline communication wins

Ready to close the frontline experience gap? Small changes, made consistently, can have a huge impact on how your internal comms land with frontline employees. Here are three easy, high-return actions you can start on this week.

• Audit your current comms channels. Take a close look at your communications channels and ask yourself how many actually reach the frontline. Then, decide whether to fix, replace, or scrap the channels that are excluding this key segment of your workforce.  

• Create a “frontline-first” filter for every message. Before sending any internal communication message, answer this question: Does this make sense and provide value to someone on a 10-hour shift with patchy Wi-Fi and no desktop access? If the answer is no, simplify it, shorten it, or make it more visual.

• Ask a frontline worker to create a piece of content. Get a frontline employee to share a quick tip, a behind-the-scenes look at their shift, or a short story about a customer interaction. This is a first step to developing an internal creator culture, and you may be surprised and inspired by just how engaging EGC can be.  

Closing the comms gap to unlock the full potential of your frontline workforce

Informed and connected employees are more productive, more efficient, and more loyal to your organization. So the frontline shouldn’t have to jump through hoops just to access basic workplace information.

Look beyond your company-wide comms performance and delve into the realities of the frontline experience. Employee communications missing the mark for deskless staff? Then commit to changes, in both the short and long term. 

 Your frontline needs relevant messages that convey key information as concisely as possible. They need mobile-first communication tools and integrated workplace software that they can access with ease.  

Achieving this may mean switching an outdated desktop platform for an employee app, like Blink.

With Blink, desk-based and frontline employees can access a company news feed, instant messaging, a content hub, employee surveys, and other workplace software — all from a single dashboard, all from their smartphone.

‍Blink. And give your frontline workers the comms experience they deserve.

For comms leaders who want to bring their teams together, employee engagement is a critical element in creating a sense of belonging in frontline organizations. There are a number of different employee engagement frameworks available.

Therefore, it’s important to understand their respective strengths and weaknesses to make the right decisions for your teams.

How can you know which one is right for your organization?

The answer lies in understanding the goals that you want to achieve through engagement, and how the different frameworks can help you do so.

At Blink, we believe in the importance of employee engagement, which is why we've carefully evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of key frameworks on the market, to help you find the one that aligns with your organizational goals.

Whether you're an SME looking to create a fast-growing startup culture, or a large enterprise looking to make your employees feel more empowered and innovative, this guide will help you understand what an employee engagement framework is and find the right model for the job.

What Is An Employee Engagement Framework or Model?

An employee engagement framework or model is a strategic structure created to help you understand and measure the factors that drive employee engagement within your organization. 

These models work to identify the specific factors that are most important to creating an engaged employee workforce, and provide a strategic framework for improving these factors as part of your wider employee engagement strategy.

But why does this even matter? Why bother? Well, studies have shown that engaged employees see increased customer satisfaction, boosted job satisfaction and improved turnover (43%) compared to their competitors, amongst a range of other competitive benefits. We know, we've told you before! But that's because it's true.

As for the framework, it provides a core structure to your communications and engagement efforts and helps you to focus on the elements that are most important. So whether you're looking to drive innovation, retention, or productivity within your organization, there's bound to be an engagement framework or model out there that can help you achieve these goals.

Before we dive into how to choose the best employee framework for you, let's take a look at some of the main employee engagement models.

Employee Engagement Framework Examples

When it comes to employee engagement theories, specifically frameworks, the sector is dominated by a few major players. In this section we'll outline the key focus and aims of each employee framework example, hopefully providing you with some insight into which model might be best for improving employee engagement in your organization. 

1. The Zinger Model

The Zinger model of employee engagement consists of 14 employee engagement elements, with key symbols for each element. Together, these elements make up a symbolic framework for measuring employee engagement, with each element representing a specific part of the engagement process. These 14 elements include:

• Achieve results
• Craft strategy
• CARE (Connect, Authentic, Recognition, Engage)
• Enliven work roles
• Excel at performance
• Esteem organization
• Foster community
• Serve customers
• Develop career
• Leverage energies
• Experience wellbeing

The model is designed to help organizations evaluate and monitor the factors that impact employee engagement over time, and track progress towards their organizational goals.

While this theoretical model lacks depth in terms of human resource management theory, it does provide a useful visualization of different engagement factors and mechanisms, making it a great choice for comms leaders looking to map out their employee engagement strategy in a visually appealing way.

2. The Deloitte Model

The Deloitte model of employee engagement was created after two years of discussions and research with clients, revealing five major elements and 20 underlying strategies that work together to make an organization truly “irresistible.” The 5 major elements included in this framework are:

• Meaningful work
• Hands-on management
• Positive work environment
• Growth opportunity
• Trust in leadership

All of these factors work together to form a core system of engagement within an organization (See Figure 1 below) that maintains itself through strong company culture. And while the model is aimed at maximizing employee satisfaction, it also works to improve productivity and profitability.

This framework has been used by hundreds of organizations around the world and boasts a high success rate in improving organization-wide employee engagement and company performance. If you’re looking for an evidence-based approach to employee engagement that can help you achieve results across the board, this might be a good fit for you.

3. The JD-R model

The Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) theory of employee engagement is a model that explains how the organizational environment impacts employee well-being and performance.

One central idea in the JD-R theory is that although workers may be based in various sectors–think transport, manufacturing, or finance–their job characteristics can be classified into two categories: job demands and job resources.

• Job demands are job aspects that require continuous effort and usually come with physical and mental costs. Some examples could include a heavy or unmanageable workload, conflicting demands from managers and customers, and workplace bullying.
• Job resources help workers progress in their careers, make their jobs less demanding, and improve their day-to-day life both professionally and personally. Some examples of resources could include anything from an easily accessed Central Hub storing core company resources to scheduled breaks during the work day and access to line management training, enrolling on employee engagement training programs and other development initiatives.

Using a variety of methods to study leadership and workers, such as Employee Surveys, interviews and administrative data, the JD-R model has been proven to be a valid method for assessing how employees feel about their job resources and demands, and in turn their engagement levels.

4. The Gallup Employee Engagement model

The Gallup model of employee engagement refers to their Q12 Survey, which consists of 12 employee engagement survey questions. After taking the Q12 survey, leaders and managers will be able to effortlessly work each item's concepts into conversations, meeting agendas, performance evaluations and team goal setting. The 12 questions are:

1. I know what is expected of me at work.
2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
7. At work, my opinions seem to count.
8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
10. I have a best friend at work.
11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

The 12 questions are split into four levels (See image below) required for an environment of trust and support in the workplace. By meeting the needs of the three levels of foundational employee engagement drivers, leaders can drive top level personal and professional growth for their employees.

Using these levels as a guide to manage your team, you can improve their performance and continue developing them professionally.

It's important to note that these four levels do not represent consecutive phases. Managers do not complete level one and then level two, etc. Leaders must ensure that employees' needs are met on level one first, however they must then continue to deliver on that level while meeting their needs on the second, third and fourth levels.

Simply put: if you don't meet your employees basic needs on an ongoing basis, the other levels won't follow.

5. The AON Hewitt model

The AON model of employee engagement consists of three main sectors, Say, Stay and Strive. Based on employee responses to "say, stay, and strive," engagement levels can be determined and used as a predictor of business outcomes. 

AON goes on to recommend some key steps when implementing an engagement framework, which include:

• Define your improvement strategy
• Boost the impact and effectiveness of your managers and leaders
• Create an aligned employee value proposition
• Design and implement total reward programs.

By using these steps, leaders can successfully improve employee engagement and drive better business outcomes for their organizations.

How to pick the right employee engagement framework for you

What business targets are you aiming for?

To choose a fit-for-purpose engagement model, you need to understand the goals that you want to achieve through engagement. Some of the most common business targets are: improved innovation, increased employee retention and productivity, and better financial performance.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) built around employee engagement metrics can also make strong targets for your engagement framework. For example, some organizations might aim to increase employee participation in the workplace and their willingness to contribute to company goals – both of which are important metrics for measuring employee engagement and satisfaction.

Some key questions to ask yourself at this point could include:

• What's the main engagement problem you’re currently facing? 
• What are your business targets?
• Does the engagement framework align with KPIs and company goals?

Understand your team setup

The first step in choosing the best employee engagement framework for your organization is to understand the different types of teams that you have. This will help you to better understand the specific engagement needs of your team, and tailor the framework accordingly.

For example, a frontline workforce is going to require specific framework targets, such as increasing employee engagement in nurses or on the factory floor. On the other hand, an office-based team may be looking to increase employee participation in company events or projects.

The truth is, frontline workers are often left with no engagement projects that meet their needs. Unfortunately, this has led to a growing number of frontline workers left feeling unheard and disengaged. 

To do better for your staff, start by really getting to know them and their team setup.

Assess your current technology

When choosing your framework to engage employees, run-of-the-mill employee engagement activities and boring old company practices need to stay in the past.

If you really want to drive employee engagement outcomes in your organization, you need the right tech. Luckily, when it comes to the best digital tools for employee engagement, we know a thing or two.

From employee engagement platforms and digital communication tools to online learning resources, there's a growing number of technology solutions available to help you improve your organizational culture and increase engagement.

In our humble opinion, Blink is the absolute frontrunner when it comes to tech solutions for engaging employees. Blink offers:

• Secure Chats to drive feedback loops, two-way communication and meaningful workplace relationships
• Central Hub for instant access to core company policies, procedures and files
• Blink Feed for company announcements and engaging day-to-day updates
• Frontline Intelligence to help you measure and analyze how your employee engagement strategy is performing
• Employee Surveys to drive a movement of listening within your organization.

With these digital features in one Frontline Engagement App, Blink really is the perfect fit for any business looking to improve employee engagement and, ultimately, business outcomes.

So if you're ready to start taking your employee engagement efforts to the next level, how about trying Blink today? You'll be able to easily meet your communication, collaboration and company culture goals!

Identify engagement framework allies

Employee engagement framework allies are those who are invested in improving your organization's culture and are willing to work alongside you to help achieve this.

For example, if you're looking to boost employee participation in your workplace, it might be worth reaching out to HR teams or management to see if they can dedicate budget towards more frequent team meetings or staff events.

Alternatively, if you're a comms or HR leader, you might need to get CIO or even CEO buy-in in order to implement the right digital tools to kickstart a new framework.

Overall, finding allies for your employee engagement framework can be a powerful way to get more support behind your goals, and achieve better results in the long run. So make sure you reach out to anyone who might be able to help you move forward.

How do you implement an employee engagement model?

It’s important to choose the right model and identify your allies to ultimately achieve your goals. To implement this thinking, it's important to approach implementation in a structured way. This will help you have a clear plan to manage the process from start to finish.

Some key steps include overhauling your digital employee engagement tools, testing and setting measurable goals, creating regular check-in points for measuring progress, and ensuring that everyone involved is aligned with the same vision and implementing employee engagement best practices.

What Blink can do for you...

Now that you have a better understanding of how to implement an employee engagement model in your organization, you can think about implementing a tool like Blink.

At Blink, strong employee engagement is at the heart of what we do. That's why our mobile engagement app offers a range of powerful tools and features to help frontline organizations improve their culture and build better relationships with their staff.

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With an average activation rate of over 85% across numerous deskless industries, Blink can help you drive more open and honest communication, increase employee participation in your initiatives, gather feedback from across all departments, all of this to help you drive key metrics and KPIs. 

Get started today