Meet Grant Aylward

Digital inclusion is the ability of individuals and communities to access, understand, and use technology in a safe and meaningful way. More often, we hear of digital inclusion and digital equity as social concepts — do citizens have equal access to health tech solutions, for example, and do they have access to the internet in order to participate in society? 

But frontline digital inclusion and digital equity for employees are just as important.

Frontline digital inclusion is essential in order to bridge the connection gap between the frontline workforce and the rest of an organization.

By understanding frontline digital inclusion better, we can help create a more equitable global workforce where everyone has access to the tools, resources, and people they need to succeed. In doing so, we encourage increased employee engagement, and unlock productivity and performance for the business, so everybody benefits.

What is digital inclusion?

Before we get into the specifics of frontline digital inclusion, let’s start with some definitions.

Digital inclusion is an important concept in the modern world as access to technology and digital services play an increasingly critical role in people’s lives. It refers to the ability of individuals and communities to access, understand, and use technology in order to take part in society, regardless of their social or economic backgrounds.

On a larger scale, digital inclusion projects serve to create equity where it isn’t already: between those who have access to digital resources and those that don’t. Frontline digital inclusion is one example of this concept in action, as it refers to providing equal opportunities for frontline workforce members to use technology in their daily activities.

Digital inclusion comprises three key areas: 

1. Accessibility
2. Digital skills
3. Connectivity 

Accessibility

Digital accessibility refers to the ability of all individuals to access digital content, tools, and services, including those with disabilities, sensory impairments, or neurodiversities.

On a global scale, improving digital access involves a wide range of considerations, such as providing alternative formats of content (such as audio or braille versions), designing websites and applications to be inclusive, and ensuring that digital services can be accessed in different languages or formats.

Digital skills

Digital skills refer to a range of abilities needed to use digital tools, devices, and communications applications effectively. Understanding their purpose and how they can be used to benefit the user also falls under this definition.

Digital education and training initiatives are important for helping people to develop the skills they need to be digitally included. Digital skills are an essential part of being digitally literate in today’s world, allowing individuals to take advantage of all that technology has to offer.

Connectivity

Digital connectivity refers to the ability of individuals to connect to the internet and online services, as well as the infrastructure and internet connection that supports this.

Enabling digital connectivity involved providing internet access in areas where there is none, or setting up public Wi-Fi networks in remote locations. This is particularly crucial in developing countries, where access to the internet can be a huge advantage.

What would digital inclusion look like for the frontline?

Frontline digital inclusion includes everything from having access to devices and software, understanding how they work and how to use them properly, and being able to take advantage of the same digital services as those in higher positions or working at HQ.

Accessibility

Workers should have access to the digital tools needed for their roles, whether their job is desk-based or not. When frontline employees have digital equity, they are able to better perform their daily work tasks using relevant software and mobile-optimized platforms.

Language is particularly important to consider here. Frontline environments like healthcare are becoming more divergent and employees are speaking a broader range of languages between themselves and with their patients. Any technology provided to them has to be easily translated to avoid crucial messages being missed.

Digital skills

Digital skills can be thought of in two ways when it comes to frontline digital inclusion. 

One: is the tool intuitive for the frontline or has it been designed with desk-based workflows in mind?

And two: are frontline employees being offered relevant training, onboarding, and support for the digital tools provided?

You might need to create additional resources for improving digital skills, such as tutorials, videos, and webinars. You can also direct them to key employee engagement champions who can empower them to use their new tech effectively.

Connectivity

Connecting your organization from the C-Suite to the frontline brings about a huge wealth of benefits, from ‘soft’ benefits like belonging and inclusion, to ‘hard’ benefits like the effective flow of information and a faster time to response.

Mobile-first digital technologies — like accessible and engaging frontline employee apps — help ensure your teams stay connected in-field and are able to access everything they need.

The digital divide: understanding frontline digital exclusion

By now, you’re hopefully as sold on the idea of frontline digital inclusion as we are. It’s not only an ethical imperative, but a business one too.

So what’s currently stopping digital equity on the frontline? Why are so many frontline workers experiencing digital exclusion?

Frontline teams typically lack access to the digital resources needed to perform their roles. They may also be offered existing tools and services that fail to meet their needs. Digital inclusion barriers may come from a lack of familiarity or understanding of how to use the tools, a lack of technological infrastructure, or simply limited access to devices and software while working in the field.

To put the problem into numbers:

• 34% of frontline healthcare employees can’t easily access workplace systems on their mobile devices
• Nearly 20% of frontline healthcare employees aren’t using their company intranet
• … and two-thirds of that 20% don’t know how to

With a digital divide like this, it's no surprise that frontline organizations are seeing a drop in the usage of and engagement with their digital channels (more on this below).

In short: we have to combat digital exclusion in order to deliver digital inclusion. And at work, that starts with the frontline.

Frontline digital exclusion in action

Digital exclusion wastes time and money. It can also be a serious contributing factor to employee disengagement. 

• At home health provider Elara Caring, employees were choosing to drive up to an hour each way to collect their paystubs in person as it was too difficult to access this information online
• For the same employees, a lack of communication between head office and the teams in the field left them feeling unsupported and disconnected
• Transport provider Stagecoach hired a full-time role just to manage platform password reset requests from frontline employees

See how Elara Caring and Stagecoach achieved frontline digital inclusion with Blink’s frontline employee app today.

We know that bridging this digital divide adds value. 

Organizations with the highest degrees of digital connectivity and empowerment are able to grow in ways that other businesses can’t. Here’s why…

Why is digital inclusion important for frontline teams?

How digital exclusion impacts frontline engagement

• Feelings of exclusion negatively impact employee engagement and therefore care and commitment
• It becomes difficult to understand frontline employee engagement. Paper-based employee engagement surveys go unanswered and unanalyzed — and if you can’t understand engagement, you can’t improve it either

How digital exclusion impacts frontline performance

• Employees will naturally drift away from your business objectives and mission statement when kept at a digital distance 
• Frontline staff become less invested in their day-to-day activities and more burnt out, negatively impacting performance.
• With fewer development opportunities due to digital exclusion, frontline workers don’t feel motivated to take on new roles or responsibilities and their growth becomes stunted

How digital exclusion impacts frontline profitability

• Operations can easily become chaotic and ineffective without an efficient flow of information between co-workers and departments
• Higher costs as recruitment and retention come under threat; the ‘leaky bucket’ of labor supply means that significant funds are deployed to the finding and training of a replacement workforce who might not stick around for long anyway
• Fresh challenges arise around recruiting and retaining new employees as the business loses its reputation as a good place to work
• Disengaged organizations see 23% lower profitability than highly engaged ones, and the longer employees remain in a disengaged state, the harder it is to turn around

How digital exclusion impacts frontline retention

• Digital exclusion can result in rising frustrations, poor employee morale, and low satisfaction due to the lack of adequate tools and resources available
• As 52% of frontline workers claimed they would leave their job over tech tools, it’s clear that these frustrations can have an impact on your employee turnover rate, too
• The average annual employee turnover rate is estimated at 18%, yet some frontline industries and organizations are experiencing much higher turnover levels. US frontline retail employees, for example, have a historic turnover rate of over 60%

Three actionable tips to drive your frontline digital inclusion efforts

Now for the how: here are three actionable tips to consider when driving digital inclusion for your frontline employees.

1. Understand who’s responsible

First and foremost, you must understand who is responsible for driving digital inclusion in your organization. While traditionally this has been the job of the CIO or CTO, it's clear that others in the C-Suite such as Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs) can have a major role to play. 

As one Forbes states:

“Given how technology has infiltrated the entire C-suite, it’s clear that while CTOs and CIOs are still in charge of which technologies to purchase and deploy, their collaboration across departments is expanding. They need input from the entire executive team to ensure their investments match and support the overarching goals of the business and leverage collaboration to have the greatest impact.”

Analysis by Deloitte (pictured below) also explores the role of the C-Suite in managing the hyper-connected workplace. Touching on how CHROs, CIOs, CROs, COOs, and individuals can adjust to the changing world of hyper-connected work, this analysis provides an excellent starting point for organizations to better understand the roles and responsibilities of each C-Suite member.

However, important to remember that true employee techquity requires buy-in and team effort from not just the entire exec team, but also heads of HR/People, Internal Comms, and that all-important first-line manager. In fact, it's crucial to leverage the first-line frontline manager if you are going to succeed with frontline digital inclusion.

A CEO might only spend 6% of their work hours with the frontline, despite these staff members representing up to 80% of their business. Conversely, frontline managers spend the most time with the frontline, yet are often overlooked and undervalued. With first-line knowledge, your inclusion efforts will be much more effective.

With all this in mind, placing responsibility for frontline digital inclusion squarely on the C-Suite is too limiting. It’s important to have a comprehensive strategy in place with clear roles and responsibilities for all stakeholders.

2. Create a frontline digital inclusion strategy 

Take inspiration from the UK Government Digital Inclusion Strategy and create a frontline digital inclusion strategy for your organization.

A digital inclusion strategy for the frontline should include a comprehensive assessment of existing technology access and resources available to frontline employees. This assessment should cover areas such as:

• Device availability (i.e., laptops, tablets, and smartphones)
• Internet connection speeds and access to data on your work sites
• Availability of learning and training materials
• Access to technical support
• Any other resources necessary to ensure successful digital integration

Once a comprehensive assessment of existing resources has been completed, your frontline digital inclusion strategy can be created and regularly updated:

• This strategy should include objectives, goals, action plans, and resource requirements necessary to achieve the desired outcomes. Improved employee engagement, enhanced customer service capabilities, and increased productivity are all in reach
• Regular reviews and updates of the strategy are key to its success. Employee engagement KPIs and frontline analytics should be established in order to track progress made against the strategy
• Finally, a successful digital inclusion strategy should include continuing education and training initiatives for frontline staff. These initiatives should focus on upskilling employees in areas such as data security protocols and best practices for the platform you choose.

Check out the digital inclusion checklist at the end of our guide for more strategic guidance.

3. Enable, engage, and understand your frontline

Achieving frontline digital inclusion requires enabling, engaging, and understanding your employees.

By combining the three, you can create an effective frontline digital inclusion strategy that puts your employees on the path to success.

Enable

Enabling your frontline with the right technology goes beyond simply providing them with a device and internet connection. It’s about equipping them with tools to succeed in a digitally-connected workplace.

For deskless workers, this might include:

• Content Hub: A central hub that's accessible on the go, storing critical policies, procedures, schedules, and guides in one place
• Digital Forms: Creating and distributing mobile-first digital forms, gathering data, and automating key processes. No hassle. No paper. No IT support tickets
• Single Sign-On: Access to all applications from one single app, without the hassle of remembering usernames and passwords
• Integrations: Integrate your existing tools and apps into new employee tech for intuitive and streamlined use

Engage

To receive engagement from your frontline, you have to earn it. This means providing digital tools that encourage engagement, as well as recognizing and rewarding input.

For example:

• News Feed: Bring the whole company together with a News Feed that's fun, familiar, and easy to use — you might just reduce time spent on non-core tasks by up to 90%
• Secure Chats: Create an intuitive, seamless communications experience for everyone with secure, mobile-first chats
• Recognition: Provide instant, personalized recognition for every employee, directly to the palm of their hand

Understand

To truly understand the digital experience of your frontline staff, you have to take the time to get to know them. This means listening, empowering their voice, and understanding how their experience affects their job performance.

• Analytics: Utilize powerful analytics for insight into the people and relationships that make your organization tick
• Surveys: Ditch paper surveys, build trust with your frontline, and get more data with short, regular Pulse surveys designed for higher engagement

Your frontline digital inclusion checklist

Digital inclusion is an important factor in the success of any organization. To measure the success of a digital inclusion strategy, there are certain key points that should be checked:

1. Start with user experience: Understand the experience of your frontline staff by listening to and empowering their voice, and understanding how their experience affects job performance
2. Offer digital support: Make sure all employees have access to online services, regardless of their digital literacy
3. Utilize powerful analytics: Leverage analytics for insight into the people and relationships that make up your organization
4. Take surveys and measure engagement: Replace laborious paper surveys with short, regular, mobile-friendly Pulse surveys to gain more data and build trust with employees
5. Provide tailored digital tools: Choose tools that are tailored to the needs of your deskless employees, and ensure a seamless user experience
6. Offer recognition: Show appreciation for employee performance with rewards, badges, shout-outs, and leaderboards
7. Invest in collaboration: Connect employees with one-on-one conversations, secure chats, and team communication tools to foster a culture of collaboration

By following this checklist and leveraging the right digital solutions for your organization, you can make sure that no one is left behind as you strive for greater digital inclusion. With Blink, this is made easier than ever.

Blink. And you bridge the digital divide

Frontline digital inclusion is an important and essential program — and it’s not as complex as it sounds.

By understanding the unique experience of deskless workers, providing access to digital tools tailored to their needs, and listening to and recognizing employee feedback, organizations can ensure that no one is left behind in the digital world.

But remember: not all digital services are created equal. At Blink, we believe in providing a seamless, intuitive user experience for the frontline, which is why our frontline employee app was built with deskless employees in mind.

With features including Secure Chats to News Feeds, Pulse Surveys, and Recognition tools, our employee-first solutions empower organizations to make their frontline staff feel connected and engaged throughout their journey.

Let us help you drive digital inclusion within your organization – get started with Blink today.

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Why off-the-shelf internal comms tools win every time

Your internal communications tool isn’t working.

Employees miss important updates. Frontline workers feel disconnected. Your IT team is stretched thin, and now you’re faced with a big decision: Build your own solution from scratch or buy a ready-made platform?

Building might seem like the best way to get exactly what you want. Total control, custom features — it sounds great in theory. But in reality? It’s a massive undertaking. Development takes months (if not years), maintenance is a never-ending burden, and by the time your internal communication software is live, it’s already outdated.

The good news? You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Today’s prebuilt corporate communication tool offers the perfect balance of speed, flexibility, extensive customization options, and a wide range of features tailored to your needs — without the cost and complexity of building from scratch.

Let’s dive into why an off-the-shelf internal communications platform is the smarter, faster, and more effective choice for connecting your entire organization.

The evolution of internal comms platforms

You may once have scraped by with a basic company intranet and SharePoint. But internal comms have come a long way — from bulletin boards and internal email blasts to mobile-first apps that deliver real-time updates and targeted, effective communication.

Today’s workforce demands consumer-grade experiences and a modern UX. So to improve your internal communications strategy and the employee experience, organizations now need platforms that are intuitive, engaging, and integrated with existing tools.

Big changes to your comms tech may feel like a daunting prospect. But if your existing internal comms platform is holding you back, remember that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. 

You can leverage prebuilt platforms to improve internal comms, share company content, and elevate company culture like never before.

6 reasons to buy an internal communication tool

Still on the fence about buying or building your internal communication tool? Let’s look at all the reasons why buying a solution provides everything you need and more.

#1. Easy activation

Building your own internal communication tool requires months (or years) of development, testing, and iteration. The process dominates the time of your tech team for a prolonged period.

When you buy a platform, on the other hand, you get instant access to a proven and reliable system with best-in-class key features and minimal training required. There’s no need to worry about designing UX, managing infrastructure, or fixing bugs.

You can simply configure and launch, counting on tried and tested functionality — and incredible speed, too. A bought platform can be live within months, if not weeks. So you can start making a big difference to your internal comms sooner rather than later.

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#2. Digital inclusion

In 2025, internal communication tech shouldn’t be reserved for your office-based team. 

If you want to achieve high levels of employee engagement and retention across all sectors of your workforce, you need an internal communication tool that allows you to reach every employee — no matter where or when they work.

With a mobile-first employee app, you can send company updates directly to employee smartphones. Whether you have office-based workers, remote teams, or frontline employees, you can be sure that comms are getting to every corner of the company.

Staff can log in to your platform without a corporate email address and stay informed of company updates on the go. They get push notifications that alert them to critical news. And they can access advanced features that encourage an employee social network, like a news feed and instant messaging tools.

The best employee apps revolutionize workplace communication. But creating, launching, and maintaining your own employee app is no mean feat.  

To ensure digital inclusion, your comms tool should be available across desktop, Android, and iOS devices. That means building and maintaining multiple apps in the app store, which is a significant burden for an internal IT team.

Opt for a turnkey solution, however, and you ensure that no employee is left out. With a dedicated tech team on hand, you can be confident that your internal communication tool will work perfectly across a range of devices and that all employees — no matter where and how they work — can onboard in just a few clicks.

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#3. Customer success

When you create employee communication software from scratch, you’re on your own. Your internal team has to build an engaging platform — and inspire employees to use it.

A purchased platform tends to come with a dedicated success team. These experts can help to optimize platform engagement, adoption, and ROI. They can also take care of training and troubleshooting, removing the burden of support from your internal IT team.

Your platform partner has walked this road before. Rolling out their platform time and time again, they’ve built up a wealth of knowledge. So your employees don’t have to be guinea pigs for a completely new system and launch process.

A customer success team can provide on-site support during the launch phase — and advise on the best ways to drive adoption. Whether that’s through a teaser campaign, employee challenges, or the simple (but very effective!) bribery of giving free ice cream cones or lunch vouchers to every employee who downloads the app.

#4. Custom branding

A common concern about a bought internal communication tool? That it won’t look and feel like your brand. That you have to sacrifice brand identity for the convenience of a bought solution. 

But with more comprehensive and robust customization options available, this is no longer the software sticking point it once was.

Modern employee communication platforms allow for full customization. You can add company colors, logos, and fonts. Your company name and logo will appear in the app store, on people’s phones, and inside the platform itself.

The best internal communication software allows you to apply this customization on a micro-level within your organization — by team, role, and geography — to provide a branded and personalized employee experience.

With extensive customization options, you can use your internal comms tool to create a company culture of belonging.

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#5. App personalization

Of course, it isn’t just the look of your internal communication platform that counts. The functionality it offers should be tailored to meet the needs of your employees.

This is why some companies choose to go down the build route. They see it as a way to get a custom solution that perfectly meets their requirements.

But again, bought solutions are keeping pace. They’re going beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to give customers a tailored tool, without the hassle of building it themselves.

With intuitive platforms that offer a user-friendly interface, you can create communication channels, custom workflows, control layouts, modify notifications, and ensure employees receive relevant content for them.

Features you don’t need? No problem — turn them on and off as you see fit. Concerned about real-time messaging? All good — set up alert and time zone parameters as needed.

Bought solutions are also agile. With your platform partner’s support, it’s easy to keep up with internal communication trends and employee expectations. And you don’t have to pay for ongoing development costs every time you need a new feature.

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#6. Integration

Internal communications don’t exist in a vacuum. Your platform needs to integrate with the other workplace software you use, including HR systems, payroll, scheduling, team collaboration tools, and much more.

Creating deep integrations for a self-build solution is time-consuming and costly. It often requires expensive API development and ongoing maintenance just to keep things connected.

But a purchased solution comes with prebuilt and seamless integrations for software like Workday, ServiceNow, Microsoft 365, and more.

Via secure, single sign-on technology, employees can access all the workplace tools they need. Your employee communication tool acts as a digital company hub, providing easy access to things like employee surveys, training, peer recognition and rewards, employee feedback forms, pay stubs, and shift swap tools.

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#7. Future-proofing

The right internal communications platform shouldn’t just solve today’s challenges. It should evolve with your organization and keep your workforce connected no matter how work changes.

Building an in-house solution may seem like a way to tailor communications to your exact needs, but without ongoing investment and dedicated resources, these systems can quickly become outdated. They can struggle to keep up with shifting workforce expectations, mobile-first engagement trends, and emerging technologies.

A prebuilt platform, by contrast, is continuously updated, giving you access to the latest and greatest capabilities without the burden of maintaining and upgrading the technology yourself.

Keep in mind: Not all prebuilt platforms are created equal. Some workplace tools are owned by larger corporations, where internal comms are just one of many priorities. This can leave customers vulnerable to shifting business strategies or product sunsets.

With the right internal comms partner, you get long-term stability, continuous innovation, and a platform designed to adapt and grow with your workforce — so you’re always ahead of what’s next.

Build or buy? Get the best of both worlds with Blink

Building an internal communication app may seem like a great way to get exactly what you want. But it’s often a long, costly, and risky investment.

In contrast, buying a prebuilt platform gives you speed, scalability, and best-in-class technology. You also enjoy the expertise of a team that lives and breathes internal comms tech. 

Choose a comprehensive solution like Blink and there’s no trade-off. You get the best of both worlds. The ability to brand and white label the platform. Powerful integrations with other workplace software you use. And a speedy launch — most of our clients go live within 6 to 12 weeks.

Our support is also second to none. Our team comes onsite at your company to assist with the platform launch and ensure high levels of adoption. The proof is in the stats.

With Blink, Domino’s achieved a 94% adoption rate and 81% monthly active users. A company news feed, chat features, and integrations with benefits, payslips, and shift swap tools make it easy for Domino’s to cultivate an informed and motivated workforce.

Over at Stagecoach, Blink has helped increase employee satisfaction by 46% and reduce staff turnover by 26%. What’s more, 100% of employees said they would recommend Blink’s internal communication platform to a colleague.

Don’t spend months reinventing the wheel. Ask the right questions when choosing a new employee communication tool and you can find a single platform that meets your ever-evolving comms needs and builds human connection — today, tomorrow, and beyond.

‍Blink. And connect your workforce with a ready-made internal comms platform.

At first glance, it seems that internal communications and external communications couldn’t be more different. 

External communication is all about sharing your brand and its messaging with people outside of your organization. This includes customers, stakeholders, and investors.

Internal communication is focused on sharing key company developments with people inside your organization. It gives employees the information they need to do their jobs effectively.

Because of this primary difference between internal and external communication, many companies treat these two forms of corporate comms as separate entities. They fail to see how their approach to external comms can inspire a better kind of internal communication.

Here, we challenge that thinking. We look at the similarities and differences between internal and external comms — and share some ideas for improving internal communication at your organization.

Similarities between internal and external communications

Let’s start by looking at all the things internal and external business communication have in common.

Strategic importance

Both external and internal communications are important to the success of your business.  

External communication is how you share your brand with customers and stakeholders. It’s how you convince people to trust in your brand and buy your products or services — and it has a clear impact on your bottom line.

Internal communication is aimed at your employees. It supports day-to-day operations and helps you build a strong company culture. The link may not be as obvious but internal communication also has a big impact on your company’s profitability.

That’s because, when you communicate effectively with employees, you stand to improve productivity, the customer experience, employee engagement, and employee retention, all of which affect company profits.

Therefore, both types of communication are essential to an organization — and both require a detailed schedule and strategy.

Selling the brand and what it stands for

You can use external and internal communication to sell your brand to respective audiences.

To your external audience, you sell your external brand image. You show customers and collaborators what makes your brand unique — and why they should pick you over your competitors. 

To your internal communications audience, you sell your employer brand and company culture. You remind employees why your company is such a great place to work.    

Comms content differs depending on your audience. But there’s a guiding principle to bear in mind. Selling your brand is easier when you create an emotional connection between your organization and your audience.

To do this, creative visuals and persuasive copy can do a lot of the heavy lifting. But you should also communicate a brand purpose that goes beyond increasing profits. You should highlight your company’s social purpose to both internal and external audiences.  

You can take things further with your internal comms. Clearly communicate your purpose, values, and strategy to employees. This helps your staff find meaning in their work — and understand how their efforts contribute to business goals — which means better motivation.

To align employees with your purpose, values, and strategy, focus some of your internal communications plan on the following:

• Making your senior execs accessible and accountable. Holding monthly Q&As is a great way to align your on-the-ground team with long-term strategy goals. It’s also much easier for employees to relate to the humans behind your company than to a faceless corporation.
  
  
• Highlighting how your company has made a difference in the world. Showcase positive customer case studies to show how your company is making a difference in people’s lives. Also, share any company activities that support people or the planet.
  
  
• Featuring employee perspectives. Interview people from different departments and ask them what they do and what they like about their job. This helps people to build a bigger picture of their workplace and understand how everything fits together.

Two-way conversations

In both external and internal communications, communication used to travel one way. A brand and its leaders would speak. Customers and employees would listen.

But social media changed things dramatically. It’s now easy for customers to interact with brands, comment on their social posts, ask questions, and post their online reviews.

This shift from one-way conversations in external communication has changed expectations around workplace communications — and many organizations are now adopting a two-way approach as part of their internal comms strategy.

Companies are involving employees in the company conversation — whether they work in the office, at home, or on the frontlines of the organization. They’re giving them a voice with the help of employee surveys, two-way communication channels, and meetings where their contributions are encouraged.

Of course, making the decision to embrace two-way conversations can be a big deal for brands. They have to be prepared to respond to questions and criticism — from customers or employees. So why do it?

Involving customers and employees in your communications is good for engagement. It helps to boost trust and loyalty, which benefits both employee and customer attraction and retention.

For employees, two-way communication makes them feel valued and respected by your organization. This means they’re more likely to offer their valuable insights and perspectives — and they’re more likely to do their best work.

The need for engagement

Another similarity between internal and external communication is the need for engaging content.

This is a given in external communication. Marketing and PR teams are tasked with making a brand stand out from the competition. They employ eye-catching visuals and interactive content to grab and hold customer attention.  

Typically, internal communication has lagged behind. But with the "Tiktokification" of internal communications, dry, corporate comms are becoming a thing of the past.

Just like customers, employees are more likely to engage with your content when it’s creative, interactive, and visually appealing. This is why many organizations are now posting social-media-style internal content to user-friendly, mobile-first communication channels.

The need for targeting

You maximize the impact of internal and external communications when you personalize content to your audience.

Send the same external or internal information to everyone and your recipients will start to switch off from your comms. They assume that your messages are irrelevant to them and stop reading or watching them.  

So you need to segment your audiences. Then, create targeted content relevant to each group of customers or employees.

For internal communications, you can segment employees by role, location, department, tenure, and team to ensure each employee only receives information relevant to them.

Of course, there are some messages that all employees need to hear. But with proper segmentation, you don’t give retail staff an in-depth update on your work-from-home policy — or tell office-based staff about the next driver training session. Instead, all comms are appropriate and engaging.

Measuring success

Measurement is another important element of both external and internal communications. If you don’t set and track metrics, you can’t be sure that your communications are effective.

So, just as you measure the impact of your external communication campaigns, you can set internal communication metrics and KPIs. You can identify your best content and assess levels of engagement, finding ways to hone your comms going forward.

Also, in the same way that you’d conduct market research and seek customer reviews, seek feedback from employees. Use surveys to ask them about their employee experience. Find out what they think about your internal communications. Then, make informed improvements. 

Differences between internal and external communications

Internal and external comms clearly have a lot in common — and there are lots of external communication principles that you can apply to your internal messaging. 

However, there are some key differences between internal and external communication that you should bear in mind.

Your audience

Internal and external communications have different audiences:

• Your external communication audience includes customers, stakeholders, business partners, investors, and the media. 
• Your internal communication audience includes your organization’s C-suite, managers, and employees.

There is, however, some overlap. You need to share external messages with frontline employees so they can relay a consistent message to customers.

Your communications team

Usually, different teams are responsible for external and internal communications.

External comms is often run by your PR or marketing teams. You may rely on agency or in-house staff.

To communicate effectively with your employees, you need an internal communications team. This is usually an in-house team that has regular contact with:

• The leadership team
• Marketing and PR
• Operations
• HR

Your internal comms team will work with partners throughout the organization to ensure key messages are communicated consistently and employees have access to the information they need.

Content

The content you share with internal and external audiences is very different.

External communication is all about marketing messages, customer support, and building a brand reputation. Examples of external communication content include:

• A press release discussing the latest company news
• Customer emails detailing a discount
• An industry research report
• An advertising campaign for a new product

Via your internal communication channels, you’ll tend to share business updates, strategy details, operational information, and company culture. Examples of internal communication content include:

• Rota changes
• Health and safety updates
• Details of your next company social
• Recognition for employee success

The content you serve to your internal and external audiences may differ. But there are still some fundamentals that apply to both.

Comms that demonstrate honesty and authenticity are better at building brand trust. So try to communicate openly across both internal and external communication channels.

In internal communications, this means being transparent about company goals and challenges. And it means welcoming questions and ideas from employees.

Communication goals

The goal of external communication is to promote the company. You’re aiming to:

• enhance the company’s reputation
• generate sales and leads
• build relationships with customers and stakeholders

Goals for internal communications are different. Across internal comms channels, you’ll share practical and operational information to ensure the smooth running of your organization.

But effective internal communication does more than convey essential, day-to-day guidance for employees. You can use your internal communications to:

• share company values, goals, and purpose
• strengthen co-worker relationships
• recognize and motivate employees
• facilitate collaboration

Done well, internal communications helps you to build a company culture employees are excited to be part of. This is particularly important for remote, hybrid, and frontline teams.

These employees miss out on the camaraderie of the office. It’s easy for them to feel disconnected from the organization and, as a result, less engaged in their work. Internal communications — and co-worker communication channels — provide a vital link to the organization.

So use internal communications to improve the employee experience, boost employee engagement, and reduce employee turnover. Build these goals into your internal communications strategy and you’ll create a happier, more motivated, and more cohesive organization.

Communication channels

You can use some communication channels to speak to external and internal audiences. You might use emails, webinars, conferences, and newsletters to reach employees, customers — and other company stakeholders.

However, in general, you use different communication channels for each group.

Your external audience gets updates via press releases, your company website, media news, and your social media accounts. You can also grab their attention with marketing campaigns and product launches. 

Internal communication takes place over internal channels. Offline channels include company meetings and notice boards. But the best internal communications strategies make the most of digital communication tools.

Modern intranets and employee apps are a one-stop shop. They consolidate your internal communications and give internal comms teams all the tools they need to communicate with staff.  

Pick a mobile-first solution and employees can access your company comms from their smartphones, which is ideal for frontline and remote workers.

You can also find internal communication platforms that provide social-media-style tools. They allow you to post interactive content on the company news feed and give employees the chance to like and comment.

Whether your comms team wants to post a company-wide update, send out a survey, celebrate team success, or provide self-serve HR functions, it’s all possible with the right comms platform.

Finding the right tool to support your internal communications strategy

There are lots of similarities between internal and external communications — and lots of ways external comms can inspire more effective and engaging internal messaging.

So segment your audience, measure success, embrace two-way conversations, and create interactive, visual content.

Don’t underestimate the benefits better internal communications can bring to your organization. It has the power to improve employee engagement, customer experience, company culture, and employee retention.

Also, remember that embracing the principles of external communication for your internal comms strategy is easier when you use mobile-first, social-media-style, digital communication tools.

Blink is an employee super-app, with all the tools you need to deliver relevant and engaging comms to employees. With Blink you can:

• Create engaging, two-way communication with news feed and instant messaging channels
• Segment your audience so they only receive relevant communications
• Launch a content and HR hub, giving employees everything they need to do their jobs well
• Measure the success of your internal comms with analytics and employee surveys

Improve internal communications at your organization. Request a Blink demo to get started today.

Cut through the noise with attention-grabbing internal communications

We’ll come clean. The idea that humans have an 8-second attention span is a myth. But — as with any enduring story — it’s a myth with its roots in truth.

In a technological age, we’re bombarded with more information than ever. And people looking to convey a message — be they marketers, influencers, or internal comms teams — have very limited time to grab our attention.

As such, the 8-second rule provides a useful frame of reference when designing employee communications content, particularly if you’re aiming to engage frontline workers or Gen Z employees, who prefer short, snappy instant messaging.

By drawing employees in quickly and effectively, you’re more likely to land critical messages. You cut through the noise and improve engagement across your internal communication channels — plus, you help to build a more captivating workplace culture.

Here, we explore all the ways your internal communication strategy can stop the scroll with attention-grabbing internal comms.

The attention economy at work

How many notifications do you get on your smartphone each day? Between news alerts, personal instant messaging, and work memos, there’s a lot of information competing for our attention.

To stand out, your internal communication app needs to adopt the tactics of the most effective players in the game. We’re talking social media platforms, with their rich multimedia content and addictive algorithms.

These platforms provide ample inspiration for internal communicators. They also establish employee communication expectations.

Away from work, employees are used to content that is dynamic, interactive, and concise. They’re accustomed to mobile-first communications and content that attracts their attention in a split second.

This is the challenge for internal communications teams. How do you replicate that experience and level of engagement in the digital workplace? How do you make sure your content is seen, read, and remembered?

How to create attention-grabbing internal communications

To make your employee communications heard above the noise, you need modern internal communication tools with content that attracts employee interest within seconds. Here’s how.

Make your content snackable and visual

Short-form content is everywhere these days. And it tends to resonate well with modern employees.

Workers don’t always have time to read a long, text-based email, scan a PDF, or try to navigate your dense company intranet. Plus, this type of communication and document-sharing are unlikely to spark employee interest anyway.

With bite-sized content, employees can read and digest need-to-know information on the go. Think snappy company news feed posts, pulse checks and employee surveys, and employee recognition shout-outs — all in a single platform with a user-friendly interface.

Visuals are also key. They help you say more with less and, because they appeal to our senses and emotions much more effectively than a plain text document, they’re a surefire way to foster an engaged workforce. Try incorporating micro-videos, carousel posts, and behind-the-scenes photos into your company comms.

Hook ‘em with your headlines

With just a few seconds to convince employees to view your content, you need headlines and subject lines that do much of the heavy lifting.

Your headlines should be short and simple. They need to provoke curiosity without resorting to clickbait tactics — and they should hint at the value employees will gain by reading further.

To craft engaging headlines:

• Keep it short and specific. Use a maximum of 40 characters in your subject lines. And ensure your headlines accurately reflect the rest of your content.‍
• Adopt an employee-centric mindset. Make employees the hero of your headlines. Figure out what is most important to your workers, then lead with that.‍
• Avoid corporate language and jargon. Use simple, easy-to-understand language and your headlines will be more engaging and quicker for employees to digest.
• ‍Create urgency or intrigue. When crafting urgent updates, mention upcoming deadlines to improve message open and read rates. Also, pique employee curiosity by hinting at what lies within.

Here are a few examples of high-impact internal message headlines:

Create a sense of exclusivity and intrigue

• Not this: What you need to know about the new product launch next week.
• But this: Be the first to see our new product!

Empower action and counter known hesitations

• Not this: Please fill out the latest employee engagement pulse check survey.
• But this: Have your say — share your feedback in minutes.

Focus on clear benefits with simple language

• Not this: Sign up for our newly implemented training programs to improve your productivity. 
• But this: Career goals unlocked! Discover new training programs.

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Embrace the Stories format

The Stories format has been popularized by Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. It provides an easy way to share short-form video content, a current favorite among social media users, in a way that highlights human connection.

The beauty of this type of video format is the ease with which you can create it. It doesn’t have to look polished and professional. In fact, DIY, smartphone-filmed content has an air of authenticity that boosts employee engagement and trust, particularly with Gen Z employees.

When exploring this format with your internal communication tools, you can feature daily updates, employee recognition and spotlights, and even shift announcements. Make Stories available on mobile and give your deskless employees a quick and engaging way to access the latest company content, too.

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Make your communications a two-way conversation

Interaction and engagement go hand in hand. So — to create compelling internal comms content that positively impacts the employee experience — you need to prioritize two-way communication and team collaboration.

You can do this with the help of key features like:

• Polls and quizzes. Quick, easy, and engaging. Polls and quizzes allow you to gather instant employee feedback and insights while giving employees the chance to make their voices heard.‍
• Emoji reactions. A simple way for employees to interact with your news feed content, emoji reactions allow them to express opinions and show support on company updates.‍
• Employee-generated content. The ultimate in interaction, employee-generated content is sure to attract the attention of co-workers and offers a centralized platform for employee content creators too.‍
• Manager video updates. Leadership and management posts break down barriers and make comms more personal, particularly if you throw in the occasional Q&A. 

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Harness the power of FOMO and urgency

The best marketers understand consumer psychology. They know what makes prospective customers sit up, take notice, and take action.

Internal comms teams can harness this psychology to maintain high levels of employee engagement across communication channels. Here are a few ideas:

• Time-limited content. Content — like Stories — that disappears after 24 hours is great at grabbing employee attention. It also encourages regular use of your employee app or internal communications platform, because employees don’t want to miss out on the latest company news. A quick video from the CEO, a behind-the-scenes look at an event, or a snapshot of a team milestone feels more valuable when it’s only available for a limited time.‍
• A sense of urgency. As with the 24-hour news cycle, regularly posting real-time updates creates a sense of urgency. Employees want to check in with your internal comms to find out what’s new. Deadlines are also effective. So launch limited-time challenges — and use time-sensitive language like “now,” “today,” “don’t miss out,” and “last chance” — to spark interest and encourage participation when it comes to urgent updates.‍
• Exclusivity. We’re drawn to content that creates a sense of prestige. So offer “sneak peeks” and “first looks” at new products, initiatives, or instant messaging from leadership. Positioning messages to employees as exclusive makes employees feel valued and part of an elite group. It also taps into employees’ natural curiosity and desire to stay in the loop.

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Adopt a mobile-first approach

The best internal communication tools are mobile-first. They make it easy for employees to comment, react, and participate in real-time conversations.

For a mobile workforce without desktop access and for Gen Z workers who live on their smartphones, mobile-first communication approach supports quick social interactions without a significant time investment. 

Make your internal communication platforms available on employee smartphones and you also have the option to use push notifications — the ultimate attention-grabber.

But be careful — don’t overdo it. To prevent notification fatigue, reserve alerts for priority messages and allow your employees to customize their notification preferences, particularly when it comes to lower-stakes content like internal newsletters and direct messaging.

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Measure, learn, and iterate

When adapting your comms so they catch the attention of employees, it takes more than guesswork. You need to measure your success by tracking engagement metrics, views, and interactions.

You can also make like your marketing team by A/B testing your internal content. Switch up images, thumbnails, colors, headlines, and calls to action to find and roll out the most eye-catching options.

Using the data on employee behavior and gathering feedback you get from your internal communication tool — along with real-time feedback from employee surveys — you can evolve your internal communications strategy to better spark the interest of employees.

Does your comms content meet the 8-second rule?

Attention-grabbing internal communications are short, visual, interactive, and mobile-first. They communicate key information — and draw recipients in — in a matter of seconds.

In a time when it’s hard to maintain the edge in the attention economy, content like this stands out. It helps you share important information and urgent updates with employees and keep everyone on the same page.

Not only does this foster more effective communication, it also improves the employee experience. When people feel informed and connected to their organization, they enjoy higher levels of employee satisfaction.

So do you accept the challenge? Will you strive to meet the 8-second rule with your internal comms? 

Audit your current content, explore the capabilities of your internal communication software, and experiment with new formats to find out what works for your entire organization. Because, by going beyond old-fashioned, text-based comms, you stand to make a big impact on your audience and create a more engaging company culture.

Blink. And craft attention-grabbing internal communications

Ian Gordon has worked in the US healthcare space for close to 30 years and has held executive roles in several large payer and provider organizations — most recently, as President of Administrative Operations at Elara Caring.

Throughout his career, he has also led large frontline organizations and created environments where employees thrived, and customers were highly satisfied. As a result of his experiences, few people can speak to the healthcare frontline engagement challenge as well as Ian.  

Blink and Ian sat down together for a February 2023 webinar, discussing topics including company culture, senior leadership engagement, digital transformation, and the opportunity to boost engagement, loyalty, and retention with frontline employees. 

Listen to the full webinar conversation ‘Why Engaging With Frontline Healthcare Workers Makes Both Dollars and Sense’ here or keep reading for the main discussion points. 

Speakers: 

• Ian Gordon, Former President of Administrative Operations at Elara Caring 
• Marcy Paterson, Head of Solutions Consulting, Blink 

How would you summarize the frontline engagement challenge organizations face in 2023? 

The first point to make is that frontline disengagement is not a new challenge. What is new, however, is how this challenge has risen to the top of the Executives’ problem list — and I think there are four main reasons why:

• Unprecedented disruption to the workforce 
• Employee burnout and generational differences between older participants in the workforce, Millennials, and Gen Z: the rise of the “gig” mentality and younger workers’ drive for work/life balance 
• Changing societal demographics and the desire for people to live independently and “age in place” 
• And, crucially, the huge competition for workers. Employers have had to significantly increase compensation and offer more flexibility, which drives up the cost structure 

What’s essential now is that we develop a more acute understanding of the implications of dissatisfaction among frontline employees: how it leads to employee turnover and what that means to our companies. 

Because, if we’re honest, what we've tried in the past hasn't worked to create significant levels of employee satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty. 

Frontline workers feel under-appreciated and under-supported and, as a result, that makes them less loyal and more likely to look for the next opportunity. You might have their hands on the job for now, but you haven’t got their hearts. 

What are the impacts of disengagement? 

I call it the quadruple miss. When frontline employees are disengaged, this has an: 

• Impact on patients who experience high caregiver turnover and inconsistency of care; they simply don’t get the comfort they are looking for when aging in place 
• Impact on patients’ families who step up to fill the gaps caused by interrupted care and must meet and re-brief caregivers on a regular basis. This can hurt them in their own personal and/or professional lives 
• Impact on frontline workers who are the ones confronted by the family’s frustration. And, in instances of high attrition, new incoming frontline workers feel responsible for the family’s frustration, and they become frustrated as well
• Impact on the company who suffers in terms of resources spent on recruiting and training a revolving door of employees. Plus, the cost of reputational damage and lost annual revenue 

Attrition is a huge issue, and a lot of money is being spent on recruitment to address those challenges. But is it a long-term losing proposition? 

I use the analogy of a leaky bucket because turnover at the rates we’re seeing now — as high as 70% in some companies — has organizations in a panic. They need to bring on so many new frontline employees; they’re recruiting, hiring, and training teams, spending money on advertising, and investing in higher salaries.  

And yet, they still can’t keep up with demand.  

I saw a survey recently that claimed 85% of home health agencies had turned away business because they didn’t have the staff and almost 60% said they did this "consistently". 

Long-term, this attrition issue becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; if you use recruitment as your primary solution to a retention issue, you will never fix the root cause. 

If recruitment isn’t the solution, what is? What have you seen work? 

I think that leadership needs to acknowledge their contribution to the problem. As leaders, we are responsible for creating a supportive environment and we need to acknowledge that we’ve helped create the employee dissatisfaction and engagement problem we have today. 

Then, you need to spend time with and listen to your frontline.  

This needs to be managed authentically; it’s often not a frequently occurring event and so employees don’t feel comfortable openly and honestly engaging with executive leadership. Leaders go in with more of a (potentially scripted) corporate message, ready to tell the frontline what the corporation wants them to hear rather than what they really need to hear. That’s not going to move the dial for employees and encourage them to become more engaged. 

Healthcare employee surveys are a step in the right direction. They are valuable and give you data at a point in time that you can trend. But what I’ve seen happen is that people spend more time debating the validity and accuracy of the survey. If you torture the numbers long enough, they’ll confess to anything, and people get caught up in that.  

What we’re talking about here is bi-directional communication — who do you think should be responsible for that? 

I think the answer is the same in every company: 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.  

Communicating issues is a team effort. It starts with the CEO and runs the full way through to the frontline. Everybody has to own it. 

Is there an opportunity to better engage that first line manager and leverage them? 

The first line manager might just be the hardest worked and most undervalued level of management in any company. They have passion and commitment and do everything they can, but if you look at the amount of administrative work that’s burdened on top of them — in addition to what they should be doing already — it’s tremendous. They barely have any time to try to manage their teams.  

And yet we do need to engage them. They are the closest to the frontline and so if you’re not getting everything you need from the frontline or hearing what you need to hear, these are the people who know them best. Often, they’ve done the job; they’ve experienced the challenges first-hand. 

But before we can engage them, we need to make sure that they’re okay. We need to understand what’s helping them be engaged or causing them to be disengaged in their jobs. It’s impossible to ask somebody to help drive engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty when they don’t feel those things to the company themselves. 

You mention the administrative burden. The same digital transformation that desk-based workers get is yet to reach the frontline. How have you tried to alleviate that? 

You need to understand the experience of having to perform repetitive mundane tasks. You need to go through that process yourself to discover what a horrible use of their time it is and why it’s no surprise that it doesn’t excite them each morning.  

Then, you can look at how technology can be leveraged to simplify these tasks. It’s about taking away the administrative tasks that aren’t exciting, aren’t adding value, or aren’t rewarding for the employee so that people can be more satisfied and engaged.  

If you can do that, then the quality of their work will go up and human errors will go down.  

That’s what Blink really brings to the table. Using Blink, we were able to simplify our internal communication. We also gave frontline workers the tools to create communities, have single sign-on, and one place for information (versus the 5 or 10 that many nurses experience).  

I’ve yet to meet a clinician or caregiver who got into this line of work to be on a computer all day. If we can reduce this non-cognitive load, then we can give them back the time they need to improve patient care. 

How do you look to create a return on investment from these programs? Where have you seen that return and how have you been able to qualify it? 

Administrative savings are easy to qualify. You know the jobs that people do, and if you can eliminate tasks and enable them to get more done in less time, then it's easy to say I need fewer people, or the same number of people can take on more work. 

But the investment you need to make won’t pay for itself with administrative savings alone. That’s when you look to the impact on turnover — loyalty, satisfaction, and engagement — to make frontline workers more productive.  

And when turnover declines, then that's tremendous because of the amount of savings that can be reaped from reducing the spend that companies have poured into their HR: recruiting, hiring, and training.  

If you can redeploy those training resources to the frontline instead, giving them the skills and capabilities to enhance their service, then that can be a differentiator in the marketplace. It is also a good reason for your frontline to feel appreciated and invested in. 

What are the pitfalls you’ve seen in organizations embarking on initiatives like this? 

One would be rushing head-first into a solution before you truly understand the problem. You need to take the time to learn what’s important to different people in different positions. 

Then there’s having a lack of clear direction or rapidly changing direction. It’s better to follow through on fewer, more meaningful activities. When employees don’t see the follow through, they become numb to the activities and disengage at another level.  

And lastly, talking at employees instead of with employees. 

How important is it to create a simplified experience specifically for the frontline? 

Many organizations are comfortable with solutions for tethered employees — those who are in the office or working at a desk all the time, with access to a community of help. 

But 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.  

You may be doing it while you're in front of a patient or, in the in the case of home health, while in between patients. Either way, you haven’t got a lot of time, and so having hub-based access to all-inclusive and easy-to-navigate information can really be a benefit to employees. 

As leaders, the question we need to ask ourselves is this. Are more worried about playing it safe and trying to protect our jobs, at least in the short term, or are we willing to do what’s right for our employees and our customers: ensuring we create an environment where customers can be satisfied and employees can feel trusted, respected, and appreciated? 

Blink. And your frontline workers feel connected. 

Blink is the world’s best app for frontline workers, proven to lower frontline attrition by up to 26% and increase frontline employee engagement. 

Learn more by booking a demo today.

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

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

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

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

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

What is employee empowerment? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The benefits of empowerment in the workplace

Your workforce is more flexible

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

Your workforce is more productive

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

Your workforce trusts leadership more

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

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

How to empower employees in the workplace

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

Bad news: this takes time and effort. 

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

Feedback: give it and receive it

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

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

Recognition: little and often is key

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

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

Career development: make sure employees are working towards something

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

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

Communication: two-way, not one-way

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

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

Responsibilities: avoid making things too top heavy

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

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

Barriers to employee empowerment and how to overcome them

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

Your remote employees can’t communicate

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

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

Fear of position loss

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

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

Lack of clear goals

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

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

Employee empowerment in different industries

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

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

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

Employee empowerment resources

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

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

Examples of employee empowerment (Chron)

Source: theinvestorsbook.com

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

Employee voice in the workplace

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

A complete guide to employee recognition programs

Managing remote teams: best practices and tips for virtual leaders

How to create a remote work policy in 2022

Why & how to empower frontline employees

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

Employee empowerment examples

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

Timpsons

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

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

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

John Lewis

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

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

Google

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

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

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

Employee empowerment: final thoughts

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

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

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

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