10 Internal Communication Influencers to Follow

Demand for home health aides is higher than ever. The job outlook for home health and personal care aides is projected to be 25% between 2021 and 2031 — meaning that, as a workforce, home health and personal care is expected to grow an incredible 20 percentage points more versus other industries.

This poses a significant challenge for home health care providers, not just in recruiting enough carers to answer to demand but in retaining these staff members as well.

The Great Resignation, high employee turnover, and decreasing job satisfaction are all impacting home health organizations in line with the wider healthcare industry. Tackling these issues starts with addressing the factors that cause them in the first place.

In this guide, we'll walk you through the numerous different factors that can influence employee retention, before diving into exactly how to increase employee retention in home health care.

If you're an HR or Operations leader in a home health care organization, keep reading to learn how you can successfully retain your valuable employees — and improve patient care and business outcomes in the process.

What causes attrition in healthcare?

Staff turnover is a natural and necessary process in all healthcare organizations. However, when turnover reaches high levels it can have a detrimental effect on the quality of care as well as being costly. And it's high levels that we're seeing.

The turnover rate for US-based home care aides sits at 35.42%, and a report from Skills for Care in the UK found a turnover rate of 29% for directly employed staff (almost double the cross-industry average).

Further problems arise when employees leave not only the organization but the health workforce itself.

By understanding and addressing employee retention and the factors that drive it, home health and personal care leaders can minimize staff attrition and the associated impact on cost of, and quality of, patient care.

While there are a number of factors at play here, Health Professional Mobility in a Changing Europe divides the organizational factors affecting retention into three main categories: 

1. Employment quality
2. Work quality 
3. Organizational quality

Below, we’ll take a closer look at each of these three dimensions and how they affect retention, before diving into actionable initiatives leading to improving employee retention throughout your home health organization.

What's important to remember is that each of these factors overlaps to create engaging, positive employee experiences and ensure retention. It's not a case of nailing just one of these categories but creating meaningful change in all three.

1. Employment quality

Employment quality is a key factor in retention and includes aspects like pay and benefits, job security, and working conditions. Other elements of employment quality relate to home health workers having direct lines of communication with their employer and being able to swap and fill shifts easily in order to support the work-life balance they seek.

Getting employment quality right is a particular challenge for home health and personal care organizations. For one, home health co-workers are typically more distributed than other healthcare teams. These are employees who leave their homes in the morning to visit patients at their homes and may rarely, or never, even step foot in a shared office or HQ.

And yet, home health organizations cannot deprioritize employee quality conditions — they can't settle for simply paying staff more in order to boost retention, as many have tried to do. As Gartner states:

"Monetary compensation is important for surviving, but deeper relationships, a strong sense of community, and purpose-driven work are essential to thriving."

That leads us to the concepts of work and organizational quality...

2. Work quality

Work quality includes the levels of responsibility, autonomy, and stress experienced in the workplace. 

Without going into any more detail than that, it quickly becomes clear how essential work quality is for healthcare workers. Few roles carry such a degree of responsibility and demand as much from employees. The scope for stressful situations is limitless — and to make matters worse, home health aides often feel isolated from the rest of their co-workers and the organization at large, meaning that when they start to feel stressed they have no one to turn to for support.

Work quality also relates to the technology provided to health professionals to help them succeed in their roles. With 52% of frontline workers claiming they'd leave their job over tech tools, it’s clear to see the impact that the right workplace technology has on work quality and employee retention.

3. Organizational quality

Organizational quality also impacts employee retention: the culture of the organization and the way that employees are managed and rewarded (or not) all play a key role here. Organizational quality can also refer to levels of organizational innovation, such as improvement programs or digitization initiatives.

Blink research shows that health and care workers overwhelmingly feel unheard and undervalued in their organizations. Unsurprisingly, the same research showed 50% are considering leaving, or have recently left, their jobs. 

Simply put, organizations with a positive culture, good management practices, and fair reward systems are more likely to retain their employees. On the other hand, companies with poor organizational quality are far more likely to experience high levels of turnover.

7 ways to increase employee retention in home health care

Turning attrition trends around is a big task. Businesses need to think bigger than compensation and make bigger commitments to the overall employee experience.

All roles in health and personal care must get the status and respect they deserve. But how can you, as business and HR leaders, provide that? 

1. Collect and analyze data

Up-to-date workforce data should be at the center of an effective retention strategy, helping you better target your employment, work, and organizational quality improvements. By collecting and analyzing data and identifying trends in your home health workforce, you can identify the starting point for your activities.

Understanding the profile of your workforce will help you to assess the risk points and ensure that retention issues affecting particular groups are addressed. For example, are retention issues organization-wide or specific to certain staff groups, demographics, departments, or teams?

For a home health provider, this will likely include looking at retention rates between carers employed directly by your organization vs agency staff vs workers brought in through other schemes like CDPAP. Carers indirectly employed by your organization might feel less connected to the company mission and vision — failing to meet their organizational quality needs as a result.

Getting to know the drivers of employee turnover, and who they impact in your specific organization, can help you create targeted initiatives to improve retention. If the data shows heavy attrition after 30 or 60 days, you might focus on creating an effective, engaging onboarding program to help new hires hit the ground running.

Making it happen

One way to improve employee retention is through the use of regular Employee Pulse Surveys. By conducting regular pulse surveys, you can ensure that you have a constant understanding of how your employees feel about their work. 

This will help you address any potential retention issues before they become a major problem or spiral into quiet quitting. Additionally, pulse surveys can help to improve employee engagement and job satisfaction, which can lead to improved retention rates.

You can also use tools like Blink’s Frontline Intelligence feature to collect and analyze critical employee engagement data and metrics, helping you to understand exactly where your healthcare workforce is feeling unengaged and unsatisfied.

2. Offer relevant training and development opportunities

Healthcare organizations that offer relevant training and professional development are more likely to retain their most valuable employees. It cannot be underestimated how valued and invested in healthcare workers will feel when their skills are being developed and their careers are progressing.

This answers to all of the three factors explored:

• Employment quality (as it opens the doors to higher pay)
• Work quality (through professional development)
• and organizational quality (as it creates a culture of progress and support)

Making it happen

Training and development programs for home health and personal care workers might include formal training programs, such as classroom-based learning or online courses. It might also include more customized opportunities, such as one-on-one mentoring or job shadowing.

What's essential to identify, however, is how these programs will be delivered. Technology will be crucial to bridge the gap between HQ and home health aides.

3. Lighten the load

An increasing number of health and care workers are struggling to balance the demands of their job with other aspects of their life, such as parenting or caring responsibilities. This often leads to stress and burnout; an early indicator of disengagement, and ultimately attrition. In some instances, burnout in healthcare staff has also been linked to medical errors and patient safety incidents.

To improve retention in healthcare, organizations must commit to creating a working environment where employees feel supported by their home health co-workers and managers — even if they rarely see them face-to-face — and are not overburdened with inflexible workloads.

Making it happen

Organizations can take a number of steps to lighten a home health worker's cognitive load:

• Providing more resources to team members and managers in a mobile and easy-to-access Hub for on-the-go support
• Implementing intuitive scheduling solutions and shift-swapping tools that can be used for real-time coordination and employee flexibility
• Encouraging work-life balance through a culture of peer support, so that co-workers can easily tap into the knowledge and experience of their peers

4. Consistent communication

Another factor that often impacts your employment quality is the consistency of your communication. Consistent two-way communication is essential for lasting relationships — and it can be one of your most powerful tools for encouraging employee retention.

Blink's research found that close to one-fifth of frontline workers don’t receive relevant communications from their organization. Organizations can create a sense of community and trust among their staff to minimize attrition by ensuring that all employees:

• Receive updates relevant to them
• Are part of the right team chats
• Can easily share their ideas and concerns

You can also use regular communication to obtain direct insight into how specific healthcare workers or teams are feeling about their work. This can help you to identify retention issues and create targeted interventions as needed.

Making it happen

Effective communication needs to be tailored to the specific needs of different staff groups. For home health and personal care aides, it will undoubtedly be about regular mobile updates and using Feed and Chat features to create energy and enthusiasm among your distributed workforce.

Read how Blink helped solve a million-dollar communication challenge for the home health organization, Elara Caring. Through deploying a number of transformative digital initiatives through Blink, 95% of Elara Caring's personal care, home health, and hospice care workers now feel more connected to the organization.

5. Focus on employee engagement

Employee engagement can be a powerful tool for improving retention, as it has been linked to higher levels of satisfaction and commitment among workers.

Healthcare organizations can create a work quality that is more attractive to top performers by getting to know the latest employee engagement trends, providing the right digital tools for key workers to engage intuitively, and regularly assessing the effectiveness of their efforts.

Engaging employees ultimately retains them.

Additionally, research by HBR shows that higher employee engagement levels can lead to a number of improved outcomes, not just retention. These include care costs (including legal action taken by a patient against a provider for negligent complications) and treatment effectiveness and patient outcomes (measured by the rate patients are readmitted).

Making it happen

To increase employee engagement, healthcare organizations should focus on creating a culture that values the opinions and input of employees. This might include activities like surveys or direct feedback, regular communications from leadership, and targeted recognition programs.

One transformative way to improve employee engagement in your healthcare organization is to pave the way with Blink, the powerful mobile employee engagement app that frontline workers love. With a suite of features perfect for healthcare, Blink will help you create a culture of engagement and retention in your organization.

6. Real recognition 

Recognition is fundamental to improving employee retention. The employers' organization for the UK's National Health System states:

"Meaningful recognition can help to motivate and retain our NHS people. Setting in place a holistic reward package, which is relevant to staff needs, can be key to ensuring your organization, and the wider NHS, retains its staff."

But recognition is more than a pat on the back. Driving real recognition for employees needs to be an ongoing, holistic process that inspires your healthcare workforce to feel valued, motivated, and connected to the company. 

Making it happen

While some companies may view the idea of regular rewards or incentives as impractical, Blink is a mobile employee recognition solution that makes it easy to provide targeted and consistent recognition to specific individuals or teams.

With features like real-time feedback, team and group chatting, and, of course, Employee Recognition, your healthcare organization can unlock the power of recognition as a retention tool. And with its wider suite of handy features, Blink is the perfect way to engage employees in your healthcare organization and help you retain talent.

7. Listen and action feedback

Over a third (35%) of frontline healthcare workers feel that their feedback will not be acted on by their organization. Unsurprisingly, half of frontline healthcare staff have changed or considered changing their job.

"By taking the time to listen and communicate, we can create a better and more supportive environment within healthcare," says Sean Nolan, CEO at Blink.

Through more effective communication, leaders feel more connected to their frontline, and frontline employees feel valued and listened to. This results in higher retention, increased productivity, and better two-way conversations.

Making healthcare workers feel heard needs to be a priority for any healthcare organization. By listening to their feedback and acting on it, you will be able to create a more supportive workplace culture that retains top talent — leading to reduced costs associated with employee turnover.

Making it happen

To effectively ensure your team is heard and their feedback is acted on, you need the right tech to manage it all smoothly. With the Blink employee app, you can listen to your employees and act on their feedback in real time, meaning they won't feel ignored or undervalued.

By using the powerful features of Blink, you can help create a culture where frontline workers feel heard and respected while focusing on:

• Encouraging two-way feedback through regular surveys and communications from leadership
• Ensuring feedback is acted on and implemented into business processes, updating employees on the progress of their feedback so they know they’re being heard
• Integrating your mobile app with workplace technologies like HR systems, payroll platforms, and more, to streamline the employee experience and implement feedback effectively across your organization

Your home health employee retention checklist

• Collect and analyze data - Gathered by regular Employee Pulse Surveys and Frontline Intelligence data
• Offer relevant training and development opportunities - Formal training programs, customized development pathways
• Lighten the load - Easy-to-access Hub for on-the-go support, intuitive scheduling and shift-swapping solutions
• Consistent communication - Team and 1:1 Secure Chats, regular and relevant mobile updates
• Focus on employee engagement - A powerful Employee Engagement App
• Real recognition - Rewards programs, Employee Recognition, Feed shoutouts
• Listen and action feedback - Regularly collect and act on feedback, update employees on actions taken

Retention next steps

Blink is the industry-leading frontline engagement app that connects management and frontline teams to build stronger organizations. With a proven adoption rate of 92% in care sectors, it’s never been this easy to unify the frontline. At Blink, we believe in empowering frontline organizations by helping you enable, engage and understand your workforce.

Our app provides a host of features that support employee retention in home health, such as employee surveys, polls, secure team and group chats and channels, employee recognition, and healthcare-friendly HR tools.

By using the app effectively, you will be able to create a culture where employees are engaged and respected – ultimately reducing employee turnover costs and driving employee retention up. We are experts in frontline engagement and retention and would love to help you achieve your goals.

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Looking for a Jostle alternative that fits your internal communication or employee experience goals better? Whether you're aiming for a more modern UX, greater mobile accessibility, or better analytics, you've come to the right place. In this guide, we explore the top 10 alternatives to Jostle — with detailed comparisons on features, pricing, reviews, and suitability — so you can make the best choice for your organization.

What to look for in a Jostle alternative

Before choosing your next platform, it’s essential to understand what separates the best Jostle alternatives from the rest. Whether you're upgrading your employee intranet, switching to a more intuitive internal communication platform, or adopting employee experience software with better analytics and mobile access — here are the key features to prioritize:

#1. Mobile-first design

Look for platforms that prioritize mobile accessibility, especially if you have frontline, hybrid, or distributed teams. A Jostle replacement should offer native mobile apps with offline support, push notifications, and responsive design.

#2. Two-way communication

Modern comms tools should enable employee feedback, not just top-down broadcasting. Tools with surveys, comments, polls, and chat improve engagement and support a transparent workplace culture.

#3. Targeted messaging & personalization

The best Jostle competitors let you segment your workforce and personalize updates by location, department, or role — ensuring that the right message reaches the right employee at the right time.

#4. User-friendly interface

A clean, intuitive UI helps boost platform adoption. Look for solutions that are easy to use for both end users and admins, with minimal training required.

#5. Integrated ecosystem

Ensure the tool integrates with your existing systems — such as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, HRIS, payroll, or shift scheduling tools — to centralize information and streamline workflows.

#6. Real-time analytics

Powerful communication analytics help you measure reach, engagement, and campaign effectiveness. This is a crucial upgrade over Jostle’s limited insight capabilities.

#7. Frontline communication tools

If you serve deskless workers, you’ll want features like QR code logins, broadcast alerts, digital forms, and mobile-first feeds. These features make platforms like Blink a better choice for engaging non-desk teams.

#8. Scalability and customization

As your company grows, your intranet should grow with you. Choose a platform that supports multilingual content, governance, and custom branding as your workforce evolves.

By keeping these capabilities in mind, you'll be better equipped to evaluate not just an intranet replacement — but a platform that powers the entire employee communication lifecycle.

Top 10 Jostle alternatives

#1. Blink (Best overall Jostle alternative)

G2 Rating: 4.7/5
Gartner Peer Insights: 4.8/5
Pricing: Free trial available — Start your free trial

Overview:
Blink is an employee experience platform that goes beyond traditional intranets by combining communication, engagement, and productivity tools in a single mobile-first interface. It enables two-way communication, real-time targeting, and frontline accessibility that Jostle lacks.

Pros:

• Mobile-first experience designed for frontline, hybrid, and HQ teams
• Smart content targeting and audience segmentation
• Real-time analytics and engagement insights
• Integrates with Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, HRIS, and payroll systems
• Fast deployment with a free trial available

Cons:

• Does not offer a desktop-only intranet for organizations without mobile needs

#2. Simpplr

G2 Rating: 4.5/5
Gartner Peer Insights: 4.4/5
Pricing: Estimated $8–$12/user/month (custom quotes)

Overview:
Simpplr is a modern intranet platform with AI-powered personalization, search, and structured content experiences. It's designed to support internal comms and knowledge sharing, primarily for desk-based knowledge workers.

Pros:

• Sleek user interface and strong personalization features
• Native integrations with Salesforce and Microsoft 365
• Good support for structured org-wide communications

Cons:

• Setup and onboarding can be complex
• Lacks flexibility for frontline or mobile-first teams

#3. Staffbase

G2 Rating: 4.6/5
Gartner Peer Insights: 4.3/5
Pricing: Custom pricing

Overview:
Staffbase is a communications-first platform with mobile and desktop experiences. It offers a branded app, newsletter tools, and internal comms analytics — with a strong focus on top-down messaging.

Pros:

• Branded employee app for mobile communications
• Easy publishing tools and editorial workflows
• Excellent for large, distributed enterprises

Cons:

• Limited peer-to-peer or two-way communication features
• Advanced features may require paid add-ons or integrations

#4. Workvivo

G2 Rating: 4.7/5
Gartner Peer Insights: 4.5/5
Pricing: Custom pricing (~$6–$9/user/month)

Overview:
Workvivo is a social intranet that combines engagement tools like shoutouts, polls, and live streams with content distribution. It’s geared toward companies looking to foster culture and community.

Pros:

• Social-first design boosts engagement
• Easy to use with intuitive content tools
• Supports recognition, wellness, and culture initiatives

Cons:

• Not ideal for task-oriented communications or operational updates
• Can become cluttered in large orgs without moderation

#5. Haiilo (formerly Smarp)

G2 Rating: 4.4/5
Gartner Peer Insights: 4.3/5
Pricing: Custom pricing

Overview:
Haiilo focuses on employee communications and advocacy, enabling companies to distribute and amplify internal messages and external content.

Pros:

• Built-in advocacy tools for social sharing
• Strong analytics for campaign tracking
• Intuitive for content managers

Cons:

• Lacks full intranet or productivity suite features
• Not ideal as a standalone hub for internal tools

#6. Unily

G2 Rating: 4.4/5
Gartner Peer Insights: 4.3/5
Pricing: Starts around $50,000/year

Overview:
Unily is an enterprise-grade digital workplace platform with a highly customizable intranet, multilingual support, and robust governance capabilities.

Pros:

• Enterprise-ready with deep customization
• Excellent integration with Microsoft 365
• Highly secure and scalable

Cons:

• Expensive for mid-sized companies
• Implementation can be complex and resource-heavy

#7. MangoApps

G2 Rating: 4.3/5
Gartner Peer Insights: 4.2/5
Pricing: Starts at $6/user/month

Overview:
MangoApps offers a modular intranet and collaboration platform where organizations can pick and choose features like messaging, wikis, task tracking, and HR portals.

Pros:

• Flexible modular pricing
• Supports multiple use cases beyond communication
• Simple UI with broad capabilities

Cons:

• Interface can feel outdated compared to newer tools
• Requires configuration and training for full potential

#8. Igloo

G2 Rating: 4.2/5
Gartner Peer Insights: 4.1/5
Pricing: $8–$10/user/month

Overview:
Igloo provides a structured intranet ideal for content-heavy orgs with needs around documentation, department pages, and policy hubs.

Pros:

• Strong content management features
• Suitable for policy-heavy or regulated industries
• Supports team collaboration and forums

Cons:

• Less mobile-friendly than modern alternatives
• More of a static portal than a dynamic engagement tool

#9. Happeo

G2 Rating: 4.6/5
Gartner Peer Insights: 4.4/5
Pricing: ~$10/user/month (based on org size)

Overview:
Happeo is a social intranet tailored for Google Workspace users. It offers channel-based communication and integration with Google tools like Drive and Calendar.

Pros:

• Deep Google Workspace integration
• Quick deployment and low learning curve
• Clean, social-style UI

Cons:

• Limited integration support beyond Google ecosystem
• Less customizable than enterprise-grade tools

#10. Noodle

G2 Rating: 4.1/5
Gartner Peer Insights: Not listed
Pricing: Starts at $6/user/month

Overview:
Noodle is a no-frills intranet platform geared toward small businesses. It offers employee directories, file sharing, and discussion forums.

Pros:

• Affordable and simple to use
• Good for small, budget-conscious teams
• On-premise or cloud deployment options

Cons:

• Dated UI and limited engagement tools
• Lacks mobile-first design and integrations

Final thoughts

Jostle has served many organizations well, but its limitations around scalability, two-way engagement, and analytics have prompted many teams to look elsewhere. Platforms like Blink offer a more modern, mobile-first experience — giving you the power to connect, engage, and support every employee, no matter where or how they work.

What makes her awesome?

Sharon provides exceptional and compassionate care to her patients. Her current patient’s family has expressed on several occasions how grateful they are that Sharon joined the patient’s care team in January 2023. Sharon’s calm and patient demeanor has made the world of difference in the patient’s daily living and has supported the family in taking care of their chronically ill family member.

How has Blink helped in her role?

Sharon routinely uses Blink to communicate with office staff to report changes in schedule and patient care.

What do they want to do next?

Sharon would love to continue to provide the best possible care to her client.

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Nominated by: Iyshia Wright, Branch Director - Brooklyn

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‘As leaders, we should be measuring engagement in everything we do’ 

– Simon White, VP People at Blink

Frontline leaders have long been searching for the most effective way to engage their deskless workforce. From Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and Learning & Development initiatives, to intranets and Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs), they've tried a variety of approaches with varying levels of success.

This has led to a Frontline Gap, an issue that many organizations, especially those with deskless employees, face. It is a void where initiatives fail to have their intended impact due to a lack of engagement from workers. 

To bridge this gap, employers must look beyond traditional methods such as ERGs and ESNs, and instead focus on using employee engagement surveys to connect directly with the needs of their deskless staff.

Frontline workers are looking for a faster, more efficient, and more useful way to do their jobs, while leaders want to bridge the Frontline Gap and connect with their deskless staff. To be able to achieve these goals, employee engagement surveys can help employers achieve direct conversations with frontline workers and understand the needs of their employees.

By taking a proactive approach to employee engagement and using pulse surveys to directly and regularly connect with deskless employees, organizations can begin to close the Frontline Gap, identify engagement challenges and create a more productive, cohesive, and engaged workforce.

Employee engagement surveys can provide valuable insights into how employees feel about their work environment, job satisfaction, team dynamics and so much more. In this guide, we'll take a brief look at why frontline leaders should conduct employee engagement surveys as a regular practice, before diving into our step-by-step guide on how to conduct your first employee engagement survey the right way.

Why employee engagement surveys are important

The solution to bridging the Frontline Gap lies in approaching frontline engagement as something that is earned, rather than simply expecting it from employees. Instead of relying on traditional methods such as ERGs and ESNs to increase engagement, employers must focus on creating an environment where workers feel truly valued and respected.

The first step towards this lies within employee engagement surveys.

Employee engagement surveys are an important tool for frontline leaders to measure engagement and understand the feelings of their deskless employees. While ERGs and ESNs can provide a good foundation for engagement, taking proactive steps to directly connect with your team is essential in order to create a productive and cohesive environment.

As businesses today are operating in an increasingly competitive hiring market, salaries and benefits are becoming more expensive and difficult to manage. With no visibility into what is going right or wrong, employers are left in the dark as to why their staff turnover rate is on the rise and morale is low.

This lack of insight into employee engagement can lead to disengaged employees, decreased productivity, and high turnover rates, alongside a weaker Employer Value Proposition (EVP) as talent is lost. 

Employee engagement surveys can help employers gain the insights they need to effectively measure and address employee satisfaction, team dynamics, and much more. Collecting and actioning this feedback is one of the key employee engagement drivers, and is considered an employee engagement best practice.

So, how exactly can employee surveys support your workforce and drive success in your goals?

Enable

By regularly understanding what they need, leaders can better enable their workforce to succeed. Engagement surveys can help identify key areas that employees are struggling in and provide valuable feedback to address these issues.

One of the main pain points for organizations, especially those with deskless employees, is the lack of resources and support needed to ensure their workforce can work effectively. Without the necessary engagement tools, communication channels and access to information needed to do their job efficiently, deskless workers are often left feeling frustrated and under-valued.

Frequent employee surveys help employers find out what their employees need to do their jobs better. It also helps the employer know if their employees feel respected and valued. The information gained helps them ensure they have the tools and resources needed for workers to do their job well, so that companies can keep a good reputation and meet their hiring targets.

Understand

It can also be hard to collect data from the frontline, as depending on the industry and environment they work in, traditional methods such as paper surveys or iPads may not be practical. For example, if they are working outdoors or in an extreme environment where digital devices cannot operate, it can be difficult to get real time feedback from them.

Additionally, it's crucial to have something that's easy to use, in every frontline worker's pocket. By giving managers what they need to measure employee engagement and continuously improve the employee experience, employee surveys can fill this gap and directly benefit the organization.

One of the most prominent pain points faced by organizations is a lack of understanding of what engaged employees need to be successful, especially in the frontline. Leaders that are out of touch with their workforce can cause real issues, including low morale, decreased productivity and high turnover rates.

To truly understand what engaged employees require, employers must conduct employee engagement surveys, aiding them in identifying key pain points and areas that need improvement.

Engage

Another key objective of employee pulse surveys is to improve and measure employee engagement. It is crucial to engage employees in order to create a positive and productive workplace. Employee engagement surveys measure levels of employee satisfaction, and identify the strengths and weaknesses of policies, programs, goals and objectives within an organization.

By understanding where leadership or productivity are weaker, employers can effectively engage their workers through real-time critical information and structured interventions tailored to improve engagement.

This is a pain leaders are facing: the frontline isn't sharing feedback because they don't want to. Gaining the engagement of the frontline by first earning their trust is key to boosting future engagement levels and increasing employee retention.

 How to successfully conduct an employee engagement survey

As we have looked at above, conducting employee engagement surveys can encourage employees to speak up, give them a voice, and help employers to create a more productive environment.

If you're planning to conduct an employee engagement survey, keep this in mind.

The purpose of an employee engagement survey is not to measure employee engagement, it's to improve it.

Employee engagement surveys should not be done out of curiosity or to "check in" with your employees, they take too much time to be done this way.

Simply having an employee survey is not enough - the way in which you conduct your surveys can make all the difference between success and failure.

LeadershipIQ surveyed over 3,000 HR executives to see "how good" their employee engagement survey was, and only 22% said they were getting good results.

So how can you conduct employee surveys so they are actually meaningful? Looking at industry leaders, we see the following behaviors taking place to launch successful surveys:

1. Get rid of annual surveys

Gone are the days of the bog-standard annual engagement survey that provides little useful information, leaving employees disengaged and uninterested.

Instead of a singular survey at one point in the year, organizations should instead be taking a more agile approach to employee engagement surveys by conducting regular pulse surveys with smaller sample sizes.

If you already have an annual survey procedure in place, the first thing you should do is look at your current process and consider whether some parts of it can be scaled back or done more frequently.

2. Define a clear, attainable goal

You'll have to really think about what information you want to get out of this survey, sometimes it's not just a simple case of finding out how your frontline employees are feeling. This is an opportunity to encourage your team to share feedback on every aspect of their role, your role, and even the CEO's right at the top.

For example, if you have a low retention rate that you want to try and improve, what questions need to be asked? What data will help you put together a plan?

Your employee engagement survey questions should be strategically planned in a way that shows the leadership team genuinely cares about their frontline workers and how their careers can be developed. This should be made visible from the start to the end of your survey.

3. Plan ahead

Once you've figured out what information you wish to gain from your survey, it's time to plan ahead and get everything into place. Here are some of the main points you should consider when you're ready to plan your survey:

• Have you got the right technologies in place to be able to conduct your survey?
• What do you really want to find out?
• Do you need to align with CIO or get buy-in?
• When is the right time to conduct your survey? You'll need to give your employees an adequate amount of time to finish it.
• Are you targeting all of your employees or just a specific group?

4. Let the frontline know! 

Once your survey is ready to go, you need to get the message out there.

Reiterate the importance of the survey to your frontline staff and how it can positively affect their role at work and the environment in which they work. It's a way to show them they are going to be heard and listened to (you need to actually follow through as well, but more on that later).

Communications leaders should be well briefed in plenty of time and should be tasked with sending out reminders to all who are involved in taking the survey.

One way you can reiterate the importance of your employee engagement survey is to release it with a message from the CEO, or another senior leader. 

5. Act and restart

Once you've received your survey results, you need to come up with a plan stating how you plan to act on your responses. This is a key aspect you can't shy away from.

This is also another chance to acknowledge employee contribution and shows that the right people have seen the results and will take action. Below is a recent example from John J. Herman, CEO of Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health.

He acknowledges and thanks staff for taking the time to do the survey, reiterates their feedback is important, and lays out in clear bullet points what their next action points are. You can view the full message here.

This should be an ongoing effort and you should keep your frontline workers informed of your processes and decision making, as a way of letting them know you are serious about improving your workplace.

If you fail to truly act on the feedback they have taken the time to give you, you risk devaluing future surveys and decreasing response rates.

You should repeat your survey at regular points throughout the year, to see if the employees are satisfied with the measures you have taken and tweak different aspects of your strategies to raise levels of employee engagement.

Considerations for conducting your first employee engagement survey

Plan

As we highlighted above, surveys should not be done out of curiosity, you need a real plan.

So when you're thinking about surveying employees take the below into account:

Who's your audience?: Whether it's teams or departments, segment your stakeholders into groups.

What do you want to measure?: What do you need to find out to improve the employee experience? Set goals, and measurable KPIs.

What are you asking?: Once you know what to measure, what questions do you need to ask to get actionable insights?

What type of survey?: Once you have your audience and goals, what type of survey are you going to run? There are different types such as, benefit surveys to measure how satisfied your frontline is with their benefits and rewards or you could even run onboarding surveys for new hires to see how well they’ve been introduced to the business.

What format?: How will the survey be received? Via email, via an app? What format will the questions be? Multiple choice or free text? Take into consideration your audience and goals and use these to guide the format you choose.

Timing: When's the best time to send your survey to your audience? How long will you leave the survey open for? How many follow up emails will you send to those that don't respond?

There's a lot that goes into planning an employee survey, but you need to do this to set you up for the best chance of it being a success. 

Platform

Do you have a way to easily and efficiently collect and analyze data? Depending on your organization you'll need to make sure you use a platform that meets your requirements.

Think about who you are going to survey, are they desk based or deskless? Do they work from home? Are they on the frontline? Do you need the survey to work on desktop and mobile?

For example, our employee survey feature is used by organizations whose employees are on the frontline, this puts more importance on the mobile functionality of our survey feature to allow for quick and easy responses wherever employees are.

If your employees feel disengaged from their colleagues and management team it's time to introduce a platform that can meet your team's needs whatever their job role. 

Trust

Employee surveys are a great opportunity to establish trust with your employees that you will listen and understand their feedback, as well as make an effort to act on how they are feeling.

But, they also pose a risk of doing the opposite if you don't do them properly.

A recent campaign undertaken by Blink found that 50% of employees wanted to leave their current position as they didn't feel like management took their complaints seriously. One third didn’t even think their organization would act on their feedback.

This again highlights why employee surveys shouldn't be done out of curiosity. If you run the survey, get the results, and don't act. What do you think will happen to the figure above?

But, if you act and communicate changes made off the back of feedback, not only could these go a long way with improving employee engagement, but build a lot of trust with your employees. 

From an employee perspective, it will also be important if the survey is anonymous. This in turn will increase trust and eagerness to take part in the survey. Anonymity is important if you want to get real honest feedback from staff, they will feel more comfortable sharing the truth if they know it won’t come back to haunt them.

Communication

Raise awareness around your survey going live! Involve your communications leader in using as many formats as possible to get the message to the frontline. 

This could involve emails, printed posters, and using an employee engagement mobile app.

These communication points need to explain the importance of taking part in the survey and why employee feedback is so important to improving the work culture.

Content

When you're planning out your employee engagement questionnaire, don't be afraid to ask difficult questions. You need to ensure you're set up to get the most out of it.

For example, Facebook found that simply asking employees how long they intend to stay was more than twice as accurate at foretelling their future turnover than machine-learning forecasts.

What's even more telling is that they found when people don’t participate in their two annual surveys they are 2.6 times more likely to leave in the next six months.

The content within your survey needs to be clear, concise, and engaging. There's no need to overcomplicate your questions or try to hide behind big words. Ask the questions in a way that will get a truthful response.

How Blink employee surveys can help you meet your goals

Most employee survey tools are designed for desk-based workers, not the frontline - Blink's Employee Surveys make it easy for you and your teams to quickly and easily conduct employee surveys.

We make it easy for frontline organizations to get the data that matters.

Triple your response rate

Get your survey seen and responded to in an app designed for everyday frontline use. Instantly transition away from paper surveys to having surveys appear seamlessly on every frontline team member’s device.

This gets rid of friction caused by having to use other platforms, with different passwords and make it easier for staff to respond as everything is in one place. From paystubs to scheduling and even critical documents - your surveys are in an app that gets opened an average of seven times a day.

Launch in 90 seconds

Ask questions fast, get answers faster. Our mobile app makes creating and sending surveys easy. From selecting your audience to selecting questions you’ll be done in minutes.

Science-backed questions

We offer a set of science backed Qs which are great if leaders don't know what to ask, you also get the option to add in your own. 

Get action-ready insights

Easy-to-use reports to make impactful decisions. Merge this with Frontline Intelligence - together with engagement stats and you’ll have an overall view of the health of your organization.

Launch your first survey

The Winter 2025 product release highlights Blink's latest innovations — some already live and others rolling out over the next quarter. Missed our Autumn 2024 release? Check it out here!

At Blink, our employee experience platform is always evolving to keep pace with the ever-changing needs of organizations and their teams.

In line with our dedication to creating exceptional employee experiences — whether on the frontline or in the front office — we’re excited to introduce our latest product features, built to transform how employees connect with their organizations and each other.

From enabling easy communication with in-app calling and live streaming, to powering better outcomes through enhanced data intelligence, these powerful new features are designed to support a connected, engaged, and uplifted workplace.

#1. Voice and video calling: Power real-time, in-app collaboration

​​We’re excited to announce the addition of native 1:1 video and voice calling within Blink, making it even easier for employees to connect, collaborate, and deliver real-time results for your business.

This new feature will include:

• Streamlined communication: Enables seamless 1:1 video and voice calls directly from individual chats or colleague profiles on mobile.
• Built for international teams: Ideal for organizations with global workforces who need quick and reliable access to colleagues.
• Future-proof design: Will launch on mobile, with plans to extend to desktop and explore group calling capabilities.
• Flexible add-on: Available as an optional feature priced based on users, ensuring scalability for any organization.

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#2. Live streaming: Go live with all employees at once

Bring your live events to life on Blink! Our new live streaming feature lets you promote and host events directly in the Feed, fostering real-time engagement and interaction.

Here’s what you can do:

• Stream seamlessly via Vimeo or YouTube, with full support for Vimeo interactions on Blink.
• Share streams from other platforms using Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) for an additional cost.
• Engage your audience as they comment and interact during your event.

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#3. Advanced employee intelligence: Unlock organizational insights

Discover what drives your organization with Advanced Employee Intelligence — an upgraded analytics suite that goes beyond the basics to tackle turnover, engagement, and productivity. These actionable insights, available as a paid add-on feature, will empower you to address challenges proactively and foster a thriving workplace.

Transform your data into a powerful driver of organizational success with four core pillars of insights:

• Activation: Ensure every employee is connected and engaged with activation metrics by team and role, plus gamified nudges to boost adoption.
• Communication: Maximize the impact of your messages with heat maps and deep-dive analysis into communication effectiveness by category, media, and more.
• Engagement: Track and improve satisfaction with tools like engagement leaderboards and influencer metrics that spotlight key communicators.
• Productivity: Streamline workflows by analyzing app usage, tool access, and shift management to reduce friction and optimize efficiency.

#4. Journeys 2.0: Engage employees before day one

Make a lasting first impression with Blink’s new Journeys for preboarding! This enhancement to our Journeys feature allows managers to kick off onboarding before an employee’s first day, creating a standout employee experience right from the offer stage.

Here’s what’s new:

• Include line managers in the journey for a seamless, supportive experience.
• Use enhanced start-date triggers to send tailored communications ahead of the first day.
• Deliver a bespoke preboarding journey that sets the stage for success.

#5. Image-first feed: Curate the content experience

We’ve made the Feed even better with a new posting experience designed for high-quality, highly curated content that stands out and visually engages users.

Here’s what’s new:

• Choose your layout: Opt for the classic look or an enhanced layout that puts your images front and center.
• Audience-first review: See how your post will appear to your audience before you post.
• Simple to use: The curation and review steps are seamlessly built into the posting process.

#6. Self-service SSO: Simplify access to third-party systems

Our new self-service SSO feature streamlines user access to key third-party systems directly through Blink, reducing the need for multiple logins and improving overall security. This feature makes it easier than ever to connect Blink with the tools your teams rely on.

Key takeaways include:

• Enhanced user experience: Simplify workflows by allowing users to access essential systems without remembering multiple passwords, driving better uptake and ease of use.
• Flexible configuration: Administrators can set up and manage SAML 2.0 Single Sign-On directly from the Blink Admin dashboard, enabling seamless integration with your Service Provider.

#7. Polls as Stories: Boost engagement with a visual integration

Take your Polls to the next level by sharing them through Stories, including our new image-first Polls feature, to maximize visibility and participation. This integration helps make employee feedback and interaction more accessible and engaging than ever.

Here’s what you can do now:

• Increase engagement: Promote Polls in Stories to capture attention and encourage more responses from your teams.
• Visual appeal: Leverage image-first Polls to create a dynamic and engaging experience, driving curiosity and interaction.

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#8. Chat and channel moderation: Maintain a professional communication environment

Administrators now have greater control over chats and channels with new moderation capabilities, including the ability to hide certain types of content when necessary. These tools empower admins to foster a safe, engaging, and well-managed communication space for everyone.

With this feature, you’ll gain:

• Improved oversight: Maintain a positive and professional environment by managing and moderating conversations directly within chats and channels.
• Content management: Use the “hide” feature to remove inappropriate or irrelevant content, ensuring discussions stay on track.

#9. Dark mode: A new way to experience Blink

Enjoy a more comfortable and visually striking interface with our new dark mode feature, now available via a simple toggle in your settings. This update adds a touch of personalization and comfort to your everyday platform experience.

With dark mode:

• Improved comfort: Reduce eye strain during late-night use or in low-light environments with a sleek, dark interface.
• Personalized experience: Give users the flexibility to choose between Light and Dark modes based on their preferences.

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Coming soon

Get excited for updates to the Hub experience, moderation enhancements, and in-app events management!

Bring your consumer-grade employee experience to life

As we kick off a new year of workplace evolution, our mission remains unchanged: to deliver tools that strengthen connections, boost productivity, and ensure every employee enjoys a seamless and exceptional experience — no matter their role or location.

These latest product enhancements reflect our commitment to helping organizations supercharge their employee experience as we step into 2025.

Employee engagement is a critical focus for People teams— or any other business leader. Learn what it is, why it’s important, and how to improve it in our complete guide.

Employee engagement is the difference between soaring productivity rates and a sense of stagnation. It’s fifty people applying for a single vacancy, rather than fifty vacancies and one applicant.    

Yet for all its importance, companies frequently misunderstand what employee engagement is and what it looks like. That's why we’re here to help. 

Whether you're looking to better understand the definition and importance of employee engagement, drive employee engagement in your organization, or simply understand examples of employee engagement, this complete guide to employee engagement has something for you.

What is employee engagement? A simple definition

Employee engagement is the ongoing process of ensuring your workforce feels satisfied with their job, aligned with your organization’s values, and supported enough to give 100% during work hours.

Research by SHRM defines the term employee engagement as relating to the level of an employee's commitment and connection to an organization, while Investopedia defines employee engagement as describing the level of enthusiasm and dedication a worker feels toward their job.

At Blink, we believe true employee engagement is a combination of two equally important parts:

• Attitude - the commitment a worker feels toward the company
• Behavior - the effort that an employee is willing to invest in their job

Whichever way you look at it, maintaining employee engagement is a key factor in determining how successful an organization will be. It also provides key insights into employee satisfaction and sentiment, which can help identify areas that may need improvement.

To better illustrate what employee engagement looks like, here are some of the key attitudes and behaviors of engaged vs disengaged employees:

What is employee engagement for employers?

HR is all about people. So it makes sense that, if that is your role, you want the best for your co-workers.

Still, there’s more to it than that.

Employee engagement is important because it affects the performance of your company. Think back to a job you’ve not enjoyed in the past  — did you give as much to that role as you did to the ones you loved?

Now extrapolate this out across an entire company of unhappy, unmotivated workers. In toxic environments, productivity nosedives. Depending on the type of organization you work for, this could mean a lower output rate, poor customer service, an increase in safety incidents, reduced patient satisfaction, missed deadlines, or any other number of issues.

What is employee engagement for employees?

For employees themselves, engagement isn't so much a daily activity they schedule time for. It's a natural byproduct of a strong employee experience.

Engagement is directly correlated to a positive work environment; when people feel respected, appreciated, and valued for their work, they are more likely to be an engaged employee. It's about being part of something bigger than just your job title — it’s that sense of satisfaction and fulfillment when you know you are making a difference.

Different groups of employees have different engagement expectations — and when those expectations match the day-to-day experiences of their roles, employees are more likely to be engaged.

Whether it’s your dispersed, frontline teams or your first-line managers, it’s worth getting to know what your employees expect from their engagement experience.

Why is employee engagement important?

Employee engagement efforts don’t need to be expensive, but they do need to be intentional. Issues created by poor employee engagement practices can cost your company thousands.

These include:

• Reduced productivity: people don’t work well when they’re unhappy. If teams are consistently falling short of productivity targets you know to be reasonable, there’s a good chance they’re unhappy at work
• Absenteeism: unhappy employees stay at home and use more sick days and mental health days than those employees who enjoy their jobs and work environments
• Presenteeism: Between May 2021 and November 2022 alone presenteeism rose by 18%. As the cost of presenteeism has historically been found to significantly outweigh the cost of absenteeism, this is one common challenge for engagement leaders to tackle.
• High employee turnover: if someone is disengaged, it makes them more likely to leave. Replacing employees is super expensive (think six to nine months’ salary, plus up to 213% of the total annual salary depending on the seniority of the position). Along with being a cost drain, the extra workload will put pressure on your other, potentially unhappy, employees while you find a replacement
• Employer brand damage: a stream of employees leaving your organization won’t do your reputation any good. Not only will you end up with a large list of vacancies, but you’ll also struggle to find people to fill them. With more job seekers than ever using online review sites, such as Glassdoor, to screen companies before they apply, a poor reputation for employee engagement has never been so damaging

This creates a cycle that your organization doesn’t want to slip into. Breaking it, or making sure that your company doesn’t start to slip down it, is an essential task that requires time and dedication to tracking — and improving key metrics.

3 core benefits of employee engagement

Gallup provides interesting insights on the benefits of employee engagement. Organizations with highly engaged employees experience:

As you can see in the employee engagement statistics above, there is a vast array of benefits to be gained from increased employee engagement. In the below sections, we’ve found some of the most compelling evidence for three core benefits of employee engagement:

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

Greater discretionary effort

Improved discretionary effort offered by engaged individuals is one huge benefit of employee engagement initiatives.

Those with high engagement levels often perform above expectations and develop meaningful relationships with their peers, contributing to improved outcomes for everyone involved. These efforts are what is known as ‘Discretionary Effort’.

The discretionary effort your employees put in directly impacts the success of your business outcomes, whether it’s your overall employee output rates, your patient safety outcomes and satisfaction levels, or a direct increase to your bottom line.

Improved job satisfaction

Employee engagement has the dual benefit of improving both organizational success and job satisfaction on a personal level. 

This is because engagement initiatives themselves provide employees with more development opportunities, better recognition for good work, and better prospects for career growth. When employees reap these benefits offered to them by engagement strategies, they feel like they make a real impact on the success of an organization, and that what they are doing is meaningful. 

Don’t underestimate the historic power of meaningful work on your employee satisfaction levels — nine out of ten employees would take a lower salary for more meaningful work.

Increased employee retention

Employees are more likely to stay with the organization when they are more satisfied and engaged. 

Research by the IJECM (International Journal of Economics, Commerce & Management) found that job satisfaction is a reliable and relevant predictor of employee retention. Highly engaged employees develop a greater sense of attachment to the organization and become more loyal, resulting in up to a 43% difference in employee turnover according to further employee engagement research.  

How to improve employee engagement

There are a number of ways to improve employee engagement, but, at Blink, we like to think of engagement efforts as being split into three key categories:

1. Delivering on the 10  key drivers of employee engagement
2. Identifying the employee engagement strategies and tactics that work for your employees
3. Ensuring the best employee engagement tools and software

Key drivers of employee engagement

In order to improve employee engagement, you must understand what drives it, and focus your efforts there. What core experiences and tools do you need to provide to your workforce in order to boost the overall employee experience and drive engagement?  

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

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

By focusing engagement efforts on enabling these core engagement drivers, you will be much more likely to see significant engagement improvements.

Employee engagement strategies and tactics

An employee engagement strategy is the plan of action you take to bring about an increase in employee engagement levels. On the other hand, tactics are the individual steps and actions that will get you there. In the context of an employee engagement strategy, this means the tactics are the specific engagement actions your teams take to implement the initiatives outlined in the strategy.

Employee engagement strategies combine a number of tactics, such as the use of team-building exercises, offering career growth opportunities, providing more effective recognition for good work and positive behavior changes, or improving your internal communication processes.

In order to effectively craft an engagement strategy, it’s important to have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish, and how you plan to get there.

By having a clearly defined strategy, it is much easier to measure the success or failure of any engagement tactic you try. When you identify which tactics work and which don’t, you can adjust your future strategy accordingly.

Employee engagement tools

Employee engagement tools are products and tech solutions that enable companies to measure, manage, and improve employee engagement levels.

Employee engagement software comes in many forms, from survey software used to collect employee feedback and communication platforms providing a channel for discussion between teams.Engagement analysis tools can also provide insight into how your engagement efforts are faring.

However, if your staff are juggling a number of platforms and tools for different parts of their work, it will be inconvenient and you're not likely to see great engagement results. That's why an all-through-one engagement super-app is the best choice for any business wanting to consolidate engagement efforts.

A super-app brings together all of your employee communications, engagement surveys, recognition programs, and employee rewards into one, central platform. 

This will not only make your life easier but will also ensure a more consistent experience for employees while enabling you to get an aggregated view of their engagement levels with just a few clicks.

Examples of employee engagement in action

How Go North West achieved 96% monthly active engagement app users

The challenge

Like many frontline organizations facing a digital inclusion gap, Go North West faced challenges when it came to digitizing processes and communications in their organization. Historically, their internal comms were split across various channels, such as emails, mail to drivers' home addresses, depot noticeboards, and unregulated social media platforms. 

With so many paper-based operational processes, Go North West faced high levels of non-adherence and inefficiency. On top of this, they were also facing an industry-wise staff shortage in the wake of the Great Resignation and COVID-19, which made growth for the company more difficult to achieve.

The solution

The first solution to the engagement challenges faced by Go North West lay in using Blink’s Hub — the super-app’s central portal for accessing processes, documents, and tools. Go North West could now use this to share duties,schedule, and running boards for easy access and updating.

After this, the company had to ensure critical information such as route diversions could reach all members of staff quickly and efficiently. This was where the team used the Blink Feed — a company-wide, mobile-first communications channel, supplemented with the use of Chats to fulfill shift swaps and fills and ensure smooth service delivery. 

The team at Go North West also needed to streamline how they provided drivers and other members of staff access to critical processes and resources. This was where Blink’s Digital Forms and Custom Apps stepped in to revolutionize how the organization worked. 

By moving to digital processes from outdated paper-based processes, drivers were able to:

• Request annual leave with a few taps from the app, made easier with functionality such as auto-population and validation  
• Access their schedules through one-click access to DAS-Web 
• Submit near-miss reports via a custom app on Blink, allowing them to log incidents quickly and easily, increasing the number of submissions to drive process improvement

The outcome

The outcome of this engagement tech overhaul was a resounding success. Engagement levels, retention, and digitization efforts were all improved. 

What did this look like in terms of engagement? Well, alongside achieving 96% monthly active app users, Go North West also saw:

• 30,000 opens of DAS-Web per month
• 6,000 Chat messages per month
• 98,000 opens of Hub content
• 17 daily app opens per user
• 186 monthly app opens per user

What a result! Widespread success across the operation, with Go North West achieving its goal of higher engagement.

The use of Blink’s engagement super-app has enabled the team to move into a digital-first future and deliver an efficient service that allows them to better serve their employees — and customers. A win-win for everyone.

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

How to measure employee engagement

Measuring employee engagement should be a continuous process.

It’s not just something you need to focus on when employee morale is down and stop as soon as it reaches manageable levels… it should be a central part of the HR or People team’s day-to-day activities.

So, before implementing any of the below, ask yourself:

• How much time should we dedicate to this a week?
• Who should be in charge of this area?
• Who can manage the on-the-ground responsibilities associated with this?
• Are there any tools (e.g. a new employee super-app) that could help us manage this workload?

In terms of exactly what to measure and how to measure it, there are two key areas you need to focus on:

1. The data that already exists in your company
2. Data that you actively go out and collect.

Measuring employee engagement using existing data

This is data that your HR team won’t have to set up any new processes for; it (should) already be monitored by various departments. The key here is collating it, as there’s a good chance that inter-departmental silos mean that you won’t necessarily be able to access it right away, let alone see the big picture.

We’re talking about:

• Absence rates
• Employee turnover
• Number of complaints to line managers
• Number of complaints to HR
• eNPS scores
• Customer reviews
• Customer retention
• Sales
• Turnover
• Social media engagement

There could be a myriad of reasons why customer satisfaction has dipped, so take a look at it alongside some of the other metrics listed, over an extended period of time.

For example, do eNPS scores dip when employee turnover is highest? Do customers write poorer reviews when absence rates are particularly high? Start to compare ‘result’ metrics (like sales, turnover, customer satisfaction, and customer retention) with employee wellness to see whether you notice any patterns.

From there, measure, measure, measure! Set up dashboards with all your chosen metrics so that you can track and compare them at a glance. You can then monitor employee engagement via its direct consequences — absence rates going down and productivity going up is a sure sign that your efforts are working.

To assess your current data, an engagement analytics tool can help. It will look at the data you already have (like those mentioned above) to identify how engaged your people really are and provide real-time insights into what might need improvement.

All of the above help to paint a picture of where you are with employee engagement, but they aren’t the only weapon in your arsenal. So, once you’ve got those dashboards up and running, move onto…

Measuring employee engagement by collecting new data

What’s the best, most efficient way of understanding your employee engagement levels?

Just ask them.

Regular, anonymous employee engagement surveys are the most efficient way of doing this. You might see these referred to as “pulse” surveys, and they are so much better for measuring engagement than the traditional annual long-answer survey for the following reasons:

Response rates tend to be higher. It’s much easier to encourage employees to complete three quick “rate on a scale” questions with an optional “any further comments” box than three pages of long-answer questions that they don’t have time to do.

You can keep them focused on one single issue each time. This gives your HR team a much better chance of addressing feedback successfully and sharing what they’ve done to address their co-workers’ concerns.

They encourage constructive feedback. The issue with running an annual survey is that employees see it as their single opportunity to get everything off their chests. 

It’s difficult to respond to 12 months of input from an entire company in any meaningful way, particularly if the topics covered range from disagreement with the company’s strategic direction or low staff retention to dissatisfaction with the options offered in the cafeteria.

How to use your employee engagement data

Whether you’ve noticed that your absence rates are soaring way above your industry average or carried out a highly targeted pulse survey, you need to take action from this data. Understanding exactly how to use your employee engagement data is therefore crucial.

Align key stakeholders with a plan of action

First, sit down with all relevant stakeholders and agree on a workable course of action. Involving stakeholders here keeps things grounded — it’s tempting to offer your workforce the moon on a stick when they’re unhappy, but this isn’t realistic. Avoid promising things you can’t deliver on — broken promises won’t be taken well by your employees, no matter how ambitious they are.

If, for example, your employees have stated they want better quality break rooms or equipment, it’s wise to take the time to align with the leadership suite on whether they have the resources to help with this before you promise a tech overhaul or new break room to your workforce.

Track improvements in data with KPIs

Second, it’s super important to track these improvements against realistic employee engagement KPIs. Change in organizations is gradual, so make sure your targets reflect this and avoid the temptation to try and go from 0 to 100 in three months.

If none of your employees are having regular one-to-one contact with their line managers, an example target structure could look like this:

• 3 months in: 20% of all employees having regular catch-ups
• 6 months in: 40% of employees
• 9 months in: 60% of employees
• 12 months in: 80% of employees

You could also consider how you roll this out. It’s much easier to coordinate regular catch-ups for office-based positions, so you could focus on getting a full 100% in the first three months for office-based teams as a quick win. Whilst you do this, you can sort out the infrastructure for deskless and dispersed teams to be able to do this further down the line.

Consider new tech

Finally, think about any tools that might help you meet these targets and/or address employees’ concerns.

There’s now plenty of workplace tech to help with a range of issues, like employee apps to help communication, productivity software to help meet targets, and advanced CRM features that make meeting customer needs much easier for frontline employees.

Check with your leadership team to see what sort of support they could offer here. They’ll be looking for a solid return on investment and plan before giving the green light, so make sure that if you’re making a direct request for new software, you build a solid business case about why you need it.

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

Communicate your plan of action

The golden rule: never assume that your workforce will notice your efforts to improve things without you communicating it.

Your workforce is busy, and meaningful change takes time — so you’re not going to make everything perfect right away. To really show your employees that you’ve taken their feedback on board, you’ll need to be explicit.

Include announcements about your planned improvements into your internal communications strategy. If you’ve conducted a pulse survey, share the results. This is a gesture of transparency that people will really appreciate—and emphasizes that you’re taking employee feedback seriously.

When announcing any improvement plans, consider:

• The channel that would work best: would more people see it via email, on a noticeboard, or via a mobile-first employee app?
• The frequency of your communication: how frequently should you update your employees on the progress you’re making towards these goals

You could also consider providing updates in person at company meetings, as this adds a welcome personal touch.

Remember the small things alongside big things

Big, organizational changes take time, but there are smaller things you can do for your workforce in the meantime.

Reworking the employee journey so there are more obvious routes for internal promotion takes time. Easier things like upgrading the coffee machine, setting up a couple of lunchtime clubs, or getting a pool table for the break room does not.

Implementing a couple of easy-to-manage changes (either that your workforce has specifically asked for, or just off your own back) emphasizes your commitment to improvement while you’re working towards the more structural stuff. It’s not a substitute, but it is a good reminder to your workforce about what you’re trying to do.

Blink. And your employee engagement strategy takes shape. 

Blink is the all-through-one engagement super-app that your business needs to make sure employee engagement isn’t an extra task on your list, but part of a holistic approach to people management.

Our platform includes all the tools you need for effective employee engagement, from surveys and feedback loops to recognition programs and rewards. We also provide comprehensive reporting dashboards and insights to monitor progress, track performance, identify problem areas and create actionable plans. 

When it comes to employee engagement, Blink is the perfect solution for businesses of all sizes. 

No matter where you are in your engagement journey, we’re here to help you create the best possible experience for your employees and drive maximum success for your business.

Get started with Blink today.