KC has been with Arriva North West and Wales since 2023. A well-loved character at the Speke Bus Depot, he is an extrovert and gregarious. In his own words: “I love social interaction because it brings me enjoyment. I love meeting new people and feel energized at big social events.”
This is why bus driving matches him perfectly. Unsurprisingly, what he loves most about his role is meeting new passengers and learning something about them. He practices his faith as often as possible, and his gratitude and positive attitude is contagious: “I feel blessed and always like to give thanks.”
Alongside the people, he also enjoys discovering new routes and the challenge of learning them. Most of all, community is at his heart, saying that bus driving “makes me feel like I can make a difference in my local community… I just like driving buses as they make many people happy when you get it right.”
According to Mark Brack, the Site Manager: “He has been a breath of fresh air in our Speke depot and has thrown himself into a number of roles to help improve engagement and the performance of the depot, including being our Blink and Employee Survey Champion. It’s great to see him recognized.”
Nominated by: Lee Coleman, Head of Communications and Engagement
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Shake Shack started in a hot dog cart in Madison Square Park over 25 years ago. Today we're a global brand with more than 700 restaurants, 14,000 team members, and an ambitious growth goal.
We're opening more than 60 new restaurants this year alone. Every new shack means new people, new teams, and new ways for our message to get lost along the way. Growth at that pace makes clear, consistent communication more important than ever.
For us, that meant finding a better way to reach, recognize, and engage our teams as we continue to scale.
Keeping every team connected
As Shake Shack has grown, so has the need to keep our teams informed and connected. A message may start with our support center or leadership, then move through above-shack leaders, shack leaders, managers, and frontline teams.
At our size, communication has to be timely, relevant, and easy to access for the people closest to our guests. We needed an approach built for the way our teams work today and flexible enough to support where we're headed next.
What our people were telling us
Before I moved into communications, I spent five years in our People Resources team, running our annual engagement survey. Those results gave us important insight into how team members felt about their leaders, workplace, and our culture, and reinforced how much the team experience shapes engagement.
Two things came up again and again as drivers of engagement: recognition and voice. People want their work to be seen. And they want to know that when they share an idea or a concern, someone with the power to act is actually listening.
An annual survey couldn't give us either of those things consistently, at scale, across 500-plus locations. We needed a way to make recognition and voice part of the everyday experience, not a once-a-year check-in.
What we needed from a tool
When we went looking for a platform, three things mattered most.
It had to fit into one place. Our team members already use different systems throughout the day, and we wanted to make access simpler, not add another step. A single point of entry mattered.
It had to be built for the floor, not the desk. I sit at a computer most of the day. The majority of our team members are on their feet, serving guests, with a phone in their pocket and not much time to sit and dig through an intranet. Mobile-first wasn't a nice-to-have. It was essential.
It had to inform, connect, and engage. We wanted a platform that could share the big picture, make it relevant to each team member, and connect the four walls of one Shack to the broader Shake Shack story. It also needed to feel natural for a workforce that is used to engaging through mobile, social, and real-time experiences.
That combination is what led us to Blink.
What changed
The integration piece has made the biggest difference day to day. We connected Blink to Workday through single sign-on, so a team member can go from the Blink Hub straight to viewing their payslip or a compliance module in seconds, no extra password required. Password reset requests have dropped since launch.
We also made communication more relevant. We wanted a platform that helps people see what matters to them, when it matters. An hourly team member and a corporate employee may need different information, and that targeting helps keep the experience useful and engaging.
And we made it ours. In a Shake Shack environment, Blink looks like Shake Shack: our colors, our photography, our voice.
How we got people to actually use it
A platform is only as good as its adoption. We built it with our operators, not just for them, testing and iterating before we launched company-wide. Then we found our champions early. Earlier this year, we brought almost 250 operators and leaders together for a two-day summit, and we used Blink as the event app, pushing schedules, session reminders, and photo sharing through the platform before it ever launched to the wider team.
By the time we launched a few weeks later, those leaders were already active, and the content was already there. Within the first two weeks, more than 70% of our workforce had registered. That number keeps climbing.
Where we're headed
We now have a more direct way to reach our frontline teams. As we grow and scale our business, that matters more every day.
We're also excited about where the platform itself is going. Last week, I built and launched a pulse survey in about five minutes and started seeing responses in real time, something our old, once-a-year survey tool could never do. As Shake Shack scales to 1,500 shacks, we need our tools to scale and evolve with us. Seeing that kind of innovation already happening gives me real confidence that Blink will keep meeting us where we are, and where we're headed next.
Awkward ice breakers. Forced fun. Activities with very little bearing on the work you actually do.
But if that’s been your experience, the problem wasn’t team building — it was how it was done.
Done well, team building in the workplace is a valuable investment.
It fosters trust and collaboration, develops communication skills that prevent costly misunderstandings, and helps to create a workplace culture that keeps people engaged and loyal.
Here, we look at the meaning of team building, at all the reasons why team building is important, and at how to make team building activities work for all types of teams.
What is team building?
Team building is a term used to describe activities, training, and initiatives that help employees work well together and achieve shared goals.
It can take many forms. Organized team building sessions. But also social occasions, volunteer days, and informal micro-activities built into the working day.
Done badly, team building is a half-day exercise forgotten by the weekend.
Done well, it creates the conditions for genuine trust and stronger relationships. It helps you build a workforce that can adapt, problem-solve, and perform — together.
Why team building is important
Team building helps improve teamwork in your organization. And that leads to the following business-boosting benefits. Here are all the reasons why team building is important.
It builds trust
Trust is the foundation that makes everything else possible: open communication, team collaboration, the confidence to raise a problem before it becomes a crisis.
A warehouse team working together through a theoretical logistics challenge learns to rely on each other in a low-stakes environment. That reliance translates directly to the real shift, where the pressure and stakes are higher.
It improves communication
Most team-building activities require good communication. Participants have to assign roles, share information, adapt plans in real time, and make decisions under some degree of pressure.
The communication skills developed through team building — active listening, clear information sharing, constructive feedback — transfer directly to the workplace.
This matters to your organization because poor communication is costly — in terms of duplicated work, errors, safety incidents, and customer experience failures.
It increases productivity
Productivity is another reason why team building is important.
A store team that’s practiced working together is faster at solving problems during a busy shift. An office team that knows and trusts each other moves more quickly than one that doesn’t.
When employees are familiar with each other’s strengths and weaknesses, they work together more efficiently. They know when to step back and when to step in.
It builds workplace friendships
Four out of five employees say workplace friendships are really important to them. Having friends at work increases engagement, satisfaction, and connection to the organization.
Team-building activities create the conditions for those friendships to form. It gives people a reason to interact with each other beyond the transactional demands of the working day.
For remote and frontline workers who don’t share a physical space, this is particularly important. Digital team-building activities that connect employees, regardless of location, reduce feelings of isolation and disengagement.
It boosts employee engagement and morale
Gallup research shows that effective team working leads to a 23% increase in employee engagement. This reflects the fact that working as part of a team, with shared goals and strong relationships, has a huge impact on how employees feel about their work.
Team-building initiatives reinforce that sense of shared purpose. They remind employees that they’re part of something bigger than their individual task list. And that gives them a reason to show up that goes beyond their paycheck.
It breaks down silos between teams
You can fuel cross-functional collaboration by planning team-building initiatives that deliberately cross departmental boundaries.
Employees from different departments can develop relationships, build mutual understanding, and learn where their skills and remits overlap.
For organizations with a large frontline workforce, cross-functional team building also addresses the sense of separation that can develop between head office and the floor.
Initiatives that bring frontline and desk-based employees together — physically or digitally — reduce the “two cultures” dynamic that so many frontline workers say they experience.
It encourages creativity and innovation
Creative thinking doesn’t thrive under pressure and in isolation. It emerges from the kind of relaxed, collaborative, escape-from-the-norm environment that good team building creates.
This is an environment where employees feel safe enough to suggest ideas that might not work, build on each other’s thinking, and approach problems from new angles.
That mindset goes beyond a team-building session. Employees carry creative thinking back to their everyday work, and can think about problems and situations from different perspectives.
It improves conflict resolution
Workplace conflict is more common than you might think. In the UK, 44% of working-age adults said they experienced conflict at work in a 12-month period, from 2024 to 2025.
You can’t prevent disagreements. But you can develop employees’ ability to handle them constructively.
The skills at the heart of effective conflict resolution — listening to understand rather than to respond, respecting different perspectives, communicating without defensiveness — are the same ones that good team building helps to develop.
It nurtures and reveals skills
Team building develops team working skills — like delegation, rapport building, and open communication.
Employees can also learn skills from each other, sharing knowledge earned in different parts of the organization and from different life experiences.
Team building often reveals pre-existing skills, too. Skills that have no obvious outlet in someone’s current role become visible — and can then be put to use.
For example, you may find a great team leader among your frontline crew, or a strategic thinker among your new hires. This is another reason why team building is important, across every team in your organization.
It strengthens company culture
83% of employees say that a positive workplace culture contributes to their productivity. It also encourages them to stay working for your organization.
A positive culture is built through repeated, shared experiences that reinforce what your organization stands for and how it shows up for employees.
Team building creates those experiences deliberately. You can create moments where employees can connect with one another and really get to understand what it means to be part of your organization.
When teams work together effectively, the working environment is more communicative and collaborative. Employees enjoy a sense of community and belonging that drives loyalty.
According to Gallup, employees are 29% more likely to stay with their company for the next year and 42% more likely to remain with their company for their entire career when they’re part of high-performing teams.
Team building for every type of workforce
So now we know why team building is important, but how do you ensure those benefits are felt across the whole of your organization? The way you deliver team building has to vary depending on the team you’re leading.
Office-based teams
Office-based teams have the advantage of shared physical space and regular informal interaction. Structured team building supplements what already happens organically.
You can use in-person events to deepen relationships, develop specific skills, and create cross-functional connections that the day-to-day working environment doesn’t always support.
Remote and hybrid teams
When planning team building for employees who spend some or all of their time away from the office, you have to be more intentional.
Limited face-to-face connection with co-workers means the informal relationship-building that happens among office-based teams has to be replaced with structured alternatives.
Virtual team-building activities, digital communities, and regular opportunities for informal communication give distributed employees a way to connect as people rather than just as colleagues.
Frontline teams face the most significant structural barriers to team building in the workplace.
Employees may work across sites and shifts. They don’t always work alongside the same people and they get limited face time with leadership. This makes it difficult for them to build connections with co-workers and company culture.
Effective frontline team building takes these barriers into account. That might mean using:
Mobile-accessible digital tools to make connection possible, no matter where or when an employee is working.
Short-form content and activities designed for employees who are on their feet, not sitting in front of a screen.
Thoughtfully-designed in-person sessions, scheduled with shift patterns in mind and repeated across different shift cohorts.
The importance of team building shouldn’t be underestimated. It’s an incredibly useful tool — one that shapes how your people communicate, collaborate, and perform.
When it’s done well, the impact is clear: better problem-solving, higher employee engagement, improved retention, and greater productivity.
For dispersed and deskless workforces, who don’t always get the opportunity for informal connection with teammates, the case for intentional team building is particularly strong.
This requires the right approach and the right infrastructure. You need mobile-first tools that make digital team building possible, and that sustain the relationships and culture that in-person sessions create.
Organizations that understand the importance of team building are investing in employee communication tools, like Blink, that support teamwork across sites and shifts.
Employee experience (EX) is how your organization makes workers feel at every stage of the employee journey. EX impacts employee engagement, employee productivity, and retention — which means that building a consistently positive employee experience makes a big difference to your business.
Positive EX is particularly important for frontline employees. These people are the face of your organization. The frontline experience directly affects product quality and customer satisfaction.
But the frontline employee experience is falling short:
A recent Quinyx report found that 1 in 2 frontline workers have thought about quitting their jobs in the past year due to low pay, stress, and irregular working hours.
O.C. Tanner research reveals that 2 in 5 frontline employees say they’re viewed as inferior by employees in the office, and more than a third say their work is not valued as highly as office work.
Frontline employees are hard to reach. Working in isolation, away from HQ, they often feel disconnected from company culture and comms — and don’t get access to the same tech tools as their desk-based peers.
The demands of shift work. A sense of inequality. A feeling of disconnection. There are lots of barriers getting in the way of a positive frontline employee experience. To overcome these barriers, you need a targeted approach that keeps frontline needs front of mind.
The good news is that there are actionable steps you can begin taking today to create a positive employee experience across your frontline — ultimately helping your organization boost employee engagement, productivity, and retention.
8 steps to building a positive employee experience for your frontline workforce
To create a positive employee experience for frontline workers, consider these eight areas of opportunity:
Develop an employee experience strategy
Create a positive company culture
Give employees development and growth opportunities
Establish effective communication channels
Recognize employee achievements
Improve the physical and digital work environment
Hone onboarding and offboarding
Ask for employee feedback
Let’s take a closer look at each of these actions.
In the most successful organizations, employee experience and employee engagement sit at the center of company strategy, informing how they hire, onboard, and develop talent. It also informs how they motivate their teams, set goals, and communicate to their employees.
Achieving this holistic approach is easier when you have a thoughtfully crafted employee experience strategy — one that tackles all five stages of the employee lifecycle:
Attraction
Recruitment
Onboarding
Development
Separation
To create a strategy suited to each of these employee journey stages, use employee feedback to help you uncover weaknesses at each stage. You can then set EX goals that align with organizational goals — and develop initiatives that will help you achieve them.
Step 2: Create a more positive company culture
A positive company culture supports a positive employee experience. So what can you do to improve the culture within your organization?
Define core values and incorporate them into the workplace
When you get clear on your company’s core values, you unite employees behind one definitive version of company culture and establish how people should work together and the goals you’re all working towards.
Once you’ve defined your values, think about how you’ll express them across every stage of your employee journey. Also, weave them into your internal communications regularly to reinforce their importance.
Foster a supportive and inclusive environment
Employees who feel that they belong at an organization are 5.3 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work. So to build a positive and productive workplace culture, you need to ensure that everyone feels supported and included.
That might mean taking an in-depth look at your diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and how they are lived across the employee journey. It might mean working to create a culture of psychological safety and open communication, where everyone feels able to share their ideas and concerns.
For frontline teams, it could mean ensuring employees get opportunities to build relationships with co-workers — and that they get access to the same tools and resources as their desk-based peers.
Promote wellbeing and work-life balance
Another characteristic of strong and resilient workplace cultures is an emphasis on wellbeing in work and in life. Companies that show concern for the holistic wellbeing of employees — caring about them as people, not just workers — are more likely to create a more engaging employee experience.
Gym memberships, mental health support, financial planning, and volunteer days can all improve the physical and mental wellbeing of employees. For many employees, work-life balance is another key factor — and there are various strategies you can use to bring flexibility to frontline work.
You can share frontline worker shifts at least two weeks in advance, giving them more time to plan their out-of-work lives. You can give them access to shift-swapping tools so they can exchange shifts with co-workers without manager involvement.
Or follow the example of the Principality Building Society, which made the decision to shut their branches half an hour before the end of retail employee shifts. This allows employees to finish tasks and leave on time, without having to serve customers for those last minutes of the day.
Step 3: Give employees development and growth opportunities
Frontline workers are often overlooked when it comes to training and career progression. McKinsey research shows that 65% of frontline workers are unaware or unsure of how to achieve advancement. Only 32% say that they receive education or training in the workplace.
But training and development can have a big impact on the employee experience. McKinsey also revealed that frontline employees rank job growth or promotion above pay and benefits. In fact, it’s their top priority in the workplace.
Make it easy for frontline employees to access development resources by choosing training programs that can be accessed via mobile devices. Micro-learning features are also a good idea, allowing employees to complete short lessons, fitting learning around their busy schedules.
Communication is key, too. The connection between a frontline role and opportunities elsewhere in the organization isn’t always clear. Managers need to make employees aware — very early in the employee journey — of the career progression options available to them.
Step 4: Establish effective communication channels
Good internal communication is the foundation of employee engagement and any successful employee experience strategy. But frontline employees are more likely to miss out on vital and culture-building communications if they’re put on a noticeboard or sent via email.
Frontline workers need communication channels that they can access on the go, on their smartphones. They need streamlined channels, so they know exactly where to find the information they’re looking for. To ensure engagement, they should also only receive content that is relevant to them.
Communication channels should allow frontline workers to connect with co-workers, too. The 32,000 frontline care workers at Elara Caring, working alone in clients’ homes, often felt isolated and lonely. This harmed employee satisfaction.
Now, with the help of Blink, the team can communicate easily over a dedicated company app. This means more knowledge sharing, stronger co-worker relationships, and a more positive employee experience.
Step 5: Recognize employee achievements
Employees experience more job satisfaction when they receive recognition from managers and peers. The act of giving recognition is also good for staff morale.
You can recognize an employee on their birthday or a work anniversary. You can highlight project success or how an employee has demonstrated company values.
But giving rewards and recognition to frontline workers requires more intention: Because frontline employees don’t work in the office, there’s less opportunity for informal thanks.
This is where digital recognition tools can help. By sharing praise and rewards on your digital communication channels, you make recognition a more visible part of company culture — even for your frontline. So you get to boost employee productivity, motivation, and satisfaction across the board.
Step 6: Improve the physical and digital work environment
Design a safe and comfortable workplace
The physical work environment has a big impact on employee wellbeing and productivity. You need to ensure the workplace is safe and comfortable and doesn’t put undue physical strain on your workers.
To improve frontline workplace safety and comfort, you should:
Provide the necessary personal protective equipment
Conduct regular mandatory training so everyone knows safety protocols
Provide channels where employees can communicate safety concerns quickly
Run regular safety audits
A well-designed work environment prevents accidents and injuries, reduces stress, and improves job satisfaction.
Use tools to streamline processes and improve efficiency
Only 10% of frontline workers say they have high access to the tools, tech, and opportunities they need to connect and advance in their workplace. But the digital employee experience is crucial to your overall EX.
Give employees too many tools — or tools that add friction to their workday — and you risk creating frustration and disengagement. Avoid using any tech tools and you’re left with inefficient paper processes. Either way, you end up harming employee satisfaction.
When choosing tools for a frontline workforce, look for:
Mobile-first tools, that don’t require a company email address and are available on employee smartphones
A tool that brings all company software into one hub, so employees don’t have to remember lots of logins and passwords
The best employee apps are built with the frontline in mind. They’re intuitive to use and offer a host of useful features. They allow workers to chat with co-workers, get company updates, select their benefits, view pay slips, complete the onboarding process, and sign up for shifts — all via their mobile device.
Step 7: Hone onboarding and offboarding
To build a better employee experience for your frontline, you need to consider every stage of the employee journey:
Craft an effective onboarding process for new employees
Onboarding is a process that should start before an employee’s first day at your organization and last for at least three months. It should incorporate regular recognition and two-way feedback, along with goal setting, team building, and skills development.
For frontline employees, it makes sense to make onboarding resources available via smartphone. That way, they can read FAQs, complete mandatory training, and learn about company policies at a time and place that suits them.
Conduct exit interviews
Exit interviews are another integral part of any employee experience strategy.
First, because when you treat employees fairly and positively even as they leave your organization, you show other employees that you value the person, not just the worker.
Second, because exit interviews can reveal areas for employee experience improvement. Whether it’s progression opportunities, pay and benefits, company culture, or internal communication, finding out what prompted an employee to leave can give you lots of food for thought.
Step 8: Ask for employee feedback
Offboarding feedback is important. But don’t wait until employees are leaving your organization to ask what they think of their employee experience. Schedule regular employee surveys to get feedback and learn t how they think and feel about your organization.
Use employee surveys
You can use quarterly employee experience surveys to assess employee sentiment. By asking the same employee survey questions every quarter, you can benchmark your performance and see which of your employee experience initiatives are making the most difference. You can then update goals in your employee experience strategy.
You can also use pulse surveys to get a snapshot of your employee experience at any given moment. This helps to ensure any employee experience issues are identified and dealt with promptly.
For either type of survey, be sure to ask demographic questions. These allow you to segment survey responses by employee journey stage, department, or team — revealing more detailed insights without compromising employee anonymity.
Follow survey best practices
To get the most from your employee surveys, follow survey best practices by:
Allowing employees to respond to surveys anonymously. That way, you get honest and valuable answers.
Sending employee surveys in a format that’s accessible to everyone. Mobile-first survey software ensures every member of staff — whether they’re working in the office, at home, or on the frontline of your organization — gets to give their opinion.
Developing a survey communication strategy. Keep employees in the loop, thanking them for their feedback and clearly communicating how you plan to act upon it. This ensures ongoing engagement with the feedback process.
The role of technology in the frontline employee experience
The digital employee experience is a big part of the employee experience. But it’s particularly important for frontline workers who don’t spend their days at a desk.
With the right technology, you connect everyone — including hard-to-reach frontline employees — to internal communication, co-workers, and vital workplace resources. This helps improve EX, boosting employee productivity and retention in the process.
Many workplace tech tools are designed for office staff. They work beautifully for your team at HQ. But don’t provide the same features and level of functionality for your frontline workers.
To prevent tech from widening the gap between the frontline and desk-based worker experience, you need tech tools and employee experience software with the following features:
An easy-to-use, intuitive interface with a minimal learning curve
A mobile-first design, so all features are accessible via an employee’s smartphone
Single sign-on security, so employees can log into all workplace software with one set of login details
No email required — some frontline workers don’t have a company email address so it’s important that workplace tech works without them
Blink’s employee app ticks all these boxes and more.
It provides a news feed, group chat, and 1:1 messaging for easy communication. It gives managers EX-boosting tools, like recognition and employee surveys. Blink also integrates with other workplace tech, creating a one-stop shop for your frontline team.
“Using Blink, Abellio bus drivers can access a system of simple pathways that makes it easy for them to report issues, start a conversation with management or colleagues, or go about their day-to-day tasks such as checking shifts and accessing payslips, reconnecting them back to the organization they work for via one simple, easy-to-use app.”
Most frontline workers who quit don’t do it on day one.
And they don’t do it at the one-year mark, either. They do it somewhere around Day 90.
When you look at what’s happening — or not happening — between weeks two and twelve, it’s not hard to see why.
Frontline employees are caught in a hinterland. A place after induction and before real engagement kicks in, where the comms, connection, and support they need are nowhere to be found.
So what can you do to reduce employee churn once and for all? How do you persuade this group of employees to stick with you for the long haul?
Here, we take a look at why the 90-day milestone matters so much in frontline retention — and what a better frontline onboarding strategy can do for your organization.
The data behind the 90-day cliff edge
The figures are stark. A third of the HR pros responding to Enboarder’s 2025 HR Leader survey said that 25% of new employees leave during their first 90 days.
For frontline organizations, the picture is even more acute.
Turnover rates in frontline industries are consistently among the highest across all employment sectors — and 56% of organizations are currently experiencing frontline worker turnover at a higher rate than the historical average.
This frontline churn comes at a considerable cost. If we look at the example of grocery retail, frontline turnover absorbs as much as 10-20% of profits.
High frontline turnover results in lower service levels, lower productivity, higher training costs, and increased demands on management. It also keeps recruitment at the top of the strategic agenda, crowding out other priorities.
Why is Day 90 such a precarious time?
Day 90 is when new hire energy wears off and the reality of the role sets in. It’s when the gap between what was promised during recruitment and what’s actually experienced becomes impossible to ignore.
It’s also — critically — the point at which most organizations have stopped formally onboarding but haven’t yet started actively retaining. So frontline employee engagement takes a hit that it can be hard to recover from.
What frontline workers are telling us
Wondering why frontline employees quit? When frontline workers leave around the three-month mark, the reasons they give cluster around the same themes.
A two-tier culture
Almost half of frontline workers report that there are two separate cultures at play within their organizations — one for the frontline and one for everyone else.
That perception is compounded by a clear digital gap. Frontline workers receive just 1% of their companies’ total technology budget, leaving them with ineffective paper-based processes or software that doesn’t work on a smartphone.
The divide between desk-based and frontline experience is very real, very visible, and — for many — a deciding factor in whether to stay.
Feeling invisible
Only 43% of deskless workers feel seen and appreciated at work, compared with 61% of desk-based employees. A lack of recognition hits hard in the early months, when new hires are most in need of reassurance.
Frontline workers also struggle to make their voices heard. 38% say they have feedback for leadership or management, but no way of communicating it.
Feeling out of the loop
When new frontline workers don’t have reliable access to company updates, policy changes, or operational information, they feel disconnected from the organization and unable to do their jobs well.
Employees with strong workplace relationships are 51% more likely to be engaged. But shift-based work can be isolating.
New starters may work alongside different colleagues every day, have limited face time with their manager, and no easy channel to build relationships beyond their immediate shift.
Without deliberate effort to create connection, the social fabric that makes work worth showing up for simply doesn’t form.
Yet 64% of frontline employees say they would stay with their organizations for six years or more if they had access to better career development and training.
The appetite for growth is there, right from the start, but the pathway often isn’t.
The onboarding illusion: What companies are getting wrong
You’ve invested time and money in your frontline onboarding strategy. So why isn’t this moving the needle on new hire turnover?
The answer may lie not in the quality of your employee onboarding program, but in the length. In most frontline organizations, structured onboarding takes place in the first week or two. It’s thorough, well-intentioned. But it ends far too early.
A strong first week doesn’t prevent an exit at the three-month mark. That’s because there’s a significant gap between structured onboarding and what actually happens when a new worker hits the floor solo.
By week three or four, new-hire support has often evaporated. The questions keep coming — but now there’s no clear channel for asking them. Connection to the wider organization fades. The sense of momentum and progress, so strong in week one, starts to plateau.
That’s when employees start to question things. Is this worth it? Does this organization actually care whether I stay? Maybe there’s something better out there…
What the 90-day window actually needs: How to reduce employee churn
That means creating an onboarding strategy that doesn't end at week two, but continues to inform, connect, and support new workers long after they hit their stride.
Here’s what that looks like in practice.
Consistent communications
New frontline workers need to feel like they’re part of something bigger. That means regular, relevant updates that keep them informed about what’s happening in the organization — delivered to their smartphone, not to a desktop intranet they’ll never log into.
The goal is to make a new hire feel like an insider, not an afterthought — and to give them the frontline communications that make their work easier.
Peer community
One of the most powerful retention boosters in frontline work is strong relationships and collaboration with co-workers.
When new workers have a channel to connect with their team — beyond whoever happens to be on the same shift — belonging develops faster. Internal communities, group chats, and shared spaces for non-work conversation all contribute to that vital social infrastructure.
A way to ask questions without feeling stupid
New starters have lots of questions. Many of them don’t ask, because they don’t want to look like they’re struggling or don’t know what they’re doing.
A searchable knowledge hub — policies, procedures, and FAQs findable in seconds from a smartphone — removes that barrier. So does self-serve access to shift swapping, payslips, and benefits enrolment.
Employees who can find answers independently feel more capable and confident.
Visibility into what comes next
New hires who can see a trajectory within the organization are significantly more likely to be there beyond 90 days.
Regular check-ins, clearly communicated development opportunities, and recognition of early progress all signal that the organization is invested in the individual, not just the role they’re filling.
The solution? A well-designed employee experience software platform makes all the above possible. It allows you to deliver structured onboarding content at the right moment in the employee lifecycle — and to fill the day with culture and community-building touchpoints.
Time to rethink your frontline onboarding strategy?
There’s a temptation in high-turnover environments to pull back on investment in the frontline employee experience. Why put significant resources into someone who might leave in three months?
It’s a reasonable question. But fail to consider frontline EX and you end up stuck in a cycle of attrition (and associated costs) that’s impossible to escape.
The frontline organizations reducing employee churn are those making the first 90 days — not just the first few weeks — feel like the beginning of something worth sticking around for.
That means extending the onboarding process beyond the induction checklist, giving new workers the tools to stay connected and informed, and building the peer relationships that make a job feel more than a job.
A mobile-first frontline platform like Blink keeps deskless workers connected from day one — through structured onboarding journeys, communications that reach every employee, recognition and survey tools, and co-worker communities.
With everything available from one user-friendly dashboard, new hires have everything they need to hit the ground running — and build a long-lasting connection to your organization.
Attitude – how an employee feels about the company, their co-workers, their managers, and their role. And behavior – the effort that an employee is willing to invest in their work.
These two attributes have a huge impact on your business.
When an employee has a positive attitude and is willing (on most days) to give their all, they’re more energized and productive. They’re keen to learn and find solutions for workplace problems.
Engaged employees are also more loyal to your organization. Teams with high engagement have turnover rates 18% to 43% lower than those with low engagement. They have lower rates of absenteeism, too.
It’s easy to see how employee engagement can help to build a more effective and efficient organization. You reduce costs linked to recruitment, sick leave, and low productivity. And you get the very best from your workforce.
Understanding the importance of employee engagement is the first step. However, finding ways to improve employee engagement within your organization, is another - And that’s what we’ll be focusing on here.
We’re going to explore a range of employee engagement ideas that you can put into practice at your business to increase engagement. But first, let’s take a look at how employee engagement applies to frontline organizations.
Employee engagement in frontline organizations
Employee engagement is so often focused on those working remote or behind a desk, rather than your frontline employees. Common activities or ideas to increase employee engagement actually actively exclude frontline workers, as well. Think in-office lunches, social happy hours, or team building activities during the standard workday.
But the truth is frontline employees want to feel engaged in the same way a desk-based team does. They benefit from a sense of belonging and connection. And your business benefits too.
Engaged employees working on the frontline provide a better service for customers or patients. Like their office-based co-workers, they take less time off sick and are less likely to look for another job.
All frontline organizations should be looking to improve employee engagement - and it’s easier than you might think. Below are our top ways to improve employee engagement across your entire organization - applicable to not only desk-based teams, but frontline organizations as well.
12 ideas to improve employee engagement quickly
Employee engagement goes way beyond team building activities and the standard annual employee review. The most engaged organizations weave employee engagement activities into the fabric of their workplace.
Our tips to improve employee engagement:
Embrace technology
Promote two-way communication
Recognize and reward
Offer growth opportunities
Foster work-life balance
Gather feedback from employees
Set clear expectations
Give regular feedback
Promote team collaboration
Celebrate milestones
Lead by example
Measure and act on feedback
1. Embrace technology
Today’s tech is intrinsically engaging, to the extent that people spend an average of 4.8 hours a day on mobile apps. That’s a third of their waking hours.
People leaders can take advantage of this fact by embracing mobile tools to increase employee engagement. Of course, embracing a clunky old intranet is going to do more harm than good. It won’t offer the user experience that employees now expect from their tech. But with cutting-edge software and apps, leaders make the cornerstones of engagement – communication, collaboration, and recognition – more appealing and accessible to employees.
For frontline organizations, this can revolutionize the way you work.
Employees no longer need a desktop or company email to access internal comms. With an employee engagement app like Blink, they can simply use the smartphone in their pocket, meaning everyone stays connected.
Teams can access chat functions, recognition features, and company tools and resources – all from the same interface.
Leaders can make the most of employee engagement surveys and analytics features. They can use data to understand employee engagement like never before, finding more effective ways to improve it.
When you put the very best tech tools at the heart of your employee engagement strategy, you connect your frontline to co-workers and management. You also make measuring and improving engagement a whole lot easier.
2. Promote two-way communication
Good communication is the key to employee engagement. It’s a way to share information and company values and to include every member of your organization in company culture. But 80% of professionals rate their organization’s communication as poor or average.
If your company comms aren’t hitting the mark, it may be because communication only moves top-down. Your leadership team speaks and everyone else listens.
You’re much more likely to motivate employees when you create channels for two-way communication. (Like they did at Domino’s). When you give them a voice, encourage them to speak up, and listen to what they have to say, employees are much more engaged.
In fact, employees who say their voice is heard at work are 4.6x more likely to give their all.
Creating two-way communication is harder in large, hybrid, and frontline organizations. How do you connect co-workers, managers, and leadership when they don’t physically cross paths? And what do you do when frontline employees don’t have a company email account?
Again, it comes down to having the right tech tools. You need communication channels that are easy to access – from the office, at home, on the shop floor, and on the road. So everyone stays connected and updated wherever they’re working.
3. Recognize and reward
When employees feel that hard work goes unnoticed, there’s less incentive for them to bring their A-game. So if you’re looking to improve your employee engagement strategy, recognition and rewards are another key focus area.
Some organizations go all out with a points and rewards system. Employees earn points for good work and can then spend points to get gift cards, company merchandise, or even make a charitable donation.
But there are lots of other ways to show your appreciation for employees. An employee of the month program or a simple thank you goes a long way. And – as we’ll see in a moment – rewarding high performers with training and career progression opportunities may prove more meaningful than small monetary prizes.
However you approach recognition and reward, the key is finding a strategy that works for all employees.
Perhaps a frontline employee stays late to get a job done. Or receives positive feedback from a customer. These employees should enjoy the same level of manager and peer-to-peer recognition as their office-based co-workers.
With Blink’s recognition tool, it’s easy to create a culture of appreciation. Anyone can send personalized messages of appreciation, sharing posts with individuals, teams, or the whole organization.
4. Offer growth opportunities
Employees who have a clear career path are more likely to stay working with your company. They’re also more engaged and productive in their work.
But too often, the focus is on the professional development of management and office-based employees. According to McKinsey research, many employers underestimate the value that frontline workers place on learning and career advancement opportunities.
Of the 2,100 frontline employees McKinsey surveyed, 70% said they had applied for a promotion or a job with more responsibility. But only 25% of those who applied were successful. And 65% said they were unsure how to achieve advancement.
Source: McKinsey
As well as highlighting the lack of growth for frontline employees, McKinsey made several recommendations:
Share professional development, mentorship, and promotion opportunities with every team member
Give managers the training they need to help employees establish career growth goals – and support them to achieve them.
Where a promotion isn’t possible, consider a lateral move or the assignment of new challenges within an employee’s current role to satisfy their hunger for growth
Ultimately, when employees are given the support they need to thrive in their careers, it’s a win-win. An organization retains employees and improves performance. Employees get to enjoy the challenge and satisfaction of expanding their talents.
5. Foster work-life balance
Achieving work-life balance as a frontline worker isn’t always easy. Shifts tend to be long and unpredictable. And when employees are supporting customers or patients, it can be hard to even take scheduled breaks.
This has long been accepted as “the way things are”. But with a third of workers saying that work-life balance is a top priority when looking for jobs, frontline organizations looking to increase employee engagement have a real opportunity – to outshine other employers and better support their staff.
You could offer predictable shifts and – where that isn’t possible – communicate shifts in advance. Consider flexible working and fair overtime policies. Encourage employees to get enough downtime by addressing an always-on culture.
Another key consideration? We know that 70% of frontline employees have suffered from burnout or felt at risk of burnout. This is something that the Starbucks team has taken on board.
Starbucks employees get access to a mental health care platform and free therapy sessions. They also get 10 days of backup care for the children or adults they care for, helping them balance the competing responsibilities of work and caregiving with less stress.
By helping employees to plan and enjoy their time away from work, organizations can count on improved productivity and engagement each time workers arrive for a shift.
6. Gather feedback from employees
Frontline employees are your eyes and ears on the ground. They can provide valuable perspective on what is and isn’t working operationally and how you can improve the customer experience.
But if your organization – like many frontline firms – is suffering from a frontline connection gap, you struggle to access that insight. More often than not, frontline employees don’t have the access they need to provide this valuable feedback.
This means you miss out on all kinds of frontline employee feedback – including their thoughts on employee engagement. You find it much harder to identify and address engagement issues before they affect morale and retention.
The first step to fixing this issue is developing feedback channels for all employees. Tech tools can help. An app like Blink allows you to send a feedback request to a frontline worker’s smartphone, meaning they’re much more likely to see it and respond.
Remember that different employees prefer different feedback methods so open up a variety of options.
Make pulse surveys, annual employee engagement surveys, and manager one-on-ones part of your feedback request schedule. And give employees the option to leave feedback anonymously so they feel comfortable being completely honest.
With up-to-date employee feedback, you can make your employee engagement strategy more relevant and effective. You get to the heart of how employees feel – and discover the areas where change is most needed.
7. Set clear expectations
Uncertainty and employee engagement don’t mix. Role ambiguity creates stress and it’s one of the leading causes of employee burnout.
Employees need to understand exactly what’s expected of them. They need to know what work to do, how to do it, and who to do it with. Even when a frontline role involves a lot of autonomy, employees need guidance on their remit to feel confident and motivated.
Managers are responsible for setting clear expectations. And it all comes down to good communication.
Frontline managers should clearly define the role and its responsibilities for new hires. They need to set key performance indicators (KPIs) so employees know what success looks like. And they need to give clear instructions when assigning new tasks.
Employees also need to know how their role fits into the bigger picture. How do their tasks relate to overarching company values and goals?
By giving employees clarity you improve employee engagement. But you also promote accountability and show employees that their work is valuable.
8. Give regular feedback
Picture an employee – let’s call him Jim – who hasn’t had any manager feedback in a while.
Jim keeps running into the same customer service problem. But he doesn’t feel comfortable approaching his manager about it. And he’s not due a one-to-one for months.
So Jim keeps at it, doubting that he’s doing a good enough job but unsure what to do about it. Without regular manager input Jim feels less confident in his abilities. His job satisfaction inevitably takes a hit.
Now let’s picture a different scene.
Jim’s manager – let’s call her Jane – understands how important feedback is to employee engagement. She sets up regular, informal one-to-ones, where both she and Jim can raise any issues.
Jim gets to hear that he’s doing a great job. And gets useful, actionable advice on what he could do better. He gets recognition where it’s due and a regular reminder of role expectations.
Feedback needs to move in both directions. And it’s as relevant to your longest-serving staff as it is to new hires. Feedback boosts the confidence of employees and increases their job satisfaction, which means better employee engagement.
Employees also stand to benefit most when feedback is constructive. This means managers focus on facts, not opinions. They talk about the actions of an employee, not their personality traits.
They also approach feedback as a two-way conversation, where employees get a chance to share their thoughts within an open and supportive environment.
9. Promote team collaboration
Two heads are always better than one. And employees who work well together are happier, more productive, and less stressed. Team collaboration can help to prevent loneliness, too.
Glassdoor research shows that 60% of employees with less than five years of work experience feel lonely all or most of the time. But 89% of all workers say that a sense of belonging within their company is essential for workplace happiness.
Bringing teams together, including frontline employees who tend to work alone, is therefore crucial to employee engagement. And it starts with company culture.
You need a psychologically safe environment where everyone feels comfortable contributing their thoughts and ideas. Like a calendar of team building activities. Special consideration for new hires and team members who work in isolation. And praise for team successes as well as individual wins.
The right communication and collaboration tools are another important part of the puzzle. Project management software helps people to collaborate when they’re not working in the same location. And chat tools allow workers to share problems, ideas, and solutions with ease.
Elara Caring is one of the largest care providers in the US, with around 32,000 carers working on their frontline. The company found it hard to connect its carers and was experiencing a collaboration problem.
By making Blink their communication hub, they improved team collaboration dramatically. Now 95% of employees say they feel more connected to the organization and their co-workers.
10. Celebrate milestones
Mavis Mills, an ASDA supermarket employee, recently celebrated her 80th birthday. And the whole team celebrated with her. They decorated her checkout with banners and balloons and gave her gifts, flowers, and a cake.
Celebrations like these bring teams together. They boost employee engagement for the person being celebrated and inspire other employees, too.
You can celebrate birthdays, work anniversaries, passing probation, or the successful conclusion of a company project. Anything that fits with your company values and culture.
Of course, it’s easier to plan a celebration for on-site teams. You can organize a gathering in the office or – as ASDA did – around the checkout where Mavis was working.
But that doesn’t mean hybrid and dispersed frontline teams have to forgo celebrations. You can still improve employee engagement by celebrating milestones via internal communication tools.
For example, with the Blink Feed, you can share meaningful milestones with a team or the whole organization – and encourage employees to join in the celebration. You can celebrate little and often to show appreciation for employees on a regular, informal basis.
11. Lead by example
The leaders of today do things differently. Good leaders understand that transparency, fairness, and emotional intelligence help to improve employee engagement.
Unlike workplace leaders of the past, they know that when everyone, at all levels of a company, sticks to the same rules and values people feel more invested in a company’s success.
As a leader, this means practicing what you preach.
You should demonstrate the same commitment to two-way communication, collaboration, and recognition that you want to see in employees. You should model work-life balance so workers find it easier to follow suit.
By living and breathing company values and culture, you inspire trust and respect in your workforce. And when you join them in using the same communication and employee engagement tools, you make it much more likely that people will follow your lead.
12. Measure and act on feedback
Gathering feedback is an essential part of any employee engagement strategy. But simply getting employees to leave feedback isn’t enough. You have to measure and act upon employee feedback, too.
Research shows that people who say their employer takes meaningful action based on their feedback are 37% less likely to look for another job. And they’re also much more likely to take part in future surveys.
So mine employee feedback for data. Then create employee engagement KPIs so you can measure progress. You can base targets around metrics like:
Absenteeism rate
Employee retention rate
Employee net promoter score (eNPS)
It then all comes down to good internal communication. Share your feedback findings and engagement progress with employees. It shows that you take their views seriously and are committed to making improvements.
Employee engagement: the next step
In thriving organizations, the drive to improve employee engagement is more than just an HR team initiative. It’s something that the whole organization embraces as part of its ethos.
Communication, feedback, and recognition become part of everyone’s every day. And the organization benefits from better staff retention, productivity, and satisfaction.
Your organization may not be at this point yet. But wherever you are in your employee engagement journey, the 12 ideas listed above will help you move forward. Weave these activities into your employee engagement strategy and you’ll encourage the employee attitudes and behaviors you want to see.
When it comes to frontline organizations, the right tech tools are a priority because they make employee engagement so much easier. They provide the vital line of connection between every member of your workforce, from new hires to stalwart staff, and frontline workers to your office-based team.
Blink’s mobile-first super-app helps every frontline employee to feel valued and heard. And with a news feed, secure chat, recognition features, surveys, analytics, and more, you have everything you need to transform internal communication and employee engagement for the better.
An intranet is a private internal network a company uses to share information, tools, and documents with its own employees. It looks and feels like the public internet, except only people inside the organization can see it.
Here's the catch. Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2025 puts employee engagement at 20% worldwide, the lowest since 2020, and most workers, especially the 80% who don't sit at a desk, still can't reach the information they need when they actually need it. A modern intranet is how you close that gap.
Whether you are entirely new to internal communications or you are actively looking to upgrade your legacy systems, understanding the basics is critical. Before you start comparing the best intranet platforms on the market today, it is important to clearly define what a modern digital workspace is actually designed to do.
This guide walks through what an intranet is in 2026, how it differs from the version your IT team built a decade ago, the features that actually matter, and why most intranets still quietly fail the people who need them most.
What is an intranet?
An intranet is a private digital workspace for employees. It holds company news, policies, HR documents, team directories, knowledge bases, and internal chat in one place, behind a login only employees can reach. Think of it as the company's internal version of the internet: the same browsing and search experience, restricted to your organization.
A modern intranet runs in the cloud, works on mobile, and plugs into the tools employees already use, from payroll and scheduling to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. It gives people a single place to find what they need, sign off on policies, and stay in the loop on company news.
Gallup's 2025 research ties engagement directly to whether employees feel informed and connected, and 31% of US employees are engaged, the lowest in a decade. An intranet that actually gets used is one of the fastest ways to move that number.
Types of intranet: Which one fits your company?
Most intranets fall into one of four categories. The right choice depends on who needs to use it and how they work.
The last category is the newest and the fastest-growing, mostly because the others were built for people at desks. If your company is mostly frontline, deskless, or multi-site, anything other than a mobile-first intranet will underperform on day one.
How does an intranet actually work?
Under the hood, an intranet is a secure web application. It lives on a server, either on-premises or in the cloud, and is accessible only to authenticated users inside the organization. Employees log in through a browser or mobile app using single sign-on, a company password, or, for frontline workers, a phone number-based identity that doesn't require a corporate email address.
Content is organized into spaces: company-wide feeds, team channels, knowledge bases, policy libraries, and directories. Admins control who sees what by role, location, shift, or department. Search pulls results across everything, and integrations surface data from HR systems, payroll, rota tools, and document stores.
The main thing that separates a 2026 intranet from a 2006 one is identity. Older intranets assumed every employee had a work email. Modern ones don't, because most frontline workers don't. That one architectural shift is why mobile-first intranets reach adoption rates the older generation never could.
What are the key features of a modern intranet?
Features matter less than the question they answer: Would every employee, even the ones without a desk, actually use this? Strip it back to essentials.
A personalized news feed. Company announcements, team updates, and peer recognition, filtered by role and location.
A searchable knowledge base. Policies, how-tos, benefits, and training in one place, findable in two taps.
Team chat and group channels. Direct messages, team chats, site-specific groups.
Policy sign-off with audit trail. Read receipts, confirmations, timestamps.
Integrations with HR and payroll. Pay slips, shift rotas, holiday requests.
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