Kate Isichei is a global collaboration and internal communications consultant and also host of the Engagement Express podcast. She has over 20 years experience working with multinationals on technology implementations, transformation projects and leadership visibility.
What do the words leadership visibility mean to you?
Is it a lone wolf standing at the top of a hill raised up above the masses or is the usual visual that pops into your mind more nuanced?
Leadership usually conjures up thoughts of the very pinnacle of corporate hierarchies. The CEO, and his or her c-suite.
Those who run the company or who are tasked with running it.
Then there are leaders who are less symbolic and more down to earth leaders like team managers and supervisors. The everyday people managers.
What about their visibility? They also need to be seen and heard but also available to see and hear from their people that they’re tasked with looking after.
That, for me, is at the heart of leadership visibility.
What does leadership visibility equate to?
The accountability and responsibility for a group of people and their ability to have a positive experience during the time they are affiliated with your organization.
Visibility equates to being both visible so people can see leaders and also accessible so employees can gain access to interact with leaders in a meaningful way.
In a 2019 Salesforce research report it was found that when employees feel heard they are over four times more likely to feel empowered to perform to the best of their abilities.
To give it their all or exercise that discretionary effort that can make the difference between good and excellent. Of course, it matters how this is done and informality can create a more comfortable environment for both leaders and their people to interact.
What does leadership visibility look like?
For example, if you organize a breakfast session where a leader makes themselves available for 45 minutes and you provide breakfast treats and hot beverages, that could be deemed as a formal gathering.
I have organized a few such sessions and found, in some cases, that there was a level of reluctance to participate. Why should this be? I would say it was cultural as well as the event type.
A breakfast session cannot, in of itself, change a culture or create a welcoming one that provides a safe environment where employees want to be seen, listened to, and heard by their leaders.
That willingness to have conversations with leaders is key.
The role of culture
If an organisation’s culture doesn’t permit or encourage connections with leaders or where they are cordoned off, no amount of breakfast sessions, walk the floors or town hall Q&As will fix this.
In this instance, the toxicity would need to be addressed before any activities could successfully come to fruition. So, it’s less a case of visibility and more a case of authentic visibility.
An approach that aligns visibility programmes with an organisation’s culture. If your managers are having regular conversations with their teams as part of business-as-usual activities, then you’re halfway into the journey of engaging employees through visible leadership.
Managers are key to making unconcealed leadership a success.
The persona of a visible leader
What do accessible leaders look like?
They are personality-driven and offer a heady combination of charisma, capability, intelligence, and social skills that culminates in a person who makes others feel at ease, relaxed, empowered and emboldened to have their say.
Not to say that quiet leaders cannot elicit the same reaction.
It’s less about being extroverted and more about being confident in one’s own skin to give others the assurance that they can do the same without fear of retaliation in response to the sharing of candid views.
Mutual respect is crucial which again is largely driven by culture .
If everyone knows they are in an environment that actively promotes transparency, then leaders can be authentically visible and encourage employees to respond positively to this visibility without viewing this access with suspicion.
What do the words leadership visibility mean to you?
Is it a lone wolf standing at the top of a hill raised up above the masses or is the usual visual that pops into your mind more nuanced?
Leadership usually conjures up thoughts of the very pinnacle of corporate hierarchies. The CEO, and his or her c-suite.
Those who run the company or who are tasked with running it.
Then there are leaders who are less symbolic and more down to earth leaders like team managers and supervisors. The everyday people managers.
What about their visibility? They also need to be seen and heard but also available to see and hear from their people that they’re tasked with looking after.
That, for me, is at the heart of leadership visibility.
What does leadership visibility equate to?
The accountability and responsibility for a group of people and their ability to have a positive experience during the time they are affiliated with your organization.
Visibility equates to being both visible so people can see leaders and also accessible so employees can gain access to interact with leaders in a meaningful way.
In a 2019 Salesforce research report it was found that when employees feel heard they are over four times more likely to feel empowered to perform to the best of their abilities.
To give it their all or exercise that discretionary effort that can make the difference between good and excellent. Of course, it matters how this is done and informality can create a more comfortable environment for both leaders and their people to interact.
What does leadership visibility look like?
For example, if you organize a breakfast session where a leader makes themselves available for 45 minutes and you provide breakfast treats and hot beverages, that could be deemed as a formal gathering.
I have organized a few such sessions and found, in some cases, that there was a level of reluctance to participate. Why should this be? I would say it was cultural as well as the event type.
A breakfast session cannot, in of itself, change a culture or create a welcoming one that provides a safe environment where employees want to be seen, listened to, and heard by their leaders.
That willingness to have conversations with leaders is key.
The role of culture
If an organisation’s culture doesn’t permit or encourage connections with leaders or where they are cordoned off, no amount of breakfast sessions, walk the floors or town hall Q&As will fix this.
In this instance, the toxicity would need to be addressed before any activities could successfully come to fruition. So, it’s less a case of visibility and more a case of authentic visibility.
An approach that aligns visibility programmes with an organisation’s culture. If your managers are having regular conversations with their teams as part of business-as-usual activities, then you’re halfway into the journey of engaging employees through visible leadership.
Managers are key to making unconcealed leadership a success.
The persona of a visible leader
What do accessible leaders look like?
They are personality-driven and offer a heady combination of charisma, capability, intelligence, and social skills that culminates in a person who makes others feel at ease, relaxed, empowered and emboldened to have their say.
Not to say that quiet leaders cannot elicit the same reaction.
It’s less about being extroverted and more about being confident in one’s own skin to give others the assurance that they can do the same without fear of retaliation in response to the sharing of candid views.
Mutual respect is crucial which again is largely driven by culture .
If everyone knows they are in an environment that actively promotes transparency, then leaders can be authentically visible and encourage employees to respond positively to this visibility without viewing this access with suspicion.
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.
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.
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. With52% 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.
"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
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.
56% of US companies have been increasing their level of remote work, according to a 2021 survey.
But as more and more workers operate from different locations, managers around the globe are facing the uncharted territory of managing remote teams. And that’s as if managing a team wasn’t hard enough already in person.
Regardless, the hardship of managing remote teams is a small price to pay for the benefits they offer. Plus, how you handle this new reality of work will shape your true potential as a leader.
So consider this post as your go-to guide for managing remote teams. We’ll begin with some common challenges that plague virtual managers, followed by our best strategies to lead your remote team with confidence.
Challenges of managing remote teams
Working from home seems normal these days, but many organizations didn’t have remote work on their radar until the global pandemic forced them to.
Before we get to the remote management strategies, let’s see some key challenges faced by leaders and their team members when adapting to this new way of working.
Shifting to a new structure
Human beings are creatures of habit. From that morning commute to the evening snack, our daily work routines have probably been pretty consistent.
When you and your team members start working remotely, everything can get upside down. You are forced to establish a new routine, along with juggling your personal and professional duties outside the office, factory, or wherever you used to work before.
Plus, it doesn’t help that you are now supposed to deal with a lot of new virtual tools, communication methods, and remote work policies. No wonder managing remote teams seems overwhelming.
Adopting tech-based communication
Facing an issue, or need a second opinion on something? Just go to your nearest team member and sort it all out in a second.
This is possible in an office, but may feel like a distant dream in today’s remote working environment, too good to be true!
In fact, 45% of employees worry over not seeing their team members in person because of remote work, and 34% have doubts about their ability to collaborate virtually. Ensuring you're providing a good digital employe experience is key.
As communication moves to technologies such as email and instant messaging, managers and their team members are finding it hard to get the answers they need in time.
Juggling productive and personal time
Personal time at home. Work on site. It has been a simple rule to follow. When you work from an office, there’s a clear line between your professional and personal life, at least more straightforward than the boundaries set by remote work.
With remote work, the lines are blurred. It’s easy for the personal responsibilities to distract you from your work, or for your work to eat up your family time. So both managers and their employees are faced with the issue of striking a balance between the two.
Building trust and rapport
When managing remote teams, you want to keep your team members assured that you are available to lead and support them. And that you’re in touch with their concerns, needs, and suggestions.
But when everyone is struggling to communicate efficiently, it gets increasingly difficult to do that. And with no visible body language and non-verbal cues, you may not get an accurate sense of their level of engagement, feelings, and emotional well-being.
We don’t mean to scare you with a laundry list of challenges of leading remote teams. But rather to drill down the fact that you’ll need to really pull up your sleeves for the job. To truly manage and engage remote teams, you should be ready to work harder than ever, which brings us to the next section.
Best practices for managing remote teams
Ready to learn the tips and tricks to manage remote teams the right way? Here’s how to get the best results from your remote employees.
1. Establish clear expectations
34% of remote workers worldwide say that transparency from leadership triggers a deep sense of connectedness at work. And a big part of transparency is setting clear rules and regulations for your team members.
When managing remote teams, it’s important to set boundaries and expectations that your team members are supposed to work with. For example, random video meetings may get awkward for some employees if they weren’t expecting them.
So you need to let your team members know exactly how you plan to manage them from a distance. This includes communicating the following:
Values and behaviors that shape the company culture
Remote work procedures
Guidelines specific to their project
Communication style guides
Expectations regarding workload and availability
The best way to start implementing work expectations when managing virtual teams is to have a kick-off meeting to introduce all the policies and procedures. Then keep reinforcing them in regular weekly and monthly meetings.
2. Implement the right communication channels
Email has its place. But there are many different types of communication, not all of which are best-suited for emails. These include:
Status updates
Frequently used resources for team members
Project schedule and deadlines
Troubleshooting guide for common problems
Because of this, picking the right communication channels is crucial for managing remote teams.
For example, depending on the nature of communication, you may also want to use channels like instant messaging, virtual meetings, or cloud sharing from time to time. And if you want to limit the use of random video calls, you can establish email and online chat as the main communication channels for your team.
Avoid having too many different tools and channels as they can overwhelm your team and allow important messages to slip through the cracks. It’s better to use a single communication platform or employee engagement tool that consists of multiple communication streams.
Blink, for example, is a mobile app that allows team members to communicate via a social-media-style feed, instant messaging, and cloud-based document sharing — all from one place.
3. Set regular check-in times
When your team is working from an office, it’s easy to check in regularly with the whole group as well as individual team members. But don’t think you can’t do the same with remote teams.
In fact, if your team has just started working remotely, you might need to schedule extra check-ins until the team members have adapted successfully to the new routine. Then scale back based on what works for your team and the given workload.
For example, start with a daily meeting of 15-20 minutes. Go around in a circle and give each worker a chance to talk about their plan for the day, any issues they have, and what they need from other team members.
4. Invest in mental health and well-being
According to World Health Organization (WHO), anxiety and depression lead to productivity losses that cost the world $1 trillion annually.
Not just that. For every $1 that goes into workers’ mental health, there’s a return of $4 in terms of employee health and productivity.
When your team members are working remotely, their mental health should be an even higher priority for you than what it was in the office. Because with remote team management, you don’t have as many opportunities to identify what emotional challenges your workers are struggling with.
For example, some employees may find it easier to adapt to remote working and maintain sound health than others. And for the ones that don’t, you’ll need to identify and support them as per their needs. Some ways to do that include:
Appointing a psychotherapist the employees can talk to
Sharing guidelines and resources for self-care
Encouraging workers to take frequent breaks
5. Celebrate both small and big wins
Achieving milestones together is what makes your team, a team. So when managing virtual teams, don’t let the physical distance come in the way of celebrating and rewarding accomplishments.
Celebrating successes will encourage your remote employees and motivate them to keep doing their best work. For example, you can host virtual parties, get a gift delivered to a team member’s doorstep, or give a bonus day off.
Also, don’t postpone a celebration in your wait for achieving something big. Even short-term successes count, especially when managing remote teams. Otherwise, your team members can easily feel discouraged.
6. Document everything
Managing remote teams can get real complicated, real fast. As you take your project activities from the physical world to a virtual environment, many key steps and tasks can slip through the cracks.
So for effective remote team management, it’s not enough to have the workflows, roles, and processes just in your head. The best way to retain and enhance team productivity is to document as much as possible and make the documentation easily accessible for all remote employees.
Create detailed documents that provide step-by-step breakdowns of all the things the team needs to get done, when to do them, and who is responsible for the work items. For example:
Checklists and templates for routine tasks
Playbooks that go deep into project protocols and procedures
Flow charts showing what actions to take in dynamic circumstances
Forms to record key information and instructions to fill them properly
To make sure your team can refer to these documents as needed, put them on a shared storage platform and set permissions for team members to access at any time. This will reduce bottlenecks and get the team members to complete their tasks efficiently.
7. Provide socializing opportunities
According to a Buffer survey, 20% of remote workers go through a heightened sense of loneliness, and another 20% find it difficult to collaborate and communicate.
So it’s vital to encourage social interactions among remote teams. You need to proactively create time and opportunities for employees to connect and socialize with one another.
Some of the best ways to do that include virtual hangouts, joint brainstorming sessions, morning coffee standups, online lunch and learns, and team-building games.
Conclusion: managing remote teams like a pro
As you can see, managing remote teams is not a piece of cake. It requires you to keep a close eye on not just the progress of tasks and project goals, but also team members’ emotional well-being and their relationships with one another.
No doubt, you’ll need to step up as a leader in some big ways. Some of the remote team management strategies we have covered may already be familiar to you, while others will need you to go out of your comfort zone.
Regardless, if you’re serious enough to be reading this article, we’re confident that you can handle managing remote teams with flying colors. So start following these best practices today, and see the difference they make in your remote team’s performance.
Plus, as we said earlier, consider using an all-in-one communication app that can make collaboration easy and bring team members together despite the physical distance that comes with remote work. Book a free blink demo.
Welcome to the February 2026 edition of the Quarterly Unlock — your inside look at what’s new in Blink and how it helps teams move faster, communicate more clearly, and unlock more value across the employee experience.
As organizations scale, systems multiply and communication noise increases. Blink should get smarter, more connected, and easier to manage — without adding complexity.
Here’s what’s new.
#1. Smarter, more relevant communication
When employees see too much content, important updates get buried. When connectivity drops, access disappears. When engagement dips, comms teams feel it first.
This quarter, we’re making sure the right people see the right content at the right time — wherever they are.
Smart Feed
We’re introducing a recommended Feed experience that prioritizes relevance — not just publish time.
Surface the most important content first
Reduce manual pinning and featuring
Adapt the Feed as organizations grow
Improve visibility without extra admin effort
Instead of a strictly chronological stream, Blink becomes intelligent — helping important messages cut through the noise. Designed for large organizations and high-volume Feeds, Smart Feed is built to evolve alongside your communication goals.
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Offline Mode
Frontline work doesn’t always come with reliable signal. Now, Blink doesn’t require it.
Save hub content and Feed posts for offline access on mobile
Access saved items centrally
Automatically sync updates when reconnected
Retain control over sensitive hub items with protected content settings
The result? Critical documents and updates remain accessible — even in low-signal environments like aviation, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, and field operations.
Email delivery of Feed posts
Multi-channel delivery — without duplicating work. Admins can now send a published Feed post as an email to:
Everyone in a group
Or only those who haven’t read it
Each email includes a preview and a direct CTA back into Blink — helping re-engage inactive users and strengthen visibility for critical communications.
For most customers, this feature will be included at no additional cost. For large enterprises with high-volume usage, it may be considered on a case-by-case basis.
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#2. Deeper interoperability across enterprise systems
Employees rely on multiple systems to get work done. But switching between them slows everything down.
This release brings core HR workflows into Blink — turning it from a communication tool into an action hub.
Actionable Workday Nudges
Managers can now approve or deny leave requests directly inside the Blink Feed.
Faster leave request approval turnaround
Reduced friction for frontline managers
Less logging in and navigating systems for employees
Improved visibility into HR processes
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Workday Digests
Daily or weekly summaries highlight open Workday tasks that require attention. Instead of relying on employees to monitor their HR inbox, Blink brings reminders into their everyday workflow — reducing missed deadlines and improving task completion.
SAP SuccessFactors daily Digest
For customers using SAP SuccessFactors, Blink now delivers a configurable daily digest when new tasks are waiting.
Task count surfaced directly in the Feed
Link-through to complete tasks in SuccessFactors
Custom branding supported
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#3. Safer, more confident Communities at scale
As Communities grow, governance becomes critical.
This quarter introduces new controls that allow organizations to scale engagement — without sacrificing oversight.
Request to join a Community
Community admins can now require approval before new members join.
Communities can be set to Open or Closed
Admins receive join requests and approve on web or mobile
Settings take effect immediately
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Request to create a Community
Employees can suggest new Communities — subject to admin approval — supporting organic growth while preventing uncontrolled group sprawl.
Automated Keyword Blocking
Organizations can now define an organization-wide keyword blocklist that prevents specific words or phrases from being sent in chats and comments.
Immediate, private feedback to users
Managed via moderation tools
Works across web, iOS, and Android
This privacy-conscious safety layer helps reduce compliance risk and maintain professional standards — particularly in regulated industries.
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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:
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:
Delivering on the 10 key drivers of employee engagement
Identifying the employee engagement strategies and tactics that work for your employees
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 coreexperiences and tools do you need to provide to your workforce in order to boost the overall employee experience and drive engagement?
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 Formsand 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.
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:
The data that already exists in your company
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.
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.
The workplace is evolving — and so is the way we communicate.
Gone are the days when communication flowed in just one direction, from the boardroom to the break room. Today, the most successful organizations view internal communications as a conversation — not a broadcast.
Consider this: Companies with highly engaged employees are 21% more profitable. And what’s one of the biggest drivers of engagement? Employees who feel heard.
That’s where two-way communication comes in. It’s not just a strategy; it’s the key to creating a thriving, connected workplace. Let’s explore what two-way communication really means — and why it’s the backbone of modern employee engagement.
What is two-way internal communications?
Traditionally, employee communications were one way. Leadership would put out a message, which would then be cascaded downward to managers and employees.
A top-down approach established the C-suite as the primary source of internal communication. It also made it difficult for employees to speak up and be heard.
Two-way communication is different. It incorporates three types of communication:
Top-down communication
Bottom-up communication
Peer-to-peer communication
With channels that support these three types of communication, information moves in all directions. Leaders still share company updates — but this multi-pronged approach gives employees the chance to contribute to the company conversation, too.
They can respond to employee surveys, comment on posts in the company news feed, ask questions in town hall meetings, and send instant messages to peers and managers. Information is shared quickly and openly, just as it is on the social media platforms we’ve all grown accustomed to.
In a culture of two-way communication, employees are no longer just passive consumers of internal communications, but active participants in it. And the benefits this can bring to any organization are substantial.
Why does two-way communication matter?
Poor communication is bad for the employee experience: You’re unlikely to foster a positive employee experience without an effective internal communications strategy.
And poor communication isn’t just bad for culture — it’s bad for business, costing an estimated $15,000 per employee per year on loss of time, productivity, and profit.
Adopting two-way communication is a meaningful way to improve communications at your organization — and it comes with a host of business benefits. Here are all the reasons two-way communication lies at the foundation of any modern workplace.
#1. Better engagement with internal communications
Imagine a conversation with the chattiest person you know. They’re talking nonstop and you struggle to get a word in edgeways. Because you don’t get a chance to speak, you disengage and stop really listening to what is being said.
It’s the same in company-wide conversations. When employees are allowed an active role in communications, they engage more with your message. They’re a lot less likely to ignore your internal content — and a lot more likely to read your comms and take the desired action.
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#2. Better overall employee engagement
Two-way communication doesn’t just improve engagement with internal messages. It enhances employee engagement across the board.
We know that highly engaged employees are 3x more likely to say they feel heard at their workplace than their highly disengaged counterparts. When employees know that their thoughts and opinions matter to leadership, you improve their satisfaction, motivation, and sense of belonging.
#3. Creating a feedback loop
When you facilitate two-way communication, you get constant feedback from employees. Employee comments, questions, and survey responses help you build a picture of what works — and what doesn’t — in regards to your internal communications.
You’ll develop a better understanding of which messages are cutting through and which are creating employee uncertainty. This knowledge helps you to craft better, more effective employee communications going forward.
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#4. Fostering a culture of transparency and trust
No matter the content controls you put in place, opening up your communications to employees requires transparency and trust on the part of your leadership team.
Leaders must be willing to share information on company goals and challenges. They also need to be happy to field employee questions in response to that information.
When leaders demonstrate this level of transparency and trust, employees are more likely to follow suit. You create a company culture in which open communication is valued — and where employees feel comfortable sharing their opinions and concerns.
#5. Promoting inclusion
According to The Workforce Institute, 83% of UK employees say people at their organization are not heard fairly or equally — and 46% say that underrepresented voices are undervalued.
Adopting a policy of two-way communication gives space to previously unheard voices. With the right ethos — and the right internal communications platform — you ensure that all employees are empowered to speak up and be heard.
This leads to greater mutual understanding. It also helps you to create a more inclusive workplace, where everyone feels valued.
#6. Creating coworker connection
Peer-to-peer connection is another beneficial result of two-way communication in the workplace. Over internal communication channels, employees get the chance to build meaningful relationships with coworkers.
This is particularly important for remote and frontline employees, who may spend the majority of their days working alone. Two-way communication channels prevent isolation and disconnection and promote a sense of belonging.
#7. Boosting employee productivity
74% of employees say they are more effective at their jobs when they feel heard.
In a culture of two-way communication, employees get information on policies, tasks, and expectations. But they also get the chance to clarify any uncertainty. With a clear idea of their role and responsibilities, employees are more efficient and less likely to make mistakes.
It’s also easier for coworkers to collaborate with one another. Whether they’re based in the same office — or in completely different locations — employees can share their knowledge and insights, granting a further boost to workforce productivity.
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#8. Reducing employee churn
Research shows that 1 in 3 employees would rather quit or switch teams than voice their true concerns to management. This makes open, trusting, two-way communication channels a crucial part of employee retention.
When employees feel that they can voice their concerns with managers, managers get a chance to respond. They can make changes to the employee experience and encourage employees to stay.
How can you foster two-way communication in your workplace?
Two-way communication requires effective internal communication tools and channels — and this is where a modern employee experience platform (like Blink) can help.
Whether you’re reexamining your current employee communications platform and exploring alternatives, start by looking at solutions that give employees a voice.
A great way to power two-way communication is by starting to use interactive channels like:
Your platform should make it easy for leadership to share company updates. And for employees to share their thoughts and questions with coworkers, managers, and the C-suite.
By embracing these technologies, internal comms teams can create an inclusive environment where every voice is heard and every employee feels connected.
JD Now, powered by Blink, will connect and engage circa 90,000 global workers across JD Group
JD, a leading global omnichannel retailer of sports fashion brands, has partnered with employee experience platform to unveil “JD Now,” a revolutionary employee super-app designed to transform communication and operational efficiency for its entire workforce. The platform is rolling out to circa 90,000 employees across JD Group’s global brands, including JD Sports, Go Outdoors, and Finish Line, marking a significant step forward in the company’s commitment to digital innovation and employee experience.
In the first 10 days following the pilot launch of JD Now, JD saw an incredible 74% adoption rate across the 20,000 initial users, as well as tens of thousands of direct and group messages — showcasing a near-immediate improvement to connection and communication.
Bridging the digital divide
The global retailer launched the platform after identifying opportunities to improve its internal communications and employee engagement. With a rapidly growing workforce, the company recognized that traditional communication methods — including shop-floor huddles, paper magazines, and physical notice boards — were no longer sufficient to maintain the level of connection and operational efficiency required for a business of its scale.
In response to feedback from employees who wanted a higher level of connection across the business, JD Group sought out a cutting-edge solution to unify and streamline its communication channels. Blink was selected for its expertise in frontline employee engagement and its ability to provide a mobile-first, user-friendly platform that could meet the diverse needs of JD’s expansive workforce.
“At JD, we know our people are our greatest asset and we are committed to investing in the tools to ensure they excel,” said Nicola Kowalczuk, chief people officer at JD Group. “The launch of JD Now in partnership with Blink marks an important step forward in enhancing our employees’ work experience and leading the way in retail digital transformation. This platform is not just about communication — it’s about equipping our teams with the resources they need to thrive in a fast-paced retail environment.”
JD Now: Key features and benefits
Unified communication platform: JD Now is an easily accessible platform, simplifying communication and reducing reliance on traditional, inefficient methods.
Enhanced employee engagement: By fostering better interaction between employees and leadership, JD Now is designed to boost morale and reduce attrition, creating a collaborative and engaging team environment.
Employee-generated content: The platform makes it easy for employees to contribute ideas and feedback, encouraging them to be active participants in the brand’s evolution.
Advanced digital transformation: JD Now reflects JD’s dedication to modernizing retail operations and providing employees with the tools needed to excel in a digital age.
Blink, known for its mission to connect frontline teams with the tools they need to thrive, is empowering hundreds of thousands of frontline workers globally with an engaging employee super-app that facilitates an average of seven interactions per day per user and helps to reduce attrition rates by up to 25%.
“Collaborating with JD Group to launch JD Now is a major milestone for Blink,” said Sean Nolan, CEO and co-founder of Blink. “Our mission has always been to bridge the gap between leaders and frontline workers, and JD Now is a testament to our shared vision of transforming employee experience and communication in the retail sector.”
