Retail Employee Engagement: A Manager's Complete Guide

When executives at Nokia Bell Labs brought engineers and scientists together from separate teams, their experiments led to the invention that we know as the vacuum tube.

Since then, the product has transformed hundreds of industries and solidified Nokia’s place in the telecommunications technology space.

The global revenue of their network infrastructure has been increasing by 22% year after year, and for the quarter ending March 31, 2021, it was €1.7B.

That’s the power of cross-functional collaboration. Many of the problems organizations face today need not one, but multiple teams or departments to work with one another. And in a survey of more than 2000 professionals, LinkedIn has identified cross-functional collaboration as a key leadership skill.

That’s why in this post, we’ll take a look at the meaning of cross-functional collaboration, its advantages, and best practices to facilitate cross-functional collaboration at work.

What is cross-functional collaboration?

Cross-functional collaboration refers to the concept of employees from different operational areas of a company working together as a team to complete a project or solve a problem. For example:

• Ecommerce website designers, developers, and copywriters may join forces to deliver a cohesive user experience.
• Sales, customer support, and marketing teams may engage in cross-team collaboration to create a uniform customer journey.
• Manufacturing floor staff and procurement managers may collaborate to reduce excess inventory and ensure stock availability.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Cross-functional collaboration has endless applications and possibilities depending on the business requirements.

Importance of cross-functional collaboration

So why would you want different departments to collaborate? The future belongs to cross-team collaboration. According to Deloitte, “We’re seeing a shift from hierarchies to cross-functional teams. Adopting team structures can improve organizational performance, while not doing so puts you at the risk of falling behind.”

We’ve covered some use cases above but the benefits of cross-functional collaboration go beyond that. These include:

Increased innovation

When you involve people from different parts of the business, you get different points of view. The combination of these unique perspectives can lead to creative ideas for solving problems and lifting production.

Better efficiency

Cross-functional collaboration can make your business operations more efficient. The more different departments collaborate, the more their workflows will evolve and improve.

For example, if a manufacturing company suddenly loses its regular supplier, sales representatives, the ordering department, and the warehouse manager can unite to find a new vendor.

With this cross-team collaboration, they have a high chance of quickly finding a new supplier that satisfies the criteria established by all three of them.

Faster acceptance and implementation of change

When you involve people from different spheres in a change initiative from the beginning, you also get their empathy, buy-in, and trust. And they spread this acceptance to other people in their respective teams.

The result? Everyone’s on the same page, and there are fewer delays in execution. For example, some companies have orientation programs where a new employee is required to spend some time in each department.

This leads to a better understanding of the challenges and decision-making processes in different parts of the business. So whatever team the employee ends up with, he’d still be able to welcome changes introduced by other teams. 

Enhanced organizational knowledge

This one’s a pretty obvious benefit of cross-team collaboration. When you collaborate with other departments, you also get to know the tools, processes, and best practices they are using.

The inner workings of a different department help you learn lessons that you can implement in your own team. For example, they might be using a better tool for data visualization which is also cheaper than yours.

Plus, you get a better sense of how your work and the other team’s work fits into the bigger picture.

Ways to streamline cross-functional collaboration

As you can see, solving problems that affect multiple teams or departments goes a long way in giving you an edge against the competition.

You may think that bringing people together from different teams would be easy, since they’re all part of the same company. But that’s often not the case, especially in medium and large-sized businesses.

Different departments may have conflicting agendas, values, goals, and priorities. And these differences prevent them from progressing on cross-functional projects.

So let’s see the core steps you can take to improve cross-functional collaboration in your business.

Have a clear vision

30% of employees worldwide cite inadequate vision as the reason for the failure of projects in their companies.

Image Source: PMI

If that’s the case for regular projects, you can imagine how high it would be for cross-functional projects.

When you don’t share a concrete reason for the existence of a cross-functional project, why would anyone prioritize it over the tasks within their own team?

Be transparent with the teams involved about why you started the project. Tell them why they were chosen for it. And clarify what’s the end goal.

For example, if you are launching an onboarding program with a mentor from each department, the vision could be to quickly transform new hires into long-term assets.

The more open your communication, the more invested different departments will be in the project’s success.

Gather the right team members

How you build your cross-functional team plays a big role in your project’s success.

For example, having a finance expert in the team will be crucial for a cross-functional project that involves cutting energy costs and becoming a more eco-friendly company. Plus, you’ll also need PR experts that can spread the story in news outlets and give the whole thing a positive spin.

When putting together a cross-functional team, also consider the diversity and influence exerted by every member within the organization. People who are well-liked and respected even outside their immediate departments make perfect candidates for cross-functional initiatives.

Clarify roles and responsibilities

Do any of these ring a bell?

“I thought he/she was going to do it.”

“I keep butting heads with someone in the other team doing my job.”

“I am reporting to two managers from different teams with different ideas on what my job is.”

If you don’t clear up the expectations from each cross-functional team member, your team will remain confused about what exactly they should do, and who will carry out each task.

Remember, employees with clarity on their roles report a high level of satisfaction (75%), effectiveness (86%), and productivity (83%).

Image Source: Effectory

So when engaging in cross-team collaboration, make sure to clearly organize both individual and collective tasks for your workers. Every employee should know what tasks they are supposed to do on their own, and what is to be done in collaboration with other team members.

Put up roles for everyone else to see

A study of American workers across many industries found that 20% end up duplicating the work of others. The reason? Not being able to reach the concerned coworker.

Image Source: Panopto

So while it’s good to clarify roles and responsibilities for each team member, they must also know what everyone else is doing and responsible for. This will help you in two ways:

• There will be no repeat or duplicate work. If someone is already handling a task, another person will not take it up.
• When a team member runs into a problem or needs some information, they’ll know who to reach out to.

The basic information you should openly display for each team member includes:

• Full name
• Department name and job title
• Role within the cross-functional project
• Contact information

‍ A great way to streamline this process is to use an employee directory. Blink, for example, is an internal communication app that offers this feature.

It lets you create a directory where information about each worker can be displayed. Plus, employees can search or reach anyone in the directory via instant messaging. 

Ensure clear and regular communication

The ability to communicate the goals, status, and outcome of your team's work is crucial for cross-functional collaboration. When cross-functional teams don’t discuss project updates and requirements with one another, they cannot realize their full potential.

But cross-functional communication can be tricky. People are occupied with projects within their immediate teams, and no one may be willing to go the extra mile to communicate with other departments.

A great way to make communication easy for everyone is by implementing simple communication channels. Even better if you can provide a designated space for employees to share updates, exchange messages, and share documents.

That way, you make it easy for different departments to share information without switching between multiple apps.

Another thing you should do is to create a concrete communication strategy for your cross-functional project. The communication strategy will clarify how and when to send updates, and set communication expectations for the teams involved.

Create comprehensive documentation

Cross-functional projects are usually big, and big projects are scary. There are many moving parts that can overwhelm the teams involved. They may not know where to begin, how to carry out a task, or whom to ask.

In such a situation, documenting every aspect of the project can be a huge help. It clarifies processes and boosts productivity in both the short and long term.

Documenting involves writing down details about the project goals, baseline measurements, ongoing tasks, expected results, and more. Then making all this information available to the departments that have a stake in the cross-functional project.

You can begin by creating a project timeline to set and communicate the main tasks and a schedule based on when they should be completed as well as establish a project baseline.

Take construction projects, for example. These are typically complex cross-functional ventures because they require the design, procurement, and construction teams to collaborate deeply with one another.

And they have many tasks and subtasks to be managed on a strict timeline, as delays can lead to increased costs. Here’s what a project timeline might look like for such a project.

Image Source: GanttPRO

This level of detail in your documentation goes a long way in showing both the big-picture view and small tasks associated with the project, making the project vision easy to digest for all the team members.

Conclusion: how to streamline cross-functional collaboration

Cross-functional collaboration can be daunting, but its potential for your business can’t be ignored. It’s an opportunity to leverage the leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills from all corners of your company and use them to drive powerful results.

So use these strategies to set a solid foundation for cross-functional success. As your teams start collaborating, encourage them to keep adjusting and learning from the experience. Because these lessons will help you improve your organization’s ability to facilitate cross-functional collaboration even further.

And if you’re looking for a tool that can help enhance cross-functional collaboration at work, look no further than Blink. Request a free demo today.

Diversity and inclusion aren’t just HR trends. They’re strategic issues.

Studies show that lack of inclusion in the workplace costs U.S. businesses up to $1.05 trillion. Insights highlighting the costs of poor diversity measures are forcing companies to reevaluate existing policies and practices.

Specifically, the COVID-19 global pandemic has shined a light on diversity and inclusion issues affecting frontline workers.

On the flip side, companies that implement diversity and inclusion strategies are reaping benefits such as increased employee engagement, better retention, and more creative problem-solving.

Here’s what you’ll learn

• Current state of diversity in the workplace for frontline workers
• How a lack of diversity in the workplace affects frontline workers
• Business benefits of providing diversity in the workplace
• What diversity in the workplace looks like
• Obstacles to diversity in the workplace
• How to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace
• Final thoughts: championing diversity in the workplace for frontline workers

In this post, we’ll discuss the current inclusion challenges facing frontline workers. We’ll also outline how businesses can better promote diversity in the workplace – and how to include it in your internal communications.

Current state of diversity in the workplace for frontline workers

Frontline workers in the United States are employed in the following six industries:

• Grocery, convenience, and drugstore
• Public transit
• Trucking, warehouses, and postal service
• Building cleaning services
• Health care
• Child care and social services

When the U.S. government issued mandated business shutdowns, these essential industries remained open. The frontline workers who keep these businesses running experienced pandemic-related stress and risk of exposure to the COVID-19 virus.

Here’s a quick look at the demographics of the more than 31 million frontline workers in the United States:

• 64.4% female / 36.6% male
• 58.8% white
• 17.0% Black
• 16.3% Hispanic
• 6.7% AAPI (Asian American / Pacific Islander)

Although women make up most frontline workers, they’re underrepresented in the public transit (29.1%) and trucking, warehouse, and postal service (22.7%) industries.

How a lack of diversity in the workplace affects frontline workers

Frontline workers are the face of your company, and they provide valuable insights into your customers’ needs and pain points. However, if you don’t prioritize diversity and inclusion in your frontline workforce, you could risk losing many of these high-impact team members.

Here are a few ways lack of inclusion and diversity in the work environment creates a negative experience for frontline workers:

Poor communication

Communication between team members with different native languages or cultures can be challenging. Add to that the fact your frontline employees aren’t necessarily in the office every day; they’re out in the world facing customers.

Without communications systems in place that cater to all of your employees, your frontline workers can feel confused or disconnected from the greater team. In more extreme cases, poor communication channels can lead to conflict between team members.

Increased chance of discrimination

A lack of diversity creates a workplace environment with a higher chance of discrimination.

When companies have a clear majority profile, it’s more likely for an employee who doesn’t “fit the mold” to experience harassment and discrimination. If you don’t have diversity in management positions, it’s harder for employees to speak up about harassment or other negative experiences.

Less incentive to feel engaged at work

Even if frontline employees don’t experience harassment at work, lack of diversity leads to lower employee engagement. A frontline employee who’s different from the workplace majority can experience isolation and feel they’re not seen or heard.

And if your company tends to promote only those who fit the majority, then employees who feel different won’t see room for long-term growth that keeps them engaged.

Ultimately, employees who don’t feel safe or valued in your organization are more likely to leave. Over time, the cost of continually replacing alienated and dissatisfied employees will cost your business.

Business benefits of providing diversity in the workplace

Creating a more diverse place and inclusive culture doesn’t just benefit your frontline employees; it’s a competitive business advantage too.

Here are the top benefits that businesses report after investing in diversity and inclusion programs:

Increased perspectives and creativity

A diverse workforce brings unique perspectives to the table, which increases creativity and problem-solving. According to a Boston Consulting Group study of more than 1,600 companies, teams with diverse leadership drive almost 20% more innovation revenue than their counterparts.

Image source

Increased profits

According to the Wall Street Journal, the 20 businesses ranked the highest in diversity and inclusion scores recorded 12% operating profit margins. Companies who ranked low on diversity initiatives, on the other hand, only generated operating profit margins of 8%.

Bringing together people from different backgrounds gives you a broader customer perspective, results in better decision making, and helps you avoid tone-deaf features or marketing campaigns.

Different perspectives in your business help you identify and capitalize on more market opportunities.

Reduced employee turnover

Higher employee engagement remains one of the top benefits of hiring diverse teams — businesses with better employee engagement experience less turnover in their workforce.

What diversity in the workplace looks like

It’s clear that successful workplace diversity and inclusion efforts can give businesses a strategic advantage.

But what exactly does diversity in the workplace look like?

It turns out that diversity is, well, diverse. Business owners and leaders must consider several types of diversity, including:

• Cultural background diversity
• Religious diversity
• Gender identity diversity
• Race and ethnicity diversity
• Age diversity
• Neurodiversity
• Disability diversity
• Sexual orientation diversity

Modern diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) programs need to go further than race and gender diversity.

Companies also need to think about embracing diversity in all departments and at all levels of their organization. Diversity initiatives are most successful when they include leadership and management.

Obstacles to diversity in the workplace

While the benefits of workplace diversity may seem clear, many companies struggle to implement effective diversity programs.

The primary obstacles businesses face when creating a diverse and inclusive environment are:

• Leadership buy-in
• Manager training
• Lack of awareness
• Encouraging honest feedback from employees

How to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace

1. Expand where you post job notifications
2. Train leaders and managers
3. Allow employees to take off cultural and religious holidays
4. Offer on-site daycare
5. Extend options for flexible hours
6. Use an app with on-demand translation
7. Solicit feedback from your employees

1. Expand where you post job notifications

Fostering a diverse workplace starts with the hiring process. Hiring managers can reach a more diverse talent pool by expanding where they share job openings. Your hiring department can build relationships with outreach groups, community hiring offices and chambers of commerce, and job fairs that cater to minority groups.

2. Train leaders and managers

You can’t assume that your managers know the value of diversity. To successfully implement diversity and inclusion efforts into company culture, both leadership and frontline managers need to buy into the idea of creating diverse teams.

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As you make changes in your hiring process, conduct manager training sessions that underscore the benefits of an inclusive workplace. Give them tools to implement your initiatives on their teams.

3. Allow employees to take off cultural and religious holidays

When you hire diverse talent, demonstrate that your company honors and celebrates the various cultural backgrounds and points of view your team brings to the workplace.

One simple way to do that is by letting employees take off work for religious or cultural holidays that aren’t observed by the entire office. By creating a culture that empowers all workers to observe important holidays, you can increase employee engagement and retention.

4. Offer on-site daycare

Many diversity initiatives focus on race and ethnicity, but gender diversity is an equally important facet. Although gender roles are expanding, access to quality childcare presents a significant challenge to working mothers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, 2.9 million women left the workforce between March and September 2021, when schools closed.

According to Care.com, over 60% of parents would be more loyal to their company and have better job performance if they had access to employer-subsidized child care.

Let’s face it: your employees’ lives don’t revolve around their jobs. Many of them want to start families and raise children. If you consider child care a business issue, you can improve retention and job performance.

5. Extend options for flexible hours

If you can’t offer employer-subsidized child care, then consider expanding your flexible work hour options. Telecommuting, remote work, part-time positions, and job sharing help you provide equal opportunity to a more diverse talent pool.

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Flexible work hours will grow increasingly important as more baby boomers move into retirement and old age. Minorities rely less on professional care for the elderly. So, many millennials are entering an era where parent care and child care compete with work for their attention.

Offering remote work or even hybrid work models means your diverse employees won’t have to choose between work and parent care. You’ll have a more engaged team that feels seen, heard, and supported.

6. Use an app with on-demand translation

It’s not enough to focus on hiring people from diverse backgrounds; you have to ensure that your workplace culture feels inclusive to everyone. If you create a recruitment process that succeeds in cultivating a diverse workplace, consider using an app with on-demand translation.

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Make it possible for everyone at the company to access your internal communications in their native language.

7. Solicit feedback from your employees

Bottom line, fostering diversity and inclusion in the workplace is an ongoing process. You can’t do it all in one fell swoop. To ensure your entire team feels heard, consistently ask for feedback from employees.

That’s helpful when starting, and it lets you measure your success as you roll out changes to company culture. Keep in mind that change doesn’t happen overnight. Diverse employees may not feel comfortable voicing concerns to managers or other leaders in person. So, consider using an internal communications app to let employees submit feedback.

Final thoughts: championing diversity in the workplace for frontline workers

Implementing diversity and inclusion initiatives helps you create a workplace where your employees feel included and empowered. When you have an engaged team of diverse employees, your business performs better.
Explore Blink today to learn more about technology solutions that improve engagement and retention for everybody on your team.

Internal communicators, it’s time to share the mic with your employees

There are an estimated 50 million content creators worldwide. Alongside the A-listers and sports stars, there are lots of regular people posting videos, sharing stories, and creating content that connects.

The social media giants have tapped into something. They know that people don’t just want to consume content. They want to contribute. And in 2025, this creator mindset deserves a place within your employee communications strategy.

An internal creator culture allows employees to react, comment, and share their own stories — you turn spectators into storytellers. Give the green light to employee-generated content (EGC) and you give your entire workforce a voice while taking engagement on your internal communication channels through the roof.

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Want to drive this kind of mindset at your organization? Here, we look at the benefits, risks, and tips you need to know when building an internal creator culture.

Why internal communications needs creators, not just consumers

Your comms pros are great at what they do, right? So what does EGC have that traditional comms doesn’t?

#1. Authenticity

Trust in leadership teams is down. In fact, Gen Z and Millennial workers are some of the least trusting in the workplace.

Humanizing your executive communications helps. But when someone has their guard up, it’s tough to make a human connection.

Real stories from real employees hit different. Like Iman Pabani recently said in Fortune: “Credibility today isn’t about expertise but about who tells the most compelling story.”

It’s not always slick and polished. But EGC is genuine. It reflects the real experiences of your workforce. Unscripted moments stick in the mind and spark conversations.

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#2. Diversity

When your internal comms team creates every piece of content, it can start to sound…well, like internal comms. Perspective and tone become repetitive and employees start to switch off.

But hand the mic to your employees and you reflect your entire organization — not just the C-suite office.

You can create Insta-worthy internal comms that resonate with your digital natives. You can post frontline-focused and relevant content created by frontline employees. You can respond with agility to the latest events and trends. 

EGC helps you showcase a more diverse range of voices and create a sense of community across your internal communications channels.

In a nutshell? By sharing diverse and authentic voices, EGC improves employee communications and employee engagement. It helps you build connection and trust across your organization — and develop a vibrant company culture.

Busting the myths about employee-generated content

Here at Blink, we’re big champions of EGC. But we know that not every organization approaches this topic with the same level of enthusiasm.

Large companies are often a little wary about opening up their comms channels to employees. But their concerns don’t always reflect how EGC works in practice.

So — in the hopes of settling a few nerves — here are some common EGC misconceptions and the reality behind them.

“It’s risky.”

Giving employees free rein to post on your internal communications platform can feel risky. But with the right guardrails in place, it’s empowering and effective.

Here are some ideas for managing the risks associated with EGC:

• Assign moderators to take down any content that fails to meet your creator guidelines
• Only allow content online once it’s been approved by your comms team
• Make an employee’s content visible to just their team — not the whole organization
• Do a trial run to see how EGC fits within your content ecosystem

With the right internal communication tools, there are lots of levers you can pull. You can fine-tune permissions and oversight to minimize the risks of EGC while maximizing the benefits.

“People won’t participate.”

Build it and they will come? But what if they don’t?

Many comms pros are worried that they’ll enable and encourage an internal creator culture only for there to be tumbleweed — they’ll find that their employees simply aren’t interested in posting to company channels.

If you have an organizational culture of open communication, this is unlikely to be the case. You’ve already created the psychologically safe conditions that make content-sharing feel normal and fun.

What’s more, remember that many of your employees are already creating content for their social media profiles. All it takes is a small shift in mindset and easy-to-use digital tools to harness their creative talent for your comms platform.

“It’s just fluff.”

Of course, your employees won’t be posting company news or financial forecasts. But their lighter style of content still brings a ton of value to your organization.

Birthday shoutouts make employees feel seen. A behind-the-scenes video instills pride and morale. That “meet my team” post builds bridges between departments.

With the help of EGC you can create a digital water cooler — a place where employees gather, connect, and find enjoyment in their work day. And its impact on your business shouldn’t be underestimated.

EGC boosts culture and engagement — and moves the dial on big business metrics like employee satisfaction and retention. It’s not about jumping onto the latest internal comms trends and it’s far from “just fluff.”

The building blocks of a creator culture

Convinced that a creator culture can benefit your business? Here are the four pillars you need to put in place to make it happen:

• Tools. The best workplace communication tools make life easy for employee content creators. They’re mobile-friendly, so creators can upload photo and video content straight from their smartphones. They provide in-built templates and AI support that guide employees to create the best possible posts. These comms tools also inspire interaction by giving your EGC audience a range of emojis, GIFs, and reactions to choose from. 

• Permission. Beyond the permission settings on your employee communication platform, you should aim for a company culture of psychological safety, where employees know that showing up and sharing is celebrated. That means normalizing imperfect content — the kind filmed on a hand-held smartphone screen. And leading from the top by getting business leaders to post personal or informal content first.

• Inspiration. Kickstart creativity by showing employee content creators what’s possible on your internal comms platform. Showcase early EGC examples from real employees. Also, create content prompts, asking employees to share their content around a particular theme or hashtag. Give them inspiration and employees are much more likely to get involved.

• Feedback. Positive reinforcement fuels more great content. So like, comment, and repost EGC on your networks. Encourage employee feedback. Give kudos publicly, celebrating creators and maybe even crowning a Creator of the Month. Also, share content stats, telling employee creators which types of communication are resonating and why — so they can create more of the same.

How to start small and scale with EGC

Still unsure how to get your EGC initiative off the ground? Here are some ideas for getting started.

Start with a pilot

Before you go all in, test the waters. Start an EGC pilot with a small group — how about your frontline employees, remote workers, or a group of culture champions?

Give this group a clear brief. Allow them to post and view EGC. Then, after a month or so, dive into the top metrics to gauge effective communication.

How has this content performed in terms of likes, shares, and comments? Is this group logging onto the platform more often? Are employee engagement stats improving?

If your pilot is a success, you can roll out your EGC initiative to the wider organization.

Create a series

Get the ball rolling and content creation brains ticking by launching a series. How about one of these ideas:

• A day in the life (a behind-the-scenes look at employee workdays)
• My why (insight into the things employees love about their jobs)
• Work hacks (tips on how to bring your A-game and get the most from workplace tools)
• Weekly win (one thing that went really well this week)

Provide a few strong examples, regularly promote your series across employee communication channels, and keep the momentum going with reminders and reactions.

Offer incentives

When you’re just getting started with EGC, incentives can be useful.

Gamification works well. Features like leaderboards, badges, and points for content creation can awaken employees’ sense of competition. Which means lots of great EGC for your news feed.

Another idea? Offer tangible rewards, like gift cards, lunch vouchers, and professional opportunities. Perhaps a top content creator could represent their team in a leadership Q&A. 

But you don’t need to overthink it. Sometimes a few words of appreciation do more than any points system. Thank employees for their content creation efforts and you’ll inspire them to do more.

Using EGC to elevate employee communications

Employee-generated content is a breath of fresh air for your employee communications. It adds authenticity, fosters two-way communication, and builds a real sense of community — all things traditional messaging can struggle to deliver.

Employees enjoy logging onto your comms platform to see what their peers have shared. And once they’re there, your core messages are more likely to cut through.

EGC also works wonders for company culture. A social feed full of real voices and relatable moments helps everyone feel seen, heard, and connected — which means a better employee experience and a workplace people genuinely want to be part of.

If you’re just getting started with EGC, it needn’t be a mountain to climb. Start small, share content inspiration, and give employees the essential tools they need to be the voice your comms has been missing.

Blink. And build an internal creator culture at your organization.

Another week, another Life at Blink spotlight! This time, we're excited to introduce a key member of our London office — Bhoomi Modi! As our QA Analyst, Bhoomi has been collaborating closely with our Product & Engineering team for just over two years.

Dive into this article to learn more about Bhoomi, her role, and what makes life at Blink so special!

What initially attracted you to join Blink?

When I first learned about Blink, what immediately drew me in was the company’s clear mission to empower frontline workers. The idea of contributing to tools that genuinely make a difference for those on the ground was very persuasive. It wasn’t just about the technology — it was about creating something that could transform the day-to-day experience of so many people.

Another big factor was that from the start I could see that this was a team deeply committed to innovation and making a positive impact. The collaborative environment and the focus on meaningful, purpose-driven work really resonated with me. That combination of mission and culture made it clear that Blink was the place I wanted to be.

What's a project you are proud of from your time at Blink?

One project that stands out to me is the automation of our tests. As a QA Analyst responsible for testing most of our features, this was a major initiative that required a great deal of long-term commitment and dedication.

What made this project truly special was the collaboration with our developers. Working closely with them not only helped us achieve our goals, but it also gave me the chance to grow and learn from some really talented people. It was a humbling experience that deepened my understanding of the development process, and it’s made me better at what I do. Knowing that the automation we implemented has made a real difference in our workflow is something that brings me a lot of personal satisfaction.

How would you describe the company culture at Blink in three words?

If I had to pick just three words, I’d say fun, friendly, and fast-paced. There’s a real sense of enjoyment in what we do here—work is challenging, but it’s also genuinely fun. The team is incredibly welcoming and supportive, so you always feel like you’re part of something bigger. And when I say fast-paced, I mean it in the best way possible. Things move quickly here, but that energy keeps everyone engaged and constantly pushing forward.

What's one thing you're excited about for the future of Blink?

I’m really excited to see how Blink continues to grow and evolve. It’s inspiring to be part of a company that’s making such a meaningful impact, and knowing that I’ve contributed, even in a small way, feels incredibly rewarding. There’s something special about watching the company’s journey and realizing that I’ve played a part in that story. I can’t wait to see where we go next.

Can you tell us about a recent initiative or program launched at Blink that you found particularly exciting?

One initiative that really stands out to me is Blink for Everyone. I’m especially proud of this program because it supports non-profit organizations that are doing incredible work for the community, often with very limited resources. I love to know that we’re helping these organizations strengthen their employee connections and make their teams feel more united and valued. Knowing that we’re making a difference for groups that give so much back to society is something that truly motivates me. 

Why do you work for Blink?

I work for Blink because everything we do is truly centered around the frontline worker. In every session, whether we’re discussing new features or analyzing metrics, the focus is always on how we can better serve our end users. We constantly ask ourselves, "What challenges are they facing, and how can we help?". This dedication to making a real difference for the people on the ground is what keeps our momentum strong and our team closely bonded.

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A 2022 Gallup report on the work environment found that businesses with engaged employees have 23% higher profits than companies with “miserable workers”. Such businesses also see lower absenteeism and higher customer loyalty.

Unfortunately, Gallup’s 2023 report goes on to tell us that only 23% of employees are actually engaged. 

The solution? Effective employee engagement strategies designed to help you create a better company culture, reduce staff turnover, and eventually boost your company’s profits. 

But before you can do any of that, you need to know how to measure employee engagement, and what measurement methods really work. 

Once you have the tools to measure engagement, you’ll have a solid foundation for improving your engagement levels and reaping the benefits that highly engaged employees bring.

What should you do before measuring employee engagement?

Understand your workforce

Each employee is different with their own unique preferences, needs, and motivations. As such, it's important to get to know your teams well — their needs, challenges, and everything in between — so that you can tailor your employee engagement strategy to work best for them.

Start by getting to know your workforce better: who they are, how they work, and what currently gets in the way of them engaging. 

For example, there is often a huge digital inclusion gap between frontline staff and their desk-based coworkers. This gap makes it very hard for frontline workers to engage with their organizations and roles – and even harder for business leaders to get to know them in the first place.

This is where engaging your first-line managers becomes crucial. By enabling first-line managers with the skills and tools to get to know their teams, you have a hotline directly to your frontline – and their engagement preferences.

It’s also important to consider the types of metrics you use for your specific workforce. Desk-based engagement metrics may not accurately reflect the engagement levels of people working in frontline roles. Transit, healthcare, logistics, or manufacturing workers (to name a few) will often have different requirements, channel preferences, and motivations for engagement than other employees.

Therefore, it's essential to understand the specific engagement requirements of your staff, track tailored engagement metrics, and create strategies to address them.

Agree on engagement goals and outcomes 

Once you know your workers’ needs, it is important to agree on engagement goals and outcomes with other stakeholders in your organization. This could involve gaining the buy-in of senior management, employee representatives, or other key stakeholders. 

Clearly defining your goals and desired outcomes will help ensure that efforts and metrics used to improve engagement are focused and aligned with your overall business strategy. Goal and outcome KPI could include:

• Goal: Increase employee retention by 10%
• Outcome KPI: Employee retention rate
• Goal: Reduce employee turnover by 25%
• Outcome KPI: Voluntary resignation rate
• Goal: Drive employee satisfaction by 15%
• Outcome KPI: Employee satisfaction survey or ENPS scores

By taking these steps before measuring employee engagement, you can ensure that you have a solid understanding of your workforce, metrics that reflect your business objectives, and clear engagement goals to achieve. 

There are a number of metrics and methods that can help you gauge a holistic view of employee satisfaction, productivity, and overall engagement in your company, 10 of which we’ll dive into in more detail below.

10 ways to measure employee engagement

Both survey and non-survey methods are available methods to measure employee engagement. Typically, it’s best to use a mix of both to get a holistic overview of employee engagement.

How to measure engagement with survey methods

Surveys help you reach a considerable number of employees at once. 

Running employee surveys can be a time-consuming, paper-filled process, but it’s still a great starting point for building the foundation of your employee engagement efforts. And with modern Employee Survey tools now available to streamline the whole process, it needn’t be such a laborious task.

Here are three survey measurement methods you can implement:

1. Annual employee engagement surveys

An annual employee engagement survey measures employees’ experience, motivation, and passion for their job and organization. It reveals how your employees go about their daily jobs and what you can do to improve their engagement on a large, long-term scale.

You can use these surveys to get ideas on areas for improvement and a basis for new recommendations and goals. 

Similarly, you can use employee surveys to evaluate your company’s culture and see whether the desired cultural values are practiced among desk-based and deskless employees. 

However, employee engagement surveys are only effective if you conduct them correctly. 

Here are four best practices for conducting employee surveys:

• Use a mix of survey questions: Ask both multiple-choice and open-ended questions. This helps your company collect the most insights into employee engagement without overwhelming respondents.
• Leverage mobile apps: Paper surveys don’t cut it. They’re time-consuming since you wait for employees to return the survey papers before you can analyze them, and they’re often disregarded by employees completely or inaccessible by teams that are not in the corporate office, such as frontline teams. Digital surveys take far less time to create and share, and the response is almost instant. So, create surveys that employees can complete from their personal or corporate devices from any location. 
• Share employee survey results: Share the survey findings with your office and your frontline workers and let them know what actions you’ll take. Managers and leadership need to assure employees that they’re listening and taking into consideration the feedback received. 

Identify the best time(s) to survey employees: It might be smart to run your survey during slower periods of work, so that employees have enough time to devote to the survey. Similarly, there’s solid advice to avoid conducting surveys during high-stress periods or bonus season. Such periods skew the survey results and give an unrealistic picture of everyday employee engagement and satisfaction.

2. Pulse engagement surveys

Employee pulse surveys allow you to send more frequent survey requests to your teams. Instead of the annual snapshot of data you gain from once-a-year surveys, pulse surveys let you measure employee engagement levels in real time.

This short survey format allows your teams to provide quick feedback on any aspect of the job or organization, from team dynamics and workflows to company policies and leadership. It’s a great way to learn more about what’s working for your employees on a daily basis and identify what could be improved. 

Pulse surveys are much shorter, providing less data than annual surveys but offering real-time insights into employees’ current feelings about the workplace and their job satisfaction.

As such, pulse surveys can be incredibly effective at identifying any sudden decreases or increases in employee morale and engagement, helping you spot them and take action quickly.

You can also tailor pulse surveys to navigate different occasions and identify trends in employee engagement year-round, instead of just once a year. For example, you could send a survey after an important organizational announcement or when there’s been a period of major change.

However you choose to use them, regular pulse surveys are a great way to measure employee engagement and ensure your workforce feels heard.

3. Employee net promoter score (eNPS)

Chances are your organization is already using the net promoter score (NPS) to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty. The same metric can also be used internally to measure employee engagement.

The employee net promoter score (eNPS) provides a solid basis for understanding employee engagement and loyalty in a cost-effective way. By tracking the eNPS scores over time, you can identify trends in employee engagement — which can help you understand how the changes you implement affect staff engagement. 

Expert tip: On its own, eNPS is not the most effective way to measure engagement.eNPS it tells you the ‘what’ but not the ‘why’ of an employee engagement score. Only measure employee engagement via eNPS if you can follow it up with more detailed methods, such as employee engagement surveys.

Further methods for measuring employee engagement

4. Implement an employee app with analytics features

Many leaders aren’t aware of the reasons behind the lack of engagement and increasing turnover rates in their business — especially frontline managers. Due to the nature of frontline organizations — varied work environments, conflicting shift patterns, and a historical reliance on paper — it is more difficult to engage with frontline workers and even harder to measure their engagement levels. 

As such, employee feedback and surveys don’t always provide the response rates you want, and employees don’t always provide insights you can act on.

To address this, you can implement an employee engagement super-app like Blink to create a digital space that invites a multidirectional, real-time conversation where frontline workers (and their desked counterparts) can speak directly to management — and to each other.

You can also use this technology to measure the outcome of their work environment and assess how your workers engage with your content, interact with other teammates, and participate in company-wide conversations. 

For instance, Blink offers Frontline Intelligence — an integrated analytics tool that measures employee engagement by tracking:

• Content metrics: See how your workers interact with posts, files, or pages you share. You can track important metrics such as reach, impressions, likes, comments, and link clicks. 
• Communication flows: View how many team members communicate with others using the employee app. Visualize the growth in communication and changes in relationships over time to keep a tab on your organization’s employee engagement.
• Internal trends: Get an overview of trending posts and topics in the employee feed to understand which content performs best and when.

This allows you to uncover who your promoters of engagement are, and who’s in line with your company’s mission and values. You can capture the insights that aren’t explicitly communicated to you – and integrate that into your next steps.

This data can help you detect feelings of disengagement early on and do a root cause analysis before they become a serious problem, affect productivity and quality of work, and increase your turnover rate.

Ensure that you also measure the adoption rate for your employee app. A high adoption rate can be indicative that your employees are engaged in their roles and understand the value that a new tool is bringing to the business. You may see differences in app usage trends between the office and frontline workers. If that is the case, add questions surrounding employee app usage in the next employee survey. 

If you’re looking for an employee app that’s designed for frontline organizations, check out Blink. This all-in-one platform gives:

• Frontline workers access to the people, processes, communications, and applications they need to do their jobs — all through their corporate or personal devices. 
• Leaders access to the data they need to improve the employee experience in meaningful ways.

5. 1-1s

1-1s are one of the most effective ways to measure employee engagement. 

These meetings allow you to have meaningful conversations with each of your team members about their performance, goals, and satisfaction levels. They also give employees an opportunity to provide honest and constructive feedback about their work environment, so that they can help influence real, positive change within the organization.

1-1s can be used as a more informal and frequent performance review, and they can give you detailed insights into the current state of employee engagement. By keeping track of these meetings over time, you can identify any sudden drops or increases in engagement, and take action accordingly.

6. Performance reviews and feedback meetings

As a more formal 1-1 process, performance reviews and regular feedback meetings can be used to make critical decisions on employee compensation, necessary training, and proposed career development. But you can also use them to gauge and measure employee engagement. 

Highly-engaged workers are more likely to perform well in their jobs. Gallup found that engaged workers are 18% more likely to have above-average employee productivity. 

To effectively gauge your employees’ performance and improve engagement, develop a continuous feedback process so that employees know how they’re doing and what’s expected.

Here’s how you can implement a reliable feedback process:

• Create a list of opportunities when employee feedback can give you critical insights into how your company operates, such as at the close of onboarding and recruitment or during quarterly and annual performance reviews.
• Use various methods and strategies to collect feedback to keep employees engaged and get the most relevant answers for the situation.
• Implement engaging and constructive conversations between managers and employees at least once every two months. Ensure managers are practicing active listening and that they are actually implementing change based on the feedback. 

7. Exit interviews

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMZ89C2tYHw&ab_channel=HRUniversity

Exit interviews are an important component of any employee engagement strategy. They provide invaluable insight into the reasons why employees choose to leave your company, and can help you identify areas that need improvement in order to keep your best talent.

Some example exit interview questions to ask could include:

• Why are you leaving the company?
• What was the motivation behind your decision to search for a new job?
• Can you identify the factors that had a positive or negative impact on your ability to succeed in your role?
• Based on your experience, do you have any recommendations for onboarding new employees?
• How did you feel about the management of your role?
• Did you feel appreciated by your team, supervisors and/or managers?
• What were the most enjoyable aspects of this job?
• What was the most challenging aspect of this job for you? 

Not all employees are willing to offer honest feedback during an exit interview, so consider implementing a post-exit survey where you can ask more detailed questions about employee satisfaction and engagement while the person is still employed at your organization.

This allows you to better understand the motivations behind each employee’s decision to leave and take action to prevent similar situations from occurring in the future. 

If you want to stay two steps ahead of the exit interview, however, stay interviews can be a potentially transformative addition to your employee engagement strategy. Currently deployed by only 27% of US HR decision-makers, stay interviews help you understand how well your current employees’ expectations are being met when it comes to meaningful connections.

How to measure employee engagement through key metrics

8. Internal communication receptiveness

Effective internal communication can be used to bridge the gap between managers and employees, build trust in the workplace, and boost employee engagement. But it’s not enough just to communicate –  you need to measure how your employees actually react and respond to the content you share.

That’s where key metrics come in. From employee app usage data, to the amount of content employees interact with or create, there are a number of metrics that can give you valuable insights about employee engagement.

You can measure receptiveness to your internal communication by tracking how much of your content is consumed, whether it’s posts or newsletters.

Specific metrics like post likes and response rates, message opens, and even file analytics can tell you how receptive your teams are to internal communication efforts. If you’re using a super-app like Blink, you can track these metrics over time to monitor how well your internal messages are being received.

The data from these analytics can give you the confidence you need to leave certain channels of communication behind. If frontline workers are not engaging with email — or don't even have access to it! — then waste no more time sending email comms, for example. An accessible mobile tool like Blink can pave the way for greater internal communication receptiveness by giving everyone equal access to messages, wherever they log in from.

9. Voluntary turnover rate

If an employee voluntarily resigns from an organization, it’s voluntary turnover. 

Voluntary turnover is on the rise. According to the Institute of Corporate Productivity (i4cp) and Fortune’s global survey of 1,195 respondents in Q1 of 2022, 77% of large organizations experienced high voluntary turnover in 2021.

To calculate the voluntary turnover rate, divide the number of employees that voluntarily left your company by the average number of workers you had during that period.

These are the top reasons of voluntary turnover outlined in Microsoft’s 2022 Work Index report:

• Personal well-being or mental health (24%)
• Work-life balance (24%)
• Lack of confidence in senior management or leadership (21%)
• Lack of flexible work hours or location (21%)

In other words, a high voluntary turnover rate means your workers struggle to stay engaged with the company due to a lack of support and direction. 

If you notice high voluntary turnover, conduct a voluntary turnover analysis to know the exact cause:

• Check for trends: Compare your voluntary turnover rate to the previous period and look for possible trends and early warnings. For instance, if you see many employees leaving after two years, it may be due to a lack of career advancement opportunities. And if you see new hires leaving within the first year, onboarding might be the issue.

• Gather employee feedback: Collect qualitative data from surveys and exit interviews to determine why employees leave your organization.
• Prepare an employee turnover report: Translate the voluntary turnover data into monetary value. That’ll help you follow up with different departments and levels of hierarchy and develop an actionable plan to increase retention rates. 

Analyzing the voluntary turnover rates for the first year is especially important since new employees represent a lot of pure cost. A time-to-productivity analysis can tell you when an employee’s productivity has risen to a point where their contribution outweighs their cost. 

For example, if the average threshold productivity occurs at the six-month mark, any employee who leaves before that incurs a financial loss to the company.

10. Employee absenteeism rate

Absenteeism is the habitual failure to come to work or stay there during working hours, and it is often unplanned and unannounced.

It’s important to differentiate unexcused absences from legitimate ones, and to be aware of the disruption that absenteeism can cause to your organization. That’s because it will negatively affect anyone working with this individual and undermine trust between employees and management and the employees themselves.

A high employee turnover rate is a strong indicator that your company needs to make adjustments before this behavior impacts your workforce’s productivity and relationships. Absenteeism is often also a reflection of poor management, so your managers must be aligned on the appropriate policies and be upskilled to develop their leadership abilities. 

To measure the absenteeism rate, divide the number of unexcused absences in a given period by the total workdays. Multiply the result by 100 to get the absenteeism rate for that period.

As a rule of thumb, an absenteeism rate of 1.5% is considered healthy. Employees do fall ill and request time off for various reasons, so you shouldn’t expect a rate below 1.5%.

However, an absenteeism rate above 2% indicates issues. Your workers may be burnt out, feeling disengaged, or in conflict with their peers or supervisors. 

The best way to prevent employee absenteeism is to intervene early. 

Develop an action plan by:

• Asking your managers to arrange regular check-in meetings, especially with underperforming employees. 
• Implementing flexible work policies for employees struggling with personal issues. 
• Getting your managers to address the problems between workers who are having conflicts.
• Ensuring management forms meaningful connections with employees and their leadership style receives positive feedback.

Comparing employee engagement measurement methods

How not to measure employee engagement

Measuring employee engagement incorrectly often leads to unreliable results and an inaccurate view of how well your team is doing. Common mistakes when it comes to measuring engagement include:

1. Not setting KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) which can provide you with measurable goals to strive for. Without these, it can be difficult to determine whether the changes you've implemented have had a positive or negative impact on your employee engagement levels.
2. Relying on just one method to measure engagement, such as employee surveys. This can not only be a problem that stops you from capturing the full image of engagement for your employees but can also lead to the overuse and over-reliance on surveys to measure engagement.
3. Ineffective methods of communication. If you rely on a communication channel that employees aren’t engaging with today — like an intranet — then you're highly unlikely to capture the richness of data that you need. That’s why we would always recommend an employee super-app over a back-end intranet.

What should you do after measuring employee engagement?

Whatever your employee engagement metrics and methods show, it’s important to note that engagement is not an activity, project, or initiative. It's an outcome you earn from consistently offering value to your business.

Remember: as trends continue to change, so will employee expectations. Keep your finger on the pulse of employee engagement levels within your organization and take swift action where necessary.

There are many digital tools to keep a tab on employee engagement. However, the best solution is one that’s designed specifically for your employees, and can provide all of these solutions in one place. 

If you have a frontline-focused workforce, check out Blink. Blink offers interactive employee surveys, cutting-edge content analytics, and intuitive communication tools to measure and actively improve employee engagement.

Blink provides a solution to fixing the broken feedback loop and filling the knowledge gap between leadership and frontline workers.

By Lauren Burns, Chief Operating Officer, Blink

‍

Big news for small businesses

At Blink, we believe every worker — not just the ones glued to a desk — deserves to feel connected, in the loop and part of something bigger.

Until now, Blink has been the go-to for massive organizations keeping their frontline teams buzzing.

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Why this matters

If you run a small or midsized business, you know the struggle:

• Important updates vanish into the black hole of your email inbox
• WhatsApp groups spin out of control, with current employees frustrated with the lack of work-life balance and ex-employees still lurking in the wings
• Your “intranet” is basically a dusty folder no one dares to open

Meanwhile, your people — especially those on the frontline — are ready for a better way to communicate. They live on mobile, expect apps that feel as easy as Instagram, and they hate feeling disconnected.

That’s exactly why we built Blink. And you don’t need enterprise money to experience it.

What you’ll unlock in your free trial

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• A social-style news feed that people actually read and post to
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• Everything in one place with a one-stop shop for policies, shifts, training, and more
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All of it designed for quick adoption and lasting engagement. And the best part? Your team already knows how to use it.

A big moment for small businesses

Here’s the truth: The future of work isn’t just for enterprises. When every team, no matter the size, gets world-class communication and collaboration tools, big things happen. Morale grows. Operations run smoother. And the culture you’re building has a digital home that matches the energy of your people.

But this is just the start. What comes next is even more exciting: unlocking the potential of your people. 

Our Blink for Everyone team is driven by one simple mission: to make it easier for people to find, try, and love Blink. So I want to also take this opportunity to thank all of our founding Blink for Everyone customers, some of whom are celebrated on our Customer Wall of Love. 

There’s nothing to hold you back. The same tech trusted by global enterprises is now in your hands — free to try, starting today.

‍Blink. And start your free trial today.