The new rules of employee messaging

Blink wins ClearBox Choice award for the second year running

Blink has been named one of the top intranet platforms by ClearBox in the latest update of the 2024 Intranet and Employee Experience Platforms report. Every year, the intranet consultancy takes an in-depth look at the intranet market, comparing available solutions and awarding the best intranet providers.

Here’s a snippet of what ClearBox had to say about Blink:

“The focus Blink places on the deskless audience is among the best we’ve seen in this report and makes a compelling choice for organizations with a frontline-heavy workforce.” — ClearBox Consulting

Let’s take a closer look at the ClearBox report and its review of Blink.

About ClearBox

ClearBox Consulting is an independent intranet consultancy that helps organizations find intranet solutions that meet their needs. It’s a vendor-neutral company that prides itself on giving honest, impartial advice. Previous clients include big names like Unilever, PlayStation, GlaxoSmithKline, and Bayer.

About the report

Every year, ClearBox compares 20 leading intranet vendors and their products, scoring them on eight criteria. It then releases a report to detail its findings. As part of the report, ClearBox highlights standout intranet vendors, giving them a ClearBox Choice Award. In 2024, Blink was among the award-winners for the second year running.

What does the report assess?

ClearBox evaluates every product against eight criteria. Criteria include user experience and visual appeal, community and engagement, publishing and communications management, and mobile and frontline support.

The organization also seeks customer opinions on the product and customer support from the vendor. It looks at information on pricing and each vendor’s development roadmap too.  

You can take a look at the full report here: The 2024 ClearBox Intranet Report

Blink’s mobile-first intranet: The ClearBox review

ClearBox describes Blink as “a frontline-focused, mobile-first product that understands its target audience perfectly.”

The report praises Blink’s community and engagement features, its approach to integrations, and its ability to support two-way employee communications. ClearBox gives Blink particularly high scores in the following areas:

• Mobile and frontline support
• User experience and visual appeal
• Community and engagement

Here, we look at each of these criteria in more detail.

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Mobile and frontline support

Blink was the only software provider in the ClearBox report to score maximum points for this criterion. Staffbase comes close. But achieving the same mobile and frontline support as Blink comes at an additional fee for Staffbase customers.

Blink was built with the frontline workforce front of mind. We wanted to create a tool that leveled the playing field, giving deskless workers equal access to internal communications and company resources.

Employees can log onto our mobile-first platform via smartphone — they don’t need a desktop computer or a company email address. Via a user-friendly interface, they can then access everything they need to thrive in their roles. This boosts employee engagement and the frontline employee experience.

User experience and visual appeal

For user experience and visual appeal, Blink gets a near perfect score — and ties with Omnia and Staffbase for its out-of-the-box offering.

ClearBox highlights Blink’s highly effective mobile user experience and straightforward navigation. The report also references Blink’s excellent branding and design options, along with the social-media-style experience it provides for users.

We know that social media provides an excellent user experience. So, with Blink, you get a comprehensive company news feed that you can fill with interactive, multimedia content. Organizations can also share real-time updates and employee-generated content across Blink Stories.

Community and engagement

ClearBox highlights Blink’s focus on community and people. It also praises the wide range of engaging features Blink includes as standard. These include employee surveys, a range of communication channels, and employee recognition tools.

The ClearBox report also talks about Blink Journeys. Admins can create tailored content pathways for employees, triggering the right content at the right time in the employee lifecycle. This ensures relevant and engaging content that is personalized to every user.  

Employees can also join Communities — spaces where workers can unite around shared interests — to find like-minded co-workers and develop a deeper sense of belonging.

Some more highlights from the ClearBox report

Here’s what else ClearBox had to say about Blink:

“Blink was designed with the frontline in mind and the focus on a mobile-first experience is clear throughout. Blink is an excellent app product and one of the best we’ve reviewed in this report.”

“[Blink is] easy to use and quick to navigate, making communications, reference materials, and tools easy to find.

“Blink offers organizations alternatives to shadow technology like WhatsApp, while also providing easy access to business tools without the need for employees to download multiple apps.”

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And here’s what customers interviewed by ClearBox said about their experience with Blink:

“Blink has drastically improved the way we communicate with our team members. In a recent survey, [employees] already feel more listened to and this is all down to Blink.”

“[Blink] is amazing. They partner with us to complete projects or work through any desired improvements as they are able. Great partner to work with!”

Why choose Blink?

Blink is the leading mobile-first employee experience platform. It gives admins all the tools they need to share critical messages and build a strong company culture. It allows frontline and desk-based workers to join the conversation, build workplace relationships, and find the information they need to do their jobs well.

Employee retention is the art of holding onto your staff once you’ve hired them.

And, in 202w, it’s more important than ever.

Why?

Because companies are finally waking up to the competitive advantages of being a "people" company. A "churn and burn" approach to hiring results in poor customer service.

This is an issue, because customers are placing increasing value on good service. With smartphones, it’s easier than ever to find a competitor company to buy from. Or in the case of consumer goods, to avoid the shop altogether and order online.

Before we start.

You can hold onto employees (more or less) by treating them well. Listening to their concerns, and providing them with a few incentives to stay put.

If you’re an HR professional or a CEO, you don’t need us to tell you that.
What you might find useful is an in-depth guide to employee retention in the modern workforce.

How to maximize your employee engagement efforts. And make sure there were no stones left unturned in creating the most comprehensive guide... we asked some industry-leading experts to contribute.
We’ll cover:

• Detail on the importance of employee retention today.
• How to build effective employee retention strategies.
• The exit interview, and how to turn it into your secret employee retention weapon.

Let’s begin...

Why is employee retention important?

Employee retention means "treating your employees right"; it’s an end in itself, not just the means.

From an ethical standpoint, no company should mistreat their employees. Meeting your colleagues’ basic needs and providing them with a safe and stimulating workplace? It's the right thing to do for its own sake.

But it’s more than that.

Attracting talent to your company—and keeping it once you’ve found it—has so many advantages. According to Herzberg's famous Two-Factory Theory, employee retention and employee motivation are interdependent. You can find out more about this in the Vantage Circle HR blog. A strong employee retention strategy will:

• Reduce operating costs.
• Improve customer service levels.
• Allow you to out-compete your competitors for the best people.

The cost of high employee turnover

Hiring and firing is expensive.

Eye-wateringly expensive, to be precise. Think six to nine months salary as a conservative estimate.

Then you need to consider the impact of not having someone there to do that person’s work. That could slow down a massive project. Cause higher overtime costs as existing staff pick up their work. Or just lead to a reduction in staff morale as they struggle with increased workloads.

Companies tend to get the importance of this for salaried positions and execs. but there’s often a bit of a blind spot when it comes to their non-desk workforce and the real cost of losing an employee.

Sure, replacing a senior-level manager is more expensive than replacing a bus driver. But what happens if your bus drivers’ morale becomes so low that two or three quit per month?

It all adds up.

"Losing talented staff can also have emotional consequences on those who stay. Effectively reducing productivity by decreasing morality and motivation," says Rochelle van Rensburg of the Ezzely Blog.

"Maintaining essential talent is therefore mission-critical to organizational effectiveness for all these reasons. Staff retention puts companies ahead of their competitors, by reducing recruiting and re-skilling costs. But more importantly, by keeping the top performers, which results in all of their specialized knowledge and expertise remaining in-house."

Your mobile workforce interacts most with customers. They are the public face of your company. So, their happiness will reflect in the level of service they give your customers.

Happier, more engaged employees deliver better customer service. They also build up a bank of operational knowledge over time. This helps them respond to queries quicker and more effectively than a steady stream of new hires ever could.

The importance of employee retention in 2020

An active employee retention strategy is more important than ever.
There are two key reasons for this:

Firstly, it's never been easier for customers to look elsewhere if they feel that your levels of service don’t match their expectations. We live in an age where any information you want is available via a few taps of a smartphone screen.

Dissatisfied with a hotel stay? Booking.com can recommend thousands of others.

Bad experience in a taxi? A quick Google gets you all the phone numbers of other local firms.

Poor customer experience at a theme park? TripAdvisor lists other attractions.

You get the idea.

Despite this, customers still want to be loyal. Millennials want to stick around if your brand fits in with their personal values. Don’t throw away this loyal market.

Secondly, it's never been easier to browse jobs via online jobs boards. If your workforce isn’t happy they will move. Don’t assume that they will sit in their job miserable because there aren’t any other options.

Reasons why employees leave and reasons why managers leave aren't always the same.

Your competitors may be waking up to the benefits of being a "people company." They'll more than happily snap up the staff you can't keep.

The best employee retention strategies

A strong employee retention rate is crucial to remain competitive. How you go about doing this is worth examining in some depth.

Remember - you are an employee too! As you create your employee retention strategies, keep asking yourself, "would I be happy with this?" or, "does this seem reasonable to me?"

Here are a few points you’ll need to cover when creating an employee engagement plan. Remember, the employee experience starts before the first day at the interviewing stage. To set each new starter up for success, getting the onboarding right is crucial. Want to learn more? Check out the Definitive Guide to Onboarding.

Let's quickly touch on the foundation of any working relationship: trust. As Kayla Lopez from the recruitment firm Viqtory.com reminds us. "If your employees trust you and the organization they tend to embrace the workplace; this begins before the employee is even hired. Transparency is something that we need to willingly support to gain trust. A workforce that trusts you will be engaged, a workforce that is engaged will retain. Trust is the foundation of all strong partnerships."

Now for the details...

Pay well

We’ll start with the basics.

If your pay rates don’t match with your competitors’, you’re going to have a bad time keeping hold of your high achievers.

Take a quick look at what your competitors pay for equal positions. Try and build a league table of what similar companies to you pay, and where you rank. Glassdoor is a good starting point.

Aiming for the absolute top is ideal if you can afford it, but you don’t have to offer the best salary offer out there. There are plenty of other ways to encourage your staff to stay put (more on that below), as long as you can land in the middle of the table. For someone working in a frontline job, it is difficult to give your best at work knowing you could get $5.00 per hour more for the same job elsewhere. (Even if there’s free pizza every Friday).

It’s also worth noting that even a generous wage packet won’t persuade your employees to stay if you’re otherwise a nightmare to work for.
Consider this step the cornerstone of all your employee engagement efforts. Not enough by itself, but essential in building something lasting and meaningful.

Give competitive benefits

You might not be able to take it to Silicon Valley levels. (Free three-course meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner, unlimited holidays, and puppy creches).

You can offer a benefits package or a performance bonus scheme tailored to the size of your business, your budget, and your business objectives. The key is to prioritize benefits that would have a tangible difference to the lives of your employees. Add the fancy stuff on if you have money to spare.

Think about:

• Childcare vouchers: we’re all aware of the struggle to find affordable childcare. Help your workforce with their work-life balance (and keep it diverse—most of the people who end up quitting jobs for childcare reasons tend to be women) by offering vouchers to help with the cost.

• Health cover for employees and dependents: an absolute must if you're US-based, although even if you live in a country which has some form of universal health care, giving employees the opportunity to go private is very appealing.

• Flexible working: if the type of work you do accommodates it, flexible working is like gold dust to your staff. A "work your hours however you want" policy helps people manage childcare commitments, fit in dentist appointments, and reduce the stress of trying to juggle work and life commitments.

• Lunch program: Most of the lunch break is spent buying, prepping or reheating food. Offering a tasty and healthy in-house solution, such as the online canteen Smunch, allows your employees to capitalize on their break time and share a meal together. Ultimately, this will improve your company culture and cross-departmental communication as well.

Once you’ve got the basics sorted, some nice-to-have options include:

• Above average PTO allowances
• Free gym memberships and cycle to work programs
• Personal development funds

Develop a feedback culture to empower employees

Your employees know their workplace better than anyone else. Make the most of it.

If your employees feel involved in shaping their workplace and consulted on major decisions then they will be reluctant to leave it.

The key to this is to carry regular, easy-to-complete employee engagement surveys so you know exactly what the mood on the ground is and how to improve it.

Employees will hold an enormous amount of goodwill towards a workplace that listens to their concerns and acts on them. Equally, they will reserve a special sort of resentment for those that send out survey after survey, only to ignore the results.

It’s essential to have a solid plan in place for your employee engagement surveys, or they will backfire spectacularly.

Key pointers

• Small, regular surveys are better than long, annual ones. Only giving your employees one chance per year to raise issues will result in bottled up frustrations spewing out come survey time. Not only does this result in surveys that skew unhelpfully negative, but it also means that your HR team will face an uphill struggle
• Another point about designing surveys that you can respond to effectively: keep it targeted. Focus each of your quick-answer surveys on a specific area—facilities onsite, for example, or about relationships with line managers.
• Use short answer questions: "yes/no" or "on a scale of 1-5" formats make it easier for people to respond immediately. Long-form feedback can be helpful, but having lots of long-answer text boxes on your survey will put people off completing it. A good compromise is to have an optional "any specific comments" box at the end of the survey.

When you’ve processed the surveys, share the results and shout about what you’re doing to act on feedback. Employees will appreciate the transparency, and it’s important to signpost what you’re doing to address the concerns they raise—or they won’t bother to participate in future surveys.

Try and create a "feedback culture" in your company by encouraging people to come forward with suggestions for improvements any time they want. Surveys highlight pain points as they are reactive; an anonymous suggestions box (either digital or real-life), on the other hand, will bring out the more innovative side of your workforce.

These suggestions might be small—a new way of organizing the break room fridge, or the introduction of free coffee Mondays—but the opportunity to improve the workplace in this way will work wonders for your wider staff’s sense of allegiance to it.

Make your workplace a fun place to work

If your coworkers are your friends, spending time at work doesn’t seem so taxing.

This is where the fun stuff comes in—the away days, lunchtime yoga, the free breakfast bar, the Christmas party...

If you have a mobile workforce, don’t forget to include them, too! They might not be in the office that often, so having regular get-togethers or breakfast clubs when shifts change is a great way to build a sense of belonging.

Obviously, base these activities on what your own workforce would like, but some ideas include:

• Regular lunchtime sports clubs (running, yoga, five-a-side, badminton are good starting points)
• Away days and team-building weekends.
• Semi-regular opportunities for free food. Depending on the size of your team, you could offer lunch on the company each Friday, pizza parties when teams hit their targets or just because
• Big events like Christmas parties and family fun days. If you run awareness weeks for things like diversity, mental health and stress, why not run some exciting events for these too?
• Recognition of key milestones. If there are particularly busy periods throughout the year (like the Christmas rush for anyone working in retail or hospitality), put on an event to recognize the hard work your employees put in. This could be a full-on party, or simply just giving your staff the nod to take off after lunch on a quiet day.

This step does, however, come with a big flashing warning sign that says: don’t bother doing any of these without doing the steps listed above first.

Because these are fun and exciting, and sound super trendy when you put them on your Careers page, people often use them in place of paying a decent wage, or offering flexible working hours, or acting on employee feedback.

The exit interview - your employee retention secret weapon

One of the best ways of figuring out what’s going wrong with your employee retention efforts is asking your colleagues when they leave.

Seems counter-intuitive, and rather frustrating, doesn’t it?

And in some ways, it is. No amount of collecting and aggregating exit interview data, tweaking your employee engagement plan and making changes in your company to reduce employee turnover will change the fact that, for that particular employee, your efforts weren’t enough. For HR people and line managers, that stings sometimes.

Still, if you can take your losses on the chin, this is a real opportunity to do better for your colleagues, and identify and fix any major issues that push people to leave.

There are three main reasons why exit interviews are so effective at flagging up things that need to change:

The employee is leaving so won't hold back

Regardless of how many times you reassure your colleagues that your pulse surveys are anonymous and that helpful suggestions are encouraged, they will still be a little suspicious.

The worry that surveys aren’t really anonymous, or that speaking out about a key workplace bugbear will get them labelled as a troublemaker, will be a constant thorn in the side of your employee retention efforts.

(As a side note, if this attitude is pervasive then it might be time to take a look at your workplace culture. A little reticence is natural. An all-encompassing dread of speaking up might indicate something a little more sinister).

The exit interview is a different kettle of fish. They’re leaving. There are no raises or opportunities for promotion in the pipeline. This is their opportunity to "tell it like it really is."

Listen, even if you think they’re being unfair and bitter.

Problems brought up during exit interviews tend to have weighed heavily on an employee’s decision to leave. In other words, they’re big issues you need to address urgently.

Get the whole picture

Multiple exit interviews help build up a better picture of life on the ground.

Of course, there’s always the chance that one particular employee just, for whatever reason, didn’t have a good time.

That’s where keeping data from previous exit interviews comes in.

For example, if an employee complains about their line manager being unbearable, it might just be a clash of personalities. Equally it could be because that line manager is difficult to work for and too demanding. It’s difficult to say without further info.

So. Run some analytics.

How many other employees from that line manager’s team have left over the past year?

Did they say anything in their exit interviews?

Have they been flagged to HR for anything previously?

If so, you might want to investigate further.

This is why it’s important to conduct an exit interview for every single person that leaves the business. If you restrict it to management positions, people based in HQ, or full-time workers, you’re missing key sets of data that could be useful in improving your employee retention strategy.

Find out what went wrong

An exit interview, conducted well, helps you identify wrong turns in your employee journey map.

You’ll probably have some sort of employee journey map already.

You might call it something different. We’re referring to the plan you make that starts at the hire phase and ends with the offboarding phase when the employee leaves. This normally includes guidelines for each stage they go through with your company. For example:

Hiring:

• Offer letter and contract sent
• Start date agreed two weeks in advance

Onboarding:

• First day: tour of premises, fire safety, welcome coffee or lunch
• First six weeks: all e-learning to be completed

You get the idea. Here's a basic template you could expand on:

(Source: Trends in Employee Journey Maps)

The exit interview provides an excellent opportunity to ask your employees about various stages in this plan, to see whether they’ve been carried out to your expectations.

Ask specifically, and don’t be afraid to go right back to the start of their employment. Whether they felt welcomed in their first weeks, for example. If they were given clear and regular feedback on their performance, and compare that to your notes on how your employee journey should pan out.

It could be that, despite your meticulous efforts in planning it, your employee journey map isn’t being adhered to by managers in the wider organisation. This could be why your employees are leaving - this map provides guidelines on how to make sure people feel safe, supported and included at work. If people don’t follow it you’re going to have problems.

Your employee journey map is important. If it isn’t being followed, you need to correct that as soon as you can. Exit interviews are the best way to do this.

How to conduct an employee retention interview

Be flexible around your employees needs

If a lot of your workforce are remote or mobile, don’t insist on a face-to-face interview at HQ.

There are several free video calling apps available, so why not make use of them? An employee is more likely to feel comfortable talking to you if you’ve made accommodations for their situation.

If they’re more comfortable talking to you, they’re more likely to be honest with you, and that’s exactly what you want.

Don’t make it overly formal

Go for a relaxed vibe. Making things too formal will only stifle conversation.

If you’re conducting a face-to-face interview, it’s a nice touch to provide some sort of refreshments; hot drinks and a pastry, maybe. The employee will appreciate the gesture, and it will encourage a more conversational feel, which is exactly what will get them to open up.

Identify the specifics to touch on

You will know, from previous exit interviews if there are any particular pain points in your employee experience.

Ask about them. You’ll then be able to establish:

• Whether these are still issues
• What progress you’ve made on them, and how effective your efforts to tackle them have been.

...But allow them to express their opinion too

If the structure of the interview is entirely created by you, you could miss something important.

By allowing employees space to expand on their own concerns, you give yourself the opportunity to pick up on potential issues that aren’t on your radar. Sure, a lot of this could be specific to that particular individual, but you should investigate nonetheless—otherwise you’ll never know whether it’s the iceberg tip of something bigger.

Remember: your relationship with the employee isn't over

People leave for all sorts of reasons—not all of them negative.

You might want to leave the door open for talented employees, in case they want to return at some point. Also consider that talented former employees can be great source of referrals.

These can be your company’s cheerleaders, even after they’ve left. A good exit interview can make this relationship. A poor one can ruin it.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that the employee leaving has been less than stellar. In this case you should see the exit interview as a chance to smooth things over, and divert potentially negative Glassdoor reviews or social media mentions.

Final thoughts

To summarize:

• An employee retention strategy is important because it makes your employees happier. Happier, more engaged employees perform better in general, and deliver better customer service.
• The cost of employee turnover is measured in increased operational costs and decreased institutional knowledge.

Bearing this in mind, the question you should be asking yourself isn’t "can we afford to expand our employee retention efforts?"

It’s "can we afford not to?"

An engaged, happy workforce with a low churn rate isn’t just a nice thing to have.

It’s not just something you can boast about on your Careers page.

It’s a competitive advantage—and people are only just waking up to this fact. Because now more than ever, people value good customer service. If you can provide that, you’ll have a serious head start on your competitors.

Blink is an internal communications tool that’s does everything your intranet does, but better. Try it out today! Request a free demo to get started.

MangoApps is a well-known name in the internal communication and collaboration space, offering an all-in-one platform for employee intranets, communication, and task management. But for many organizations—especially those with deskless or distributed teams—it’s not always the best fit. Whether you're looking for a more intuitive interface, stronger mobile capabilities, or better support for real-time communication, you're not alone in your search.

In this guide, we break down the top 12 MangoApps alternatives to consider in 2025, based on usability, features, employee engagement, and scalability.

What to look for in a MangoApps alternative

Before diving into the list, here are the key factors to consider when evaluating alternatives:

• Mobile-first experience: If your workforce includes frontline or non-desk employees, you’ll need a platform that works seamlessly on mobile devices.
• Ease of use: Platforms with clean interfaces and intuitive navigation drive higher adoption across all levels of the organization.
• Real-time communication: Look for tools that enable instant updates, alerts, and chat, not just static content.‍
• Integration flexibility: Your platform should connect easily with tools like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Workday, and HRIS systems.
  
• Employee engagement tools: Polls, surveys, recognition features, and content targeting help drive connection and culture.
  
• Scalability and support: Whether you’re a company of 500 or 50,000, ensure the platform can scale with you—and that help is readily available.
  

Here are the best alternatives to MangoApps in 2025

#1. Blink – The all-in-one employee experience app

Best for: Enterprise organizations that want to streamline communication, drive engagement, and boost productivity.

Blink stands out as the most powerful MangoApps alternative — especially for organizations looking for a modern, mobile-first platform that actually gets used. Unlike traditional intranet tools that sit in the background, Blink puts everything your employees need into one intuitive app: communications, schedules, forms, HR systems, and more. With real-time chat, content targeting, newsfeeds, surveys, and recognition features, Blink doesn’t just inform employees — it activates them.

The platform is designed for engagement, boasting adoption rates of over 80% across industries like retail, healthcare, logistics, and manufacturing. It also integrates effortlessly with tools like Microsoft 365, Workday, UKG, and ADP, making it a true hub for the digital employee experience. Plus, Blink’s admin tools give Internal Comms, HR, and IT full control over what content is delivered to whom — so you’re always reaching the right people with the right message.

For companies tired of legacy platforms that don’t connect with modern workforces, Blink is a clear upgrade.

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#2. Staffbase

Best for: Large enterprises that want to build branded employee apps.

Staffbase specializes in custom-branded employee communication apps, with a strong focus on top-down messaging and internal news delivery. It’s a good fit for enterprises with a strong emphasis on company-wide updates, although some users find its collaboration features limited compared to more integrated platforms.

#3. Unily

Best for: Enterprises seeking a polished intranet with strong SharePoint integration.

Unily delivers a sleek and customizable intranet experience, particularly suited to companies already using Microsoft tools. It shines in content publishing and brand personalization, but may require a significant implementation timeline and budget.

#4. Simpplr

Best for: Companies looking for an intranet focused on content discovery and employee engagement.

Simpplr offers a modern, AI-powered intranet designed to help employees find the information and people they need quickly. Its strengths lie in personalization, integrations, and employee feedback tools, though smaller teams might find it more than they need.

#5. Haiilo

Best for: Social-first communication and employee advocacy.

Haiilo blends internal communication with social sharing, making it a great option for organizations that want to empower employees to become brand ambassadors. It supports news distribution, surveys, and analytics, but collaboration tools are more limited.

#6. LumApps

Best for: Organizations embedded in the Google Workspace ecosystem.

LumApps integrates deeply with Google tools and offers features like personalized news feeds, social communities, and knowledge management. It’s well-suited for content-heavy communication but may not be ideal for frontline teams.

#7. Jive

Best for: Enterprises looking for a community-driven intranet.

Jive is a mature platform known for its collaboration and knowledge-sharing capabilities. It supports employee communities and forums but may feel outdated compared to newer, more agile platforms.

#8. Igloo Software

Best for: Mid-size businesses seeking a flexible digital workplace solution.

Igloo offers pre-built templates, collaboration tools, and strong document management. It’s a solid choice for knowledge workers but lacks the modern mobile experience many organizations now require.

#9. Workvivo

Best for: Organizations prioritizing culture, recognition, and employee social engagement.

Workvivo turns your intranet into a social space where employees feel more connected to their company. Its strength lies in fostering real-time interaction and transparency. Many teams choose it to reinforce culture and encourage engagement beyond standard top-down messaging. It’s engaging and user-friendly, though companies may need to pair it with additional tools for workflows, operations, or integrations.

#10. Happeo

Best for: Google Workspace-centric companies wanting a fast, social intranet.

Happeo blends social features with knowledge sharing and is known for its fast deployment and Google integration. It’s ideal for remote or hybrid teams who need an intranet without the complexity.

#11. Speakap

Best for: Deskless workforce communication, especially in retail and hospitality.

Speakap is built for frontline teams and focuses on secure, real-time updates. It’s easy to use and offers role-based content delivery, though it lacks the depth of features found in all-in-one platforms like Blink.

#12. Interact Software

Best for: Enterprises wanting a structured, content-rich intranet.

Interact offers strong content management, personalization, and search capabilities. It’s geared toward knowledge sharing and compliance-driven industries but may not offer as fluid a mobile experience.

Final thoughts on choosing a MangoApps alternative

If you're searching for a MangoApps alternative that delivers better engagement, faster communication, and a user experience your employees will love, Blink should be at the top of your list. While other platforms have their strengths, Blink combines everything you need — mobile access, real-time updates, integrations, and workforce-wide engagement — into a single platform that scales with your business.

If you’re like most people, you’d probably prefer not to imagine what happens in a worst-case scenario, or a situational crisis.

However, imagining what could go wrong — and how you’ll react to it — is one of the most important things you can do for your business. 

An effective crisis communications plan starts with your employees. With early, clear, and consistent messaging, your team can become advocates for your company during any crisis. 

By following these four straightforward crisis communication best practices, your stress levels will go from 100 to 10 (hopefully).

The 4 crisis communication best practices you need to remember

1. Make messaging consistent
2. Back up statements with action
3. Balance timeliness and precision
4. Practice empathy

Let’s have a more in-depth look at each of these practices. 

1. Make messaging consistent

Your internal communications during a crisis should convey the same stance and expectations to every member of your team, regardless of level. 

That is more effective if you already have an easy, direct line of communication with each member of your organization. 

While different roles may need to respond differently, it’s crucial t foster a sense of transparency rather than secrecy to ensure a better response across your organization. 

Communicate often to make sure everyone is on the same page, even with constantly changing information.

In a 2020 Edelman study on internal communications during the COVID-19 pandemic, 63% of employees wanted daily updates, and 23% wanted communications multiple times a day.  

2. Back up statements with action

It's important for your team to understand how to talk about a situation, but it's even more important for them to understand what's being done — and their role in the process. 

As soon as you have a response plan, communicate it to your team. That way, what's being done to resolve an issue is at the forefront of the conversation. Share what your organization's plan is to prevent situations from arising and use as many concrete steps as you can. 

Recruit those in your organization who can help with definite tasks. Perhaps the PR team needs to create an official statement, or the development team needs to redesign a product. Whatever it is, let everyone know how they can help to react to the crisis. 

3. Balance timeliness and precision

The moments immediately following an event are often the most critical for your internal communications during a crisis. 

You don’t want there to be a sudden vacuum of silence where others may be left to speculate. That is the time to get your initial response out quickly, to guide the narrative. 

It’s alright to let your employees know there are some things you still don’t know. It’s better to be upfront about how you’re addressing uncertainties than to wait to communicate at all. 

With that in mind, it’s also appropriate to take your time to craft a more thought-out response for the long term. Planning for crises means you’re prepared immediately in the event. 

While it can be impossible to plan out the details of your crisis response, it's vital to create crisis response documents that lay the groundwork processes for establishing more detailed responses with your team. 

4. Practice empathy

The crisis will undoubtedly affect your employees day-to-day, some certainly more than others. 

It’s critical to empathize with your employee’s struggles throughout the crisis and recognize where their duties have become more difficult.

A 2020 Catalyst survey on the effects of empathy in the workplace during COVID-19 found that empathetic leaders and managers increase productivity, innovation, and engagement. 

Although you don’t want to dwell on how the situation is causing setbacks or difficulties, you can still empathize with your workers while returning to the positive.

Communicate your gratitude for their continued hard work and outline plans to alleviate their stressors. 

The Catalyst study states empathetic leadership entails: 

• Respecting life circumstances
• Supporting both life and work needs
• Fostering inclusion

Open lines of communication to hear their input and experiences. Solicit feedback through forms, polls, and one-on-one interviews. Let your employees know that you want to listen to their thoughts on tackling the crisis from their point of view. 

Show up in more than just writing. Video messages and calls communicate more empathy than written statements. 

Final thoughts: 4 crisis communication best practices

Your internal communication during a situational crisis is just as important as your public communication — and perhaps even more so. 

That’s why it’s essential to lay the groundwork for a plan so you can react effectively if necessary. Your internal crisis communications should be consistent, actionable, timely, and empathetic. 

All the members of your organization deserve frequent, comprehensive, and accessible updates during a crisis. 

Psst – looking for crisis communication tools?

Blink’s employee communications app provides an efficient way for you to communicate with everyone in your organization. From company-wide status updates to policy changes through the intranet, the all-in-one app makes connecting with your employees simple. 

Boston, MA — May 18th, 2026 — Blink, the leading employee experience platform for frontline workforces, today announced it has raised $17 million in funding from Enlightened Hospitality Investments (EHI), the growth equity fund affiliated with Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG). Blink also announced a new global partnership with Shake Shack following a successful integration of its workforce management solutions.

As restaurants – and frontline-driven industries more broadly – continue to navigate high employee turnover, margin pressure, and an increasingly complex operating environment, Blink is helping organizations address some of their most persistent workforce challenges. By improving employee communication and engagement, Blink enables teams to stay connected, informed, and aligned – driving higher staff satisfaction, reducing turnover, and increasing overall productivity. Blink’s frontline workforce solutions empower employees to access critical company information, tools and communicate seamlessly across teams, from corporate to frontline staff, all in one unified platform. In 2025, adoption of Blink’s self-service employee tools, which enable team members to swap shifts, access pay stubs, and have more agency over their work, grew 300% year over year, and employees opened the Blink app seven times a day on average to stay informed, efficient, and connected.

“We are excited to partner with Danny and the EHI team and believe that their commitment to delivering Enlightened Hospitality is more relevant now than ever,” said Sean Nolan, Founder & CEO of Blink. “We also are thrilled to launch with Shake Shack, an industry leader who shares our commitment to a strong corporate culture that begins on the restaurant floor.  As we embark on this next chapter of growth, we look forward to partnering with forward thinking brands who are empowering their people to win in this competitive market”

Blink will use the funds to invest in its product and engineering teams and drive continued innovation across its AI-first platform, while also accelerating its go-to-market strategy to reach more customers across the hospitality industry and beyond.

“I have always believed that Enlightened Hospitality – the ethos that when you take care of your people, your people take care of your customers – is how to create sustaining success in any business" said Danny Meyer, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Enlightened Hospitality Investments and Founder of Union Square Hospitality Group. "Blink’s technology puts people first by making sure team members are equipped and supported so they can, in turn, deliver their very best. Blink’s smart technology will help shape the future of restaurants." 

Blink IQ, the company’s AI workforce insights platform, gives management real-time insight into trends such as workforce feedback, productivity, sentiment, and turnover to help companies identify issues early, take action fast, and improve both engagement and operational performance.

“At Shake Shack, everything starts with our people. The energy in our Shacks and the Enlightened Hospitality our teams bring to life each day are what make us special,” said Luke DeRouen, Chief Communications Officer at Shake Shack. “As we continue to grow, we are focused on giving our teams simple tools that keep them informed, connected, and engaged. Blink will help us do exactly that, enabling a more connected and consistent experience across our Support Center and Shack teams.”  

Blink works with some of the world’s most recognized hospitality brands across the restaurant and hotel industry and continues to expand across verticals, including retail, transportation, healthcare, manufacturing, and logistics. In 2025 alone, the company added over 700,000 users in the hospitality sector.

By centering the platform on the employee experience, Blink helps restaurants streamline operations, strengthen culture, boost retention, and elevate every guest experience. To learn more about Blink, visit www.joinblink.com.

To learn more about this partnership, read the announcement on Business Wire and Kristen Hawley’s exclusive coverage in Expedite here.
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About Blink

Blink is the mobile-first employee experience platform that connects your people, systems, and culture in one super-app. It bridges the digital divide between deskless and desk-based workers, supercharging employee communication and engagement at industry-leading companies like Shake Shack, McDonald’s, Domino’s, Booking.com, Dollar Tree, Nokia, easyJet, JD Sports, Carrefour, and Stagecoach. Blink is the top-rated Employee Communications Application on Gartner Peer Insights and a Leader in the G2 Grid for Best Employee Engagement Software. Learn more at joinblink.com.

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About Enlightened Hospitality Investments (EHI)

Enlightened Hospitality Investments (EHI) is a value-added strategic growth equity firm affiliated with Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG). The firm was formed to leverage the brands, businesses and team at USHG to identify and invest in scalable businesses with proven category leadership and a commitment to building an employee, customer and community-focused culture. EHI partners with portfolio companies to provide strategic direction, operational experience, increased visibility and access to relationships to drive growth with our portfolio partners. EHI manages over $550M of committed capital and primarily focuses on hospitality and related technology businesses, but will also invest in other hospitality-related companies that share an employee, customer and community-focused culture.

13 ways to quickly improve internal communications

Internal communications joins the dots. It connects every member of an organization and helps keep everyone up to speed. But it’s not without its challenges.

Comms leaders have to quiet the noise while amplifying key messages. They need to share updates consistently. And find tech tools that make communication engaging for employees. 

In frontline organizations, there are additional communication challenges to tackle.

Frontline teams often work disparately. Employees can’t rely on in-person meetings for the latest updates. Nor do they have access to a desktop computer or even a company email address.

Finding reliable ways to reach these employees – that go beyond a messy noticeboard – is vital for business success.

With these challenges in mind, we’re going to look at the ways comms leaders can quickly and effectively improve internal communications. Let’s dive right in.

Why is it important to improve your internal comms?

Poor internal communication harms your business and its bottom line. When leaders, teams, and individuals fail to communicate well, every area of operations is affected.

Poor communication also has an effect on employees. Staff want to feel part of the organization they work for, and the first step to achieving that is keeping them in the loop.  

Ultimately, when you improve internal communication, you:

• Boost workplace trust. Over 40% of workers say that poor communication is reducing the trust they have in leadership and their teams. This is making them more stressed and less loyal to their organization.
  
  
• Engage employees. Informed employees are 2.8 times more likely to be engaged. Employee engagement is linked to higher productivity, profitability, and employee retention rates.
  
  
• Get better at what you do. When you improve internal communication, you improve decision-making, teamwork, and collaboration. Everyone pulls in the same direction, which spells bigger and better business results.

The benefit of good internal communication in frontline organizations is even more pronounced.

Safety concerns. Equipment failures. Product or service updates. A shift you need to cover. Inclement weather. These critical communications need to travel between frontline staff and managers quickly and reliably. It’s how you limit downtime and ensure the very best customer service.

But if your communication culture, communication skills, or communication tools are lacking, you’ll find it hard to connect the various teams that make up your organization.

13 ideas to quickly improve internal communication

With so much to be gained from good internal communications, time is of the essence. Every day you continue doing things the old way, you’re missing out.

So here are some internal communication ideas that you can put in place quickly, for maximum impact. Weave these ideas into your internal communication strategy and start making improvements right away.

1. Start with the leadership team

Leaders set the tone of an organization. So if your leadership team isn’t sold on your bid to improve internal communication, your employees won’t be either.

It’s up to leaders to drive comms throughout the company. It’s also on them to engage with comms. That way, employees see that your internal communication channels are a valued resource for people at all levels – and they’re much more likely to engage with them, too.

To prove to your workforce that it isn’t one rule for them – and another for their managers – get the leadership team on board right at the start. Involve leaders in the launch of your internal communications plan and encourage them to be positive promoters of it.

2. Ask questions & launch surveys

To avoid time-consuming missteps, get employee insight early on in the process. Employee input informs your strategy and improves your chances of getting things right the first time.

You can get input by asking informal questions and launching surveys. Find out what employees want from internal communications – and what aspects of current comms they struggle with.

With Blink’s super-app, you can launch surveys that reach your whole workforce. A user-friendly interface makes it easy for employees to respond. And a clear dashboard helps you to draw conclusions from their answers.

Surveys help you make informed internal communication decisions. But there’s another benefit, too. By involving employees in this part of the process, you set an important precedent.

You show employees that you value their input – and that their voices are heard. This raises trust in the process. It also helps employees see what they stand to gain by engaging with internal communications going forward. 

3. Streamline your communication channels

Well-established companies often have history with lots of different internal communication tools. In frontline organizations, there tends to be a mix of tech solutions and old-school communication channels – like posters and notice boards.

If you’ve inherited a complicated system of communication channels, it’s worth stepping back and assessing their impact on company communication.  

Is a noticeboard crammed with memos an efficient and reliable way to communicate with your teams? Are multiple communication channels helping you to clarify the message – or are they muddying it?

Less is usually more. So streamlining your comms channels is a great way to improve internal communication. Employees are much more likely to engage with a single source of reliable info.  

That’s exactly what happened at Domino’s. The pizza delivery company was using word of mouth, posters, and WhatsApp groups to communicate with its frontline. But by switching to Blink, Domino’s put all internal communication in one place and now everyone gets the same need-to-know updates.

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4. Personalize your comms

Think of all the marketing emails that land in your inbox every day. The ones that personalize their message stand out. They’re much more likely to resonate. The rest is like white noise. It becomes very easy to ignore stuff that doesn’t feel relevant to you. 

The same goes for company comms. When you make your message more relevant to your audience, they sit up and take notice. When employees are inundated with comms that have nothing to do with their role, they tend to start ignoring the noise - and before you know it even the most relevant and critical messages are missed. 

You can quickly make a change by segmenting your audience. Divide your organization by department, team, location, and stage in the employee life cycle.

Then, craft personalized comms. And only send mass communications when they really are relevant to the whole organization. Intentional, personalized communication is much harder to ignore.

5. Run company-wide stand ups

A standup meeting is a short but regular opportunity for teams to share progress and identify blockers. It’s a way to get everyone on the same page and clarify what they should be doing.

A company-wide standup is the easiest way to communicate your current priorities and action plan to everyone. But you can also run stand ups within teams, departments, or locations.

Of course, if you’re a frontline organization, getting everyone together for this type of meeting isn’t always practical. Employees work different shifts and in different locations, or maybe even work on the road.

But don’t dismiss the idea of company stand ups outright. Create stand ups for different shift swaps, or locations, or smaller groups of people. And for the times you can’t be together in real life, tech can help.

Employees can join a meeting via video conference. Or you can record your company-wide stand ups and post them as video content to your primary internal communication channel.

6. Implement an employee app

In today’s technological world, you can find incredible tools designed to improve internal communication, fast.

An employee app is a great example. It works well because you meet employees where they already spend their time – on their smartphones. And because it incorporates features that employees are familiar with, like instant messaging, group chats, and a newsfeed.

Take Stagecoach, a UK-based bus company. When Stagecoach implemented an employee app, 84% of their workforce started using it within just one week. Because they chose a communication tool that employees could use intuitively, they got better and faster uptake.

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An employee app also streamlines your employee communications because employees can access everything via a single, user-friendly interface. And it provides channels for both top-down and bottom-up comms. Anyone can read and share information.

Blink’s employee app ticks all these boxes. Designed for frontline organizations, it helps bridge the gap between your frontline and desk-based teams. 

7. Reward & recognize your employees

Another way to quickly improve internal communication is by rewarding and recognizing employees. Shout out those employees who hit their goals or reach a personal milestone. Highlight the times when a member of staff goes above and beyond.

A culture of recognition helps to build engagement. It also boosts morale and encourages other employees to do their best work.

Using internal communication channels in this positive way encourages employees to communicate more frequently, too. When an employee feels acknowledged, they’re more likely to acknowledge others, share successes, and communicate constructively with peers.

You can put the wheels in motion by encouraging managers to send regular messages of acknowledgment. But to amplify the effect, go further. 

Build recognition into your internal comms strategy by using Blink’s recognition feature. Via the app, you can send messages of public praise with the power to inspire everyone.

8. Conduct regular 121 meetings 

If your managers only run 121 meetings with employees once or twice a year, this is an area ripe for improvement.

A lot can happen over the space of a year or six months. Internal communication might be missed or misinterpreted. Regular 121s are an opportunity to realign goals and understanding.

Regular 121s help you to:

• Build a personal connection with employees
• Address concerns in real-time
• Improve employee engagement

It also makes the act of discussion and feedback more familiar. Employees get used to sitting down and sharing their work experiences with managers. So managers are much more likely to get candid (and therefore useful) insight from their staff.  

Advise your managers on how often they should conduct 121s. Monthly, bi-weekly, or even weekly sessions create an open feedback loop.

Also, remember that a public communication forum can never replace 121s. While employees are often happy to share some ideas publicly, they also need the opportunity to share their thoughts privately and confidentially.

9. Encourage content creation

Leave content creation to management and you run into two key problems:

1. Your internal communication is unengaging because there’s lots of top-down communication but not enough bottom-up or peer-to-peer communication.

2. Managers find it hard to balance content creation alongside their usual workload. This means more managerial stress and/or less quality content.

There’s a quick and easy solution. Give everyone a turn at content creation. Use guidelines and templates if you think they’re needed. Then, let employees start threads, post blogs, upload videos, and recognize their peers.

In doing so, you strengthen your company network. Employees build new relationships. They find people with whom they have things in common. They chat about non-work-related topics.

This type of water cooler chat may seem irrelevant to your business objectives. But trust us when we say it’s hugely important to the quality of communication that takes place within your organization.

This is particularly true in frontline firms where workers don’t always get the opportunity for informal chats with co-workers.

When employees build trusting relationships with co-workers, they don’t just find it easier to chat about their latest vacation or the boxset they’re currently binging. They find it easier to communicate and collaborate on workplace topics, too.

10. Take a data-driven approach to internal communications

How do you measure the success of an internal communications initiative? You need reliable, accessible data you can track over time.

This is another reason why having the right communication tech is vital. Pick communication tools with analytics built in and it’s easy to view and act upon insights.

You can see which type of content your employees do and don’t interact with. You can see which posts get the most comments and likes. This helps you to hone your internal communication going forward.

Similarly, analytics functions help you to see the bigger impact that your communication strategy is having. Perhaps it’s helping you to reduce staff turnover or increase staff satisfaction.

When you have access to the data, it’s easy to demonstrate the value and effectiveness of internal communication improvements. You’ll also find it easier to make informed, targeted changes that make your initiative even more successful.

11. Be consistent

Good internal communication is all about consistency. You can’t promise employees a weekly update or a monthly webinar and then fail to deliver.

They’ll stop seeing your communication as reliable and trustworthy – and they’ll stop checking in for new content. This is the point at which the wheels fall off your strategy and you have a much harder job pushing that new initiative uphill. 

To show employees that your new internal communication strategy is here to stay, make sure it’s sustainable.

At the outset, you may like to err on the side of caution, only committing to a content schedule you know is manageable for the people delivering it. You can always add more items to your content calendar once it’s up and running.

Also, as we mentioned earlier, enlisting the support of employees in content creation helps to create an internal communications ecosystem that doesn’t rely on a handful of time-stretched managers. With all hands on deck, it’s much easier to create and post content consistently.

12. Be transparent

Internal communication is most successful when communication is transparent. That means:

• Including everyone in communications
• Creating an open connection between leadership and employees
• Clearly communicating business changes and decision-making processes
• Acknowledging both successes and mistakes

Transparent communication is important because it helps to build trust between all members of your organization. It prevents secondary channels of communication – in the form of rumors and speculation – from emerging. And it helps to boost employee engagement. 

If you don’t already have a culture of open communication, getting there is likely to take time. You need to develop communication skills throughout your organization and set new norms of behavior.

However, one of the things you can do to improve internal communication quickly is to involve employees in your internal communication strategy. Be open about the changes you’re trying to implement – and why.

When employees feel like part of the process, they’re much more likely to feel invested in its outcome.  

13. Report back on changes you are making

So you’re planning to make big changes to the way you communicate internally. Don’t forget to involve employees from the beginning and throughout the process.

After launching employee surveys and conducting 121s, communicate your findings. Let workers know what you’ve learned, what changes you plan to make, and what you hope to gain.

This shows that you’re committed to transparent communication, not just paying lip service. And that you’re putting employees at the center of decision-making.

Take this tack and employee engagement, morale, trust, and the success of your internal communication strategy all stand to benefit.

Final thoughts

Improving internal communications takes time and strategy. It’s a long-term commitment. But there are quick wins to be had.

Gather insights. Involve all members of your organization. Find the right tools. Start fostering a culture of open, honest communication, right now, today.

By doing so, you’ll create change in the here and now. And lay the groundwork for future internal comms improvements, too.

It’s well worth the investment, particularly for frontline organizations. With strong internal communication, you build teams who are more connected, informed, and engaged - which leads to widespread benefits for your employees, customers, and business.

Want to make internal communication a priority for 2024? Then put internal comms in the palm of every employee with Blink’s employee app.

Our mobile-first app supports two-way communication, critical messages, employee recognition, and workforce surveys. It also integrates with the business tools you already use. So employees can access all resources from one user-friendly interface.

Accessed via mobile or desktop and with speedy, sky-high adoption rates, Blink provides a quick and easy way to improve your internal communications in 2024.