7 benefits of switching to unified communications (and UCaaS)

Balancing employees’ happiness with their alignment to your company’s direction is not easy. And the most noteworthy example of this is Apple in its early days.

The company had positioned itself as an unconventional, new-age brand where creatives and rule-breakers flocked to work. So, as the company grew larger, cultivating the required discipline became a challenge. The more control senior management tried to exert, the more frustration it caused them and the employees. 

What happened at Apple shows that a brilliant business model alone isn’t enough to push a business forward. In fact, none of it matters if your workers aren’t happy. Because if they aren’t, they won’t be engaged at work or receptive to new initiatives.

The good news? You can prevent this from happening at your organization. Not to mention boost productivity and build a strong employer brand. This article will show you why ensuring employee happiness and well-being is a must and ways to implement them at work.

Why is employee happiness important?

Research by Oxford University has found that happy workers are 13% more productive than unhappy ones. And that’s not the only perk of employee happiness and well-being. Let’s see the rest.  

Happy employees equate to happy customers: Happy workers transmit their positive emotions to customers and prospects they encounter every day. And this helps nurture leads and makes them more likely to buy from you, or work with your business.

Happy employees collaborate better: Happy workers get along well with one another, boosting teamwork and effective communication. So projects run smoothly and meet deadlines.

Happy workers are healthier: Happy employees are more likely to remain physically and mentally fit. When you invest in employee well-being, you minimize workers’ sick days and loss of work output.

Happy employees are more loyal: When workers are happy in their jobs, they are less likely to quit or switch jobs. This helps you reduce the turnover rate and save money on new talent acquisition.

Top ways to ensure employee happiness

Use the following list to check whether you’re doing all you can to boost employee happiness and well-being at work. If you are, you’re on the right track. If not, it’s not too late to get started.

Value and respect your workers

In a survey of 129 large and midsize US businesses, 87% of leaders said that they are focusing on building a culture of dignity in the next three years.

Downtrodden workers can never consider themselves happy. If your company culture can’t assure dignity at work, then there is no hope for employee well-being.

That’s why respecting your workforce is not just a strategy for employee happiness, but a core principle that can set a solid foundation for all the other steps we have outlined below.

A happiness-driven company culture ensures that everyone is treated with dignity, and that respect is not being given selectively based on seniority, experience, color, gender, or any other factors.

So make sure to shape your work policies, communication, and every aspect of work in a way that each worker matters. Recognize employees for what they bring to the table and the contributions they make for your business.

Even simple gestures like high-fiving quick wins and taking their concerns seriously go a long way in making workers feel valued. 

Encourage and act on employees’ feedback

Employees who feel heard at work are approximately five times more likely to perform their best work, according to research by Salesforce.

No workplace is perfect, and no employees expect it to be. But they do expect at the least that their problems and suggestions will be heard and acted on.

Yet in many workplaces, workers feel dissatisfied because their concerns are often brushed under the carpet. The result is diminished employee happiness and morale.

If you want to ensure employee well-being in the workplace, go out of your way to let your employees freely express how they feel and contribute new ideas.

Take group meetings, for example. Usually, the extroverts do most of the talking and introverts remain quiet. So it’s important to have weekly one-on-ones too to make sure everyone has a chance to be heard.

Develop your employees

A LinkedIn report states that 94% of employees would stay longer at a company if it invests in their professional growth. Knowing that you care about their development, workers will feel happy and more motivated.

Make sure to support them with adequate training and provide deserving workers with a clear roadmap and opportunity for promotion. Show them that their efforts are valued and will lead to their future growth. Plus, you can sign them up for seminars and conferences relevant to their work and ambitions.

Share positive feedback and constructive criticism

Data from 150+ countries and 1000+ organizations has found that 96% of employees appreciate receiving feedback regularly.

So you can imagine how important it is for workers to know how they are doing, what they are doing right, and if there’s something they can do better.

When you’re candid with your employees about their work, you demonstrate that you have faith in their skills and you care about employee well-being.

For example, if a worker has shared some great ideas in a group meeting, don’t wait to let him know how much you value the contribution. Even a small acknowledgment like below can have a great impact.

"Thank you for your suggestions, Jack! You came to the meeting prepared with well-researched ideas, and you're really helping us move forward with the project. Keep up the good work."

And don’t forget to set up weekly or biweekly meetings with your staff to go over their work. You can use this opportunity to give specific feedback that helps them excel in their roles. 

Pay and treat workers fairly

Your employees may be enjoying what they do. But they should also get fair compensation for their work.

So don’t let any contribution slip through the cracks. Recognize and pay workers for every big and small investment they make at work. For example:

• If they work overtime, pay for it.
• If an initiative helped grow the company, give out bonuses to people involved.
• Don’t underpay female employees for jobs similar to male employees.

Plus, there should be a transparent system that makes it easy to understand and reduce the pay gap among different employees.

You can even hire an external agency to avoid any bias or favoritism. This company will audit your performance review process and offer recommendations based on objective measures such as the current market value for job roles.

Reward workers’ accomplishments

We already touched a bit on rewarding your employees. But it warrants more attention. Having a reward and recognition program at work is crucial to employee happiness.

And rightly so. Your workers spend considerable time and effort in fulfilling your business mission. But if they feel their work isn’t acknowledged, they are more likely to be dissatisfied. So if you are serious about employee well-being, leave no stone unturned to show them what they do matters.

Apart from putting a formal reward system in place, there are plenty of small, informal things you can do to reward good work. These include a free meal, a company-wide update on what the employee is being recognized for, an extra day off, and even just a heartfelt thank you. Having these as little tactics as part of your overall employee engagement strategy will have a big impact.

Ensure proper communication

78% of US workers say that improving employee communication should be a high priority for their employer.

Workers are less likely to be happy if their responsibilities are not clearly communicated to them. And this is just one small example. Not communicating effectively with your staff can lead to a whole host of challenges, like frequent misunderstandings, workplace conflicts, and poor peer-to-peer relationships.  

But just any type of communication isn’t enough. You can’t bombard employees with a ton of emails or unnecessary meetings in hopes of keeping them happy. You need to have the right channels, tools, and training.

And one of the best ways to tackle all these three areas is to use a single, unobtrusive communication platform like Blink. It follows a mobile-first approach. So it can reach workers wherever they are.

Not just that. It also requires minimum training. The social-media style interface ensures that workers know how to use it from the get-go.

Implementing such a solution can help you establish communication norms without isolating both desk-based and front-line workers.

Conclusion: ways to improve employee happiness and well being

Overall, workplace happiness is a significant factor in employee engagement.

But at the end of the day, there is no shortcut or magic recipe to make your employees happy. It’s about the cumulative impact of the small steps you take and the culture you build.

Use the strategies and employee engagement best practices outlined above to encourage a happiness-oriented company culture. Plus, look for your own creative ways to delight your workers and make them feel valued. In the long run, you’ll see that the payoff for such efforts really makes them worthwhile.

Also, the right employee engagement app can make a big difference in the success of your initiatives to boost employee happiness. So book a free Blink demo today.

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

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

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

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

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

What causes attrition in healthcare?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Employment quality

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

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

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

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

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

2. Work quality

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

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

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

3. Organizational quality

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

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

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

7 ways to increase employee retention in home health care

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

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

1. Collect and analyze data

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

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

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

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

Making it happen

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

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

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

2. Offer relevant training and development opportunities

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

This answers to all of the three factors explored:

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

Making it happen

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

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

3. Lighten the load

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

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

Making it happen

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

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

4. Consistent communication

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

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

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

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

Making it happen

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

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

5. Focus on employee engagement

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

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

Engaging employees ultimately retains them.

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

Making it happen

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

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

6. Real recognition 

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

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

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

Making it happen

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

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

7. Listen and action feedback

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

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

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

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

Making it happen

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

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

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

Your home health employee retention checklist

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

Retention next steps

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

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

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

Get started today

A survey conducted by the American Association of Critical Care Nurses reported that 66% of respondents considered leaving their job due to the pandemic.

At first glance, it may seem like the pandemic is what caused frontline workers to feel burned out and leave their jobs, but Amanda Bettencourt, Ph.D. of the association, says,

“This was the stress test for an already stressed system.”

The employee experience for frontline workers has been overlooked for a long time. Finally, businesses are paying attention to how to improve internal communication for their frontline workers.

The truth is that frontline workers love creating a good customer experience. Matthew, a Registered Nurse at Denver Health, says,

“I love what I do. I chose this profession because I wanted to be on the frontline doing this, and there’s nothing else I want to do.”

But how can businesses make the work experience better for frontline workers?

Keep reading to learn how to motivate frontline employees and support them so they can do what they do best – taking care of your customers.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Benefits of empowering frontline staff
• How to improve internal communication on the frontline
• 1. Make communications accessible to everyone
• 2. Personalize communication
• 3. Make it easy to give and view feedback
• 4. Create a single source of truth
• 5. Streamline manual processes
• 6. Provide ongoing training opportunities
• 7. Ask frontline employees for their ideas
• 8. Check in regularly and in person
• 9. Celebrate achievements
• 10. Put yourself in their shoes
• Final thoughts: how to improve internal communication on the frontline

Benefits of empowering frontline staff

Many frontline workers love the work they do. Their job satisfaction comes from helping patients and creating a positive impact on customers.

Tina Cummings, Materials Technician at Baystate Noble Hospital, explains,

“We get a sense of accomplishment doing our part to keep folks safe. We find the supplies that they need and get it to them as quickly as possible.”

When your frontline staff feels connected and empowered, they can focus on delivering an excellent customer experience.

But, if your frontline workforce feels unsupported and unheard, employee morale can plummet and lead to burnout and a higher employee turnover rate.

If you want to improve customer satisfaction, it starts by caring for the employees who interact with customers and patients every day.

How to improve internal communication on the frontline

1. Make communications accessible to everyone
2. Personalize communication
3. Make it easy to give and view feedback
4. Create a single source of truth
5. Streamline manual processes
6. Provide ongoing training opportunities
7. Ask frontline employees for their ideas
8. Check in regularly and in person
9. Celebrate achievements
10. Put yourself in their shoes

1. Make communications accessible to everyone

According to a Frontline Employee Workplace Survey conducted by Yoobic, one in three frontline employees feel disconnected from the company. During the COVID-19 pandemic, companies had to make fast changes to business strategies and operations.

While these changes often affected frontline employees, they didn’t feel included or well-informed. More than 75% of respondents say that receiving internal communications through a mobile app would make them feel more connected to HQ.

2. Personalize communication

Including frontline employees in internal communications is an excellent start, but it won’t solve the problem entirely. More messages don’t automatically equate to higher employee engagement. You need to make sure that your messages are meaningful to frontline employees.

When you communicate significant changes to essential workers, make it easy to understand how any new initiatives will affect their daily work. Anticipate possible questions from frontline employees and answer them in your original message. This should be a key part of your internal communication plan anyway.

For example, if you’re implementing COVID-19 precautions in-store, let employees know how you’ll be supporting them with signage or website updates so they feel supported.

3. Make it easy to give and view feedback

Some initiatives look great on paper, but they don’t work in real-time with customers.

Ben Davis, a social worker in New York, told Time Magazine of a time when top-down pandemic precautions like remote contact made it more challenging to work and connect with individuals who suffer from mental illness symptoms like paranoia.

What seemed like a good idea at first was ineffective and became the source of concern for many frontline workers.

According to Davis,

“It was all very different and very confusing. I don’t know how well he – a patient – understood that I was doing it to help keep him safe.”

In this case, Davis’s feedback was heard. His team implemented changes focused on the long-term protection of frontline workers, such as allowing them to stop administering medication if gloves run out.

Employees on the frontline can feel frustrated if they don’t have access to the resources they need to do their jobs.You must give frontline workers a place to provide feedback and ensure they see that the feedback has been taken and processed.

4. Create a single source of truth

Consider using a mobile app to deliver your intranet or knowledge Hub so your deskless employees can access the right resources.

5. Streamline manual processes

A whopping 71% of frontline workers feel bogged down by repetitive manual tasks and paperwork. One part of motivating frontline employees involves letting them focus on work that creates impact, such as working with customers.

It may sound small, but spreading your admin work across multiple platforms means your frontline workers have to log into several websites to take care of repetitive work.

Respect your frontline workers’ time by consolidating administrative work into a single portal and automating manual processes.

6. Provide ongoing training opportunities

There’s a direct connection between growth opportunities and employee retention. Team members who see a future with your company are more likely to stay engaged and experience high levels of job satisfaction.

During onboarding, show your frontline workers there’s a clear path to growth in your company. Then, make sure they can easily access resources to help them build the skills they need to advance.

For example, clinic receptionists can develop skills to become Medical Assistants and then continue to advance to higher Medical Assistant levels (MA II, MA III) to earn a higher salary.

7. Ask frontline employees for their ideas

Take time during meetings to let people provide an overview of their projects, goals, and progress.

When dealing with customer feedback issues, you can also show your frontline staff you value their expertise by asking for their opinions and suggestions. Use polls and surveys to stay tuned into the customer experience through your frontline workforce.

8. Check in regularly and in person

Too many business leaders underestimate the importance of frontline workers. A grocery store bookkeeper describes his experience to New America as, “bosses come through. They don’t speak to you. They think they’re better than you…We are the ones that are helping you make this money.”

Leaders must schedule regular site visits, but you have to remember to acknowledge on-site and remote employees and genuinely listen to them.

Treat site visits as an opportunity to build relationships with frontline staff, show them that you’re there for them, and reinforce the idea of teamwork.

9. Celebrate achievements

Employee recognition is an integral part of motivating frontline employees. Take time to celebrate work-related achievements like promotions and personal milestones such as birthdays and anniversaries.

10. Put yourself in their shoes

Learning to empathize with your frontline workers creates a better work environment for everyone. Don’t assume the challenges you face in the office are the same your remote employees deal with every day.

Instead of making assumptions, ask your frontline employees questions about their experience and really listen when they tell you. Use questions like “How can I make it easier for you to get your work done?” to get actionable feedback from your frontline workforce.

Lead by providing support and proactively removing the obstacles that make it difficult for frontline workers to succeed.

Final thoughts: how to improve internal communication on the frontline

How many businesses could survive without their frontline workers? And still, they’re often overlooked and misunderstood.

Learning to motivate your frontline employees through empathy, communication, and support can transform your customer experience and overall business. Discover employee engagement for modern workforces with Blink today.

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Employees spend hours on TikTok but avoid the company intranet like the plague. So what’s the deal?

TikTok is built for discovery, connection, and delight. It understands and delivers what audiences want. In. An. Instant.

The average company intranet? Well…safe to say, it’s not quite made it into the user experience big leagues.

Nevertheless, the intranet still plays a central role in many organizations. It’s a way to land messages, boost employee engagement, and improve operational efficiency. But only if employees are actually logging in.

This is where we can take inspiration from TikTok — an app that the average user opens a mindblowing 20 times per day — to create a modern social intranet.

A modern social intranet is a million miles from the dusty old document repository your employees grumble about. Done right, it’s a bustling hub of activity — and a place where your workforce actively chooses to hang out.

Want to know more? Here’s what your intranet can learn from the world’s stickiest social platform.

The problem with most intranet solutions

The average intranet packaged solution is about as far away from TikTok as you can get.

It’s built for desktop, not for mobile devices. The UX is cluttered and dated. Content is stale or irrelevant. Communication is one-way. And frontline workers are often excluded from the experience entirely.

The result? Employees actively avoid your intranet.

They use workarounds and WhatsApp in its place. And when they do log in, the overriding feeling is one of frustration. This damages the employee experience along with the workplace productivity, internal communication, and employee trust you expect your intranet to support.

But things are changing. Modern social intranets are rewriting the rules. They’re borrowing lessons from social platforms, like TikTok, and applying them to the digital workplace.

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Why TikTok wins (and what that has to do with work)

With two billion users spending an average of 95 minutes a day on the app, TikTok is a master of user engagement. So what makes it so addictive? And how can you bring that same energy to your employee intranet solution?

Let’s take a look.

TikTok tactic #1: Algorithmic personalization

The “For You” feed knows you better than your best friend. It learns what you like and serves it up on repeat. With a never-ending stream of videos — all relevant to you and your viewing preferences — there’s always a good reason to stop by the app.

Applying it to your intranet: Use personalization features to serve employees content that actually matters to them — based on their location, team, role, tenure, or interests. When employees see content and resources that relate to them, they’re more likely to see value in the intranet.

TikTok tactic #2: Short-form, snackable content

The most popular TikTok videos are short and snappy. They start with a killer hook to grab attention. They opt for authenticity over polish. And they feature text or captions that are quick and easy to digest.

Applying it to your intranet: Boost content consumption and move away from text-heavy messages. If you have a lot of information to share, break it up into bite-sized chunks. Include captions or TL;DRs. Use images, videos, and graphics to stop the scroll and help employees digest new information quickly — even in the middle of a busy work day.

TikTok tactic #3: Endless scroll

TikTok’s feed is designed to be frictionless. No clicking through menus. No dead ends. Just one piece of engaging content after another. There’s always something new for users, available just one swipe away.

Applying it to your intranet: The best intranets feature a home feed that invites browsing and discovery. They surface fresh, relevant content — from CEO updates to shift changes to the next team social — and put them where employees are most likely to see them.

TikTok tactic #4: Social interaction

Likes, comments, shares — TikTok is built for interaction, not just passive viewing. Users can respond to content and pass it on. That two-way employee communication builds employee communities and drives engagement.

Applying it to your intranet: Modern social intranet solutions act as a digital water cooler — a place to build connections. So give employees a way to react to what they see, using likes, emoji reactions, comments, and polls. Let them ask questions, offer feedback, cheer each other on, and share knowledge with their co-workers.

TikTok tactic #5: A creator culture

TikTok thrives because anyone and everyone can be a creator. Every day users drive trends and spark conversation. They enjoy a sense of contribution, creativity, and collaboration that keeps those user numbers rocketing upward.

Applying it to your intranet: Build an internal creator culture at your organization and include employees in your content creation engine. Encourage employees to share birthday shout-outs, behind-the-scenes videos, work hacks, and weekly wins. With authentic and diverse intranet content from employees, you make the intranet feel like their space, not just another management tool.

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What the modern social intranet looks like

To harness these tactics for your workplace, you need a different kind of intranet. This is what it should look like.

#1. Mobile-first and frontline-friendly

For too long, frontline employees have been excluded from the company intranet. To give them the same access and user experience as desk-based employees, you need a solution with mobile access built right in. A mobile-first intranet offers the same features and functionality across all devices — and puts company resources into the pocket of every employee. 

#2. Rich, multimedia content

When creating intranet content, make like a social media marketer and think about your intranet as more than a content management system. Your intranet should support highly visual, eye-catching content. We’re talking images, videos, graphics, and easy-to-digest formats, like Stories. By ditching text-heavy content, you convey information and engage employees more effectively.

#3. Smart personalization + notifications

On a modern social intranet, personalized experiences come as standard. Employees receive tailored internal comms on custom homepages and can easily adjust their notification preferences. With features like employee journeys, you can also automate content to appear to the right employees at the right time.

#4. Two-way interaction

Social media is built on two-way conversations. A modern intranet solution gives employees the option to like, comment, share, and post emoji reactions to news feed content. Other interactive features include polls, surveys, Q&A events, and instant messaging tools.

#5. Seamless integration

TikTok is super easy to use. Just a few taps and users can be scrolling through the latest content. Your intranet can mirror this experience by integrating with your HR systems, scheduling, payroll, and collaboration tools — enabling employees to do more from one user-friendly dashboard.

Need to address the skeptics? Why this isn’t about dance routines at your desk

Adding a little TikTok spice to your employee intranet doesn’t mean persuading your CEO to jump on a viral video bandwagon. Or allowing your workforce to add unnecessary noise to internal communication channels.

Most organizations aren’t like TikTok — and don’t want to be like TikTok. And that’s 100% okay. Because this isn’t about mimicking the latest social media trends. It’s about leveraging the potential of TikTok design principles:

• Design for engagement
• Personalize the experience
• Remove points of friction
• Make it social and visual

By integrating social media-style features into the company intranet you can count on higher employee engagement, better reach, and improved connection across your organization.

It’s easier to reach your whole workforce, including your frontline organization. And when you do, you provide them with relevant and attention-grabbing content that will have them coming back for more.

Your next steps: Modernizing your intranet experience

So what next? How do you go from a clunky old intranet to something worthy of the TikTok era?  Here are the key steps involved in upgrading your intranet:

Audit your current intranet solution. What do you feel is working? Which parts of the intranet get the most and least traffic? What needs to be changed?

Talk to employees. What do they want in an intranet solution and how do they feel your current intranet meets their needs?

Partner with internal stakeholders. Get internal communications, HR, and IT on board to reimagine the platform, laying out the intranet features you class as must-haves and nice-to-haves.

Find the right platform. Browse the top intranet software providers and take shortlisted solutions for a test drive, looking for tools that prioritize a digital employee experience, not just storage.

Start small. When rolling out new employee intranet software, pilot each new feature. Or test the platform with a small group of employees before tweaking and launching it to the rest of your workforce.

Make improvements. Like TikTok, use content analytics and user feedback to continuously improve your intranet solution so it meets the needs of employees now and into the future.

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Will you make the social intranet shift?

Today, employees expect consumer-grade tech tools in the digital workspace. By taking inspiration from tools, like TikTok, you can make your intranet — and the overall employee experience — a central part of your digital transformation.

Incorporate the very best social-style design and you create a reliable and engaging source of information and connection. You reduce employee frustration and improve intranet usage stats, too. 

Blink is a mobile-first modern social intranet that comes with a personalized news feed, Stories, Communities, seamless integrations, and more — everything you need to deliver a high-impact and interactive employee experience.

Blink. And build an intranet your people actually want to use.

Cut through the noise with attention-grabbing internal communications

We’ll come clean. The idea that humans have an 8-second attention span is a myth. But — as with any enduring story — it’s a myth with its roots in truth.

In a technological age, we’re bombarded with more information than ever. And people looking to convey a message — be they marketers, influencers, or internal comms teams — have very limited time to grab our attention.

As such, the 8-second rule provides a useful frame of reference when designing employee communications content, particularly if you’re aiming to engage frontline workers or Gen Z employees, who prefer short, snappy instant messaging.

By drawing employees in quickly and effectively, you’re more likely to land critical messages. You cut through the noise and improve engagement across your internal communication channels — plus, you help to build a more captivating workplace culture.

Here, we explore all the ways your internal communication strategy can stop the scroll with attention-grabbing internal comms.

The attention economy at work

How many notifications do you get on your smartphone each day? Between news alerts, personal instant messaging, and work memos, there’s a lot of information competing for our attention.

To stand out, your internal communication app needs to adopt the tactics of the most effective players in the game. We’re talking social media platforms, with their rich multimedia content and addictive algorithms.

These platforms provide ample inspiration for internal communicators. They also establish employee communication expectations.

Away from work, employees are used to content that is dynamic, interactive, and concise. They’re accustomed to mobile-first communications and content that attracts their attention in a split second.

This is the challenge for internal communications teams. How do you replicate that experience and level of engagement in the digital workplace? How do you make sure your content is seen, read, and remembered?

How to create attention-grabbing internal communications

To make your employee communications heard above the noise, you need modern internal communication tools with content that attracts employee interest within seconds. Here’s how.

Make your content snackable and visual

Short-form content is everywhere these days. And it tends to resonate well with modern employees.

Workers don’t always have time to read a long, text-based email, scan a PDF, or try to navigate your dense company intranet. Plus, this type of communication and document-sharing are unlikely to spark employee interest anyway.

With bite-sized content, employees can read and digest need-to-know information on the go. Think snappy company news feed posts, pulse checks and employee surveys, and employee recognition shout-outs — all in a single platform with a user-friendly interface.

Visuals are also key. They help you say more with less and, because they appeal to our senses and emotions much more effectively than a plain text document, they’re a surefire way to foster an engaged workforce. Try incorporating micro-videos, carousel posts, and behind-the-scenes photos into your company comms.

Hook ‘em with your headlines

With just a few seconds to convince employees to view your content, you need headlines and subject lines that do much of the heavy lifting.

Your headlines should be short and simple. They need to provoke curiosity without resorting to clickbait tactics — and they should hint at the value employees will gain by reading further.

To craft engaging headlines:

• Keep it short and specific. Use a maximum of 40 characters in your subject lines. And ensure your headlines accurately reflect the rest of your content.‍
• Adopt an employee-centric mindset. Make employees the hero of your headlines. Figure out what is most important to your workers, then lead with that.‍
• Avoid corporate language and jargon. Use simple, easy-to-understand language and your headlines will be more engaging and quicker for employees to digest.
• ‍Create urgency or intrigue. When crafting urgent updates, mention upcoming deadlines to improve message open and read rates. Also, pique employee curiosity by hinting at what lies within.

Here are a few examples of high-impact internal message headlines:

Create a sense of exclusivity and intrigue

• Not this: What you need to know about the new product launch next week.
• But this: Be the first to see our new product!

Empower action and counter known hesitations

• Not this: Please fill out the latest employee engagement pulse check survey.
• But this: Have your say — share your feedback in minutes.

Focus on clear benefits with simple language

• Not this: Sign up for our newly implemented training programs to improve your productivity. 
• But this: Career goals unlocked! Discover new training programs.

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Embrace the Stories format

The Stories format has been popularized by Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. It provides an easy way to share short-form video content, a current favorite among social media users, in a way that highlights human connection.

The beauty of this type of video format is the ease with which you can create it. It doesn’t have to look polished and professional. In fact, DIY, smartphone-filmed content has an air of authenticity that boosts employee engagement and trust, particularly with Gen Z employees.

When exploring this format with your internal communication tools, you can feature daily updates, employee recognition and spotlights, and even shift announcements. Make Stories available on mobile and give your deskless employees a quick and engaging way to access the latest company content, too.

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Make your communications a two-way conversation

Interaction and engagement go hand in hand. So — to create compelling internal comms content that positively impacts the employee experience — you need to prioritize two-way communication and team collaboration.

You can do this with the help of key features like:

• Polls and quizzes. Quick, easy, and engaging. Polls and quizzes allow you to gather instant employee feedback and insights while giving employees the chance to make their voices heard.‍
• Emoji reactions. A simple way for employees to interact with your news feed content, emoji reactions allow them to express opinions and show support on company updates.‍
• Employee-generated content. The ultimate in interaction, employee-generated content is sure to attract the attention of co-workers and offers a centralized platform for employee content creators too.‍
• Manager video updates. Leadership and management posts break down barriers and make comms more personal, particularly if you throw in the occasional Q&A. 

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Harness the power of FOMO and urgency

The best marketers understand consumer psychology. They know what makes prospective customers sit up, take notice, and take action.

Internal comms teams can harness this psychology to maintain high levels of employee engagement across communication channels. Here are a few ideas:

• Time-limited content. Content — like Stories — that disappears after 24 hours is great at grabbing employee attention. It also encourages regular use of your employee app or internal communications platform, because employees don’t want to miss out on the latest company news. A quick video from the CEO, a behind-the-scenes look at an event, or a snapshot of a team milestone feels more valuable when it’s only available for a limited time.‍
• A sense of urgency. As with the 24-hour news cycle, regularly posting real-time updates creates a sense of urgency. Employees want to check in with your internal comms to find out what’s new. Deadlines are also effective. So launch limited-time challenges — and use time-sensitive language like “now,” “today,” “don’t miss out,” and “last chance” — to spark interest and encourage participation when it comes to urgent updates.‍
• Exclusivity. We’re drawn to content that creates a sense of prestige. So offer “sneak peeks” and “first looks” at new products, initiatives, or instant messaging from leadership. Positioning messages to employees as exclusive makes employees feel valued and part of an elite group. It also taps into employees’ natural curiosity and desire to stay in the loop.

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Adopt a mobile-first approach

The best internal communication tools are mobile-first. They make it easy for employees to comment, react, and participate in real-time conversations.

For a mobile workforce without desktop access and for Gen Z workers who live on their smartphones, mobile-first communication approach supports quick social interactions without a significant time investment. 

Make your internal communication platforms available on employee smartphones and you also have the option to use push notifications — the ultimate attention-grabber.

But be careful — don’t overdo it. To prevent notification fatigue, reserve alerts for priority messages and allow your employees to customize their notification preferences, particularly when it comes to lower-stakes content like internal newsletters and direct messaging.

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Measure, learn, and iterate

When adapting your comms so they catch the attention of employees, it takes more than guesswork. You need to measure your success by tracking engagement metrics, views, and interactions.

You can also make like your marketing team by A/B testing your internal content. Switch up images, thumbnails, colors, headlines, and calls to action to find and roll out the most eye-catching options.

Using the data on employee behavior and gathering feedback you get from your internal communication tool — along with real-time feedback from employee surveys — you can evolve your internal communications strategy to better spark the interest of employees.

Does your comms content meet the 8-second rule?

Attention-grabbing internal communications are short, visual, interactive, and mobile-first. They communicate key information — and draw recipients in — in a matter of seconds.

In a time when it’s hard to maintain the edge in the attention economy, content like this stands out. It helps you share important information and urgent updates with employees and keep everyone on the same page.

Not only does this foster more effective communication, it also improves the employee experience. When people feel informed and connected to their organization, they enjoy higher levels of employee satisfaction.

So do you accept the challenge? Will you strive to meet the 8-second rule with your internal comms? 

Audit your current content, explore the capabilities of your internal communication software, and experiment with new formats to find out what works for your entire organization. Because, by going beyond old-fashioned, text-based comms, you stand to make a big impact on your audience and create a more engaging company culture.

Blink. And craft attention-grabbing internal communications

Optimizing an intranet for marketing departments might not be on your mind, but your marketers can benefit from stronger connections with the rest of your corporation.

“Until recently, we communicated through email. This was to share patient information and… not much else. There was little in the way of engaging employees, celebrating achievements, or keeping in touch,”

said Christi Krizman, Director of Development and Training at Promises Behavioral Health. The company now has a 70% average engagement rate on Blink.

The health organization shares personal anecdotes and success stories and communicates with different branches and departments easily. 

Best of all, with a smart intranet, your marketing team members can use these interactions and stories as marketing collateral. 

The intranet for marketing means taking advantage of features other departments will be excited about — like your company social networking feed — and using them to ease your marketers’ workload.

Must-have features for your marketing intranet

Intranets have been associated with HR or IT for a long time. But these departments aren’t the only ones who benefit from a way to connect to the rest of your organization. 

With the right features, your marketing department can both source materials and share upcoming campaigns with ease.

You need to be able to share different media content on your intranet. And you want to be able to share the latest marketing strategies with frontline staff and receive pictures, videos, and feedback from them. It should be simple for everyone to publish their own content too.

An intranet with different permission settings will help make sure only certain teams or people have approval to see specific documents or market research. That makes it easier to share information confidently in the digital workplace.

The best intranet platforms for marketers should integrate with other apps like Slack or Microsoft 365, so your team can continue to use the tools they feel comfortable with.

Surveys will help marketing gain feedback from different departments without hassle. They can then check the built-in analytics to see how engaged employees are with the content they’re posting.  

5 ways to use your intranet for marketing

Now you know what features to look for in a marketing intranet, it’s time to go over how you can use those tools productively. 

1. Share marketing initiatives

Sometimes employees don’t know about new deals or offers unless they get notifications from management. An intranet keeps everyone on the same page. 

2. Create a sharable photo album

Make an album where staff can upload pictures or video clips that marketing can use. Having one place where a photo of a staff celebration can be quickly uploaded to the company intranet reduces the strain on all of your workers.

When it’s easier for people to share their content, they’re more likely to.

3. Collect social media content

Not only pictures but quotes, examples of good work by frontline workers, and even share job vacancies at specific locations. Social media is becoming less curated, and more authentic content is resonating with users.

Sharing digital marketing materials with actual workers instead of models can help you achieve that genuine feel.

4. Promote your company blog

Share posts that staff are likely to be interested in and learn from. 89% of marketers use blogs in their content strategies, but do your workers know about it? Don't just send them to your homepage — share case studies, white papers, and press releases they might care about.

5. Share marketing materials that others need

Have a folder or feed for current sales strategy and brand assets, so if an employee needs to reference them, they’ll always have easy access to the promotions. 

Get your marketing team on board

A social intranet is only as good as the contributions from its users.

You need to get your marketing department engaged with a new platform, or they won’t see the benefits from the workspace.

Multiple experts at the Content Marketing Institute expect video content to grow in 2022, but your department might not have the resources to create all of this content themselves.

By leaning into your company’s intranet software, your team can source photos, videos, success stories, milestones, and other materials from frontline workers and other departments as they create them.

Marketing will be able to access this information quickly — and in most cases, directly. 23% of marketers surveyed by HubSpot said just finding the ideas for new content was their biggest challenge for 2022.  

If your marketing team is able to improve internal communications with other branches, they can access new information and learn what’s trending in stores now.

They can also use employee-generated content as a springboard or incorporate it directly into new marketing efforts. 

The best way to have marketing get on board with an intranet is to have them try it out for free and see how they like it.

Final thoughts: marketing intranet — using an intranet to transform marketing

An intranet for marketing can streamline the entire department and lessen their workload.

Having your entire company help generate content yields a more authentic message that improves employee engagement and means less time spent hunting for a good photo or story. 

Communicating and defining the roles helps keep everyone on the same page. 

But make sure the intranet solution you choose has the features your organization needs for each department.

Your employees need to be able to access the intranet easily, and a mobile solution will help more workers connect and engage. 

Help cut down on the work your marketing department is facing with a fast, company-wide intranet like Blink today.