What Blink’s Magic Quadrant debut means for the market

Nowadays, most organizations understand the importance of employee engagement. In fact, 75% of CHROs say that improving the employee experience and organizational culture is a top focus for 2024.

There’s plenty of research out there, outlining the benefits employee engagement brings to your business. Increased employee productivity and retention, better customer satisfaction rates, improved business profitability — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

It’s clear. Businesses that prioritize employee engagement tend to be more successful than those that don’t. But one important question remains.

Whose responsibility is employee engagement? Who within an organization is tasked with devising an employee engagement strategy — and putting it into action? 

In this guide, we explain who should take ownership of employee engagement. We also look at the vital role HR teams play in establishing the strategies, tools, and behaviors that support better engagement in the workplace.

Why does employee engagement matter?

Engaged employees are happier. They’re more likely to interact with company communications and contribute to company culture.

Engaged employees are also more productive and more innovative. They come up with bright ideas, feel invested in their work, and are committed to your organization.

A focus on employee engagement benefits employees. It also has a significant impact on business results. By striving to improve employee engagement, you can:

• Increase productivity and profitability: Engaged workers outperform their less engaged peers. Gallup’s extensive research into employee engagement reveals that engaged organizations are 17% more productive. They also experience a 23% increase in profitability.
  
  
• Boost levels of innovation and creativity: An engaged workforce goes beyond the bare minimum. They’re more likely to collaborate — and more likely to demonstrate creative thinking — which spells greater business innovation.
  
  
• Improve customer experience: Engaged employees care about the customer experience and inspire customer loyalty. Whether they’re serving customers, manufacturing products, or working at HQ, your team is dedicated to customer satisfaction.
  
  

Minimize staff turnover: Higher employee engagement levels are linked to higher employee satisfaction. This boosts employee retention and minimizes turnover. In fact, organizations with high levels of engagement can reduce staff turnover by up to 51%.

Why avoid disengagement?

So, we’ve looked at how employee engagement benefits your business. But why is disengagement such a problem?

Disengaged employees are less productive and invested in your organization. They experience more stress, anger, and health problems than their more engaged co-workers — and are more likely to take time off sick.

These employees are also less loyal. They’re more likely to look for a job elsewhere, increasing your recruitment costs. Those who stick around can cause other problems for your organization.

According to McKinsey, quiet quitters account for between a fifth and two-fifths of an organization’s workforce. These workers fulfill minimum job requirements — but no more. Some also act to demoralize and disrupt other members of your team. 

It’s also worth bearing in mind that frontline employees are generally even less engaged than their desk-based peers. They’re more likely to feel burned out, three times more likely not to recommend their organization as a good place to work, and twice as likely to leave.

Whatever form it takes, disengagement is costly. According to Gallup’s estimate, low engagement costs the global economy $8.9 trillion in GDP. So finding ways to engage the whole workforce — including your remote, office-based, and frontline employees — is crucial.

Who is actually responsible for employee engagement?

IIt’s clear that high levels of employee engagement are good for an organization. But who within your organization makes that happen? Who’s responsible for employee engagement?

The most successful employee engagement strategies involve everyone within an organization. It’s simply not possible for HR to improve employee engagement significantly without company-wide buy-in.

You need all of the following parties on board:

• Leadership. Leadership is responsible for championing employee engagement. Their attitudes and behaviors filter down through an organization. So without C-suite support, employee engagement initiatives are unlikely to be effective.
• Management. Managers also play a crucial role. Because they have direct contact with employees, they’re well-placed to develop and sustain employee engagement, implementing the agreed engagement strategies.
• Employees. Workers also play a role in the success of employee engagement. They can help by supporting their teammates and by taking part in two-way dialogue with managers and leaders, providing constructive feedback. 
• HR. None of the above would be possible without HR. The people team is responsible for empowering the rest of the organization. They put in place the strategies, processes, tools, and coaching needed to build a more engaging and engaged workplace.

The HR team is uniquely positioned to drive employee engagement. As the custodians of talent, it’s HR's responsibility to manage employee recruitment, onboarding, development, and retention. For each of these key points in the employee life cycle, they can devise and implement strategies that ensure employees feel valued and engaged.

They can also support the wider organization so they understand what good engagement looks like — and the best ways to achieve it.

In a nutshell: HR and employee engagement go hand-in-hand. But they need buy-in from leadership and management if they’re to improve employee engagement and reap the associated benefits. 

The role of HR in employee engagement: 6 key responsibilities

As well as coaching leaders, managers, and employees to adopt effective employee engagement behaviors, HR is responsible for engagement in all the following ways.

1. Recruitment and onboarding

HR can support employee engagement from the very first contact a potential employee has with your organization.

By developing your employer brand and by crafting job descriptions that showcase this brand, you showcase company culture and attract candidates to apply. 

Once a new hire starts work, you can continue to engage them with tailored onboarding experiences. Support workers to find resources and forge relationships from day one and they’ll feel part of company culture more quickly.

2. Communication

Internal communications are critical to employee engagement. Relevant, personalized, and timely communications keep employees informed and engaged.

HR teams can use communication tools to regularly remind employees of workplace benefits, perks, and development opportunities. They can also encourage leaders and managers to send their own engagement-boosting comms.

Regular, two-way communication is also key to maintaining a positive relationship with employees. HR should make an effort to communicate with employees often, whether it be through secure chat, 1-2-1 meetings, or the company news feed. This helps employees to feel valued and connected to the company, boosting overall performance.

3. Recognition

Employees feel more engaged when they feel valued by their employer. So praise from a manager or co-workers, bonuses, and rewards programs should be a regular feature of the employee experience.

While it’s up to team leaders to show their appreciation, HR plays an important role in making recognition an integral part of company culture.

Your HR team can establish recognition and reward systems. They can determine which rewards are most appealing to your workforce. They can also implement user-friendly employee recognition tools, which make it quick and easy for managers to recognize the hard work and milestones of their employees.

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4. Retention

Another key responsibility for HR teams is talent retention. With employee surveys and exit interviews, you keep a finger on the pulse of your organization. You learn how employees are feeling and what could be done to improve employee engagement.  

This data can then be used to make changes that will improve employee engagement levels and drive employee retention, minimizing staff turnover and its costly consequences.

Development and progression are also key to retention. HR teams can keep employees engaged by clarifying progression opportunities and career goals. 

They can also ensure easy, online access to training and development programs — so all employees, whether they work on the frontline or in the office, can make progress in their careers.

5. Wellbeing and safety

Employees are more likely to enjoy high levels of engagement when they feel physically and psychologically safe at work.  

HR can support this aspect of employee engagement by ensuring good communication around safety. It should be easy for employees to report safety concerns and hazards. Workers should have access to a content hub that stores essential company policies and safety procedures.

For psychological safety, HR can take the lead, promoting transparent communication and an inclusive company culture across all employee touchpoints.

6. Tools and tech

The right tools and tech make employee engagement much easier. So another responsibility for HR is the implementation of tools — like employee engagement apps — which have the power to engage the workforce and amplify company culture.  

Via an employee app, employees can access an engaging news feed, employee surveys, training and development, and a content hub — everything they need to feel connected to their roles, co-workers, and the wider organization.

It’s important that these tools are available to all employees to ensure engagement initiatives reach every sector of the workforce.

So look for tech tools that are accessible via a mobile device and that don’t require a company email address. That way, frontline employees enjoy the same access as their desk-based peers.

Searching for the ultimate employee engagement tool? Here’s a quick intro to the Blink employee app.

What can HR do to improve employee engagement?

HR teams play a critical role in employee engagement — and there’s lots that HR can do to improve employee engagement within their organization.

It starts with the right foundations - here are five employee best engagement practices.

Understand BAU engagement

HR can support managers in understanding the 'baseline' or BAU (business as usual) engagement levels within an organization.

This means assessing and tracking metrics like turnover, productivity, and performance over time, as well as identifying any trends or patterns that may be affecting overall engagement levels.

With this information, HR can work with managers to identify the most suitable employee engagement activities. These are interventions that will improve engagement levels in both the short and the long term.

Learn how to measure engagement

When you measure employee engagement, you can make data-backed decisions — and don’t have to rely on guesswork. So HR teams should establish and track employee engagement key performance indicators (KPIs).

Some useful metrics include retention rate, absenteeism rate, and employee net promoter score (eNPS). You can also use employee surveys, exit interviews, and your employee intranet analytics to assess engagement levels within your organization.

Here's how we measure engagement at Blink:

• Retention: Disengaged employees are more likely to quit their jobs so employee retention is a good indicator of engagement. You need to understand why and when employees choose to leave your organization.
• Manager performance: Strong managerial support is a key driver of employee engagement, so it's important to assess and improve the performance of your managers. We drill down into the data to identify low-engagement teams and then provide those managers with extra coaching.‍
• Intranet engagement: What do your intranet engagement metrics tell you? By tracking how employees interact with our employee app, our HR team can identify disengagement and dissatisfaction.

Know how to manage for engagement

Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement and have a huge influence on employee wellbeing.

Ideally, mid-level management supports engagement by providing constructive feedback, giving recognition and rewards, and acknowledging individual strengths and contributions.

HR can support employee engagement by supporting managers. With the right employee engagement tools and guidance, managers are empowered to build happy and engaged teams.

Employee engagement training can also help managers better understand the important role they play in engaging the workforce.

Look for early signs of disengagement

Employees who are becoming disengaged may start to pull back from their work. They might make fewer contributions to the team, their output may decrease, and they might be less likely to speak up in 1-2-1s and meetings.

This disengagement isn’t always obvious to busy managers, particularly when they’re responsible for a dispersed frontline team. So HR can support them by using employee intranet analytics to identify employees who aren’t engaging with the platform.

By looking out for early signs of disengagement, HR and managers can take action to re-engage employees before they impact team morale or decide to leave the organization.

Talk about more than tasks during 1-2-1s

HR should encourage managers to focus more on fostering strong relationships during 1-2-1s.

Of course, they need to discuss work-related tasks and employee performance. But this is also an opportunity to learn about employees’ personal interests, goals, and challenges.

By creating a supportive and open environment where employees feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and concerns, HR can build the trust and connection that is critical for strong employee engagement.

In summary

Improve employee engagement at your organization and you stand to improve productivity, profitability, and employee retention.

HR teams are responsible for employee engagement throughout the employee life cycle. They play a critical role in devising and implementing employee engagement strategies.

But they can’t go it alone.

For employee engagement initiatives to be a success, you need company-wide buy-in. Leaders, managers, and employees — guided by HR — need to see the value in engagement and demonstrate a commitment to creating an engaging workplace culture together.

In today’s modern workplace, you also need the right tech tools. These tools make it easy for everyone to incorporate engagement activities into their every day.

Blink’s employee app provides all the tools you need to improve engagement within your organization:

• A personalized news feed: A place where you can build a welcoming company culture, encourage everyone to take part in two-way communication, and prioritize the most relevant information for each employee. 
• Recognition tools: Our Kudos tool makes it easy for managers to recognize employee milestones and achievements. It allows co-workers to share in the celebration, too
• Employee surveys and analytics: Gather employee feedback and view app analytics to understand, track, and make data-based improvements to employee engagement
• An integrated content and resource hub: Employees can access all tech tools and resources via a single, user-friendly interface. Just one set of login details and no company email address necessary. 

Whether you're looking for a new way to measure employee satisfaction or simply want to provide a more engaging employee experience, Blink has the tools to support and facilitate your success.

Book a personalized demo today to find out how Blink can support employee engagement at your organization.

"We know it's important. And we've got it covered. We do a survey every year."

We hear this depressingly often in our daily conversations about employee engagement. 

Most healthcare workers know staff engagement matters. There are plenty of studies that show how important it is.

That's because the Annual Engagement Survey is the primary tool wielded by most healthcare organizations.

It asks employees to rank answers to statements like "I would recommend my trust as a place to work" on a five-point scale.

When everyone has labored through the questionnaire, frontline managers receive team results. Then, someone tallies the average score. First for hospitals, then for the organization as a whole. Most healthcare organizations repeat this exercise every year.

And unfortunately, when it comes to measuring employee engagement in healthcare, the Annual Employee Engagement Survey is ineffective. The best-case scenario: it isn't enough on its own. Worst case scenario? It actually makes employees less engaged.

Why an employee engagement survey isn't enough.

The format is too rigid Employees rank based on inflexible, pre-determined, multiple-choice answers. There's no room for the more varied input or nuance needed to get a clear picture.

The questions don't yield actionable answers. Standard engagement metrics on predictors outside most leaders' control: e.g., How motivated do you feel?

The metrics are fluffy. The most commonly-used questionnaire uses "percent favorable" metrics. These inflate scores and creates blind spots by making an appearance of high engagement without the outcomes to back it up.

The answers aren't necessarily honest. No matter how many times managers tell employees surveys are anonymous, there will still be a nagging sense that if they are frank, someone will link the questionnaire to their name – and it may have repercussions. It's a human thing.

Once a year is not enough. Bank account. Weight. If something matters to you, you'll check it regularly. You wouldn't rely on a once-a-year snapshot to get a clear picture of what's going on. An annual survey is a snapshot in time, and many random factors can influence results. How a healthcare worker feels on that particular day isn't reflective of how they feel year-round.

An employee engagement survey in itself is not enough. If something matters, you act on it. But most organizations finish the study and then move on.

Year after year: employees toil through the same one-size-fits-all form. No real changes happen. The same questions appear on the survey. And by the middle of the second quarter, any hopes for change fade again.

But what else can you do?

Surveys can be useful as an annual check-up. But healthcare leaders need to supplement them with regular, focused check-ins. Some companies choose to do this with pulse surveys. However, we find this leads to questionnaire fatigue. In a sector as demanding as healthcare – especially in the current climate – there will be even less patience.

The alternative? Monitor the vital data that contribute to engagement in the first place.

The following factors reflect how engaged your workforce is. By adding up averages and totalling scores, you will get a birdseye view of engagement across the organization as a whole and specific departments.

The 10 engagement indicators all healthcare leaders should be tracking

1. Employees on a leave of absence.
2. Workers who have filed compensation claims.
3. The number of employees who have quit in the last 12 months.
4. The number of training hours employees voluntarily attend.
5. Performance appraisal and evaluation ratings.
6. The number of discrimination complaints and legal claims.
7. The average commute time (the shorter, the better). 
8. The average amount of relevant education employees undertake.
9. The number of employees on zero-hour contracts.
10. The number of employees progressing in their roles.

Keeping an eye on your workforce's 'health' in this way isn't complicated. Technology will do it for you. Specialized engagement platforms like Blink make engagement patterns in your organization visible and highlight where you need to invest more time and energy.

The format is flexible. You can adjust the set of factors depending on the way your organization operates.

The results are actionable. Because the metrics are so focused, it's clear what the issues are and whether it's in your control to improve them.

Data doesn't lie. These results are black and white, unsusceptible to individual moods or concerns about anonymity.

It's ongoing. You can monitor these results weekly, monthly, annually, and even daily.

And finally...

There's no need to pester busy healthcare workers. You can save the questioning for when it really matters.

Keeping an eye on the ‘health’ of your workforce by tracking these things on a regular basis (eg monthly) isn’t complicated. Technology like Blink will do it for you, making engagement patterns in your organization visible, and highlighting where you need to invest more time and energy. 

So you’re tracking engagement indicators – then what?

Here’s another thing that I need to keep emphasizing in my conversations about staff engagement: engagement not something that ‘happens’ (or not) – it’s something you need to make happen. If an employee leaves within 12 months, that’s not just bad luck; it means something was missing, either in the onboarding process or in other ongoing processes in your organization. And it almost certainly means the employee was not engaged.

We know a fair amount about what underpins employee engagement. Five actionable points, in particular, play a key role. From the perspective of the employee, these are:

1. being clear about your role; 
2. receiving adequate support;
3. having the right equipment; 
4. being able to play to your strengths; and
5. working alongside committed colleagues. 

Not surprising, then,  that 70% of the variance in employee engagement in healthcare can be attributed to managers. 

Managers are key to employee engagement.

And here are four key strategies that managers can implement to improve staff engagement:

Foster a culture of continuous development

Staff will be more engaged in a culture that gives them opportunities for development and growth. This means encouraging employees to participate in their personal and professional development activities and giving them access to learning opportunities that align with their long-term goals. 

It also means creating an atmosphere in which employees feel comfortable asking for guidance about prioritizing tasks to learning a new skill. 

And it means supporting team members in sharing best practices, recognizing one another's accomplishments, and fostering a sense of shared accountability.

Make check-ins less formal and more regular 

By seizing small opportunities for meaningful conversation, healthcare managers can build work environments where developmental conversations happen naturally and often. 

Rather than reserving such discussions for one-on-one office meetings, managers can use morning huddles or impromptu hallway discussions to briefly "round" with employees -- asking about barriers, clarifying expectations, and answering questions. Even brief conversations can promote ongoing dialogue and communicate to employees that their manager cares about them.

Appoint clinical coordinators

For managers with vast control spans, facilitating regular conversations with individuals may be logistically impossible. In such cases, appointing and equipping nurses as clinical coordinators can nurture essential individualized development. 

These coordinators will continue their frontline nursing duties but will also be responsible for facilitating ongoing developmental discussions with an assigned group of nurses, including regular (e.g. quarterly) goal-setting, accountability and strengths coaching. 

Clinical coordinators often become a rich source of ever-present support. They turn into trusted counselors who hear opinions, remove obstacles and provide immediate feedback.

And because they maintain frontline responsibilities, they will have credibility among their teammates, as they will understand the demands of the job.

Prioritize employee health and wellbeing

This issue is urgent. The pandemic has made clear that much rests on employee health and wellbeing, and that these should be primary goals. The healthcare industry's current triple aim is to improve patient experience, reduce costs and improve population health. 

A fourth one should be added to that, and it should probably come first: protect and support staff health and wellbeing.

A new Occupational Medicine study led by King’s College London found that over the past year, nearly half of NHS intensive care staff reported mental health symptoms consistent with severe anxiety or depression. An alarming 40% had symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD), including flashbacks and nightmares.

This affects individuals and their lives; but it also impacts on teams and organizations.

Summing up

Frontline staff, when given enough support, confidence and encouragement, are capable of incredible things – improving care, reducing costs and designing solutions to big challenges. 

In what has arguably been the hardest year of their career, healthcare professionals have run entire wards, created PPE solutions and developed care packages for Covid-19 patients. All these are manifestations of high levels of engagement.

But real staff engagement needs real investment. Not just a financial investment (although that too) but investment in genuinely facilitative leadership – the kind that is prepared to "walk the talk" and make engagement a truly two-way exercise.

That’s why health and care managers play such an important role in fostering staff engagement. But they shouldn’t have to find their way through this from scratch, investing time they don’t have. Giving them the technology/tools to more effectively drive engagement is essential. 

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.

Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 report puts global employee engagement at 20%, the lowest level since 2020. In that environment, the difference between a platform that gets adopted and one that doesn't rarely comes down to the technology. Instead it comes down to how the launch was run.

Most organizations announce new tools, but the smart ones build anticipation. I got to see that difference up close recently, working with AG Barr on the rollout of their Blink app, which their people named Fizz. Within 30 minutes of launch, 50% of their workforce had signed up. Two weeks later, they hit 92% adoption. 

At Blink, we have a deep understanding of the drivers for adoption across the frontline and have incorporated this into our implementation approach. We call our approach the Five Levers, and this is what they look like in practice.

Lever 1: Get your comms team in the room from day one.

Having implemented technology across very different organizations, it’s clear to me that the comms team's proximity to the build is one of the strongest predictors of launch performance. 

A common mistake in platform launches is treating comms as a final step. The platform gets configured, tested, signed off, and then someone hands the comms team a brief and asks them to do their thing. 

The real value is unlocked when the comms team are active participants throughout the implementation journey. Involve them in design decisions, enable them to build deep knowledge of the product, and give them the opportunity to ask the questions that only someone who knows both their audience and the product deeply would think to ask. 

Lever 2: Give people ownership before you ask for buy-in

Gallup defines engagement as the psychological attachment workers have to their work, their team, and their employer. That attachment can be built by users during an implementation through participation, consultation, and all the small, accumulating signals that say “this was made with you in mind”.

The most effective implementations I've been part of find ways to bring users into the process before launch. One customer shadowed frontline workers during the design phase to understand their ways of working and surface how the platform could genuinely remove friction from their day. Another customer ran an internal competition to name their custom Blink app. That might sound like a small gesture, but it got people curious and gave employees a sense of ownership that carried through to launch day.

None of these approaches were expensive, but all of them materially changed the reception at launch by treating co-ownership as an adoption strategy. 

Lever 3: Build suspense, and make launch an event.

Most internal platform launches follow the same pattern: countdown comms, a PDF guide, and a go-live date. However, awareness isn’t the same as anticipation… and knowing something exists is not the same as wanting it.

The most effective comms teams run deliberate suspense campaign in the weeks before launch. By the time your platform goes live, you want people to be itching to finally get access to something they have been waiting for.

One of the best ways to do this is by treating launch as a moment worth celebrating. Set up stalls across locations, run competitions, visible leadership presence and lean on champions (more on that later). 

The most memorable launches I've been part of have had a real sense of occasion. We've seen customers deploy drones to drop QR activation codes, bring in celebrity guests, and line up food trucks on launch day. Prizes have included iPads, flight vouchers, annual leave, and pizza parties for entire teams. These things create energy that employees are still talking about a year later.

Not every organization has that kind of launch budget though, and it doesn't matter as much as you might think. The underlying principle isn't spend, it's signal. A launch that feels like an event tells employees that the organization takes this seriously, that someone thought about them specifically, and that showing up on day one means something. You can do that with a well-placed stall, a visible leader handing out coffees, and a competition where the prize is a piece of inexpensive swag. 

Frontline workers are harder to reach through traditional internal channels, so a physical presence on launch day says something an email can't. It signals that the organization considered them specifically, which is always noticed.

The lesson for comms professionals is that you have more control over the emotional temperature of a launch than most plans account for. Anticipation, energy, occasion are the difference between a launch that lands and one that quietly fades.

Lever 4: Create champions, not just comms

Even a well-designed email gets deleted, but a teammate who says "this is genuinely good, let me show you" gets results. That’s why every successful launch I've been part of has had a network of champions behind it. 

Peer influence consistently outperforms top-down communication. This isn’t because the top-down communication is poor, but because people weight information differently depending on the source. A message from a familiar colleague carries credibility that a well-crafted comms email simply can't replicate. 

Here’s a cheat sheet for building a great champion network:

1. Identify the right people: credibility matters, so look for people who are trusted by their peers across all parts of the business - different locations, functions, and seniority levels.
2. Give them early access: make sure they've had hands-on training and early access to the platform so they have time to explore it properly.
3. Give them something to shout about: champions should understand the “why” behind the platform so they can have an authentic conversation rather than deliver a rehearsed message.
4. Make them visible on launch day: a familiar face in the right place at the right time is worth more than any amount of pre-launch email communication.
5. Keep them engaged beyond go-live: the best champion networks don't dissolve after launch day. Give champions a way to feed back what they're hearing, keep them updated on new features, and recognize their contribution. They're your longest-running adoption tool.

Lever 5: Plan the weeks after launch as carefully as the day itself

The common post-launch pattern to avoid is a spike on day one followed by a plateau. Early adopters come, they engage with the overwhelming amount of week one content on the platform, but then usage stalls. Organizations that plan the post-launch phase deliberately with real incentives, visible momentum, and continued champion activity consistently derive more value than those that treat launch day as the end of the project.

At Blink, we dedicate time to developing a post-launch engagement plan with our customers long before launch, aligning leaders, managers and core functions on what to share and when. We encourage leadership teams to regularly engage across the platform. easyJet's "3, 2, 1" method is one of the most effective approaches I've seen. Leaders are expected to like three posts, leave two comments, and post one thing each week. It's simple enough to stick to, and the visibility of leadership activity sets the tone for everyone else.

Another way to avoid a post-launch slump is to run campaigns within the platform, such as a competition for the post with the highest engagement (cue a ton of wonderful user generated content, with the prize likely going to a post containing a very cute pet photo) or a weekly prize draw eligible only to the people who have activated over the first 4-6 weeks. It should be meaningful enough to sustain motivation, and structured enough to keep the campaign alive long after launch day.

Rather than being the finish line, go-live is the start of a different comms challenge. The pre-launch campaign creates demand, and the post-launch campaign keeps people coming back. 

What this actually takes

Gallup's 2026 data is clear that technology only lands when leaders and managers make it make sense for people. The Five Levers aren't complicated, but they do require treating the communication of change as a discipline with the same rigor as the technical implementation, starting early, going deep, and understanding that adoption has to be designed.

The organizations I've seen launch technology well involve comms from the start, build anticipation rather than just awareness, invest in champions who carry real credibility, and keep the campaign going after day one. The ones that don't, however good the platform, tend to end up with a flat launch and a difficult conversation about why nobody's using it.

If you're planning a platform rollout and want to talk through your approach, I'd love to hear from you. Connect with me on LinkedIn, or reach out at joinblink.com.

Do you encourage employee voice in the workplace? 

By ‘encourage’, we don’t mean ‘tolerate’. We mean: do you actively encourage it? Do you run regular feedback initiatives and act on them? Do you train managers to ask for, accept and pass on feedback? 

A major survey we conducted recently suggests that ‘not being listened to’ is employees’ number one gripe with management – and one that has a significant impact on talent retention. In other words, there could be a huge amount of untapped innovation going to waste, right under your nose.  

With over a fifth (22%) of those who raise issues at work feeling that they receive no advice or support, there’s definitely more organizations could be doing. Here’s how an employee voice strategy could help. 

Voice of the employee – what is it? 

Whenever we’re grappling with important workplace concepts, we can always rely on the CIPD for a useful, easily digestible summary. They define employee voice as: 

“The means by which people communicate their views to their employer and influence matters that affect them at work”

If we were to distill this a little more, our answer to “what is employee voice?” would be

“your employees’ involvement in decision making processes and how you encourage it”. 

What is an employee voice strategy? 

An employee voice strategy is how you encourage your workforce to have their say. 

It’s worth distinguishing between ‘action’ and ‘strategy’ here. Running employee surveys as and when might be a useful action to take, but doesn’t constitute a strategy in itself. An employee voice strategy is a planned and sustained program of activities that encourage your employees to make their voices heard. 

Check out the employee voice examples below for specific strategy building blocks, but make sure everything you create is built on these two key principles: 

• Commitment to a ‘speak up’ culture: if employees consider the risks of speaking up (whether delivering a positive input or a criticism) then they simply won’t bother. Make it rewarding to contribute (even if the feedback is negative) and more employees will do so.

• Commitment to employee-centered leadership: senior management must take the lead in listening to employees and acting on feedback. High-visibility commitment to this at senior levels will increase the success of your employee voice strategy.

What are the benefits of employee voice? 

Employee voice is good for your workforce. Colleagues feel you take their input seriously, and feel happier and safer in their roles as a result. 

Secondly, it’s great for your business! In a nutshell, a great employee voice strategy encourages innovation, boosts performance and rubs off on that all important bottom line.

Employee voice and workplace engagement

Employees like to be involved in the decisions that affect them. CIPD data suggests that employees’ satisfaction with involvement in decision-making is significantly and positively related to their overall job satisfaction.

But employee voice doesn’t just affect how happy employees are at work. It also affects how invested they are in your organization and its long-term success. 

Being able to participate in decision-making automatically draws your employees into the mission of your business. Rather than being there to follow orders, they become stakeholders that actively contribute to key business achievements.

This sense of ownership is called employee engagement, and it contributes significantly to long-term business success.

A pre-COVID Gallup poll found that companies with high employee engagement achieved:

• 10% higher customer ratings
• 17% higher productivity
• 20% higher sales
• 21% higher profitability

Importantly, as the Great Resignation continues to cause staffing issues for many businesses, employee engagement also breeds employee retention, making it that bit easier to hold onto your top performers in a tough market. Regularly surveying your employees to keep your finger on the pulse, and actually actioning the results is a simple employee engagement best practice to follow and help your team invested.

Employee voice and organizational performance 

Why ignore your single biggest pool of ideas for improving your organization’s performance? 

The link between employee voice and organisational performance is hard to ignore. Your employees know the ins and outs of your organization better than anyone. They can tell you better than anyone about which processes work, which don’t, where major silos exist and where slowdowns occur.  

Yet all too often, segments of the workforce – frontline employees in particular – feel as if their input won’t be taken seriously. If you allow this type of sentiment to grow, employees won’t share valuable insights further up the chain. 

You might not find any million dollar ideas here (but hey, don’t rule it out), but you can expect a million smaller bits of feedback that could help your business run that bit more effectively. The sum of all these parts: cost savings for you, increased satisfaction for your employees. Everyone’s a winner. 

Employee voice and compliance

In a recent online poll, a stunning 93% of respondents thought that becoming a whistleblower would negatively impact their career. There are still huge barriers to overcome for employees who witness wrongdoing or poor practice and want to report it. 

Encouraging a genuinely open culture via employee voice initiatives makes it so much more likely that your employees will speak up if they see something wrong. In some cases, this opportunity to fix issues internally can save a huge amount of financial and reputational damage. 

The importance of employee voice and communication

We recently conducted a case study of frontline healthcare workers in the UK. When asked about the one thing they would say to senior management anonymously, their answers were pretty telling: 

“Please answer my emails and questions. I am trying to do my best at work and would appreciate feeling listened to.” 

“Communication please!”

“Listen to us! We have been here long enough to know what works.”

Creating an employee voice strategy formalizes two-way communication so that it’s not left to individuals to follow up. An organizational commitment to communication ensures that people feel heard on a personal level, whilst providing senior decision-makers with the tools to keep the conversation going. 

Employee voice examples

Employee voice can be direct or indirect, formal or informal. 

Direct employee voice involves speaking directly to senior management, line managers and other decision makers with feedback and suggestions. Indirect employee voice does this through an intermediary, such as an employee committee, representative, or union rep.

Formal employee voice is expressed through official, codified channels, such as employee surveys. Informal employee voice can be expressed wherever and whenever – a quick email to a line manager or dropping in for a conversation during a senior exec’s office hours are both good examples. 

As you build your employee voice strategy, you’ll likely use a combination of all of these to make sure your workforce truly feels heard. Here are a few examples of employee voice initiatives that you could start in your business. 

• Regular ‘pulse’ surveys with a process for gathering and acting on feedback
• Training on workplace practices and how to flag up when they aren’t being followed
• Regular one-to-ones with line managers for two-way feedback and suggestions
• Open office hours for senior managers and key decision makers
• Open forums or meetings for discussing new initiatives and proposals
• Transparent communication about company news and developments

You can extend the scope of your employee voice strategy using the right software tools. Arguably this is hugely beneficial for all businesses now, and for remote, hybrid and mobile teams this is essential. 

An employee app with an instantly updated newsfeed, two-way content creation and the ability to support employee-generated content is a must-have, as is employee survey software,

Final thoughts on employee voice

Your employees are brimming with great ideas! Why lock that away? 

It’s on you, as a workplace, to actively encourage employees to share these ideas. Don’t sit back and hope people come to you – shout about how receptive you are (and mean it) and how much you value ideas and contributions from across the business. 

You’ll need: 

• The drive to create a culture where everyone feels able to speak up
• A commitment at senior leadership level to open communication and two-way dialogue
• The willingness to take the negative feedback along with the positive

Use the ideas above to get started. Focus on meaningful sustainable change and commit for the long term and you’ll get results. 

Blink’s newsfeed, social sharing and two-way publishing features help you encourage employee voice. Book a free demo to find out how.

What makes her awesome?

Sharon provides exceptional and compassionate care to her patients. Her current patient’s family has expressed on several occasions how grateful they are that Sharon joined the patient’s care team in January 2023. Sharon’s calm and patient demeanor has made the world of difference in the patient’s daily living and has supported the family in taking care of their chronically ill family member.

How has Blink helped in her role?

Sharon routinely uses Blink to communicate with office staff to report changes in schedule and patient care.

What do they want to do next?

Sharon would love to continue to provide the best possible care to her client.

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Nominated by: Iyshia Wright, Branch Director - Brooklyn

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ClearBox validates Blink’s leadership in the future of the intranet market

For the fourth year running, Blink has been recognized as a standout platform in the annual ClearBox intranet market report — and this year’s results come with an even stronger signal.

The ClearBox Consulting Intranet and Employee Experience Platforms Report 2026 confirms what Blink customers already know: the intranet market may be mature, but it hasn’t converged. And Blink continues to lead where it matters most.

In fact, Blink is the only vendor in the entire report to achieve a perfect 5/5 score in any category, earning top marks for Mobile & Frontline Support.

Here’s how ClearBox summed it up:

“Blink is an engaging, social and truly mobile-first platform, ideal for organizations with a high percentage of frontline and deskless employees.”

Let’s break down what the report assessed — and what this year’s findings mean for buyers.

About ClearBox

ClearBox Consulting is an independent intranet and digital workplace consultancy that helps organizations select, design, and evolve the right intranet and employee experience platforms.

Trusted by global brands including Unilever, PlayStation, GlaxoSmithKline, and Bayer, ClearBox is known for its rigorous, vendor-agnostic evaluations and practical buyer guidance.

Each year, ClearBox reviews 20 leading intranet and employee experience platforms, scoring them across eight core criteria and sharing detailed insights into where each vendor truly excels.

What does the ClearBox report assess?

ClearBox evaluates platforms against eight key criteria, including:

• User experience and visual appeal
• Community and engagement
• Publishing and communications management
• Mobile and frontline support
• Governance, administration, and vendor maturity

The research also incorporates customer feedback, pricing considerations, and product roadmaps — giving buyers a clear picture of both current capability and future direction.

You can explore the full findings here: ClearBox Intranet and Employee Experience Platforms Report 2026

Where Blink stands out in 2026

Mobile and frontline support — perfect score, category leadership

Once again, Blink leads the market in mobile and frontline delivery — but this year, the result is definitive.

Blink is the only platform to receive a perfect 5/5 score for Mobile & Frontline Support across the entire vendor landscape.

This isn’t incremental improvement. It’s category leadership in the fastest-growing, most underserved segment of the workforce.

Blink was built mobile-first from day one — not retrofitted for frontline teams later. Employees can access everything they need through a single, secure app, without a company email address or desktop login. Offline access, frontline-native UX, and intuitive navigation ensure that critical information reaches everyone, everywhere.

ClearBox highlights Blink’s structural advantage here, noting that desktop-led intranets consistently under-serve frontline workers — a gap Blink was designed specifically to solve.

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User experience built for adoption — not training

Blink continues to earn top marks for user experience and visual appeal, thanks to its clean, social-style interface that mirrors the consumer apps employees already use.

ClearBox notes:

“Blink delivers an engaging, social experience and practical tools for communication, collaboration and productivity, without overwhelming users with complexity.”

From a feed-first experience and Stories to rich multimedia content and communities, Blink makes communication feel familiar, fast, and engaging — driving adoption without heavy change management.

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What ClearBox is really telling the market in 2026

Beyond individual scores, this year’s report delivers a clear message to buyers: the intranet market is mature, fragmented, and outcome-led.

There is no longer a single “do everything” platform that wins across every category. Instead, vendors lead by solving specific problems for specific audiences.

For Blink, that market context matters.

ClearBox’s findings validate Blink’s long-standing strategy of not chasing feature sprawl, and instead focusing relentlessly on communications effectiveness, frontline reach, and measurable engagement.

Key signals from the report include:

• Internal communications teams are increasingly the primary buyers — not IT
• Mobile and frontline delivery is no longer optional
• Governance, moderation, and trust are critical as platforms become more social
• Buyers want practical AI embedded into real workflows, not hype

Blink aligns with each of these shifts — by design.

Enterprise governance, without killing engagement

As platforms become more social, ClearBox notes that governance and risk management are back in focus — especially for large, complex organizations.

Blink balances engagement with control through:

• Community permissions and moderation tools
• Timed log-outs for frontline safety and compliance
• A relevancy-based, algorithmic feed that balances reach with oversight

The result is social communication that scales inside the enterprise — not in spite of it.

What this means for buyers

If your priorities include:

• Communications effectiveness
• Frontline reach
• Mobile-first delivery
• Governed, measurable engagement

The ClearBox 2026 report shows that Blink consistently outperforms broader, heavier platforms where it counts most.

Blink isn’t trying to be everything to everyone. It’s focused on helping organizations reach 100% of their workforce — and prove the impact of doing so.

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Some more highlights from the ClearBox report

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

“Today, Blink continues to stand out for its mobile-first design and intuitive user experience, making it a strong choice for organizations with frontline workers.”

“The platform’s personalised feed and simple navigation give employees quick access to relevant content.”

“Blink also excels in onboarding and adoption support, offering practical features like QR code access and in-person onboarding events.”

“Overall, Blink is a strong choice for organizations prioritising mobile engagement, particularly those with large frontline populations.”

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

“Our users find it easy to use and intuitive, boosting activation and engagement rates.”

“It’s easy to download, the UI is simple and familiar, and it’s been a gamechanger for our company since launch.”

“Blink has completely transformed how we communicate. Our frontline teams finally feel connected and included.”

“Blink makes work feel more connected. It’s like a social hub where everyone — whether in the office, on the frontline, or remote — can share updates, celebrate wins, and find what they need fast.”

“We’ve leaned hard on them to make some changes specifically for us and they have been extremely accommodating to our timelines to make it happen.”

“While they have lots of big clients, they always make you feel like you are their only customer. They are a fantastic bunch!”

“The Blink team has been a true partner from day one. They’re proactive, responsive, and invested in our success.”

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Looking ahead

ClearBox doesn’t just validate Blink’s performance this year — it validates Blink’s direction.

Blink wins when:

• Communications is a strategic function, not a broadcast channel
• Frontline workers are first-class citizens, not an afterthought
• Mobile is the primary experience, not a companion app
• Outcomes matter more than feature checklists

Bottom line: The ClearBox 2026 report confirms that Blink isn’t chasing the past of the intranet market — it’s aligned with its future.