What good EX feels like (and how to design for it)

Working remotely hasn’t stopped Jessica from immersing herself in Blink’s vibrant culture. As a solution consultant for our US enterprise accounts, she’s been making waves since joining over two years ago. Whether visiting our Boston or London offices — or collaborating from her home in Pennsylvania — Jessica loves Blink’s agile, innovative, and positive environment.

Which Blink office do you work out of?

I'm one of the few fully remote employees, but I’ve still managed to visit both offices. I go to Boston more often — probably three or four times so far — and I’ve been to London twice. I’m based in Pennsylvania, roughly in the middle between Philadelphia and New York City.

I lived in New York City for ten years, but now I have three young kids, so we needed more space. Right now, for example, it's snowing outside and there are deer in my front yard — quite a change from the city!

What's your position at Blink?

I'm a solution consultant for enterprise accounts in the US.

How long have you been at Blink?

Just over 2 years now.

What initially attracted you to join Blink?

What drew me to Blink was partly the people I knew here — people I really respected. I thought if they were at this place called Blink, then I should be here, too. On top of that, Blink’s overall mission resonated with me. I’ve been selling software for a long time, usually to IT departments, and I never really saw the broader impact beyond making some people more productive.

But hearing how Blink improves the lives of frontline workers, who often receive little support — especially after everything that happened with COVID — made me realize how crucial they are. Unfortunately, many companies aren’t investing much in improving their experience, and that’s what we’re aiming to change: enhancing their work lives.

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

I have to say, there’s a major deal I worked on (which we haven’t announced yet) that was incredibly exciting from start to finish. I felt like we were entering the next phase of Blink. Just the fact that this huge company even considered us — and ultimately chose us — was amazing.

I loved seeing the teamwork and effort everyone poured in. At some point, every single team played a role — marketing, product, implementation, sales, pre-sales, legal, and more. So many people came together, and it was really fun to witness. It took about six months, with hundreds of meetings and around 20 demos — truly unbelievable.

How would you describe the company culture at Blink in 3 words?

I would say it's fast-paced, super-positive — which you don't see everywhere — and agile.

I chose “super-positive” because everyone is always open and happy. You never join a meeting — whether it’s an internal call or a customer call — without seeing smiles on people’s faces. Even though everyone’s busy, they’re still great to talk to and easy to connect with.

People here are also eager to help, and I think our customers pick up on that. They know we’re not just going to deliver reliable work — we’re going to brighten their workday, too. That positivity really carries over into our relationships with them.

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

I'm excited to see how quickly we're growing in the US and how we'll continue to expand. I’m also really thrilled about what we've already accomplished and what we’re planning to do in retail and hospitality.

When I first joined Blink, we only had a handful of customers in that sector — some of them quite small. Now, seeing what we've achieved, what we're currently doing, and what we have planned for the future is incredibly exciting, especially in that space.

We've done amazing work in transit and healthcare so far, but retail and hospitality brands are more widely recognizable. I feel like this will bring greater awareness to all the good Blink is doing, and more people will hear about it simply because they can relate more to these public-facing companies.

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

Our internal 12 days of Blinkmas gifts campaign was amazing — I’ve never seen another company do anything like it! The gifts were great, and I loved how excited everyone was to participate. I looked forward to it every morning, eager to see who won the previous day’s gift and what the newest gift was. It really made the lead-up to the holidays special.

I actually ended up winning a really cool prize: a donation to a charity of my choice. I chose a local charity that helps families in Bucks County, where I live in Pennsylvania.

Why do you work for Blink?

I love the people here — my daily team, my manager, and the fact that I can easily reach out to anyone in another department when I need something. I always know exactly who to contact, and they typically respond quickly, no matter the time of day. It’s a refreshing change from bigger companies, where requests can just vanish. At Blink, everything gets done efficiently.

I also work here because our product is amazing. I’m in it day in and day out, and it’s so fun to envision solutions for our customers — our product is incredibly straightforward to use. I’m impressed by how fast we roll out new features and develop enhancements, whether it’s based on our own plans or customer feedback. I’ve never been at a company that does it so quickly and so well. We work together to figure out what’s best for the next phase of Blink, always keeping our customers’ needs at the center.

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The employee intranet is a critical piece of the employee engagement puzzle. It keeps your workforce on the same page, supports the easy sharing of information and resources, and serves as a valuable tool to support internal communications, HR, and IT functions.

But historically, employee intranets have been developed with a desk-based workforce in mind, creating a gap in the workforce tech experience for frontline employees — the vast majority of the global workforce.

It’s a gap that these deskless employees are keenly aware of: Just 10% of frontline workers say they have enough access to the tools, tech, and opportunities they need to connect and advance in their workplace.

This lack of access is often a result of two simple reasons: Most intranets are 1) designed for a desktop computer experience and 2) accessible only through a corporate email address — two things that many frontline workers don’t have or use on a regular basis.

To overcome these issues, organizations sometimes try communicating with their frontline workers using memos on a noticeboard, SMS messages, or shadow IT. Yet this just furthers the disconnect, with desk-based workers getting a rich digital workplace experience — and frontline workers still missing out on all the benefits an employee intranet brings.

With frontline satisfaction and retention in need of urgent attention, a modern intranet, suited to all sectors of your workforce, can transform the frontline employee experience.

Let’s look at six ways that organizations can customize their intranet to make it more frontline-friendly. By incorporating these ideas into your own intranet, you can give your frontline employees — alongside your office staff — the communications, connection, and resources they need to thrive in the workplace.

6 ways to customize your intranet for the frontline

#1. Make all tools and resources accessible in one hub

Frontline employees work busy shifts with limited downtime. If they have to switch between lots of different apps, remembering multiple sets of login details, they’re unlikely to regularly use your workplace tools.

By putting everything your workforce might need in a centralized employee app, your frontline workers can benefit from quick and easy access to key tools and resources.

An employee app, accessible via smartphone or desktop computer, can act as a content hub where all policies, documents, and forms are stored. It’s where employees can catch up with company news, connect with coworkers, and fill out the latest employee surveys.

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With the help of single sign-on technology, a company app can also act as the gateway to all other workplace software, improving adoption of tools across the business. Employees need to sign on just once to access anything from training programs and shift-swapping software to time-off policies and employee benefits.

#2. Create different channels to satisfy all employee connection needs

While it may not take place around the famous water cooler, office-based workers get lots of opportunity during the work day for informal chit chat. But frontline employees — who often work disparately, away from HQ and on their own — tend to miss out on coworker connection. This can create a disjointed employee experience and get in the way of knowledge sharing, team building, and collaboration.

So when it comes to the company intranet, don’t just create channels for important company updates. Create channels suited to informal conversation and two-way communication, too.

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Here, employees can get to know one another and chat about their choice of topics. They can enter groups, building relationships with co-workers in the same location, in the same role, or with the same hobbies. By providing a variety of communication channels on your employee intranet, you satisfy the various connection needs of your workforce.

#3. Use mandatory reads to highlight important communications

Some frontline employees work in environments where safety and compliance are critical. Others interface with customers and need the most up-to-date information on inventory and processes. But these workers don’t always call into HQ before their shift starts, and they sometimes operate with less direct supervision than their office-based peers.

So how can you ensure critical updates get through to your deskless workforce?

By marking the latest policies, safety alerts, and best practices as mandatory reads on your intranet, they’re more likely to cut through the noise. 

Mandatory reads appear prominently on the intranet dashboard or the company news feed. They only disappear when an employee reads and acknowledges them. And by using backend analytics that track engagement and reading rates, your internal communications team can ensure that all workers, regardless of their locations, have received and read new need-to-know information.

#4. Surface personalized content based on teams and titles

If you primarily use your intranet for your desk-based workforce, it likely contains a lot of information that is irrelevant to your frontline teams. Serve this information to your frontline employees and they’ll become disengaged with your intranet, making it harder for you to communicate key messages.

Use intranet tools that allow you to personalize the user experience — and don’t simply make a distinction between your office and frontline staff.

Segment your employees based on their title, team, location, and tenure. Then customize their dashboard so it features the most relevant content. For frontline employees, you might like to include key contacts, “suggested for you” content, and news related to the frontline.

Similarly, when employees access the company news feed, they should see content relating to them and their roles. You can achieve this by selecting the audience for each post — whether that’s the whole company, your office staff, your frontline workers, or a particular team.

#5. Make it easy for managers to recognize great workers

A third of frontline workers say that a primary reason for leaving their position is feeling undervalued by their employer. Yet despite the role of workplace appreciation in engagement and retention, less than half of workers said they had received recognition from their organization, leaders, or peers in the previous month.

Frontline managers are well-placed to offer praise but — like the people they lead — these managers are busy, feeling like there are barely enough hours in the day. To build recognition into the frontline employee experience, make it easy for managers to tackle through an employee intranet with built-in rewards and recognition features.

By providing ready-to-go templates, managers can easily but meaningfully personalize and post messages of recognition to a company news feed or a group chat. With just a few clicks, managers can show appreciation for hard work, highlight successes, or celebrate an employee birthday.

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Highlight employees on public channels within your intranet and recognition will take on a life of its own. Coworkers and other managers can like the post and comment with their own words of praise, amplifying the post’s impact.

The fewer steps involved in employee recognition, and the more visible you make it, the more likely it is to become an integral part of company culture.

#6. Analyze intranet data to identify gaps and opportunities

A modern intranet is more than just an information hub — it’s a way to capture, measure, and analyze employee engagement rates. It also allows you to segment data by division, location, and more criteria to unearth more granular employee-level insights.

By examining intranet engagement data for your frontline workforce, you can build a clearer picture of which strategies are working — and which could be improved. Also, consider using employee surveys to ask your frontline about their intranet experience. You may discover points of friction and reasons why employees aren’t using your intranet.

With these data-backed insights, you can make targeted and informed decisions about how to customize your intranet to maximize frontline employee engagement.

A frontline-friendly culture can be built on the intranet

While standard intranets don’t always work for a frontline workforce, there are ways to customize your employee intranet so it meets the needs of everyone.

Personalize your intranet experience so its content and chats are more relevant to frontline employees. Give your dispersed workers recognition and coworker connection opportunities. Above all, make your intranet easy to access and use via a mobile app.

By doing so, you’ll make your intranet more engaging — and provide a reliable source of information and connection for all employees.

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A record 50.5 million people living in America quit their jobs in 2022 — and a further 40% of US employees considered leaving their jobs. Organizations need to step things up a notch if they want to start engaging both their desk-based and frontline staff.

The good news is there are many employee engagement strategies, tactics, and ideas you can implement to turn around the situation. The 12 strategies we discuss in this guide will help you create an engaging workplace experience and drive employee engagement for both desk-based and frontline employees.

Frontline Employee Engagement in 2024

Blink created this guide after working with hundreds of frontline organizations. Now, these insights can help other leaders prepare for a year that promises both challenge and opportunity.

Download to learn more: The top eight frontline engagement trends to watch out for and the six key strategies for success

A quick recap: what is employee engagement?

Employee engagement is the ongoing process of ensuring your workforce feels:

• Emotionally connected to their job, coworkers, and organization as a whole
• Satisfied with their job role and function
• Aligned with your company’s values
• Able to give 100% during work hours

Industry statistics cite employee engagement as a key factor in employee satisfaction, retention, and even company profitability. Employee engagement should be a number one priority for businesses globally — and yet, as of 2023, only 23% of employees globally are engaged.

You can use a number of methods to measure employee engagement levels in your business. Think surveys, metrics, and other engagement KPIs that will help determine how motivated, satisfied, and fulfilled your employees are in their work.

Remember, employee engagement is often the byproduct of a great employee experience. If you provide a fulfilling, enjoyable, and inspiring workplace experience, you enable and encourage engagement.

With this in mind, you need to tailor and adapt your strategies to meet the needs of different types of employees, including frontline workers. For instance, the tactics required to drive employee engagement in manufacturing industry environments will look entirely different from those used in corporate offices. Tailoring your approach in this way will make their overall experience positive and rewarding.

The foundations of effective employee engagement strategies

Engaged employees can be your greatest business asset. They are more focused and committed than disengaged workers, encourage their coworkers, and positively impact your bottom line.

But improving employee engagement is not about what you do. It’s about what you are as an organization, the culture you cultivate, and the values that you live by.

So before we jump into the employee engagement strategies, it’s important to look at the key values of employee engagement that form the foundation for those strategies. Those core values are:

Respect

Respect is an essential consideration for all your high-level decisions about managing employees. For your workers to be engaged at work, they should be able to trust that they are being treated with fairness and respect.  

So how do you convey this in your processes and policies? You pay competitive wages, allow enough breaks, listen to their ideas, and formally recognize excellent performance and value-abiding behaviors.

Transparency

If your employees aren’t aware of anything about your organization that’s beyond their scope of work or immediate team, you can’t blame them for feeling like an outsider. Sooner or later, they’ll feel isolated and disengaged.

Being in the loop doesn’t just help them do their jobs in a better way, but also makes them feel like they belong. So it’s essential to communicate openly and regularly with all your employees.

The more transparent your communication, the higher level of trust you’ll build with your workers. And the more comfortable they’ll feel sharing their thoughts and concerns, which brings us to the next pillar of employee engagement.

Two-way communication

Most organizations follow a top-down approach to employee communication in which frontline employees hardly ever have a say. But these workers often have the best insights because they work directly with customers day in and day out.

So one of the best values to nurture and cultivate for high employee engagement is two-way communication. Give your workers ample opportunities to raise their voice and share what they think. Then act on this feedback to take your employee engagement to the next level.

12 actionable employee engagement strategies

Here are 12 employee engagement strategies & tactics you can implement today:

1. Foster co-worker relationships

When employees have friendly relationships with immediate team members and other people in the organization, they are more likely to enjoy the day-to-day.

Workplace relationships don’t just help with networking, they also provide the guidance and motivation a worker needs to succeed in their role. And creating opportunities to build and nurture these connections is one of the best employee engagement strategies.

Co-workers don’t always cross paths throughout the working day — especially in frontline organizations. It might be up to you to encourage better intra-department connections through organized events. You could create a program to encourage workers to collaborate, socialize, or train each other on the parts of the job that they know best.

Workers from different departments can connect, share notes, and exchange best practices. This way, they can also try out a recently learned skill or explore different options they might want to pursue in the future.

In fact, there are many cases in which employees consider leaving their organization to pursue a different career path. This program will help you facilitate the lateral moving of an employee to a different department, so they aren’t forced to look elsewhere. This way you hit two goals with one stone: high employee engagement and better employee retention.

2. Have a thorough onboarding process

Onboarding is essential for setting the right tone and expectations when a new employee joins your team.

As the statistics in the video above highlight, around 20% of new hires leave in the first seven weeks of employment, but organizations with a strong onboarding process have improved retention rates by 82%.

A strong onboarding experience is achieved by:

1. Making sure your onboarding process covers not only organizational policies, but also the company’s core values, mission, and vision
2. Giving your new employees mobile access to relevant materials and resources to learn from, and encouraging all employees to provide their feedback
3. Acknowledging the importance of connection during onboarding. Introduce new hires to their team members, leadership, and coworkers. For a dispersed workforce, this can be done by ensuring your employees have the right digital tools and channels to connect from wherever they are

A sense of belonging from day one is integral in order to improve employee engagement — particularly for the frontline, where 80% of workers feel they have few connection opportunities at work.

See how Go North West is using Blink to make new team members feel part of the organization right from day one.

3. Rethink physical spaces

Frontline employees power the global workforce. With no central break room or day-to-day opportunities for office chat, dispersed workers can become increasingly disconnected from the rest of the organization.

While team building and other social events may be organized with the best of intentions, they often miss the mark for frontline workers, putting more pressure on employees instead of providing a channel for enthusiastic engagement.

If you’re a frontline leader, you need to rethink your social spaces and channels to meet the engagement expectations of all your employees. This might mean creating dedicated digital channels, Feeds, or groups for frontline workers who would otherwise never have a chance to interact.

Deliberately creating space for accessible social interaction can help build relationships, increase engagement, and create an environment of inclusion and positivity throughout your organization.

4. Clarify career pathways

Results of a recent Frontiers report show that:

1. Career growth has a positive impact on knowledge workers’ organizational engagement
2. Career goal progress and professional ability development promote job engagement
3. Career growth has a positive effect on affective commitment, which in turn influences employee engagement.

If you can make workers feel that they can advance their careers without leaving your company, you’ll see a big boost in employee engagement. Workers at every level of your company should be able to view a clear-cut career path ahead and the map to follow that path.  

So when formulating employee engagement strategies for your company, see how you can help workers get in complete control of their careers. The more assured they are about achieving their future goals, the more engaged you’ll find them to be.

How to accomplish this? Take your workers’ input on where they see themselves in the future. Here’s a career development plan template that might come in useful, as you do.

When you empower employees to take charge of their goal setting in alignment with team objectives, they’ll be more invested in working hard to hit those goals. And they won’t need tight schedules to do the same, leading to an improvement in overall satisfaction.

5. Provide training and learning opportunities

Helping workers learn new skills and investing in their professional development is crucial to their engagement.

In fact, 35% of millennial employees (who also make up around 35% of the US workforce) said they were attracted to employers who offer excellent training and development programs for this reason and saw it as the top benefit they wanted from an employer.

There are many measures you can take to facilitate employee education:

• Conduct online workshops that support employees’ learning goals
• Make educational content easily accessible through a central repository
• Provide reimbursements for courses workers enroll in

When you invest in employees’ learning and development, you are sending a message that your company is committed to them for the long term. And this demonstration of commitment makes them far more likely to give their 100% on the job.

6. Clear and consistent communication

Dispersed staff need a tool that allows them to interact with each other as if they were in the same room. This is key for breaking down barriers, unifying teams, and working productively, no matter where your team is located.

Secure 1-1 and Group Chats, a News Feed for communicating organizational updates, and team or departmental channels are all essential.

At Blink, communication is part of our culture and we are strong believers in its power. This is something that you must emphasize too if you wish to engage your employees. When you build a culture of trust and open communication, you help create an environment of transparency, respect, and collaboration.

You also need to make sure your team members are able to communicate with each other. Every team member should be aware of the communication channels that the organization uses and how to use them.

As leaders, don’t forget your own role in communication, either. Simply providing employees the channels to communicate and actually engaging employees through these channels are two different things.

To ensure a clear and consistent communication strategy, consider:

1. Frequent News Feed updates to keep team members in the loop
2. Regularly scheduled 1-1s and ongoing two-way feedback loops
3. Targeted posts in group chats and forums for sharing ideas and gaining insights
4. Frequent Employee Recognition or shoutouts in the company channels

7. Improve internal branding

When someone asks where they work, your workers can feel absolute pleasure, cold apathy, or even disdain or embarrassment answering that question. It all depends on your company’s reputation inside and outside the premises.  

Money is undoubtedly a strong motivator, but employees also want to feel proud of where they work. The strength of your organization’s brand and what it stands for is directly related to your workers’ level of engagement.

That makes internal branding one of the most crucial employee engagement strategies. It means you need to ensure that your workers understand, support, and feel connected to your mission, vision, and values. The more convinced they are of what your brand stands for, the more likely they are to emulate behaviors that speak to the same values.

The supermarket chain Trader Joe’s is a great example. It has designed a fun and quirky environment for both workers and customers, with the workers conveying its brand values through different aspects of their job. The way they name products, design signage, décorate the store, and interact with customers — everything aligns with the Trader Joe’s brand.

The checkout process is just as warm, friendly, and casual. Workers display enthusiasm and a genuine desire to help with their feedback and expertise on the products.  

This goes on to show that when done correctly, internal branding can create a virtuous cycle. It will attract workers who love your brand, who will further communicate their passion to your customers and partners, thereby enhancing the brand and attracting more top talent.  

8. Encourage diversity and inclusion

D&I initiatives are crucial to the overall employee experience, making them a great place to focus your efforts for improving engagement levels. Research by ADP states:

“Studies have shown that employees who are satisfied with their organization’s commitment to diversity and inclusion (D&I) are twice as engaged as dissatisfied employees. Changeboard adds that diverse and inclusive organizations work 12% harder, are 19% more likely to stay longer with the organization, and collaborate 57% more effectively with peers.”

What does this look like in action? Bentley University highlights some key actions that can help you better promote diversity in the workplace, including to:

1. Address implicit bias: Make sure everyone in the company, starting with your C-suite and leadership teams, is aware of their unconscious bias and take proactive steps to address it
2. Acknowledge intersectionality: D&I initiatives must not ignore or sidestep the fact that all individuals have nuanced social identities and backgrounds that can confer or deny privilege in accordance with cultural norms
3. Invest in Employee Resource Groups (ERGs): Investing in ERGs, or affinity groups that provide social support for employees with shared backgrounds, interests, and/or experiences is one of the most effective ways to ensure diversity initiatives remain top-of-mind
4. Offer mentorship programs: Mentorships encourage both personal and professional growth, and provide a pipeline for leadership development. For groups with fewer role models in senior positions, mentorship can be crucial to cultivating diverse leadership
5. Communicate with transparency: Be open and transparent about the goals of your D&I initiatives. Communicate progress towards achieving measurable objectives, ensure everyone is informed about key developments in the initiative, and most importantly, be open to feedback from all employees on how you can improve it

In addition to these diversity strategies, every segment and every department of your organization must also feel included to foster true D&I and, in turn, boost engagement.

In fact, studies show that belonging is one of the most powerful predictors of D&I efficacy in the workforce. Organizations with high levels of belonging also have higher employee net promoter scores (eNPS), which are correlated with higher engagement levels.

Frontline workers can experience the very opposite. Warehouse workers, for example, are typically secluded from other employees — and that goes double if they work the night shift as well. If a frontline worker continues to feel left out, then their engagement is likely to suffer. It’s crucial that you take the necessary steps to ensure that everyone has a sense of belonging and inclusion, starting with your frontline employees.

9. Survey, listen, and act

Your employees all have improvements they’d make to their roles, whether it’s a better work-life balance, tools that they can actually use in their roles, or more contact with management. You need to collect these insights — and act on them — to keep your employees engaged long-term.

An employee engagement survey can help you gain this valuable feedback from workers. An employee survey gives you insights into employees’ opinions, attitudes, and experiences — and you can use this data to identify areas for action.

You can also use surveys to recognize areas of improvement and understand what makes employees proud of their work.

Make sure you follow through on survey results with actions that address the employee feedback provided. Additionally, keep your workers in the loop with regular updates on progress and changes made as a result of their input. This will help build trust between your team and management, and demonstrate your commitment to employee engagement.

10. Recognize and reward

Rewards and recognition are essential for employee engagement. In fact, one 2022 Harvard Business Review study found that when an employee says their manager is great at recognizing them, then that employee is 40+% more engaged than those with managers who were not.

Recognition is an effective way to keep employees motivated. It also reinforces the behaviors you want more of in your organization.

For example, if you want to encourage team collaboration, reward teams that work together on a project or present a unified front during client meetings. If you need increased productivity, recognize employees who go above and beyond to get the job done.

Remember, rewards don’t have to be expensive or elaborate. Digital recognition tools or Kudos are both an effective and cost-effective way to show appreciation for your team’s hard work.

11. Provide incentives and perks

While closely related to your rewards and recognition schemes, incentives and perks work slightly differently. Typically, incentives are used to elicit a particular action from your employees. For instance, you might offer bonus pay for completing a project before the deadline or reaching certain on-the-job targets.

Unlike as-and-when recognition and rewards that react to a job well done, with ongoing incentives, workers will often know what they will get for completing the challenge ahead of time, and exactly what is required in order to receive that incentive.

Perks are more general benefits that make working in your organization more desirable. Some basic examples could include flexible work hours, subsidized gym memberships, and free snacks or coffee. You really need to get more creative than this, however, if you want to provide perks that your employees really want.

For example, factors such as compensation, growth through promotion, paid training, and high-value traditional benefits have the largest impact on frontline employee preferences when choosing a new role. However, employers do not value the same factors, according to the same research by McKinsey. The study states:

“When it comes to growth-oriented attributes, employers tend to emphasize a higher job title (among the bottom five attributes for frontline employees) over job growth and learning opportunities (both top-five attributes), which may help explain why frontline employees cite a lack of employer-provided development opportunities as a primary barrier to their advancement.”

To align your company perks with the needs of your frontline workers, you should consider providing opportunities for a yearly raise or promotion, advanced learning and employee development opportunities, and ongoing upskilling.

12. Implement employee engagement tech with analytics tools

Analytics are essential for a successful employee engagement strategy. With the right engagement analytics tools, you can gain insights into how employees are engaging with company messages, what topics they’re most interested in, and how to best tailor future activities to their needs.

For example, use feedback or survey tools on mobile devices to collect real-time data from employees. This data can then be analyzed to reveal the most critical areas of focus for your engagement strategy.

You can also use dedicated analytics features to tailor specific messages or activities that best meet the needs of individual employees. This helps you create a more personalized, effective experience for workers and drive more meaningful engagement within your organization.

Using technology to monitor employee engagement is also one of the best ways to ensure that initiatives are tied directly to overall business objectives. Analytics help you understand if there are any engagement gaps that you need to fill.

Are there certain teams that consistently fail to engage with your content, for example? Tracking open rates, comments, will help you identify any disengaged teams or employees, so that you can work to address and improve their experience.

How to create an employee engagement strategy

Set goals

You need goals that are specific and measurable when creating a successful employee engagement strategy. This provides the foundation for your efforts, ensures everyone is on the same page, and helps you assess progress along the way.

Identify your issues

Once you have established your goals, determine what obstacles stand between you and achieving those objectives. Communication issues, lack of motivation, or a disconnected team can all put your progress at risk. Knowing what might stand in your way will help you tailor activities to your organization’s needs and develop solutions that are relevant and effective.

Build your plan

Next, you need to create a plan of action for achieving your engagement goals. You should include activities such as tailored employee surveys, tech and communication refreshes, and analytics implementation in this plan.

Analyze and adjust

Finally, track the progress of your employee engagement efforts with analytics tools and review how well they worked. Adjust activities based on the findings, and move forward with more tailored initiatives.

Why your employee engagement strategy might fail

Not listening to feedback

If you don’t listen to what your employees are telling you, then your engagement activities will be misguided and ineffective. You need to respond quickly and effectively to feedback in order to ensure that your initiatives meet their needs.

Not having the right tools

Communication and engagement tools are essential in today’s workplace, and even more so if you want an engaged workforce. Without the right tools, you won’t be able to track progress or employee engagement scores accurately — let alone ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Plus, if your tools aren’t fit for mobile, you will be missing out on the chance to engage with your key employees when they are on the move.

Not having leadership buy-in

Employee engagement strategies rely on strong leadership support. Without it, your initiatives can easily be overlooked or deprioritized as other programs take precedence. Make sure that your leadership is involved and invested in the process to ensure success.

But who are your most engaged allies?

How would greater employee engagement help them meet their targets?

How do you bring the opportunity to life for your wider leadership team?

What are the risks they’ll ask you about, so that you can prepare in advance?

We cover this and more in our essential guide to executive buy-in for frontline employee experience.  

Not communicating effectively

Employee engagement strategies only work when teams are communicating effectively. Invest time into making sure that communication channels are clear and regularly updated with relevant content so that everyone can stay in the loop.

Final thoughts

No one wants employee disengagement. It’s costly and damaging to morale. Plus, disengaged workers make errors at a 60% higher rate.

But still, many companies turn a blind eye to the issue. They wait to take concrete action and implement employee engagement strategies until things get out of hand.

The good news is that improving employee engagement is both possible and measurable. You need the right steps, the right engagement tools, and serious execution. So take a good look at your present culture and see which of these strategies will be a good start for you.

Remember, your company is a community. And communities prosper only when every member and segment feels valued, trusted, and respected.

Blink is an internal communications tool that can help take your employee engagement to new heights.

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Culture isn’t built in annual town halls or values documents.

It’s built in the hundreds of micro-moments that employees experience every day.

The tiny, human interactions that tell employees what your company stands for and that forge your employee experience.

While you can write your values in a document that employees read during the onboarding process — and (shh!) probably never again — micro-moments are the daily, lived experience of your culture.

Micro-moments can support what’s written in that document — or they can write a completely different story. The best organizations make sure it’s the former. They understand the power of micro-moments. And they use them to create a joined-up understanding of company culture, where daily interactions reflect the kind of organization you want to be.

Here, we take a look at why micro-moments are so important and how to achieve more cultural impact with smaller but no less meaningful employee interactions.

Defining micro-moments in the workplace

So what do we actually mean by a micro-moment? It might help to start with a few examples:

• A shout-out to celebrate an employee's birthday in the news feed.
• A manager checking in to ask how you’re feeling this week over instant messaging.
• A quick story post from the CEO that gives a little insight into their day.

These micro-moments bridge the gap between corporate messaging and real workplace experience. They take that dusty company culture document and turn it into a living, breathing reality.

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Why micro-moments matter in today’s workplace

These small moments might not seem all that significant on their own. But together — with all the hundreds of other micro-moments employees experience — they form the foundations of your culture. They shape how employees feel, interact, and show up.

Here’s what they do for your workplace:

They keep the conversation flowing. Silence breeds uncertainty. Gaps in communication leave room for rumor, misunderstanding, and disengagement. But micro-moments, in the form of regular internal communication touchpoints, keep employees connected and informed.

The compounding effect. One “good job” message might seem insignificant — but repeated, positive micro-moments create trust and belonging. And each one builds on the last. A few words of encouragement today make it easier for someone else to speak up tomorrow.

Connection in a dispersed workplace. When your team is dispersed, micro-moments replace the hallway chat or the catch-up over coffee. They act as a digital water cooler, bringing frontline, remote, and office-based teams together, and keeping culture alive across time zones and shifts.

It’s what employees expect. Outside of work, we routinely connect over micro-moments. A video story. A WhatsApp message. A voice note. We’re used to short-form, snackable content. Which is why, in the workplace, a simple 10-second video can do more for morale and engagement than a 10-page strategy doc ever could.

They fit into your workflow. Employees — particularly those on the frontlines of your organization — are busy. So culture-building efforts shouldn’t pull them away from their day. Micro-moments integrate seamlessly into the flow of work, making connection quick and easy for everyone.

They signal care and attention. Finally, micro-moments show employees that leaders and peers are paying attention, noticing effort, and valuing contributions. They help to build a culture of open communication and recognition, where employees feel appreciated and encouraged to take part.

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How to achieve macro-impact with micro-moments

So how do you harness the potential of micro-moments for your organization? Here are a few practical ways to make the smallest of interactions deliver the biggest possible impact.

Empower managers to create daily connection rituals

Managers are the ones who bring your culture to life. But they’re also sandwiched between employees and the C-suite, juggling expectations and tasks from all sides. That’s why creating small, repeatable rituals is key to micro-moment success. Think:

• A quick message to ask “How’s your day going?”
• A public thank you when someone goes the extra mile
• A follow-up on feedback shared in last week’s meeting

These interactions take seconds but their impact is long-lasting. They show empathy and accountability, which helps managers (and by extension the organization) build trust with employees.

Even better? Make these micro-moments visible. Give recognition and conduct check-ins over shared digital channels to amplify their impact. You’ll spread positivity across the organization and reinforce the culture you want to build.

Balance top-down messages with peer-to-peer moments

The best cultures are built through connection and participation. And that means going beyond traditional top-down messaging to involve everyone in the company conversation. So encourage peer-to-peer connection. Let employees react to posts, respond to news feed questions, add their congratulations to co-worker recognition, and even create their own culture-building content.

By appointing employees as co-creators of your culture, you sprinkle micro-moments throughout the workday. And you ease the load for your comms team, too. Everyone helps keep the conversation going.

Another benefit of this approach? Peer-led moments feel lighter, more organic, and more genuine. They have an energy that draws people in, so they help to build a real sense of community within your organization.

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Encourage the C-suite to go beyond corporate comms

When the C-suite speaks, everyone tends to listen. So you can create truly impactful micro-moments by getting leaders involved. Of course, a lengthy email newsletter or a polished corporate video isn’t the kind of thing you’re looking for.

Instead, you want leaders to share short, relatable moments in real time. A selfie from a site visit. A post sharing what inspired them that week. A quick note to highlight customer success and the team behind it.

This content shows accessibility and warmth. It tells employees: I see you and I’m part of this too. It’s especially powerful for frontline teams who rarely see leaders face-to-face.

Leaders may need a little coaching in how to deliver these kinds of moments. And you may need to experiment with the formats they feel most comfortable with. But — with the right support from comms — the C-suite can create micro-moments that really resonate.  

Prioritize authenticity over polish

The beauty of micro-moments? They don’t need to be overly rehearsed or perfectly produced. In fact, working to get a piece of internal content “just right” can actually dilute its cultural impact.

Use micro-moments to respond to what’s happening right now — a big client win, a project milestone, or even the trending topic that’s on everyone’s lips. Quick, relevant interactions land far better than polished-but-stale content.

That’s because authentic micro-moments show employees that the company is human and that leaders notice what’s happening on the ground. Workers appreciate the authenticity — and they’re far more likely to believe the message.

And for your employee communications team? Removing the pressure to polish every post means content can go out fast, keeping conversations alive, building momentum, and weaving cultural values into every day.

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Create digital spaces for every kind of comms

You can only make a success of micro-moments when you have the right ecosystem in place. That means giving employees multiple, connected communication channels where they can share, react, and respond in real time.

Think recognition, polls, team chat, video updates, live streams — each touchpoint surfacing a different side of your company culture. When these channels are available across mobile-first tools, micro-moments reach every member of your workforce, including hard-to-reach frontline employees.

The result? A culture with the power to create positive employee experiences and better employee engagement across the board.

Use analytics to spot engagement opportunities

With intranet analytics, you can spot the times, places, and teams where micro-moments stand to make the most impact.

If participation on the employee intranet drops, if certain teams aren’t responding to updates, or if sentiment in comments starts to shift, these are the early warning signs you need to pay attention to.

By tracking engagement and feedback in real time, you can see what works, spot gaps, and fine-tune your micro-moment strategy. The data helps you step in at the right time — and keep doing more of what actually connects with employees.

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Incorporating micro-moments into your organization

The challenge for most organizations isn’t understanding the value of micro-moments.

It’s creating the environment where they happen naturally.

A check-in from a manager. A poll to gauge employee opinion. A quick live stream update. These micro-moments drive trust, belonging, and a sense of purpose. They show employees that yours is a place where open communication and connection are the norm.

So what next? To incorporate micro-moments into your comms strategy, go beyond polished, corporate messaging. And — to make your strategy sustainable — encourage people from across the company to share and amplify micro-moments.

Digital employee experience platforms like Blink makes it easy. You can send a recognition post, launch a poll, share a video story, and even go live with your audience, in just a couple of clicks.

And — because Blink is a mobile-first intranet platform — everyone can take part. From the comms team to the C-suite, your office team to your frontline workers, everyone has the tools they need to access and contribute to workplace culture.

Blink. And take your culture from boring to buzzing.

We’ve rounded up the seven top training programs that will help boost morale, foster collaboration, and increase productivity for your staff. From interactive workshops to online employee engagement courses, these programs offer something for everyone.

Whether your team is new or experienced, office-based or deskless, there are plenty of options available to help create an engaged workforce.

So let's dive into what the best employee engagement training programs are, what they offer, and how they can benefit your organization.

Choosing the best employee engagement training courses

A great employee engagement course should provide teams with a comprehensive understanding of how to create an engaged workplace environment. 

It may include a range of topics covering effective communication practices, problem-solving strategies, team-building exercises (that don’t make employees squirm), and more strategies that create highly engaged employees.

They may also offer special features such as a dedicated tutor support service, unlimited online email support, certification upon completion, real-time feedback on learning, resources to help employees create tangible goals and objectives, and interactive tools that can be used in the workplace.

To choose the right employee engagement program for your organization, you should assess and compare who the course is made for and what the content of the course is, alongside the:

• Cost
• Length
• Location
• Credit awarded

By assessing these four elements, you can make a more informed decision about which program is best suited to your team’s needs.

What to look for in employee engagement training for managers

Before you can select a training program for managers, it’s important to know what factors to consider for your leadership team. Employee engagement training is essential for even the most high-performing managers, especially frontline managers, as their impact has the unique advantage of cascading effects throughout their entire team. 

Cost varies greatly, especially given the number of remote learning and development options available. While eLearning courses are typically more affordable and easily worked into a manager’s schedule, in-person courses offer the benefit of interaction, personalized feedback, and, often, more in-depth practice.

It’s also important to consider whether you, your C-suite, management teams, and HR professionals value certification or credit hours for the time undertaken. The accreditation may add value and incentive for course engagement, as well as the name of the institution offering the training. 

Two common HR management organizations that accept credit hours for professional certification are SHRM and HRCI. 

You should also consider whether your managers will feel more compelled to complete the learning experience offered by a big name like Harvard to make up for the additional expense.

Additional considerations for choosing an employee engagement program

If you have a frontline workforce, be sure to look for a program that can be easily accessed on mobile devices or through an app with audio lessons available. This will ensure employees can access the course anytime, anywhere, helping you bridge the frontline connection gap.

Additionally, consider the size of your organization and budget. If you have a large team, you may want to look into programs with bulk discounts or offering free training resources. On the other hand, if you’re a smaller business without many resources, eLearning courses may be more cost-effective due to their convenience and lower investment needs.

With digital inclusion now crucial to the modern workplace, it's important to assess the ease of use and accessibility of any courses you choose. Are they easy for team members to access and navigate, or do they require any specific software?

Now that you know what to consider before selecting a program for management let’s go over some of the best employee engagement training programs available today.

The 7 best employee engagement training programs

1. Gallup engagement champions

Workplace advisory and polling group Gallup offers a Creating an Engaging Workplace for Engagement Champions course to help anyone in a leadership position foster a more engaging workplace and support higher productivity. 

The course's primary focus is educating higher-level leadership on how to best help their mid-management increase team engagement. There are also practical takeaways for HR professionals or managers themselves.

Cost: $3,000. 

Length: Two days.

Location: In-person and virtual.

Credit: The in-person course earns professional credit hours from HRCI (14.5) and SHRM (14.5).

2. Dale Carnegie

Dale Carnegie is a well-known continuing education provider that offers several management courses, including a virtual course called A Manager’s Guide to Sustainable Employee Engagement. 

The six-hour course focuses on actions managers can undertake that inspire workers to put forth their greater discretionary effort. The emphasis is on practicing emotional empathy that delivers a long-lasting culture of engagement.

Cost: $699.

Length: Three two-hour sessions.

Location: Virtual.

Credit: It offers professional credit hours — 5.5 HRCI (5.5) and SHRM (5.5).

3. LSA Global

LSA Global’s employee engagement training personalized course focuses on accountability, change-readiness, and engaging purpose (ACE) as the foundation for a greater level of engagement and business clarity. 

Cost: Available upon request.

Length: Two-day workshop.

Location: In-person.

Credit: None.

4. DecisionWise

Engagement technology provider Decision Wise offers an online engagement training program called Engagement Magic. 

The training covers the importance of employee meaning, autonomy, growth, impact, and connection for engagement and educates learners on fostering these attributes through various employee engagement strategies. 

Cost: $150.

Length: One day.

Location: In-person and virtual.

Credit: None.

5. Harvard Professional Development 

Harvard’s The Positive Workplace: Building Employee Engagement and Satisfaction course focuses on giving managers the tools to help workers through times of stress. 

There is a large emphasis on building positive company culture through effective communication and conflict resolution. 

Cost: $2,895.

Length: Two consecutive days.

Location: In-person.

Credit: Credit towards Harvard’s Certificate of Leadership Excellence in Leading Teams.

6. eCornell

Cornell’s online educational division strategic engagement course is ideal for managers looking for more training in the quantifiable aspects of employee engagement. 

The course teaches methods of measuring employee engagement, like employee engagement surveys, and guides managers through building engagement initiatives to combat disengagement based on organizational data.

Cost: Available upon request.

Length: Two weeks, two-to-five hours per week.

Location: Virtual.

Credit: Credit towards Cornell’s Strategic Human Resources Leadership Certificate.

7. LinkedIn Learning

LinkedIn Learning offers various employee engagement training courses for managers through its catalog of user-generated lessons. 

Self-paced pre-recorded lessons like this one on Employee Engagement are a highly accessible training resource for organizations of all sizes. 

Cost: $34.99 for a single course or $19.99/month.

Length: Varies.

Location: Virtual.

Credit: Online certification and continuing education credit to SHRM (1.25) and HRCI (1.25).

The value of employee engagement training for managers

According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report, just 31% of employees in the US and Canada are engaged – and that's the second-highest in the world! As such, it makes sense for implementing engagement strategies to be one of your organization’s largest retention priorities. 

Typically, most think of across-the-board engagement tactics like benefits, salary, and advancement opportunities. But when it actually comes down to increasing everyday engagement and profitability, as Gallup explains, the best bet is focusing on some of the most critical players in your team: your managers. 

They understand each employee’s career goals, strengths, and opportunities for improvement. Managers help shape the culture that can make or break an employee’s experience. 

Despite their essential role in increasing the number of engaged employees, few managers are naturally good at navigating the nuances of managing people. 

Why? Well, we know that many managers make their way to a management role because of experience in their industry (as practitioners) rather than their experience leading people. 

They might be a very experienced warehouse manager, but if they haven't got years of experience managing other warehouse managers, then this kind of training can add a huge amount of value in increasing team-wide employee engagement.

With nearly 70% of frontline leaders expressing interest in developing their leadership skills, a lack of this training can cause growing leadership development gaps in your organization. 

On top of this, without training to improve the specific leadership skills required to be a strong manager, there can be potentially disastrous consequences when it comes to engagement and overall employee retention. 

In fact, after surveying 3,000 American workers, GoodHire found that 82% of them said they would potentially quit their job because of a bad manager. For that reason alone you may want to consider management employee engagement training as part of your wider L&D efforts.

After all, if you can train managers to increase employee engagement, then you can unlock all the key business benefits that come from having a more engaged workforce, making employee engagement training for managers well worth the investment.

What’s next for frontline managers? 

Choosing the right employee training method and investing in the right technology are crucial actions for business leaders wanting to boost engagement.

Hopefully, this guide gave you a better understanding of the considerations to keep in mind when selecting an employee engagement training program and highlighted some of the best ones available today.

After equipping your employees with the right training programs, the next step is to seek the best tools in the industry. Blink’s mobile-first frontline engagement super-app is the perfect all-through tool for any organization wanting to boost employee engagement.

With a suite of features designed to connect your entire workforce, Blink can help your business drive optimal performance and engagement from every member of your team.

With Blink’s Content Hub, employees and managers can access any training documents and company procedures from the palm of their hands, making any employee engagement training initiatives more effective and accessible for you in the long-run. 

Get started today with a free demo.

Ren has been making her mark at Blink for over a year, helping to power our Revenue Operations function with a sharp analytical eye and a strong command of tools like SQL and Python. Based in our London office, she’s been a driving force behind smarter systems, cleaner data, and smoother cross-team collaboration.

We caught up with Ren to hear more about what drew her to Blink, the projects she’s proud of, and how being part of a fast-moving, mission-driven team keeps her inspired every day.

Which Blink office do you work out of?

‍I'm based in the London office.

What is your position at Blink?

‍I work as a Revenue Operations Analyst.

How long have you been at Blink?

I’ve been at Blink for just over a year now!

What initially attracted you to join Blink?

Honestly, it was the product that really stood out to me. I really connected with Blink’s mission of helping frontline employees stay connected. I had previously spent some time working in education as a teacher, so I saw first-hand how valuable something like Blink could be. I remember thinking, “If I had this as a teacher, I would’ve loved it.” That real-world application really sold it for me.

What confirmed I’d made the right choice was during the interview process. I got to meet my future team and was thrown straight into a collaborative SQL task. That experience represented the collaborative nature of the environment at Blink and it immediately felt like a team I wanted to be part of.

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

Rather than one specific project, I’d say I’m proud of how much I’ve grown my technical skills. I’ve had the chance to work on projects that pushed me to master tools like SQL and Python. It’s been amazing to not only learn those languages but to use them daily and feel confident doing so.

One of the biggest challenges early on was finding the time and headspace to fully focus on that kind of technical development. But as a team, we tackled that by introducing dedicated Hackathon days, which gave us uninterrupted time to solve complex problems and upskill together.

The impact of this has been really rewarding. A lot of the work I’ve done in Rev Ops has helped bring critical data into the hands of our go-to-market teams, enabling them to better connect with customers and prospects. Most recently, I’ve been using SQL and Python to help build out parts of our very own internal “Blink ChatGPT” tool!

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

I would describe the Blink culture as fun, motivating, and challenging.

Fun because the social side of Blink is genuinely brilliant. We’ve had some amazing team events — from the Crystal Maze experience to crazy boules, an F1 simulator, and even a speedboat ride along the Thames. These moments really help bring people together and build strong bonds across teams.

Motivating because you’re constantly surrounded by incredibly smart, driven people who are all deeply invested in the success of the company. Being around colleagues who genuinely care pushes you to bring your best every day.

Challenging because the pace is fast, and the problems we’re solving are complex. Those challenges have also been the most rewarding and have accelerated my growth more than I expected.

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

I’m really excited to keep seeing us sign big, well-known customers. Every time we bring a large name on board, it’s a huge morale boost across the company. It really shows how strong our product is. A standout for me was when we signed McDonald’s — such an iconic brand choosing us felt like a major moment. I’d like to see us continue to expand into the retail market. Another big fashion brand would be really exciting. It’s a sector where our impact could be huge, and there is a lot of potential there.

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

The first thing that comes to mind is all of the work that has gone into the upcoming summer party. I think it’s going to be an amazing event — not just for us internally, but for our customers too. It’s a brilliant opportunity to bring everyone together, share best practices, and show off what makes Blink such a great platform. Events like this really spotlight our culture and our community.

Since joining Blink, I’ve also had the chance to be part of three customer launches. It’s been incredibly rewarding to meet users in person and see the real impact our platform has on their day-to-day work. This definitely motivates me in the work that I do at Blink.

Why do you work for Blink?

I work for Blink because, as I’ve said before, I believe in the product. I think it’s an incredibly impactful software that helps a huge number of people. Another thing I appreciate is the variety in my role — it keeps the work dynamic and engaging. I get to work across lots of different teams at Blink, from operations to technical projects. That mix keeps things exciting. Plus, the atmosphere here is genuinely great. If I had to pick a favorite team to collaborate with, I’d say the sales team. They’re always full of energy, very motivated and really fun to work with. I’m grateful that I get the opportunity to collaborate with them.