When executives at Nokia Bell Labs brought engineers and scientists together from separate teams, their experiments led to the invention that we know as the vacuum tube.
Since then, the product has transformed hundreds of industries and solidified Nokia’s place in the telecommunications technology space.
The global revenue of their network infrastructure has been increasing by 22% year after year, and for the quarter ending March 31, 2021, it was €1.7B.
That’s the power of cross-functional collaboration. Many of the problems organizations face today need not one, but multiple teams or departments to work with one another. And in a survey of more than 2000 professionals, LinkedIn has identified cross-functional collaboration as a key leadership skill.
That’s why in this post, we’ll take a look at the meaning of cross-functional collaboration, its advantages, and best practices to facilitate cross-functional collaboration at work.
What is cross-functional collaboration?
Cross-functional collaboration refers to the concept of employees from different operational areas of a company working together as a team to complete a project or solve a problem. For example:
Ecommerce website designers, developers, and copywriters may join forces to deliver a cohesive user experience.
Sales, customer support, and marketing teams may engage in cross-team collaboration to create a uniform customer journey.
Manufacturing floor staff and procurement managers may collaborate to reduce excess inventory and ensure stock availability.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Cross-functional collaboration has endless applications and possibilities depending on the business requirements.
Importance of cross-functional collaboration
So why would you want different departments to collaborate? The future belongs to cross-team collaboration. According to Deloitte, “We’re seeing a shift from hierarchies to cross-functional teams. Adopting team structures can improve organizational performance, while not doing so puts you at the risk of falling behind.”
We’ve covered some use cases above but the benefits of cross-functional collaboration go beyond that. These include:
Increased innovation
When you involve people from different parts of the business, you get different points of view. The combination of these unique perspectives can lead to creative ideas for solving problems and lifting production.
Better efficiency
Cross-functional collaboration can make your business operations more efficient. The more different departments collaborate, the more their workflows will evolve and improve.
For example, if a manufacturing company suddenly loses its regular supplier, sales representatives, the ordering department, and the warehouse manager can unite to find a new vendor.
With this cross-team collaboration, they have a high chance of quickly finding a new supplier that satisfies the criteria established by all three of them.
Faster acceptance and implementation of change
When you involve people from different spheres in a change initiative from the beginning, you also get their empathy, buy-in, and trust. And they spread this acceptance to other people in their respective teams.
The result? Everyone’s on the same page, and there are fewer delays in execution. For example, some companies have orientation programs where a new employee is required to spend some time in each department.
This leads to a better understanding of the challenges and decision-making processes in different parts of the business. So whatever team the employee ends up with, he’d still be able to welcome changes introduced by other teams.
Enhanced organizational knowledge
This one’s a pretty obvious benefit of cross-team collaboration. When you collaborate with other departments, you also get to know the tools, processes, and best practices they are using.
The inner workings of a different department help you learn lessons that you can implement in your own team. For example, they might be using a better tool for data visualization which is also cheaper than yours.
Plus, you get a better sense of how your work and the other team’s work fits into the bigger picture.
Ways to streamline cross-functional collaboration
As you can see, solving problems that affect multiple teams or departments goes a long way in giving you an edge against the competition.
You may think that bringing people together from different teams would be easy, since they’re all part of the same company. But that’s often not the case, especially in medium and large-sized businesses.
Different departments may have conflicting agendas, values, goals, and priorities. And these differences prevent them from progressing on cross-functional projects.
So let’s see the core steps you can take to improve cross-functional collaboration in your business.
Have a clear vision
30% of employees worldwide cite inadequate vision as the reason for the failure of projects in their companies.
If that’s the case for regular projects, you can imagine how high it would be for cross-functional projects.
When you don’t share a concrete reason for the existence of a cross-functional project, why would anyone prioritize it over the tasks within their own team?
Be transparent with the teams involved about why you started the project. Tell them why they were chosen for it. And clarify what’s the end goal.
For example, if you are launching an onboarding program with a mentor from each department, the vision could be to quickly transform new hires into long-term assets.
The more open your communication, the more invested different departments will be in the project’s success.
Gather the right team members
How you build your cross-functional team plays a big role in your project’s success.
For example, having a finance expert in the team will be crucial for a cross-functional project that involves cutting energy costs and becoming a more eco-friendly company. Plus, you’ll also need PR experts that can spread the story in news outlets and give the whole thing a positive spin.
When putting together a cross-functional team, also consider the diversity and influence exerted by every member within the organization. People who are well-liked and respected even outside their immediate departments make perfect candidates for cross-functional initiatives.
Clarify roles and responsibilities
Do any of these ring a bell?
“I thought he/she was going to do it.”
“I keep butting heads with someone in the other team doing my job.”
“I am reporting to two managers from different teams with different ideas on what my job is.”
If you don’t clear up the expectations from each cross-functional team member, your team will remain confused about what exactly they should do, and who will carry out each task.
Remember, employees with clarity on their roles report a high level of satisfaction (75%), effectiveness (86%), and productivity (83%).
So when engaging in cross-team collaboration, make sure to clearly organize both individual and collective tasks for your workers. Every employee should know what tasks they are supposed to do on their own, and what is to be done in collaboration with other team members.
Put up roles for everyone else to see
A study of American workers across many industries found that 20% end up duplicating the work of others. The reason? Not being able to reach the concerned coworker.
So while it’s good to clarify roles and responsibilities for each team member, they must also know what everyone else is doing and responsible for. This will help you in two ways:
There will be no repeat or duplicate work. If someone is already handling a task, another person will not take it up.
When a team member runs into a problem or needs some information, they’ll know who to reach out to.
The basic information you should openly display for each team member includes:
Full name
Department name and job title
Role within the cross-functional project
Contact information
A great way to streamline this process is to use an employee directory. Blink, for example, is an internal communication app that offers this feature.
It lets you create a directory where information about each worker can be displayed. Plus, employees can search or reach anyone in the directory via instant messaging.
Ensure clear and regular communication
The ability to communicate the goals, status, and outcome of your team's work is crucial for cross-functional collaboration. When cross-functional teams don’t discuss project updates and requirements with one another, they cannot realize their full potential.
But cross-functional communication can be tricky. People are occupied with projects within their immediate teams, and no one may be willing to go the extra mile to communicate with other departments.
A great way to make communication easy for everyone is by implementing simple communication channels. Even better if you can provide a designated space for employees to share updates, exchange messages, and share documents.
That way, you make it easy for different departments to share information without switching between multiple apps.
Another thing you should do is to create a concrete communication strategy for your cross-functional project. The communication strategy will clarify how and when to send updates, and set communication expectations for the teams involved.
Create comprehensive documentation
Cross-functional projects are usually big, and big projects are scary. There are many moving parts that can overwhelm the teams involved. They may not know where to begin, how to carry out a task, or whom to ask.
In such a situation, documenting every aspect of the project can be a huge help. It clarifies processes and boosts productivity in both the short and long term.
Documenting involves writing down details about the project goals, baseline measurements, ongoing tasks, expected results, and more. Then making all this information available to the departments that have a stake in the cross-functional project.
You can begin by creating a project timeline to set and communicate the main tasks and a schedule based on when they should be completed as well as establish a project baseline.
Take construction projects, for example. These are typically complex cross-functional ventures because they require the design, procurement, and construction teams to collaborate deeply with one another.
And they have many tasks and subtasks to be managed on a strict timeline, as delays can lead to increased costs. Here’s what a project timeline might look like for such a project.
This level of detail in your documentation goes a long way in showing both the big-picture view and small tasks associated with the project, making the project vision easy to digest for all the team members.
Conclusion: how to streamline cross-functional collaboration
Cross-functional collaboration can be daunting, but its potential for your business can’t be ignored. It’s an opportunity to leverage the leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills from all corners of your company and use them to drive powerful results.
So use these strategies to set a solid foundation for cross-functional success. As your teams start collaborating, encourage them to keep adjusting and learning from the experience. Because these lessons will help you improve your organization’s ability to facilitate cross-functional collaboration even further.
And if you’re looking for a tool that can help enhance cross-functional collaboration at work, look no further than Blink. Request a free demo today.
When executives at Nokia Bell Labs brought engineers and scientists together from separate teams, their experiments led to the invention that we know as the vacuum tube.
Since then, the product has transformed hundreds of industries and solidified Nokia’s place in the telecommunications technology space.
The global revenue of their network infrastructure has been increasing by 22% year after year, and for the quarter ending March 31, 2021, it was €1.7B.
That’s the power of cross-functional collaboration. Many of the problems organizations face today need not one, but multiple teams or departments to work with one another. And in a survey of more than 2000 professionals, LinkedIn has identified cross-functional collaboration as a key leadership skill.
That’s why in this post, we’ll take a look at the meaning of cross-functional collaboration, its advantages, and best practices to facilitate cross-functional collaboration at work.
What is cross-functional collaboration?
Cross-functional collaboration refers to the concept of employees from different operational areas of a company working together as a team to complete a project or solve a problem. For example:
Ecommerce website designers, developers, and copywriters may join forces to deliver a cohesive user experience.
Sales, customer support, and marketing teams may engage in cross-team collaboration to create a uniform customer journey.
Manufacturing floor staff and procurement managers may collaborate to reduce excess inventory and ensure stock availability.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Cross-functional collaboration has endless applications and possibilities depending on the business requirements.
Importance of cross-functional collaboration
So why would you want different departments to collaborate? The future belongs to cross-team collaboration. According to Deloitte, “We’re seeing a shift from hierarchies to cross-functional teams. Adopting team structures can improve organizational performance, while not doing so puts you at the risk of falling behind.”
We’ve covered some use cases above but the benefits of cross-functional collaboration go beyond that. These include:
Increased innovation
When you involve people from different parts of the business, you get different points of view. The combination of these unique perspectives can lead to creative ideas for solving problems and lifting production.
Better efficiency
Cross-functional collaboration can make your business operations more efficient. The more different departments collaborate, the more their workflows will evolve and improve.
For example, if a manufacturing company suddenly loses its regular supplier, sales representatives, the ordering department, and the warehouse manager can unite to find a new vendor.
With this cross-team collaboration, they have a high chance of quickly finding a new supplier that satisfies the criteria established by all three of them.
Faster acceptance and implementation of change
When you involve people from different spheres in a change initiative from the beginning, you also get their empathy, buy-in, and trust. And they spread this acceptance to other people in their respective teams.
The result? Everyone’s on the same page, and there are fewer delays in execution. For example, some companies have orientation programs where a new employee is required to spend some time in each department.
This leads to a better understanding of the challenges and decision-making processes in different parts of the business. So whatever team the employee ends up with, he’d still be able to welcome changes introduced by other teams.
Enhanced organizational knowledge
This one’s a pretty obvious benefit of cross-team collaboration. When you collaborate with other departments, you also get to know the tools, processes, and best practices they are using.
The inner workings of a different department help you learn lessons that you can implement in your own team. For example, they might be using a better tool for data visualization which is also cheaper than yours.
Plus, you get a better sense of how your work and the other team’s work fits into the bigger picture.
Ways to streamline cross-functional collaboration
As you can see, solving problems that affect multiple teams or departments goes a long way in giving you an edge against the competition.
You may think that bringing people together from different teams would be easy, since they’re all part of the same company. But that’s often not the case, especially in medium and large-sized businesses.
Different departments may have conflicting agendas, values, goals, and priorities. And these differences prevent them from progressing on cross-functional projects.
So let’s see the core steps you can take to improve cross-functional collaboration in your business.
Have a clear vision
30% of employees worldwide cite inadequate vision as the reason for the failure of projects in their companies.
If that’s the case for regular projects, you can imagine how high it would be for cross-functional projects.
When you don’t share a concrete reason for the existence of a cross-functional project, why would anyone prioritize it over the tasks within their own team?
Be transparent with the teams involved about why you started the project. Tell them why they were chosen for it. And clarify what’s the end goal.
For example, if you are launching an onboarding program with a mentor from each department, the vision could be to quickly transform new hires into long-term assets.
The more open your communication, the more invested different departments will be in the project’s success.
Gather the right team members
How you build your cross-functional team plays a big role in your project’s success.
For example, having a finance expert in the team will be crucial for a cross-functional project that involves cutting energy costs and becoming a more eco-friendly company. Plus, you’ll also need PR experts that can spread the story in news outlets and give the whole thing a positive spin.
When putting together a cross-functional team, also consider the diversity and influence exerted by every member within the organization. People who are well-liked and respected even outside their immediate departments make perfect candidates for cross-functional initiatives.
Clarify roles and responsibilities
Do any of these ring a bell?
“I thought he/she was going to do it.”
“I keep butting heads with someone in the other team doing my job.”
“I am reporting to two managers from different teams with different ideas on what my job is.”
If you don’t clear up the expectations from each cross-functional team member, your team will remain confused about what exactly they should do, and who will carry out each task.
Remember, employees with clarity on their roles report a high level of satisfaction (75%), effectiveness (86%), and productivity (83%).
So when engaging in cross-team collaboration, make sure to clearly organize both individual and collective tasks for your workers. Every employee should know what tasks they are supposed to do on their own, and what is to be done in collaboration with other team members.
Put up roles for everyone else to see
A study of American workers across many industries found that 20% end up duplicating the work of others. The reason? Not being able to reach the concerned coworker.
So while it’s good to clarify roles and responsibilities for each team member, they must also know what everyone else is doing and responsible for. This will help you in two ways:
There will be no repeat or duplicate work. If someone is already handling a task, another person will not take it up.
When a team member runs into a problem or needs some information, they’ll know who to reach out to.
The basic information you should openly display for each team member includes:
Full name
Department name and job title
Role within the cross-functional project
Contact information
A great way to streamline this process is to use an employee directory. Blink, for example, is an internal communication app that offers this feature.
It lets you create a directory where information about each worker can be displayed. Plus, employees can search or reach anyone in the directory via instant messaging.
Ensure clear and regular communication
The ability to communicate the goals, status, and outcome of your team's work is crucial for cross-functional collaboration. When cross-functional teams don’t discuss project updates and requirements with one another, they cannot realize their full potential.
But cross-functional communication can be tricky. People are occupied with projects within their immediate teams, and no one may be willing to go the extra mile to communicate with other departments.
A great way to make communication easy for everyone is by implementing simple communication channels. Even better if you can provide a designated space for employees to share updates, exchange messages, and share documents.
That way, you make it easy for different departments to share information without switching between multiple apps.
Another thing you should do is to create a concrete communication strategy for your cross-functional project. The communication strategy will clarify how and when to send updates, and set communication expectations for the teams involved.
Create comprehensive documentation
Cross-functional projects are usually big, and big projects are scary. There are many moving parts that can overwhelm the teams involved. They may not know where to begin, how to carry out a task, or whom to ask.
In such a situation, documenting every aspect of the project can be a huge help. It clarifies processes and boosts productivity in both the short and long term.
Documenting involves writing down details about the project goals, baseline measurements, ongoing tasks, expected results, and more. Then making all this information available to the departments that have a stake in the cross-functional project.
You can begin by creating a project timeline to set and communicate the main tasks and a schedule based on when they should be completed as well as establish a project baseline.
Take construction projects, for example. These are typically complex cross-functional ventures because they require the design, procurement, and construction teams to collaborate deeply with one another.
And they have many tasks and subtasks to be managed on a strict timeline, as delays can lead to increased costs. Here’s what a project timeline might look like for such a project.
This level of detail in your documentation goes a long way in showing both the big-picture view and small tasks associated with the project, making the project vision easy to digest for all the team members.
Conclusion: how to streamline cross-functional collaboration
Cross-functional collaboration can be daunting, but its potential for your business can’t be ignored. It’s an opportunity to leverage the leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills from all corners of your company and use them to drive powerful results.
So use these strategies to set a solid foundation for cross-functional success. As your teams start collaborating, encourage them to keep adjusting and learning from the experience. Because these lessons will help you improve your organization’s ability to facilitate cross-functional collaboration even further.
And if you’re looking for a tool that can help enhance cross-functional collaboration at work, look no further than Blink. Request a free demo today.
So, you already know how digital transformation can improve your warehousing, docking and inventory processes, but are you paying enough attention to digitalization in your run-the-business systems? Here's why you need to.
Digital technology is making huge advancements in the logistics sector, yet the frontline are still left feeling unsatisfied. By improving not only supply chain capabilities, but also your day-to-day employee management systems, businesses can enjoy a number of unexpected benefits, which we've put together for you in this handy guide.
We'll share some of our frontline employee engagement expertise with you here, as well as the latest research on how digital transformation can help in areas such as recruitment, training and tracking performance. This should help HR leaders see just how valuable digital tech can be when it comes to making their logistics workforce operate better and more efficiently across the board.
What is digital transformation (DX) in logistics?
Digital transformation (DX) in logistics is the use of digital technologies to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness of logistics systems in order to better meet the needs of customers and businesses.
While you may be familiar with the growing pressure to digitize your supply chain management and front-of-house systems, many logistics companies are just starting to realize the impact that digital transformation can have on their back-end operations as well.
In order to keep up with today's fast-paced and competitive business environment, HR leaders will need to look at how they leverage employee technology in order to better manage their workforce; recruit and retrain more effectively; and track employee performance and engagement over time.
By creating a more streamlined, digital and integrated approach to these HR functions, businesses can streamline their operations and better meet the needs of both customers and employees alike.
So for any HR leader looking to get ahead of the competition, it is essential to embrace digital transformation in logistics and use it as a tool to improve operational efficiency, employee engagement, and overall business performance.
Core goals of logistics digital transformation
As business leaders, it's crucial to have clear goals in mind when looking to invest in or implement new digital tools.
While common logistics and supply chain processes like docking, inventory, digital supply chains, and other front-of-house systems might not be your main focus, digital transformation in logistics can help you improve or manage your business in other important ways. Think project management, team communication, and business planning, just to name a few.
But what specific goals should you be looking to achieve with your run-the-biz logistics DX efforts? Core goals often include:
Cost Reduction: For HR professionals, this may mean looking for ways to automate processes, reduce employee errors and minimize overhead costs related to hiring, training, and onboarding new employees.
Improve Communication: One of the main goals of the digital transformation journey is improving communication both internally and externally, with an aim to drive increased employee satisfaction and, ultimately, retention.
Customer Satisfaction: Improving customer satisfaction is another important priority for many logistics leaders looking to leverage digital technologies. Whether it's through improvements in product quality and delivery times, or better tracking of customer feedback and requests, maintaining high levels of service can be a key goal of DX efforts in logistics.
Employee Engagement: One often forgotten goal of DX efforts in the transportation and logistics sector is to improve employee engagement and happiness, which can have a direct impact on your employee retention and productivity levels.
Increase Profits: While not always a top priority for HR leaders, increasing profits and driving ROI can be another overarching goal of DX efforts in the industry – and this can be a great hook to get buy-in from your IT leaders or CEO.
While there are many benefits to be had from digital transformation for logistics companies, there are also a number of potential barriers (see image above) and roadblocks that can impede success. For HR professionals, the main challenges will likely include:
Resistance to Change: One of the biggest challenges faced by any company looking to undergo digital transformation is the natural resistance to change that arises within any organization. This can be especially true in cases where employees feel they are being asked to do more work or change the way they've been doing things for years.
Company Culture: Another obstacle that can arise during DX efforts in logistics is company culture. If the company's culture is not supportive of change or new technologies, it can be very difficult for any type of transformation – digital or otherwise – to take hold and be successful.
Legacy Infrastructure: Finally, one of the biggest challenges faced by companies looking to digitize their operations is legacy infrastructure. Many companies have invested heavily in outdated systems and technologies that can be difficult – and expensive – to replace. As such, it often takes a lot of time and effort to upgrade these systems in order to enable a successful DX initiative.
By knowing what you're up against, you can better prepare yourself and your organization for the challenges of digital transformation in logistics. With a clear understanding of your goals and potential roadblocks, you can work to overcome resistance, build a supportive company culture, and upgrade or replace legacy systems as needed.
And with the right approach and mindset, you can leverage digital tools that will help you achieve improved business outcomes and drive higher levels of success for your organization.
Driving digital transformation with frontline workers
Digital business processes impact your frontline team directly, and they need to be included in the transformation journey. Frontline workers are often left feeling like an afterthought, particularly during digital transformation efforts, which can be a huge mistake.
These workers are the ones who interface directly with customers and clients on a daily basis, and they understand what improvements will make their jobs easier – and ultimately benefit the company as well. As such, it is important to invest in frontline workers when driving supply chain digital transformation initiatives.
For logistics companies, this often means leveraging frontline workers as a source of insights, ideas, and feedback on what technologies will work best for them. For logistics employees, this could include instant communication, on-the-go manuals, direct route information or a familiar social media interface: all features of theBlink Frontline Engagement App.
5 unexpected HR benefits of DX in logistics
1. Reduction in staff turnover
With a real pressure on HR leaders to bring in high-quality candidates and retain their existing staff, one of the most surprising benefits of digital transformation in logistics is reduced staff turnover.
By leveraging new technologies in your business strategy to improve the work environment – such as intuitive systems that are easy to use or improved communication channels – you can help alleviate some of the stresses and challenges faced by your employees on a daily basis.
52% of frontline workers claim that they would leave their job over tech tools, according to Unleash.ai, highlighting the impact that the right workplace technology has on employee retention.
The right digital initiatives can make your workers feel more valued, appreciated, and supported – thereby helping to reduce turnover rates in the long-term.
2. Better employee engagement
Another unexpected benefit of digital transformation in logistics is improved employee engagement. This can be driven by a number of different factors, such as the use of gamification techniques or employee engagement apps that allow workers to connect with their colleagues and share ideas.
DX for your logistics workforce can also help foster a company culture of collaboration, innovation, and teamwork. By investing in your employees and encouraging them to work together towards common goals, you can cultivate a sense of shared purpose that will help drive greater success for the entire organization.
And with improved employee engagement and loyalty, HR leaders are better equipped to attract and retain top talent, manage performance, and achieve their business goals. Highly engaged employees also achieve 23% more profitability and 43% less employee turnover, Gallup reports, so the impact of upgrading your employee engagement initiatives runs deeper than you might think.
3. More productive staff
In addition to greater employee engagement and reduced turnover, digital transformation in logistics can also help boost staff productivity. In fact, McKinsey reports that well-connected teams see a productivity increase of 20–25%, so if you can target your DX initiatives towards connecting your employees, you could see another unexpected benefit.
With the right tools and technologies at their fingertips, your workers will be able to streamline processes, optimize performance, and improve output. This means better results for you and your organization – as well as increased job satisfaction for your logistics workers as it becomes easier to succeed in their frontline roles.
Whether you are implementing new systems, optimizing existing technology, or offering your employees training and support, digital transformation can help unlock the full potential of your workers and help drive greater success for your business.
4. Improved safety
In the logistics sector, one of the biggest concerns is often worker safety. This can be due to a number of factors, including long hours on the road, heavy lifting and handling of goods, or exposure to harsh weather conditions and other environmental hazards.
With digital transformation in logistics, however, you can help improve worker safety by leveraging new technologies and systems to protect your staff. This could include investing in smart wearables that track location and movement, implementing automated risk assessment tools, or an easy-to-access, Central Hub storing safety procedures and policies.
With this focus on safety, your workers will be more confident about their working conditions and better able to manage any risks that arise. And as a result, you can help reduce workplace injuries and help keep your employees safe, satisfied and healthy.
5. Increase your bottom line
And finally, perhaps one of the most valuable benefits of digital transformation in logistics is an improved bottom line. Whether you are looking to reduce costs, increase revenue, or improve overall efficiency for profitability, DX can help support these goals and drive greater success for your organization.
By leveraging new technologies and systems, you can streamline day-to-day processes, optimize performance and drive retention amongst your logistics workforce, saving on costs related to employee churn and recruitment and boosting your bottom line in the long-term.
Tips to help drive digital transformation in the logistics industry
Create a DX roadmap: A DX roadmap should include an evaluation of existing processes and systems, as well as a plan for implementing new technologies and improving existing ones.
Align digital transformation strategy with business objectives: To maximize the impact of your digital transformation efforts in logistics, it's important to align these efforts with business objectives and goals. This will help ensure that you are investing in solutions that can have the greatest impact on your operations.
Appoint digital transformation champions: To drive successful implementation and adoption of digital tools in logistics, it is important to identify key champions within your organization who can act as advocates for change.
Communicate clearly and often: To help ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page, it is important to communicate your digital transformation goals and strategies clearly and often, as well as work closely with IT or other key departments to troubleshoot any issues or problems along the way.
Keep track of your timeline: Maintaining a clear and realistic timeline for your digital transformation journey is essential to ensuring that you stay on track and meet your goals.
Use the right tools: Whether it's a digital tool for employee engagement, a new ERP system, or order tracking do your best to ensure it's right fit that will drive performance forward.
By keeping these best practices in mind, HR leaders can help drive digital transformation in logistics, maximizing the impact of these efforts on their organization as a whole.
Accelerate your digital transformation today…
The Blink Frontline Engagement App offers a powerful and easy-to-use platform for improving communication, collaboration, and task management between logistics managers and frontline employees. Whether you are looking to reduce costs or drive employee engagement in your logistics operations, the Blink app can help you achieve your goals quickly and easily.
Don't fall behind in the DX movement – get started with Blink today, and start accelerating your digital transformation in logistics!
With features like Secure Chats for real-time communications, Blink Feedfor product updates, and a Central Hub for document management, Blink can help drive increased innovation and productivity throughout your entire organization.
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 employee engagement strategies to meet the needs of different types of employees, including frontline workers. This 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:
Making sure your onboarding process covers not only organizational policies, but also the company’s core values, mission, and vision
Giving your new employees mobile accessto relevant materials and resources to learn from, and encouraging all employees to provide their feedback
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, where80% 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.
Career growth has a positive impact on knowledge workers’ organizational engagement
Career goal progress and professional ability development promote job engagement
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
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.
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:
Frequent News Feed updates to keep team members in the loop
Regularly scheduled 1-1s and ongoing two-way feedback loops
Targeted posts in group chats and forums for sharing ideas and gaining insights
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:
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
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
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
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
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 feelincluded 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
12 best employee engagement strategies & tactics that work 2
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 anemployee 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.
McKinsey: What frontline employees want—and what employers think they want
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?
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.
The line that launched a thousand eye rolls — and how to counter it.
“Can you just send this out?”
Six words that send a chill up any internal communicator’s spine.
And a phrase that indicates how many organizations still view the internal communications team. As glorified messengers, not strategic partners.
This mindset is harming the effectiveness of internal communications and the business outcomes that are linked to it. Think employee experience, retention, and productivity.
Because today’s workplace is noisy. And sending out messages without strategy only adds to that noise. Messages get lost. People switch off. It gets even harder for comms to cut through.
This was a hot topic in Blink’s recent webinar — Human internal comms: Fueling engagement with authenticity. And here, we’re going to dig a little deeper into why the comms function is so routinely misunderstood — and what we can do to fix that.
Internal communications: The most undervalued strategic function
Internal communication (IC) has long been overlooked and undervalued. And too many communicators are still kept on the sidelines.
According to recent Gallagher research, 27% of internal communicators say they lack leadership buy-in and are left out of decision-making. They’re relegated to a supporting role rather than a strategic one.
But internal communication sits at the heart of company culture, change, and connection. It’s a direct line to employee experience — especially for frontline employees with limited digital or face-to-face contact.
And let’s be clear: It’s about more than churning out information. Internal communicators shape meaning and build trust. They develop effective ways to really reach and resonate with your workforce.
And this is important. Because your people receive a staggering number of employee communications. Over on the webinar, the panel shared the fact that people receive 121 business emails every day and switch between tools and tabs nearly 1,200 times.
“Internal comms […] are fighting against this noise. People don’t want more information, necessarily. They want more meaningful information and meaningful connections.”
— Blink
Simply “sending this out” does a disservice to employees, organizational goals, and the morale of your IC team.
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How we got here: What’s holding comms back?
So why have some IC teams ended up simply distributing messages rather than crafting a narrative? Here’s what’s standing in the way.
A misunderstanding of the role
In too many organizations, internal communicators are seen as wordsmiths — a team who’ll polish a piece of text before sending it out to employees. This perception can be hard to shake and leaves IC wading through admin tasks rather than forging strategy.
Lack of leadership buy-in
Without the backing of the C-suite, the comms team is brought in late — often after decisions are made. This leaves little room for IC to shape the company story or influence outcomes. The impact IC has on business objectives is also underestimated so it’s hard for teams to secure the budget and support they need.
Lack of tools to measure strategic value
It’s a catch-22. Comms teams struggle to get investment for modern tech tools. But without these tools — and their data analytics — it’s hard to prove the worth of IC and justify investment. You need data to show how IC supports big business goals.
Too reactive, not proactive
Many IC teams get stuck in a reactive cycle — publishing company news and chasing approvals. They don’t get the breathing room or support they need to step back, align with business objectives, and plan a comprehensive internal communication strategy.
Siloed working
If internal communications is isolated from HR, IT, operations, and line managers, they miss opportunities to align and embed strategy and share employee feedback. Cross-functional collaboration is impossible and teams miss out on the insights others within the organization can provide.
The cost of staying in your lane
Fail to break free from the messenger role and there are a bunch of risks to contend with. These include:
Information overload. When messages are delivered without strategy — or a sense of the wider narrative — employees become overwhelmed and switch off from internal communications.
Poor employee engagement. Messages don’t feel consistent, relevant, or interesting. Employee engagement suffers, along with employee retention, productivity, and satisfaction.
IC burnout. Communicators struggle to sustain their morale. Those who enjoy collaborative relationships with the C-suite have 2x better well-being than those with transactional relationships.
Misalignment. Poor internal communications lead to measurable losses for your organization. These include project delays, compliance issues, and lost productivity.
Frontline connection gap. Without a clear strategy, deskless workers get stuck with paper notices or word-of-mouth comms.
Missed impact. If you’re treated like a service desk, your influence is capped. So you find it hard to support business objectives in the way you know internal communications can.
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Redefining the role: What internal communications should look like
A tactical internal communicator wears many different hats. Here’s what a new and improved strategic role should look like.
A strategic partner
Comms teams deserve a seat at the table. When you get a say in company strategy, you can better manage company changes and crisis communication. You get greater control over tech tool selection and have the intel you need to drive company-wide alignment.
A trusted advisor
You act as a comms guru for your organization, training leaders and managers to show up in the right way, on the right communication channels, at the right time. You guide them in open communication and empathy, giving them an effective blueprint to follow.
An EX designer
When comms gets tactical, you can craft the employee experience journey, rather than simply delivering touchpoints. You can connect messages to meaning more effectively, ensuring that EX talking points are backed by policy and action.
A community builder
You don’t just send out top-down messages. You develop interactive, two-way comms that spark conversations and fuel employee engagement. Think polls, Q&As, employee-generated content, and content that inspires comments, likes, and shares.
A creative powerhouse
The best internal communicators aren’t satisfied with sending out text-heavy emails and documents. They keep their finger on the pulse of internal comms trends and create attention-grabbing, short-form, social media-inspired content. We’re talking images, photos, videos, graphics, and short snippets of text.
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So what now? How to shift from executor to strategist
Ready to level up? Here’s how you can move beyond messaging to deliver an internal communication plan with real impact.
Say no to being the messenger
Crafting effective internal communications means knowing when to say no. As Tiffin Jernstedt — former chief communications officer and internal communications expert — puts it:
“You have to say: We know everything that’s going on in the organization and your message doesn’t fit today.”
You can’t send everything. Your job is to prioritize. To help people within your business understand what matters most right now — and how messages fit within a broader narrative, that day, that week, and that month.
Need help pushing back? Try one of these approaches:
Ask: What outcome are you trying to achieve with this message?
Suggest: I think that message is most suited to this channel.
Offer: We can help shape this message to make it land — but we’ll need to rework it slightly.
Explain: We track comms engagement closely. Here’s why timing matters.
Bring data to the table
Authentic internal communication doesn’t just inform. It inspires, connects, and builds trust. To prove that, track internal communication metrics, like these ones:
Content read rates
Employee response time
Behavior change
Platform adoption rate
Employee satisfaction
Employee engagement
Then, link these metrics to overarching business objectives. If you can prove the ROI and impact of your employee communications, you can make the case for a more strategic role.
Build cross-functional allies
Team work makes the dream work.
Foster positive working relationships with your HR, ops, and IT teams. You can work together toward shared goals and get well-rounded insight into what employees need.
Not sure where to begin? Start small:
Start a recurring cross-functional meeting to think through EX gaps and opportunities
Ask key stakeholders what they wish more employees knew
Help a frontline leader share a success story
Share data between departments to build a detailed picture of EX
Push for better tools
The best internal communication tools support you to deliver rich, multimedia messages. They provide the channels and functionality you need to win employee attention, craft compelling journeys, and encourage interaction.
These digital tools also give you reporting and analytics tools that help you make meaningful internal communication improvements, while also proving your impact and justifying a more strategic role.
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Raise the bar — and your voice
Internal communications deserves better — and whether you’re a team of one or a team of many, so do the professionals behind it.
It’s time to shift perceptions, get strategic, and fight for a seat at the table. Move beyond simply sending out messages and you can make a real difference to internal communication and the business results that rely on it.
Imagine checking the weather forecast once a year and dressing for those conditions all year round.
Sure, you’re spot on for a day or two. But the rest of the year? Without reliable intel, you have to roll with whatever rain, snow, or sunshine comes your way — and scramble to adapt each time a new storm rolls in.
By seeking employee feedback so rarely, you miss out on key insights. Workplace issues evolve and — if you’re unlucky — explode, before they even appear on your radar.
And in all the months between survey seasons, employee voices go unheard and job satisfaction suffers. Staff shift their priorities, come up with fresh ideas, hit new points of friction, and maybe even switch jobs.
If you’re only listening to employees once a year, you’re making decisions in a downpour without an umbrella. Here’s how to flip the script and respond to employee input in real time.
Why annual employee surveys fall short
The annual employee survey comes with a couple of big drawbacks:
It’s too slow. Think about the last big workplace problem you had to deal with. Did it arrive neatly in time for your annual survey? Probably not. By the time your official feedback rolls in, small problems have snowballed and good employees have jumped ship. Annual surveys may be great for spotting long-term trends — but they don’t help you catch and fix problems in the moment.
Survey fatigue is real. Employees are busy. And the annual employee engagement survey tends to be long — you’ve got a lot of questions to ask because you’ve been saving them up for the past 11 months. Faced with competing priorities, employees are liable to skip the survey entirely — which means low completion rates and an even fuzzier picture of employee sentiment.
It feels like a box-ticking exercise. This is another primary reason for low survey completion rates. If your annual survey is overly formal, impersonal, or doesn’t leave space for real, detailed feedback, employees see it for what it is: something the organization has to do, not something it genuinely cares about. If workers don’t believe you’ll act on their answers, they’re a lot less likely to fill out the form.
The data is one-dimensional. Annual surveys are blunt instruments. They tend to value numbers over nuance. They can tell you what’s wrong — but they can’t always tell you why. And without the why, it’s hard to plan a meaningful plan of action. You end up with a spreadsheet full of stats but no clear path toward a better employee experience.
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The case for real-time employee listening
In 2025, the world of work is changing — fast. So you can’t conduct an employee engagement survey once a year and call it a done deal. This is where real-time employee listening can help.
Real-time feedback mechanisms — in the form of pulse surveys, quick-fire polls, and team chats — allow you to collect up-to-the-minute employee insights. So you can spot and respond to issues early.
Regularly seeking employee feedback also builds trust. It shows a commitment to hearing employee voices — and to improving the employee experience. This improves survey engagement going forward.
Let’s look at an example.
Employee listening in action at Marlowe Fire & Security Group
Marlowe Fire & Security Group, a leading provider of fire safety and security solutions and a company with a large frontline workforce, knew they had challenges with employee communications, recognition, and company culture.
But traditional surveys weren’t helping them uncover root causes and solutions. Participation was low, insights were vague, and managers didn’t know how to take action.
So Marlowe turned to Blink. Using Blink’s employee surveys, the company was able to customize questions by team and make them accessible on every employee smartphone.
Automated nudges boosted participation and personalized reports went straight to all 150+ line managers — putting actionable insight directly in the hands of those who could act.
Because surveys were easy and effective, Marlowe could run more of them, turning a once-a-year event into an ongoing employee listening campaign. The results speak for themselves: 92.5% survey participation and plenty of new insights uncovered.
Marlowe found that a breakdown in internal communication at line manager level — something their old surveys had never revealed — was a major problem. With this understanding, Marlowe has been able to tackle long-standing issues to create a more connected workplace culture revolving around effective communication.
Making employee feedback a natural and regular part of the employee experience doesn’t have to be complicated. Take a look at these tips to get started.
Use pulse surveys and in-app polls
The annual survey can feel overwhelming for employees. This leads to survey fatigue and low completion rates. You can make it quick and easy for employees to give feedback with the help of pulse surveys and company news feed polls. In just a couple of clicks, employees can share their real-time opinions on everything from a new initiative to leadership communication to the manageability of their current workload.
Create always-on feedback channels
Not all feedback fits neatly into a survey box. That’s why always-on channels like team chats, open forums, or anonymous suggestion boxes are so powerful. They give employees the opportunity to share what’s on their mind in the moment — and provide space for detailed comments. Because they give employees the freedom to talk about anything and everything, open channels like these can uncover issues you didn’t even know existed.
Use one-on-one meetings
Direct, personal conversations — either in person or via private chat — give managers the chance to hear employee feedback first-hand. Staff get the chance to share their latest challenges, frustrations, and ideas. Managers can ask follow-up questions to dig deeper and clarify issues. Handled empathetically, these meetings also build trust and strengthen open communication, making it more likely that staff will come forward with their concerns and suggestions in future.
Keep iterating
When you’re gathering employee feedback regularly, you don’t just get insight into the employee experience. You learn about your feedback process too. You get to see what works and what doesn’t. Perhaps some survey questions yield more honest and revealing answers. Maybe some corporate communication channels are better than others at boosting response rates. Use this data to refine your feedback strategy, finding new ways to encourage and act upon employee input.
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Turning listening into action (in 3 simple steps)
You’ve collected real-time feedback. Now it’s time to act. To sustain employee survey buy-in and make meaningful changes to the workplace, you need to turn insights into tangible change.
Step #1: Analyze your findings
Don’t just skim the surface of feedback data. Dig into the details. Start by separating your data by a wide range of segments, like team, department, location, role, or tenure — different groups often experience the workplace differently. Look for patterns and recurring themes. Then ask yourself — What is driving this sentiment? — before forming a plan of action.
Step #2: Prioritize quick wins and plan for long-term impact
It’s rare that you can implement changes overnight. But small, visible improvements make a big difference to your workforce. So identify a couple of quick wins to show employees you’re listening — and outline larger projects that will take more time. Early successes encourage more participation and build trust in the feedback process.
Step #3: Close the feedback loop
Tell employees all about it. Openly share what their feedback has revealed. Explain what you plan to do next — the short-term changes and long-term projects, too. Even if you can’t act on every piece of feedback, explain your decisions to build credibility. By closing the feedback loop with thoughtful two-way communication, you show employees that their voices and opinions really matter to your organization.
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Your people are talking — don’t be the last to hear
Annual surveys have their place. But if they’re your only employee listening or bottom-up communication tool, you’re missing out on huge chunks of the company conversation.
People are sharing feedback constantly — in chats, in meetings, in the break room. If you’re not listening in real time, you risk letting small frustrations grow into big problems, and letting great ideas go unheard.
Employee satisfaction, experience, and retention rates soon start to suffer — and major issues may take you by surprise.
So keep your ear to the ground and your finger on the pulse. Use employee listening digital tools to create regular and informal opportunities for employee feedback.
With Blink, you make those listening tools — from pulse surveys to polls to team chat — available on every employee smartphone and a core part of your employee communication strategies. Feedback is easy, engaging, and continuous. So you get the insight you need to act fast, build a better employee experience, and — ultimately — boost business success.
Domino's Pizza Group is the UK’s leading pizza brand; their first UK store opened in 1985. They have over 1,000 stores across the country and more than 35,000 team members. Their vision is simple: to be the number one pizza company in the world. But their internal communication strategy was holding them back.
So, what happens when communication becomes critical in the wake of a global pandemic? And how do you reach frontline workers who are digitally and physically disconnected (see the winning types of internal communication)?
The challenge
Domino’s have a distributed workforce operating out of various sites. These include Head Office and Supply Chain Centers in Milton Keynes, Warrington, West Ashland & Naas.
Frontline processes were paper-based and manual with no practical way to reach everyone. Dominoes struggles to get key messages across, because communication relied on word of mouth, posters and consumer channels like WhatsApp.
Domino’s had no reliable channel for frontline communication. And employees needed consistent information – but paperwork posed a Covid-19 transference risk.
The internal communications strategy
The situation demanded an immediate flow of two-way communication. As a result, Domino’s launched Blink in April 2020 as a critical part of their Covid-19 response plan. The goal? Empower, equip and protect all frontline employees.
Before long, Blink integrated with benefits, payslips and holiday bookings. Domino's also began using digital forms for shift swaps and holiday bookings. The result? 85% adoption rate in less than a fortnight, and a strong long-term, communication strategy.
Since joining Blink’s London office less than a year ago, our Data Analyst, Nikita, has already made her mark — tackling data-driven projects, collaborating across teams, and fueling the mission to empower frontline workers. She loves the energy of a smaller startup and finds real purpose in crafting tech solutions that make a positive impact.
Read on to learn how Nikita dove into the world of advanced analytics at Blink, why she’s proud of her work on the AEI tool, and what keeps her excited about the future!
What initially attracted you to join Blink?
I was really inspired by Blink’s mission to empower frontline workers. It was great to see technology being used for such a positive cause. I’ve worked at startups before and really enjoy the energy of a smaller company. Before joining Blink, I was at a slightly bigger startup, but I love our size and find what we’re doing here incredibly exciting.
What's a project you are proud of from your time at Blink?
AEI! I’m particularly proud of the Advanced Employee Intelligence (AEI) tool. I’ve been working on it with Izzy for the past few months, and it’s been exciting to provide customers with insights they didn’t have before. This tool offers actionable metrics, and it’s gratifying to see how our data can truly help other organizations.
How would you describe the company culture at Blink in three words?
I would say supportive, vibrant and energetic.
What's one thing you're excited about for the future of Blink?
I’m really excited about the coming year at Blink. We have a lot of great new customers on board, which means there will be even more data to explore. I can’t wait to see the insights we uncover and how they’ll help us continue innovating.
Can you tell us about a recent initiative or program launched at Blink that you found particularly exciting?
I found the recent Frontline Heroes holiday campaign especially meaningful. It highlighted real stories from frontline workers who use Blink every day, and hearing their experiences was incredibly heartwarming. It served as a powerful reminder of the impact Blink can have on people’s daily lives, and it gave me a renewed sense of purpose in supporting our users on the frontlines.
Why do you work for Blink?
I’m early in my career, and one of the biggest benefits of working at a smaller company like Blink is getting exposure to so many different areas — Marketing, Customer Success, Product — you name it. I love the variety and the fact that I can see the direct impact of my work. Plus, Blink’s mission really resonates with me, so it feels great to contribute to something I believe in every day.
I started here as an Operations Support Analyst under Ana (Mason), which was a fantastic learning experience. But as I took on more analytical tasks, especially around the development of AEI, I transitioned into my current role in Data RevOps. I’m finding it incredibly interesting, and being hands on with such an important product is really rewarding.
Given how much I’ve already learned and how the company is evolving, I see myself staying at Blink for the foreseeable future. It’s a prime opportunity to keep growing, and I don’t want to miss out while I’m still soaking up knowledge at this stage in my career. I’m excited to see what new challenges and opportunities will come as Blink continues to expand.
