How to Calculate Employee Retention Rate (With Examples)

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:

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.

Request a free demo to get started.

Since joining Blink’s London office just a few months ago, Noah Brooks has jumped headfirst into the engineering world — taking on everything from accessibility features to auto-translation tools. As a graduate software engineer, Noah loves the fast-paced startup culture and the chance to see his work go live within days. Beyond coding, he’s inspired by how Blink’s mission supports frontline workers, and he appreciates the open, collaborative environment that encourages him to learn from different departments.

Which Blink office do you work out of?

I work at the London office.

What is your position at Blink?

I’m a graduate software engineer, working in the engineering team across various technical areas. I’m currently on the web team.

How long have you been at Blink?

I started in mid-September, so about four and a half months.

What initially attracted you to join Blink?

Initially, I hadn’t heard of Blink when I came across the job posting. But what attracted me was the flexibility of the position. As a graduate software engineer at a startup, I'd have the opportunity to work across different areas of technology. The frontline focus also stood out — everyone I spoke with, whether in interviews or during my office visit, was passionate not just about their own work, but about the company’s mission as well.

All the tech folks I met were genuinely excited about technology, and they were curious about my interests in computer science. That made me feel like Blink would be a great place to learn and start my career.

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

I’ve worked on a lot of smaller projects, and I’m proud of many of them. One highlight was handling accessibility features for the platform — something I’d never done at university, but found really interesting. I also tackled custom fields, which let admins add new fields to user profiles and manage their visibility and editability. That was probably my biggest piece of work last year.

Right now, I’m focused on auto-translations for users and the ability for admins and moderators to add translations. It’s fascinating and I think it’ll have a big impact. As someone who speaks multiple languages, I love it from both a technical standpoint and a user standpoint.

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

I’m going to choose dynamic, collaborative, and driven.

I picked “collaborative” because, ever since I joined, communication has been easy. The company is relatively small, so you really get to know everyone, and whenever we start a new project, we discuss our approach, who handles each part, and how others can pitch in. We’re focused on preventing problems that might occur if just one person is handling everything, and I’ve always felt comfortable asking questions.

“Dynamic” fits because we’re constantly adapting — whether to meet the needs of the work, the customer, or the project. There’s absolutely no fear of evolving our methods as the company grows.

Lastly, “driven” because everyone is so passionate about their work. People are both highly knowledgeable and eager to share that knowledge. They’re committed to delivering the best possible solutions for both the customer and the product.

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

There are many exciting new customers joining Blink, which means — from an engineering standpoint — they’ll request a lot of specific features. That’s always interesting, because, for example, the auto-translation feature we’re implementing came from a specific customer need, and I’m excited to see how it turns out. The company is growing quickly, so it’s a really thrilling time to be part of it.

I’m also looking forward to seeing who else joins the team, especially in engineering. Personally, I’m curious about how our engineering processes will continue to evolve and what I’ll learn in the process.

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

I don’t want to repeat Nikita’s answer about the Frontline Heroes campaign, but I really did enjoy it. As someone new to the company who hasn’t attended a launch or spoken with many users yet, it was great to see those user perspectives. Learning how Blink impacted different people was super interesting from an engineering standpoint.

Why do you work for Blink? 

I think it’s a combination of factors I’ve mentioned before, especially the startup culture. I’ve never worked at a startup, but I really wanted to see the direct impact of my work. I once did an internship at a larger company and felt my work wasn’t all that useful. Here at Blink, I can develop a feature and see it live just a few days later.

Another big draw is the culture itself — I can get to know everyone in the company. Even though I love engineering, I also enjoy hearing about what product, marketing, and sales are working on. At a bigger company, it’s unlikely I’d get that same exposure.

Plus, we’re building something meaningful for frontline workers. Everyone here is passionate about our purpose. I’ve worked in the service industry and often felt underappreciated, so it’s great to be part of a team dedicated to changing that. 

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Today’s employees routinely use digital tools to manage their personal lives — for banking, shopping, fitness, and even dating — and now expect a similar level of convenience and connectivity in their professional environments.

Forward-thinking organizations are meeting these expectations through employee experience software platforms that transform how teams communicate and engage. Solutions such as Blink’s employee experience platform enable staff to feel more connected, motivated, and loyal to their company by simplifying communication and recognition.

Frontline teams, in particular, benefit from a unified employee experience solution. The “frontline connection gap” often leaves these employees isolated from leadership and peers, reducing both satisfaction and retention.

A mobile-first employee experience platform, such as Blink, bridges that gap by bringing everyone together wherever they work. It gives each employee a stronger sense of belonging, supports regular recognition, and creates continuous communication that makes work more fulfilling.

This guide from Blink outlines some of the best employee experience software platforms available today — helping you identify the right solution to connect your workforce and elevate engagement across your organization.

Whether your organization has frontline, desk-based, or hybrid teams, an employee experience software platform like Blink’s employee experience platform helps you meet and exceed modern employee expectations and deliver measurable improvements across engagement, operations, and culture. Here’s what effective employee experience software can help you achieve:

Enhanced employee engagement

Low employee engagement costs the global economy $8.8 trillion, according to Gallup. Employee experience platforms like Blink enable two-way communication, recognition, and collaboration that increase loyalty, satisfaction, and productivity.

Streamlined HR processes

The best platforms automate repetitive and time-consuming HR tasks such as time tracking, performance appraisals, and routine communication. By handling these automatically, HR teams free up time for human-touch, value-add work that improves the overall employee experience.

Improved talent management

Around 65% of frontline employees are unsure how to progress in their careers. Employee experience software provides continuous feedback, coaching, and development tools that help managers identify high-potential talent and guide employees toward advancement.

Data-driven insights

Comprehensive reporting and analytics capabilities enable organizations to measure engagement, sentiment, and performance. Blink’s platform, for example, supplies real-time insights that support better decisions, highlight trends, and surface issues early.

Employee recognition and empowerment

Employee appreciation and self-service tools make staff feel valued and informed. Access to essential information anytime, anywhere fosters a sense of support and connection across the organization.

A positive company culture

Transparent communication and meaningful connection — both core features of leading platforms like Blink — build positive company culture. When employees feel proud of where they work, satisfaction rises, churn decreases, and employer branding strengthens.

Key things to look for when choosing an employee experience software platform

Now that the benefits of an employee experience software platform are clear, it’s important to identify the key capabilities that define an effective solution. When choosing your platform, consider these essential features — many of which are core to Blink’s employee experience platform:

User-friendly interface

The best employee experience platforms minimize the learning curve. They should feel intuitive and familiar from day one, encouraging quick adoption across all teams.

Personalization and customization

Every organization is different. Choose a platform that lets you tailor tools and workflows to your company’s structure and employee needs.

Employee self-service

When employees can access the information and tools they need independently, HR teams spend less time handling routine requests and more time on strategic, people-focused initiatives.

Integration capabilities

For a seamless employee experience, ensure your platform integrates smoothly with existing business systems — from scheduling and payroll to communication tools. Blink, for example, integrates across multiple systems to provide a unified digital workplace.

Mobile accessibility

Frontline workers and remote employees often lack equal access to company tools. A mobile-first platform like Blink enables engagement and communication anywhere — whether on the shop floor, in the field, or during a commute.

Analytics and reporting

Select software that delivers robust analytics on engagement, satisfaction, and retention. Data-driven insight helps HR teams make informed decisions and address trends early.

Comprehensive feature set

To reduce the need for multiple apps, look for a platform that combines employee engagement, feedback, rewards, performance management, and learning and development. Blink’s platform consolidates these into one accessible hub, simplifying management and improving the overall employee experience.

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15 best employee experience software platforms

1. Blink

Blink is a leading employee experience app and communication platform purpose-built for frontline teams. As a mobile-first solution, Blink unifies dispersed workers and connects them with leadership through an intuitive, easy-to-use interface.

Users can quickly launch pre-loaded or custom employee surveys, add mandatory reads to a shared company news feed, recognize colleagues for outstanding work, and access real-time insights on engagement, satisfaction, and retention.

Built around frontline accessibility, Blink’s Hub centralizes essential information, including pay stubs, schedules, and key documents. Its interface encourages high adoption and consistent daily use — ensuring every employee stays informed, valued, and connected.

Key features

• News feed
• Employee surveys
• Employee recognition
• Secure chat function
• Content hub (Blink Hub)
• Insights and analytics
• Integrations
• Mobile-friendly design
• Content translation

Even after identifying the right employee experience management software, securing senior leadership buy-in remains essential. Before presenting your case, gather evidence and insights in the following key areas — all central to the successful implementation of a platform like Blink.

Developed by the team at Blink, the platform brings together communication, engagement, and HR functionality in one secure space. It’s designed to strengthen connections and alignment across all levels of an organization while reducing the administrative burden on HR teams. The essential guide to executive buy-in for frontline employee experience

Scalability: Evaluate how your chosen platform will adapt to your company’s future needs, including long-term growth and an expanding workforce. Blink’s platform is designed to scale seamlessly as organizations expand, supporting larger teams without adding administrative complexity.

Implementation: Assess how straightforward it is to deploy your software and integrate it with existing systems. A solution such as Blink simplifies this step with pre-built integrations and guided onboarding.

User adoption: An employee experience platform only delivers value when employees actively use it. Confirm that your software has a proven record of adoption. For example, 97% of employees at Care Synergy now use the Blink app, demonstrating how intuitive design drives engagement.

Vendor reputation and support: Review customer testimonials and case studies to verify a provider’s reliability and service quality. Blink’s long-term partnerships and customer success programs help ensure ongoing performance and satisfaction across industries.

Case study: Elara Caring

Elara Caring employs more than 32,000 caregivers who provide in-home and hospice support to patients across the United States. The organization faced a significant communication and coordination challenge:

• Without company-issued phone numbers or email addresses, caregivers felt disconnected from both colleagues and headquarters.
• An outdated manual scheduling process left hundreds of shifts unfilled each week.
• The existing HR platform failed to meet employees' operational and engagement needs.
  

To close these gaps, Elara Caring implemented Blink’s employee experience platform, developed by joinblink.com. The mobile-first platform unified essential communication, scheduling, and feedback tools into a single, secure, accessible application. Managers and caregivers could now share updates through a company news feed, manage shifts in real time, and recognize great work — all from their smartphones.

The impact was immediate. Workforce efficiency improved, communication bottlenecks were eliminated, and employees felt more connected to both their teams and leadership. Ninety-five percent of employees now report stronger connections to Elara, and 96% would recommend Blink’s platform to others in their field.

Read the full Elara Caring case study on joinblink.com

2. Culture Amp

Culture Amp is an excellent choice if you want to improve your performance tracking process. You can set and track employee targets, create personalized L&D plans, and access historical conversation and 1:1 data so managers can provide actionable feedback.   

This employee experience management software also gives you access to a ton of data. This provides a great basis for analysis and insight. And the platform even does some of the hard work for you too, using employee engagement stats to predict staff turnover.

Key features

• Reporting and analytics
• Turnover prediction tool
• Performance reviews
• Goal tracking

Pricing

Contact sales team for prices

3. Bonusly

Bonusly is a great option for employee recognition. Employees meet personalized targets and build up points, which they can then use to claim a selection of rewards,  all via the platform.

Whether you want your team to go above and beyond for customers, meet their sales quota, or simply engage with a request for employee feedback, Bonusly helps you to promote and recognize the employee behavior you most want to see.

Key features

• Peer-to-peer recognition
• Employee rewards
• Goal setting
• Reporting and analytics

Pricing

• Core: $3 per user/month
• Pro: $5 per user/month

Contact sales team for custom plans

4. Lattice

With Lattice, you’ll find it easy to launch employee surveys, celebrate employee wins, and get real-time experience data with the help of the platform’s Pulse feature and sentiment analysis. Lattice also supports employee development opportunities. It connects individual work to business outcomes so employees can view their progress easily.

Key features

• Reporting and analytics
• Employee surveys
• Employee recognition
• Goal management

Pricing

• Performance Management + OKRs and Goals: $11 per user/month
• Engagement: +$4 per user/month
• Grow: +$4 per user/month
• Compensation: $+6 per user/month

5.  Qualtrics XM

Qualtrics XM offers several products, one of which they’ve designed specifically for people teams. The employee experience platform uses AI and automation, so you can continually gather and assess employee feedback and get to know employee views at every point in the employee life cycle.

Data analytics tools help you to connect employee feedback to customer experience and business outcomes – so you can target employee experience improvements where they stand to make the most difference.  

Key features

• 24/7 technical support
• Automation tools
• Analytics and reporting
• Action plans

Pricing

Contact sales team for prices

6. Workhuman

Workhuman is built around social recognition. Team-based social feeds support peer-to-peer appreciation. Employees gain recognition points, which they can exchange for personalized and locally sourced rewards. And an AI-powered Inclusion Advisor gives real-time feedback on recognition posts to prevent unconscious bias and promote a culture of belonging.

Key features

• Employee recognition
• Performance management
• Translation into 34+ languages
• Community building

Pricing

Contact sales team for prices

7.  Mo

Mo is one of the best employee experience software platforms for team communication and appreciation. It allows you to share successes, recognize results, and reward good work.

Standout features include the Mo assistant, which helps people managers to remember work anniversaries and prompts them to appreciate employees who haven’t had a pat on the back in a while, and the social feed, where you can start conversations, prompt employees to start conversations, and ask for employee feedback.

Key features

• Team appreciation
• Social feed
• Employee feedback
• Insights

Pricing

• Starter: $3 per user/month
• Level Up: $5 per user/month

Contact sales team for custom plans

8. Motivosity

Motivosity provides tools for every stage of the employee journey. From recruitment to onboarding to development to career progression and even an employee’s company exit experience. The basic plan gives you access to a company social feed, great for important announcements and getting to know co-workers. Add-ons include Recognition and Rewards, Manager Development, and Employee Insights.

Key features

• Social feed
• Employee recognition
• Manager training
• Surveys and insights

Pricing

• Motivosity: $2 per user/month
• Recognition and Rewards: +$2 per user/month
• Manager Development: +$2 per user/month
• Employee Insights: +$2 per user/month

9.  WorkTango

WorkTango (formerly Kazoo) allows you to highlight the strengths and skills of peers and employees, while a points and rewards system incentivizes key behaviors. It’s one of the best employee engagement platforms for teams who want to make recognition an integral part of their company culture.

Key features

• Employee recognition
• Goal setting and feedback
• Surveys
• Analytics and reporting

Pricing

Contact sales team for prices

10. 15Five

15Five is one of the best employee experience software options if you’re looking to connect employee work with business objectives. Managers and employees can create career paths that motivate performance. Employees can identify their strengths and how these align with their goals.

Key features

• Goal setting tools
• Feedback
• Employee recognition
• Manager coaching

Pricing

All of the following prices are billed annually:

• Engage: $4 per user/month
• Perform: $8 per user/month
• Focus: $8 per user/month
• Total Platform: $14 per user/month

11. Leapsome

Leapsome is a solid employee engagement software, particularly if you’re looking for a solution that can scale with your company. You can select the modules you need, adapting the software to the size and budget of your organization. With Leapsome, you can run meaningful, well-structured meetings. You can also congratulate co-workers publicly and share private feedback too.

Key features

• Employee feedback
• Learning and development
• Goal setting
• Employee competency framework

Pricing

Pricing starts at $8 per user/month with the option to add on the extra features you need

12. BambooHR

BambooHR provides a huge range of HR tools. Teams can use it to track payroll, hours worked, and paid time off. The platform offers recruitment and L&D tracking tools.

As well as making life easier for HR teams, BambooHR has a couple of features designed to improve the employee experience. Wellbeing and eNPS surveys help teams to understand the employee perspective, while performance tracking tools support employee progression. 

Key features

• Performance reviews
• Time tracking
• Payroll management
• Applicant tracking system (ATS)

Pricing

Contact sales team for prices

13. Officevibe

If you’re looking for an easy and effective employee survey tool, Officevibe is an excellent choice. Officevibe is just one of the HR products available under the Workleap umbrella and this offering is laser-focused on employee experience.

The platform gives managers tools to become better leaders and build happier teams. Pulse and customized surveys, peer-to-peer recognition, and 1-1 meeting tools that guide meaningful and productive conversations are all at a manager’s disposal.

Key features

• Surveys
• Employee feedback
• Employee recognition
• Performance tracking

Pricing

• Free: $0 per user/month
• Essential: $5 per user/month
• Pro: $8 per user/month

14. Workvivo

Another good employee experience management software, Workvivo helps organizations streamline their communications and showcase their company culture, even when teams work remotely. When posting on the social feed, employees can link their posts to company values and goals. And with the Badge Feature, managers can recognize employee achievements publicly.

Key features

• Social feed
• Employee recognition
• Content hub
• Analytics & insights

Pricing

Contact sales team for prices

Read more: Workvivo alternatives

15. Jostle

An intuitive platform with a quick and easy setup process, Jostle is another popular employee engagement platform. It works to connect everyone within an organization, providing a social feed and a space for shared documents.

Managers can set tasks and then use built-in chat functions to track progress. They can also separate the social feed by location or team, ensuring that the right information reaches the right people.

Key features

• Social feed
• Surveys
• Peer-to-peer recognition
• Document and policy sharing

Pricing

Prices depend upon the number of employees you have. For an organization with 15-50 employees, prices are as follows:

• Bronze: $5 per user/month
• Silver: $9 per user/month
• Gold: $12 per user/month

Smaller organizations can expect to pay more per user. Larger organizations can expect to pay less. Prices for the Platinum plan are available from the sales team.

Additional considerations for HR teams

You may already be sold on a particular employee experience management software, but getting senior leadership buy-in is a vital next step. Before entering conversations about the type of tool you’d like to implement, be sure to gather information on all of the following:

Read more: The essential guide to executive buy-in for frontline employee experience

• Scalability – Find out if and how your chosen platform will respond to your company’s future needs, considering long-term company growth and an increase in the number of employees.
  
• Implementation – Determine how easy it is to implement your chosen software and whether it integrates with your other existing systems.
  
• User adoption – An employee experience platform provides very little value if employees don’t use it. Check whether your chosen platform has a user-friendly interface and a history of high adoption rates. We’re proud that 97% of employees at Care Synergy are now using the Blink app. Find out more by watching our on-demand webinar.
  
• Vendor reputation and support – Take a look at customer reviews, testimonials, and case studies to find out whether your software provider has a good track record in terms of product quality and client care.

Case Study: Elara Caring

Elara’s 32,000 carers spend their workdays caring for patients in their homes or in hospice settings. The company faced a million-dollar communication problem:

• Without company phone numbers or email addresses, carers felt disconnected from their co-workers and head office
• Carers wanted shift opportunities but an inefficient manual system meant hundreds of shifts went unfilled each week
• The company’s existing HR platform was failing to meet the needs of employees and the wider organization

Elara saw a solution in Blink. Our platform gathered all the information and tools that employees needed in one easy-to-use platform that everyone could access from their smartphones. Employees and managers had access to a social feed, shift scheduling, employee feedback and employee recognition tools.  

The result? Improved workforce efficiency and streamlined communications. Thanks to Blink, Elara has transformed the employee experience. 95% of employees now feel more connected to Elara and 96% would recommend the platform.

Read the full Elara case study.

Quick question: who does a forklift operator turn to when there’s a problem? Or to whom does a shift nurse bring her safety concerns?

In most cases, this would be the middle-level, frontline manager or supervisor. That’s how critical frontline leaders are to the day-to-day functioning of your organization and its workers.

But many of them are handling a management role for the first time. They were probably promoted because they were great at their job. So the skills and behaviors they need to manage frontline workers may not come naturally to them.

Whether you’re leading frontline workers or leading those who manage frontline workers, proper frontline leadership training is essential. And the following tips will help take your training programs to the next level. 

Frontline leadership training tips

The right frontline leadership training strategies don’t just show people how to lead frontline teams, but also help you turn junior frontline workers or those with no frontline experience into powerful frontline leaders. Let’s see what these are.

Get out in the field 

This frontline leadership training tip may look obvious on the surface. After all, how can you lead or train deskless workers just from your desk?

But it’s surprising how many leaders and supervisors become disconnected from the people they lead due to physical distance.

Their teams are out there in the factory, toiling away at the warehouse, serving customers in their rooms, or traveling to client locations, while the managers spend most of their time in their little cabin.

This doesn’t just impact frontline leadership training, but also puts you out of the loop from what’s really happening on the ground level.

So get out and see your world. Frequent places you wouldn’t normally visit. Seek out conversations with workers you don’t usually interact with. And train other frontline managers in your company to do the same.

Prioritize empathy

A hospital security guard was once working the night shift. He noticed the hospital CEO walking toward him in the hallway. Wanting to make a good impression, he acknowledged and smiled. But the CEO walked right past him, as if he was not important enough to engage. So how would the guard feel at that moment?

Understanding and empathy are essential to engaging frontline employees. And it’s important to reinforce this fact as much as possible in frontline leadership training.

As a frontline leader, you should be easily approachable. And make your workers feel comfortable in raising their concerns and suggestions.

Also, be proactive about this. Many frontline managers unintentionally project a stoic image. They accidentally come across as cold and uncaring even though they are not. So a frontline leadership training session is a good opportunity to identify and improve on these blind spots.

Empower your people

As per a 2019 employee engagement study, 33% of workers feel undervalued at work. Without the motivation and authority to take full responsibility, it’s hard for them to take pride in their work.

So another aspect of effective frontline leadership is teaching and supporting workers in taking ownership of their tasks.

As you train frontline leaders and employees, you’ll notice them wanting to step up. And this is the time to allow them to do so. Encouraging independent decision-making is the key to building a high-performance team.

One way to empower your frontline leaders and workers is to reduce the bottlenecks and red tape preventing them from experiencing autonomy at work.

Instead of micromanaging their every move, provide clear expectations about the final outcome. Your role as a frontline leader is not to micromanage every little process, but to empower your teams to handle day-to-day operations on their own.

Second, always encourage open communication. When a team member communicates with you, listen actively and respectfully to their issues and feedback. And provide candid feedback of your own when required.

Use storytelling

As humans, we are wired for stories, and they’re easy for us to remember. Not just that, stories activate more areas of the brain than just language processing. So they have a better chance of inspiring and impacting us.

When training or managing frontline employees, storytelling goes a long way in creating cohesion and showing them that their actions make a difference.

For example, a real-estate company built a set of simulation videos to demonstrate a new customer-success approach.

The videos featured the activities of the protagonist — a leasing agent — as she worked with customers to fill a unit in her locality. And each video created an opportunity for the viewer to learn how to handle a specific conflict that may arise in the process.

As a frontline leader, we bet you have a lot of stories to share from your experiences in the field. If you do, you’re sitting on a goldmine that can be invaluable when imparting frontline leadership training. So use stories to emphasize key takeaways in your training sessions and drive frontline workers to action.

When telling a story, follow the standard story arc. Start with a character your audience can relate with, build tension with a conflict, then introduce concepts and actions the character used to resolve the conflict. For more information, see our guide to employing storytelling for communication.

Invest in a continuous improvement program

Training frontline leaders and workers on improvement strategies like TWI, Lean, Kaizen, and Kata can kill two birds with one stone. They learn how to be more efficient and be a good leader.

Kaizen, for example, is the process of making tiny, incremental improvements in both strategy and operations over time. And these small improvements eventually lead to a big difference in the long run. Toyota is famous for applying this model right from the beginning, and it played a big role in the company’s success.

By introducing a continuous improvement course in your organization, you can turn frontline supervisors into real leaders, and teach them how to:

• Motivate frontline employees
• Collaborate with people in other departments
• Get workers to comply with safety measures
• Empower frontline employees to share feedback
• Build trustworthy relationships at work

Start small and see how the small changes you initiate are impacting your team. If everything goes well, you can apply the changes to the whole organization.

According to the Kaizen philosophy, the goal is not perfection, but improvement. No matter how trivial. So remember not to get your workforce bogged down with unrealistic expectations.

Frontline leadership FAQs

What is frontline leadership training?

Frontline leadership training programmes will aim to improve the skills of those currently in or looking to move into a frontline leadership role. The majority of these courses will focus on improving communication, reducing conflict, improving employee performance, and enhancing team effectiveness.

What is frontline leadership?

Frontline leadership refers to the ability of supervisors or managers on the frontline and their ability to combine practical management skills with proactive and decisive decision marketing.

What are the skills of a frontline manager?

A frontline manager will rely on a lot of skills to keep their team performing efficiently. Some of these skills include: communication, critical thinking, leadership, strategic thinking, motivation & engagement skills.

Conclusion: frontline leadership training tips

According to a Woohoo study of employees worldwide, workers say that 40% of their bad days are because of a lack of guidance and support from their manager.

Frontline managers in your organization need to listen and be responsive to their teams’ needs. And effective frontline leadership training is essential to develop the skills that make this happen.

Even if you already have a training program in place, the tips outlined above will help you make it better. So go ahead and use them to turn workers into leaders.

IM Flash Technologies, a semiconductor factory with a large frontline workforce, was struggling with its worst turnover in decades.

As a last resort, they turned to employee engagement surveys.

Senior leaders spent the next year collecting insights and making the changes their employees asked for.

By the next year, they'd reduced turnover by 50%.

Clear, actionable data is the key to making informed decisions about your workplace culture and internal communications: the good, the bad – and the ugly.

And what’s your best bet to get this data? Extract it straight from the source: your people.

Senior managers have been using the trusty annual employee engagement survey for the past 30+ to ask workers how they really feel.

And fair enough. When done right, an annual employee survey can get you some solid insights. But it’s not going to cut it in today’s world. At least not on its own.  

In this post, we’ll walk you through the ins and outs of conducting an employee engagement survey, why it may or may not work for your company, and the employee survey alternatives you can start using right away. 

What is an employee engagement survey? 

An annual employee engagement survey is a set of questions shared with workers once a year. The answers help gauge employee sentiment, identify issues, and contribute to (possible) solutions. 

mployee engagement is crucial for any organization’s growth. Teams with highly engaged members sell over 20% more than groups with low engagement, according to a PeopleMetrics study. Engaged workers have the potential to get your company more customers, while disengaged workers increase expenses and reduce profits. 

So an annual employee engagement survey measures the extent to which workers feel valued at your organization. 

With that in mind, here’s a rundown of how you’d typically go about conducting a yearly employee engagement survey in an organization. 

How to run an employee engagement survey

Figure out your goal

Before creating and distributing a survey to your workers, you need a crystal clear idea of what you want to measure and why. This will help you generate the right questions and get data you can actually use. 

For example, your purpose for conducting an annual employee engagement survey could be:

• Help find ways to transform a toxic workplace culture
• Generate ideas to enhance the employee net promoter scorer (eNPS)
• Identify how to increase employee engagement throughout the company
• Come up with ways to improve employee retention
• Develop two-way communication between managers and workers

Plan your survey questions

Asking great questions is the key to getting to the heart of workplace issues. The right questions will get better answers from workers. And the better responses you get, the easier for your company to identify areas of improvement. 

Here are the best questions for an annual employee engagement survey. These are a baseline – but a solid one!

• What is your favorite thing about working at our company?
• What is your least favorite thing about working at our company?
• What’s the most important thing we should do to make things better at our company?
• Do you feel like a valued member of our company or just a number? Why?
• What can we do to foster better internal communication at our company?
• Do you get constructive feedback from your seniors on a regular basis?
• Do you see your career growing in this company?
• Is the number of tasks assigned to you reasonable?
• Are you satisfied with our rewards and recognition policies?

Don’t overwhelm your readers

If you conduct an employee engagement survey only once a year, it’s tempting to combine multiple surveys or ask a wide range of questions. 

Give in to this temptation, and you’ll likely end up with a survey that confuses workers and doesn’t generate actionable feedback. 

That’s not what you want, right? So keep it simple. Only include the most important and specific topics to keep your survey from turning into an SAT exam. And make sure to use plain language that all the employees can easily understand. 

Ideally, your survey should include around 30 questions. Go more than 40 and it’s overkill. 30-40 questions are just enough to cover all the key aspects as per your objective without putting too much burden on the workers.

Build and distribute your survey

The next step is execution. How will you create the survey and share it with the employees? The good news is there are many intuitive tools at your disposal. Take Blink for example.  

Our employee experience platform helps you share anonymous polls and surveys with your employees. These surveys get high completion rates and honest feedback. 

All you need to do is create your form with a 3rd-party application such as Google Forms, Survey Monkey, or Typeform. Once your form is ready, simply copy its URL and add it to the Hub.  

Promote, promote, promote!

Now comes the fun part — getting workers to fill the survey. Just like charity begins at home, survey advocacy begins with senior management. Here are the key steps that will help maximize the reach of your annual employee engagement survey. 

• Get the senior leaders and managers to complete the survey first. This way, you can get feedback on the overall experience of filling the survey. So you can make any amends, if needed, before sharing the survey with the whole workforce.
• Use an employee app to provide resources that may come in handy when a worker sits down to complete a survey. 
• Promote the survey at every opportunity. Boost participation by mentioning the survey in employee newsletters, posting flyers, announcing prizes, and reminding workers about the survey in meetings and conferences.

Are annual employee engagement surveys dead?

Now you know how to conduct surveys. But you should also know that an annual employee engagement survey has certain shortcomings. 

An annual employee engagement survey can help gauge your work culture only to some extent. So when used on its own, it’s not the best way to learn more about your employees. Often, it may not reveal any solid insights into your organization’s core issues.

Before you decide on planning a survey, also consider the drawbacks below.

It’s impersonal

An annual employee engagement survey, by its nature, is a cold way to get feedback. When you send a set of questions once a year to be answered by your workers, the unspoken message they may hear is: 

"We want your inputs, but only in a certain format and confined to the questions we have developed. We're not attempting to build or nurture a relationship or anything! Don’t think too much and just check a few boxes. No big deal!"

An annual employee engagement survey can make workers feel that their employer doesn’t take feedback seriously. So neither should they. 

It doesn’t provide valuable data

An annual employee engagement survey doesn’t encourage honest feedback. Many of the workers may not trust the system. They might think that being too honest in an annual employee engagement survey - like slamming their manager - can get them in trouble.

It relies on fluffy metrics 

HBR once reported in a case study that United Parcel Service faced a huge loss because its annual employee survey didn’t uncover problems associated with a surge in part-time jobs. So when workers went on strike, it cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars.

Most commonly-used questionnaires make use of “percent favourable” metrics. So the data you get consists of inflated scores and blind spots, giving you the illusion of high engagement when it’s the opposite in reality. 

It’s not regular enough

For anything that matters, measuring your progress just once a year is not enough. Whether it’s your personal health, financial investments, or employee engagement, you’ll be wise to keep tabs regularly.

An annual employee engagement survey is a snapshot in time. And the feedback you get from employees in a singular moment can’t accurately reflect their feelings for the whole year. 

Since organizations using annual surveys don’t get the data they need to act, they don’t. They finish conducting the survey like it was just a formality and move on, further tarnishing whatever trust workers had in the employer.

For these reasons, many HR leaders believe that annual employee engagement surveys are dead. While we won’t go as far, it’s evident that once-a-year surveys alone aren’t enough to get accurate and comprehensive insights, which brings us to the next part. 

Employee engagement survey alternatives 

Gone are the days when workers were happy just to have a job. And before you counter — Yes, even if it provides standard benefits like health insurance and retirement savings. The ingredients that make your employees engaged, satisfied, and happy are now more nuanced and sophisticated. 

To find out how successful your recipe is, you need comprehensive techniques that can capture worker sentiment in a timely and relevant manner. Let’s see what those are.

1. Tracking company-wide metrics

The tools and technologies that you use for employee management and collaboration can give you a ton of real-time and continuous feedback from the workforce. 

Most modern systems these days come with built-in analytics to drill down into worker behavior and identify areas of improvement. For example, you can view:

• Performance appraisal and evaluation ratings
• Number of discrimination complaints and legal claims
• Number of workers on a leave of absence
• Employees who have filed compensation claims
• Number of workers who resigned in the last 12 months
• Number of training hours workers attended voluntarily
• Average employee commute time (the shorter, the better)
• Number of workers on zero-hour contracts

By understanding such people trends, you can get an accurate sense of engagement across the organization. And you can do all this without directly involving your employees. 

2. Pulse surveys

Research shows that 77% of employees want to provide feedback more than once per year. And that most employees prefer to provide feedback four times a year.

That’s where Pulse surveys come in. Pulse surveys get employee feedback using short, frequent check-ins that are not confined to specific content or topics. When you ask quick questions at short intervals, the feedback you get will be more authentic and practical.

3. Town-hall meetings 

Townhalls are another viable alternative to annual surveys. If you manage a team that’s too large for a conference table, organize a Town Hall meeting to spark discussions and learn about team members’ concerns. 

Don’t want to put yourself on the spot? Easy. Ask employees to submit questions in advance so you can be better prepared to answer them. 

4. An open-door policy

Why wait for a formal process or tool to get feedback? You can create an environment in which spontaneous feedback is encouraged. 

Make your employees feel safe and comfortable with two-way communication mechanisms. When they can talk openly about their concerns, you’ll always have a string of things you can improve in your repository. So you won’t have to go hunt for good ideas once every year. 

Final thoughts 

If you really want to have a lasting impact on your culture, you must consult your employees regularly and consider alternatives to a once-a-year survey. By pairing surveys with alternative ways to get employee feedback, you’ll be on your way to shaping a work environment where workers feel more productive and content.

If you’re one of the thousands of organizations using Workplace from Meta to power your internal communications, you’re probably in the thick of figuring out what you need to do next ahead of the Workplace sunsetting beginning in 2025. Researching, selecting, and implementing a Workplace alternative is likely taking up the bulk of your time and energy and may feel like an overwhelming project to tackle.

The good news: With the right platform — and technology partner — you can take the stress out of migration and continue to give employees the intranet features they know and love.

Whatever your vision is for your new platform — maybe a familiar format, or something new and improved — it’s important to get migration right. A smooth migration process can set you up for success and minimize headaches for you and your workforce.

In a recent webinar, Blink’s migration specialists outlined their full 5-step guide to a successful Workplace migration. While we (of course) believe there are lots of benefits to choosing Blink as a Workplace alternative, these steps are relevant to any platform you choose to use.

3 key steps to Workplace migration  

Migrating to a Workplace from Meta alternative is about more than moving data from one system to another. A successful migration requires meticulous planning and a launch mindset. It keeps disruption to a minimum and supports a seamless employee experience.

Important steps you need to take when migrating from Workplace include:

1. Scope and plan the migration

2. Verify data mapping and reconfigure settings

3. Activate and engage users

Let’s take a closer look at how these can make or break your migration journey.

#1. Scope and plan the migration

Migrating to any of the Workplace from Meta alternatives available is a huge change — and it’s one you want to get right first time by thoroughly scoping and planning your migration.

Bear in mind that while employee communications platforms tend to have a lot in common, no two tools are identical. There are bound to be differences between Workplace from Meta and your new intranet platform.

To ensure each business function is accounted for, bring together people from across your organization. Discuss platform differences. Gather a wide range of perspectives on platform and migration needs. Also, clarify what you want to achieve with regards to user experience and platform capabilities.

As part of the scoping and planning stage, consider incorporating the following tasks:

• Analyze data quality: Take stock of the data you have on Workplace. Are all user profiles activated and complete? Are all groups still relevant? Does your content have contextual elements, like author names and publication dates? Assess which data is complete, which needs to be improved, and which should be deleted or archived.
  

• Review mobile vs. desktop strategy: Consider which data you want to feature on mobile and desktop versions of your platform. For companies with a frontline workforce, it’s wise to include exactly the same data on both mobile and desktop devices — ensuring everyone can enjoy the same great employee experience.
  

• Identify champions and trend-setter groups: To boost early adoption and usage, treat your Workplace migration as a new platform launch. Identify champions and trend-setter groups who will be excited for the new communications hub and encourage peers to join them.

#2. Verify data mapping and reconfigure settings

It can take anywhere from days to weeks to run a migration, with timing depending on:

• Your chosen platform

• The size of your organization

• The volume of data you want to migrate

But as soon as you’ve executed the technical migration, you can begin examining the details of your new platform. The first tasks on the list are verification and reconfiguration.

At Blink, we use our own migration matrix that allows us to clearly map Workplace data and content to corresponding Blink content. However, with any technology switch, it’s always good to be prepared for potential hiccups. Data and settings don’t always transfer neatly to the new platform and post-migration tweaks often have to be made.

To ensure the best user experience post-migration, check that your important data — including user profiles, groups, and knowledge base content — has been transferred correctly, imperfect data has been updated, and settings have been reconfigured as needed.

User profiles

Review the user profiles that have been transferred from Workplace. Check that all details — like names, roles, and profile pictures — are correct. Delete any duplicate users. Also, verify that your organizational hierarchy has transferred correctly, with the right employees assigned to the right managers.

This is a good opportunity to check the permissions and notification settings associated with each user profile. Do this during the verification process and you won’t have to revisit each user profile to make changes later.

Groups

Look at the groups that you’ve migrated over from Workplace. Check that their names are correct. View members and admins to ensure nothing has gone awry during the switch.

You should also take the time to look at dynamic team membership rules to ensure that employees are automatically assigned to relevant groups going forward.

Knowledge base content

To ensure a consistent employee experience, it’s important that users can access the resources they need as soon as they log in to your new internal communications platform. Check that content is in the right place and that users will be able to find it easily. Confirm that all contextual information, including author names and publication dates, is visible and correct. Review permissions for publishing, editing, and sharing rights.

And don’t forget about formatting: Check headings, double-check hyperlinks, and make sure your multimedia content, such as videos and images, looks good and works well.

#3. Activate and engage users

If you’re at this step, it means you’re ready to launch your new intranet to the workforce. Congratulations! To maximize engagement and encourage adoption, you’ll want to give employees an incredible experience on your new platform starting day one.

Decide how you’ll build buzz around the incoming platform. That may mean notifying employees that your new intranet is imminent and incentivizing them to log in on launch day. You can consider running giveaways, creating gamified experiences, or planning a launch party — all with the goal of boosting in-platform engagement.

Remember that you’re launching a social platform: Creating an immediate sense of active community will be the difference between delight and disengagement. By going live with a published backlog of engaging content, employees can be welcomed to the new platform with a lively and pre-populated news feed.

Education is another important part of the puzzle. Help employees get the most from your new solution through training sessions, Q&A forums, and dedicated support channels.

This is also a great time to promote the internal champions and trend-setter groups you identified earlier in the migration process. These ambassadors can spread the word about your new platform, drive activation, and offer support where it’s needed.

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Making your Workplace migration successful

Whether you want employees to instantly feel at home or are relishing the opportunity to start afresh, a clear migration plan can help you minimize disruption and keep the company conversation flowing during the transition from Workplace to your new company hub.

By starting the process with a thoughtful migration plan and ending it with a robust rollout strategy, you can supercharge employee adoption on day one and drive engagement long past launch day.

For our full 5-step guide to making migration easy on you — and your workforce — download our on-demand webinar: From Workplace to Blink: Migration Made Easy for actionable advice helpful for any organization exploring alternatives to Workplace.