Download 'Frontline Employee Engagement in 2023: the leader’s guide to strong teams in tough times' to get a head start in the new year.
Jess DeVore
Published:
September 6, 2023
Last updated:
September 17, 2023
This article is part of Blink’s “frontline first” series: content created specifically for leaders of deskless or distributed teams. We know that the job of frontline leadership is entirely different from managing ‘desk-based’ teams, so this is for you and your unique set of challenges.
It's somehow nearly the end of 2022, which means it's high time to start looking ahead to the year ahead.
For leaders in frontline organizations, this can be more than a little daunting. After two years of challenges caused by the pandemic and the Great Resignation, the looming prospect of a recession promises yet more adapting and innovating in order to survive and thrive.
So we'd like to help.
After working with hundreds of frontline organizations, we've created a short guide that breaks down the core principles to building a stable and successful frontline workforce for 2023 and beyond.
You can download a copy for free here or by clicking on the image below - we hope you find it useful and inspirational as you look to the new year.
What we'll cover
Start your free trial today
See how Blink helps frontline teams stay connected, informed, and engaged.
Growth is exciting — until your communication stack starts showing cracks.
What worked when you had 500 employees rarely survives the jump to 2,000. Messages get missed. Tools and communication channels multiply. Frontline teams fall out of the loop. Managers spend more time clarifying updates than leading their teams. Collaboration suffers.
And the cost adds up fast.
Internal communication isn’t just about “sending messages.” It’s the connective tissue that keeps people aligned, productive, and confident through change — especially during rapid growth, acquisitions, and reorganization.
In 2026, the best internal communication platforms are mobile-first, integrated, and built to scale. They bring updates, messaging, recognition, feedback, and knowledge into one clear place — reducing noise while increasing clarity.
But choosing the right platform is where many growing organizations stumble.
In this guide, we break down exactly how to compare internal communication tools for growth — so you can avoid tool sprawl, protect employee trust, and scale communication without slowing your business down.
Let’s get into it.
How to choose and compare internal communication tools for growth
Step #1: Audit your current communication tools and challenges
Start by mapping your current comms tech stack. List every communication tool your company uses — email, intranet, chat apps, recognition tools, employee apps — everything.
Categorize these tools by function and adoption level. Then, identify pain points. Are employees frustrated by fragmented communication? Duplicate workflows? Low engagement? Or maybe frontline teams can’t access key updates at all?
Creating a simple audit table with key criteria can make this research easier to digest:
Tool
Purpose
Coverage
Integration status
Mobile experience
Overall user experience
Analytics
Adoption rate
Unique features
Problems we have with this tool
This gives you a baseline. So you can see what’s working and what’s holding you back.
Step #2: Define business outcomes and KPIs
The best employee communication tools don’t just support better comms. They support your overarching business goals and KPIs.
So, when comparing internal communication tools for business growth, start by asking: What do we want to achieve?
Example goals include:
Increase productivity by ensuring employees have the information the need, when they need it
Improve retention by fostering engagement and a sense of belonging
Boost customer satisfaction through better-informed frontline teams
Strengthen collaboration across departments, locations, and roles with joined-up comms software
Next, define KPIs that make these outcomes measurable. For example, missed deadline rates, employee satisfaction scores, time-to-information, and cross-functional interaction rates.
During M&A or large-scale change, communication KPIs matter even more. Leaders should track not just engagement, but clarity — for example, repeat questions in manager channels, policy page revisit rates, or sentiment dips following major announcements. These indicators reveal where uncertainty is slowing integration and decision-making.
Step #3: Prioritize essential features for growth and engagement
In 2026, mobile-first communication solutions are essential. If your tool isn’t designed to work seamlessly on a smartphone, you exclude frontline workers and make life harder than it needs to be for everyone else.
When you compare internal communication tools for growth, look for platforms that deliver an exceptional mobile experience and the following functionality to drive adoption, impact, and scalability:
Step #4: Test integrations and compatibility with your ecosystem
Your internal communication platform can’t live in isolation. Integration matters. It eliminates workflow fiction, maximizes comms ROI, and supports seamless adoption of your tech tools.
Start by auditing your software ecosystem: HRIS, CRM, payroll, identity providers, operational tools. Then, look for internal communication platforms that offer strong integrations with your current tech stack.
Things to look for?:
Single sign-on. So employees can access all workplace software via one unified dashboard and a single set of login details.
HRIS sync. From benefits to policy docs to schedules to payroll, you make life easy for employees and your HR team when internal comms and HR systems talk to each other.
Calendar/file system connectivity. To create a joined-up system, the same calendar and files should be accessible across all workplace software.
Security compliance. Easy access is important. But you need to balance this with security and privacy standards. Look for platforms that balance usability with data protection.
You may like to run sample integration tests, documenting any issues or workarounds needed, to find the best match.
Use case: Supporting internal communications during M&A and organizational change
Business growth doesn’t always follow a straight line. For many organizations, growth comes through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) or major restructuring — moments when communication becomes both more critical and more fragile.
While legal close and system access often run smoothly, the employee experience that follows is far messier. What we consistently see during M&A-driven growth includes:
Conflicting messages across teams
Duplicated tools and knowledge bases
Managers fielding questions they don’t yet have answers to
Employees unsure where to go for “what’s actually changed”
This is where internal communication platforms are truly tested.
Communication at scale — without losing local context
Successful M&A communication balances two competing needs:
A shared narrative from the parent organization
Local relevance for acquired teams
The best internal communication tools support this by clearly separating global updates from location-, role-, or entity-specific information — so employees understand what applies to everyone and what applies to them.
Systems change needs a human layer
During M&A, system consolidation is inevitable. What shouldn’t be inevitable is confusion.
Employees don’t want another announcement about a new platform. They want:
One clear place to start their day
Simple guidance on what changed (and what didn’t)
Confidence they’re using the right tools
Mobile-first platforms that unify communication, knowledge, and workflows help organizations turn change management from a one-time event into a guided experience.
Modern intranets under pressure
Legacy intranets often collapse under M&A strain:
Duplicate pages and policies
No clear ownership
Inconsistent branding and structure
Modern internal communication platforms act as flexible, living knowledge hubs — supporting shared content while allowing phased integration and local nuance.
Supporting managers is risk mitigation
Managers become the front line of communication during M&A — often before decisions are fully finalized.
Platforms that provide:
Manager-ready messaging
Clear distinction between what’s decided and what’s evolving
A single source of truth managers can point teams to
…reduce mixed signals, rumor cycles, and burnout. Supporting managers isn’t just enablement — it’s how organizations protect trust during change.
Why measurement matters more during M&A
The most successful M&A integrations share one thing: visibility.
Strong internal communication tools allow leaders to see:
Who’s engaging with updates
Where confusion persists
Which teams need additional support
Without this data, organizations guess. And during M&A, guessing is expensive.
Bottom line:
If an internal communication platform can support employees through M&A — preserving clarity, confidence, and culture — it’s built to support business growth at any scale.
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Execution mistakes to avoid after choosing an internal communication tool for business growth
Choosing the right internal communication platform is a big milestone. But growth-ready comms don’t come from software alone — they come from how well the platform is implemented, adopted, and embedded into daily work.
Here are the most common execution mistakes growing organizations make and how to avoid them.
Mistake #1: Rolling out to everyone at once
A full-scale rollout might feel efficient, but it often hides problems until they’re expensive to fix.
Different groups experience communication very differently — especially during growth or post-acquisition integration. Frontline teams, managers, and HQ staff don’t have the same needs, habits, or access.
What to do instead:
Run targeted pilots with representative user groups. Track adoption, ease of use, and qualitative feedback. Use what you learn to refine onboarding, governance, notifications, and content formats before scaling.
A phased rollout surfaces friction early — when it’s still easy to fix.
Mistake #2: Measuring usage, but not impact
Login rates alone don’t tell you whether communication is working. High activity can still mask confusion, misalignment, or low trust.
What to do instead:
Measure adoption and engagement alongside business outcomes. Segment data by role, location, and department to identify where communication is supporting productivity — and where it’s falling short.
Look for correlations between communication patterns and KPIs like retention, customer sentiment, safety incidents, or time-to-information. That’s where ROI becomes visible.
Mistake #3: Letting tool sprawl creep back in
One of the fastest ways to undermine a new platform is by continuing to introduce side tools “just in case.”
This recreates the very fragmentation the platform was meant to fix.
What to do instead:
Commit to consolidation. Use your internal communication platform as the default starting point for updates, resources, and workflows — and only introduce additional tools when there’s a clear, documented gap.
Clear ownership and governance keep the platform focused, trusted, and scalable.
Mistake #4: Treating communication as a broadcast channel
Posting more messages doesn’t automatically improve alignment — especially during periods of change.
When everything looks urgent, employees stop paying attention.
What to do instead:
Design intentional communication flows. Use push notifications sparingly for critical updates. Reserve feeds for cultural and organizational alignment. Enable group or team channels for local coordination.
Structure reduces noise — and increases trust.
Mistake #5: Leaving managers unsupported
During growth or M&A, managers become the de facto interpreters of change — often before decisions are fully finalized.
Without support, this leads to mixed messages, burnout, and rumor cycles.
What to do instead:
Equip managers with clear, shareable messaging and a single source of truth they can confidently point teams to. Be explicit about what’s confirmed, what’s evolving, and where employees should go with questions.
Supporting managers isn’t just enablement — it’s risk management.
Mistake #6: Treating implementation as “done”
Employee expectations, business priorities, and communication needs don’t stand still — especially in growing organizations.
What to do instead:
Regularly audit performance using analytics and feedback. Adapt content, workflows, and governance as teams and structures evolve. Continuous improvement turns your communication platform into a long-term growth asset — not a one-time rollout.
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Bottom line
The right internal communication tool creates the foundation for growth. But disciplined execution is what protects clarity, trust, and momentum as your organization scales.
Avoid these common mistakes, and your platform won’t just support growth — it will actively enable it.
Last year, Blink started working with First Bus to connect their entire workforce in one place: drivers, engineers, managers and corporate functions. Most of whom don't sit at a desk, don't have corporate email, and historically haven't had much of a digital relationship with their employer at all.
What made this project interesting was that we weren't coming in solely to implement Blink. First Bus was already mid-way through a Workday transformation programme and Blink was to become a key part of it.
There was a reason for that. By the time we came in, nearly every major bus operator in the UK was already running Blink, so this wasn't an untested bet for a frontline workforce. And Blink and Workday already work closely, technically and in the way the two are delivered, which on this programme meant working alongside LACE and Kainos, the partners building Workday itself.
Implementing Blink is not just about getting the product ready for go-live, the configurations, the integrations, the complications. Getting a deskless workforce to actually use a new system means understanding how they spend their day, what they'll bother picking up their phone for, and what they'll ignore. As an implementation manager at Blink that is absolutely central to the role.
Implementing Workday is a different beast. The scope, the build, the resources required, the timelines and the complexity can be challenging. Workday is a profoundly capable product. It's the source of truth for employee data, learning, payslips and far more. The bedrock other employee experiences get built on top of. If an organisation were a restaurant, Workday is the kitchen. And to build the kitchen, you need to hire the chefs, design the menu, spec the equipment, and that’s before you’ve even prepared a single dish. It’s a big task, but an operational kitchen doesn’t equal a fully functioning restaurant. The food can be extraordinary, but if nobody's there to take the order, explain the menu, and bring it to the table, your frontline workers are just standing outside with their tummies rumbling, no idea there's gourmet grub just around the corner.
Blink is the front of house. The experience layer that makes the kitchen work for everyone.
Greeting the guests
Getting any product into the hands of a deskless workforce is a challenge and being on the ground for this kind of launch really matters. This change initiative succeeded through a high-level partnership involving Blink, the transformation and communications units at First Bus, HR and Payroll experts LACE Partners, and Kainos, who managed the technical implementation of Workday. Teams went into the depots in-person on launch day to help people get set up. Union briefings ran region by region in the months beforehand, and in the run-up to go-live the message went out everywhere people would see it: notice boards, team meetings, and on digital signage in depots. Everyone understood this couldn't be handled with an email and that proper preparation for launch was pivotal to success.
A table for 14,000
Blink and Workday launched together to everyone at First Bus. One front door for everything: driver duties, team communications, and Workday sitting inside it alongside the rest. Frontline colleagues didn't need to understand what Workday was or find their way into it separately. They downloaded one app, and it was all there. And it was theirs. What showed up was shaped by their role, their location, their shifts, all pulled from Workday in the background without anyone needing to go looking for it.
Which is just as well, because for many of them, if you'd said "we're launching Workday", the honest response would have been "What? But I've already had six work days this week." The name meant nothing to a bus driver. What mattered was whether it was worth opening.
Before, getting hold of a basic document meant calling the depot office and waiting. Now it's easily found in the app.
A tailor-made menu
Transformation programmes often shift. Timelines move, scope changes, things that were supposed to be in phase one end up in phase two. At First Bus, the payroll project was delayed; giving the frontline access to their payslips through the app on day one was not going to happen. In a standalone Workday rollout, removing one of the key incentives for a frontline worker to open Workday at least once a month, is a real problem.
However, everything carried on with a few minor tweaks to the menu. The Blink Hub contained a shortcut to the pre-existing payroll provider, and a lighter version of Workday was launched with careers and learning as the key frontline use cases. First Bus achieved 80% user activation on Blink within the first week, with the majority of them accessing Workday.
Now for the main course
First Bus now has Blink adoption over 90% and Workday embedded across the workforce. But that's just the starter and there’s more on the Workday menu coming soon. Payslips, mandatory learning notifications and actionable nudges will land inside the app the workforce already opens every day. With employees opening Blink over 4.5 times a day, there’s no need to resource at ground zero for another transformation programme. No need for posters in the depot canteen or more boots on the ground. A feed post campaign, a short explainer video in the hub and an FAQs Page, and the Workday potential is unlocked.
That's what getting everyone looking in the right direction actually buys you. Not just a successful go-live, but the ability to keep adding value without having to find the resource and rebuild the case for change every time.
Every Workday programme faces timeline pressure, scope changes, and the harder problem of reaching people on the frontline. The kitchen will always be complex. But if you build the front of house properly from day one, everything that comes out of it lands easier, lands faster, and keeps people coming back.
If there's one thing I'd take into the next programme, it's that every frontline rollout needs a personalised menu to give everyone a reason to open the app without being told to. Curate that, serve it well, and every other dish feels like part of their menu.
Because front of house isn't a nice-to-have, it's what turns a kitchen into a restaurant.
When’s the last time you had a work-related question, opened your phone to Google it, and ended up down a rabbit hole of Tasty slow cooker recipe videos on Instagram?
If the answer is, “Not that long ago,” don’t worry. You’re not alone.
Many people consider social networks a productivity killer. Swiping through an endless stream of dog videos can make it hard to get work done.
Social media apps get a bad rap at work, but that’s because they’re so good at keeping people engaged and interacting.
What if you could harness the power of social media and use it to help your employees engage more at work?
You can use a social intranet to make your internal communications as engaging as a playlist of cats riding Roombas (well, almost).
With a social intranet, your employee network becomes more than a dumping ground for company documents — it’s a place where people can collaborate, learn, and feel connected to one another.
A social intranet is a private collaboration platform where workers can access content in one place. It offers social features like commenting and messaging so employees can interact and work together. And unlike traditional intranet solutions, social intranet software uses interactive elements to increase employee engagement and collaboration in the digital workspace.
Since intranets are networks only company employees can access, they serve as internal communications and knowledge management tools.
Why employee apps are the new intranet
Are intranets a thing of the past? In this eBook, learn how to engage with the deskless workforce effectively to build strong, happy frontline organizations.
Traditional intranet setups have more restrictions when it comes to posting and interaction. For most employees, it’s like having “read-only” access to company resources.
Yes, social intranets are still relevant — here's how to use one 1
On the other hand, social intranets give workers permission to create and engage with content. You can use social intranets to share company resources and encourage employees to connect with each other and the content.
Let’s take a look at some of the top benefits of choosing a social intranet over a traditional one.
Deloitte found that improving employee engagement can increase retention by up to 87%. The study also suggests that using social tools internally increases employee satisfaction by 20%.
Socializing intranet with features like instant messaging keeps your employees connected so they’re more likely to feel like they’re part of a team.
Better collaboration
Gone are the days when you had a question at work and you had to walk five desks over to get your answer. With remote working in a digital workspace, your employees may be spread over several states and countries. That can make collaboration a challenge.
Social intranets provide tools that make it easier for your employees to connect and work together by offering features such as status updates and commenting. Activity streams, which are similar to social media news feeds, keep everyone in the loop, and private instant messages (which work like, e.g. Instagram DMs) eliminate the need for lengthy email chains.
Increased productivity
If workplace interruptions get out of hand, they’re a killer on your team’s productivity.
Imagine your marketing department trying to work on a website update, but they keep getting calls from sales reps who can’t find the right assets. Or maybe your website developer is hard at work on that new layout, but they’ve got to field emails from marketing about text updates.
With a traditionally restricted intranet, your employees have to rely on constant calls and meetings to share information.
A social intranet with private messaging and commenting features lets your employees engage with updates on their own time, so they can focus on their priorities without interruption.
Enhanced security
Employees who can’t contribute to their intranet need to find other places to share documents and files. Unfortunately, file-sharing platforms like Google Suite or Dropbox aren’t as secure as your private network.
With a social intranet, you have an added layer of security on your internal knowledge and documents.
What your social intranet platform should include
As you review different social intranet platforms, look for features that help employees connect and collaborate.
Yes, social intranets are still relevant — here's how to use one 2
Here are some standard social intranet features to look for:
Commenting, tagging, and messaging for easy social interaction
Company news feeds and notifications for sharing updates
Information hub with powerful search capabilities for ease of access
Communities and forums for collaboration and knowledge-sharing
Polls and surveys for collecting feedback
Employee directory so people can get to know each other’s faces even if they haven’t met
Social intranet best practices
According to Prescient Digital Media, only 13% of employees use the company intranet every day. Most companies need to work harder to make their intranet useful for employees.
Here’s how you can set up your intranet to make sure your employees love checking in.
Make contribution easy
You can’t force employee engagement from the top down. Everyone in your organization has something to contribute, so make sure they can.
Businesses aren’t run out of a single headquarters anymore. Remote workers and frontline employees who interact with customers don’t always have access to a laptop or computer.
If you want a social intranet that everyone will use, it must be accessible to your entire workforce. Choose a platform optimized for mobile apps so your deskless workers still get the same online employee experience.
Look for a provider with analytics
How do you know if your social intranet is making a difference? Well, you won’t – unless you track its analytics.
Yes, social intranets are still relevant — here's how to use one 3
Marketers use engagement analytics to measure the success of every campaign. You should take the same approach to internal communications.
By tracking your workforce analytics, you can figure out what type of content works for your team and create more of it. Without them, you risk investing a lot of time for a small reward.
Final thoughts: what is a social intranet, and how does it benefit you?
Staying connected in the digital workplace is vital. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Businesses need tools that adapt to ‘new normals’ and still keep employees connected.
The best social intranet is also a modern intranet.
It helps you create an internal comms resource your employees will actually want to use. No matter where your people are, they can log on and feel connected to the company and supported in their work.
A 2022 Gallup report on the work environment found that businesses with engaged employees have 23% higher profits than companies with “miserable workers”. Such businesses also see lower absenteeism and higher customer loyalty.
Unfortunately, Gallup’s 2023 report goes on to tell us that only 23% of employees are actually engaged.
The solution? Effective employee engagement strategies designed to help you create a better company culture, reduce staff turnover, and eventually boost your company’s profits.
But before you can do any of that, you need to know how to measure employee engagement, and what measurement methods really work.
Once you have the tools to measure engagement, you’ll have a solid foundation for improving your engagement levels and reaping the benefits that highly engaged employees bring.
What should you do before measuring employee engagement?
Understand your workforce
Each employee is different with their own unique preferences, needs, and motivations. As such, it's important to get to know your teams well — their needs, challenges, and everything in between — so that you can tailor your employee engagement strategy to work best for them.
Start by getting to know your workforce better: who they are, how they work, and what currently gets in the way of them engaging.
For example, there is often a huge digital inclusion gap between frontline staff and their desk-based coworkers. This gap makes it very hard for frontline workers to engage with their organizations and roles – and even harder for business leaders to get to know them in the first place.
This is where engaging your first-line managers becomes crucial. By enabling first-line managers with the skills and tools to get to know their teams, you have a hotline directly to your frontline – and their engagement preferences.
It’s also important to consider the types of metrics you use for your specific workforce. Desk-based engagement metrics may not accurately reflect the engagement levels of people working in frontline roles. Transit, healthcare, logistics, or manufacturing workers (to name a few) will often have different requirements, channel preferences, and motivations for engagement than other employees.
Therefore, it's essential to understand the specific engagement requirements of your staff, track tailored engagement metrics, and create strategies to address them.
Agree on engagement goals and outcomes
Once you know your workers’ needs, it is important to agree on engagement goals and outcomes with other stakeholders in your organization. This could involve gaining the buy-in of senior management, employee representatives, or other key stakeholders.
Clearly defining your goals and desired outcomes will help ensure that efforts and metrics used to improve engagement are focused and aligned with your overall business strategy. Goal and outcome KPI could include:
Goal: Increase employee retention by 10%
Outcome KPI: Employee retention rate
Goal: Reduce employee turnover by 25%
Outcome KPI: Voluntary resignation rate
Goal: Drive employee satisfaction by 15%
Outcome KPI: Employee satisfaction survey or ENPS scores
By taking these steps before measuring employee engagement, you can ensure that you have a solid understanding of your workforce, metrics that reflect your business objectives, and clear engagement goals to achieve.
There are a number of metrics and methods that can help you gauge a holistic view of employee satisfaction, productivity, and overall engagement in your company, 10 of which we’ll dive into in more detail below.
10 ways to measure employee engagement
Both survey and non-survey methods are available methods to measure employee engagement. Typically, it’s best to use a mix of both to get a holistic overview of employee engagement.
How to measure engagement with survey methods
Surveys help you reach a considerable number of employees at once.
Running employee surveys can be a time-consuming, paper-filled process, but it’s still a great starting point for building the foundation of your employee engagement efforts. And with modern Employee Survey tools now available to streamline the whole process, it needn’t be such a laborious task.
Here are three survey measurement methods you can implement:
1. Annual employee engagement surveys
An annual employee engagement survey measures employees’ experience, motivation, and passion for their job and organization. It reveals how your employees go about their daily jobs and what you can do to improve their engagement on a large, long-term scale.
You can use these surveys to get ideas on areas for improvement and a basis for new recommendations and goals.
Similarly, you can use employee surveys to evaluate your company’s culture and see whether the desired cultural values are practiced among desk-based and deskless employees.
However, employee engagement surveys are only effective if you conduct them correctly.
Here are four best practices for conducting employee surveys:
Use a mix of survey questions: Ask both multiple-choice and open-ended questions. This helps your company collect the most insights into employee engagement without overwhelming respondents.
Leverage mobile apps:Paper surveys don’t cut it. They’re time-consuming since you wait for employees to return the survey papers before you can analyze them, and they’re often disregarded by employees completely or inaccessible by teams that are not in the corporate office, such as frontline teams. Digital surveys take far less time to create and share, and the response is almost instant. So, create surveys that employees can complete from their personal or corporate devices from any location.
Share employee survey results: Share the survey findings with your office and your frontline workers and let them know what actions you’ll take. Managers and leadership need to assure employees that they’re listening and taking into consideration the feedback received.
Identify the best time(s) to survey employees: It might be smart to run your survey during slower periods of work, so that employees have enough time to devote to the survey. Similarly, there’s solid advice to avoid conducting surveys during high-stress periods or bonus season. Such periods skew the survey results and give an unrealistic picture of everyday employee engagement and satisfaction.
2. Pulse engagement surveys
Employee pulse surveys allow you to send more frequent survey requests to your teams. Instead of the annual snapshot of data you gain from once-a-year surveys, pulse surveys let you measure employee engagement levels in real time.
This short survey format allows your teams to provide quick feedback on any aspect of the job or organization, from team dynamics and workflows to company policies and leadership. It’s a great way to learn more about what’s working for your employees on a daily basis and identify what could be improved.
Pulse surveys are much shorter, providing less data than annual surveys but offering real-time insights into employees’ current feelings about the workplace and their job satisfaction.
As such, pulse surveys can be incredibly effective at identifying any sudden decreases or increases in employee morale and engagement, helping you spot them and take action quickly.
You can also tailor pulse surveys to navigate different occasions and identify trends in employee engagement year-round, instead of just once a year. For example, you could send a survey after an important organizational announcement or when there’s been a period of major change.
However you choose to use them, regular pulse surveys are a great way to measure employee engagement and ensure your workforce feels heard.
3. Employee net promoter score (eNPS)
Chances are your organization is already using the net promoter score (NPS) to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty. The same metric can also be used internally to measure employee engagement.
The employee net promoter score (eNPS) provides a solid basis for understanding employee engagement and loyalty in a cost-effective way. By tracking the eNPS scores over time, you can identify trends in employee engagement — which can help you understand how the changes you implement affect staff engagement.
Expert tip: On its own, eNPS is not the most effective way to measure engagement.eNPS it tells you the ‘what’ but not the ‘why’ of an employee engagement score. Only measure employee engagement via eNPS if you can follow it up with more detailed methods, such as employee engagement surveys.
Further methods for measuring employee engagement
4. Implement an employee app with analytics features
Many leaders aren’t aware of the reasons behind the lack of engagement and increasing turnover rates in their business — especially frontline managers. Due to the nature of frontline organizations — varied work environments, conflicting shift patterns, and a historical reliance on paper — it is more difficult to engage with frontline workers and even harder to measure their engagement levels.
As such, employee feedback and surveys don’t always provide the response rates you want, and employees don’t always provide insights you can act on.
To address this, you can implement an employee engagement super-applike Blink to create a digital space that invites a multidirectional, real-time conversation where frontline workers (and their desked counterparts) can speak directly to management — and to each other.
You can also use this technology to measure the outcome of their work environment and assess how your workers engage with your content, interact with other teammates, and participate in company-wide conversations.
For instance, Blink offers Frontline Intelligence — anintegrated analytics tool that measures employee engagement by tracking:
Content metrics: See how your workers interact with posts, files, or pages you share. You can track important metrics such as reach, impressions, likes, comments, and link clicks.
Communication flows: View how many team members communicate with others using the employee app. Visualize the growth in communication and changes in relationships over time to keep a tab on your organization’s employee engagement.
Internal trends: Get an overview of trending posts and topics in the employee feed to understand which content performs best and when.
This allows you to uncover who your promoters of engagement are, and who’s in line with your company’s mission and values. You can capture the insights that aren’t explicitly communicated to you – and integrate that into your next steps.
This data can help you detect feelings of disengagement early on and do a root cause analysis before they become a serious problem, affect productivity and quality of work, and increase your turnover rate.
Ensure that you also measure the adoption rate for your employee app. A high adoption rate can be indicative that your employees are engaged in their roles and understand the value that a new tool is bringing to the business. You may see differences in app usage trends between the office and frontline workers. If that is the case, add questions surrounding employee app usage in the next employee survey.
If you’re looking for an employee app that’s designed for frontline organizations, check out Blink. This all-in-one platform gives:
Frontline workers access to the people, processes, communications, and applications they need to do their jobs — all through their corporate or personal devices.
Leaders access to the data they need to improve the employee experience in meaningful ways.
5. 1-1s
1-1s are one of the most effective ways to measure employee engagement.
These meetings allow you to have meaningful conversations with each of your team members about their performance, goals, and satisfaction levels. They also give employees an opportunity to provide honest and constructive feedback about their work environment, so that they can help influence real, positive change within the organization.
1-1s can be used as a more informal and frequent performance review, and they can give you detailed insights into the current state of employee engagement. By keeping track of these meetings over time, you can identify any sudden drops or increases in engagement, and take action accordingly.
6. Performance reviews and feedback meetings
As a more formal 1-1 process, performance reviews and regular feedback meetings can be used to make critical decisions on employee compensation, necessary training, and proposed career development. But you can also use them to gauge and measure employee engagement.
Highly-engaged workers are more likely to perform well in their jobs. Gallup found that engaged workers are 18% more likely to have above-average employee productivity.
To effectively gauge your employees’ performance and improve engagement, develop a continuous feedback process so that employees know how they’re doing and what’s expected.
Here’s how you can implement a reliable feedback process:
Create a list of opportunities when employee feedback can give you critical insights into how your company operates, such as at the close of onboarding and recruitment or during quarterly and annual performance reviews.
Use various methods and strategies to collect feedback to keep employees engaged and get the most relevant answers for the situation.
Implement engaging and constructive conversations between managers and employees at least once every two months. Ensure managers are practicing active listening and that they are actually implementing change based on the feedback.
Exit interviews are an important component of any employee engagement strategy. They provide invaluable insight into the reasons why employees choose to leave your company, and can help you identify areas that need improvement in order to keep your best talent.
What was the motivation behind your decision to search for a new job?
Can you identify the factors that had a positive or negative impact on your ability to succeed in your role?
Based on your experience, do you have any recommendations for onboarding new employees?
How did you feel about the management of your role?
Did you feel appreciated by your team, supervisors and/or managers?
What were the most enjoyable aspects of this job?
What was the most challenging aspect of this job for you?
Not all employees are willing to offer honest feedback during an exit interview, so consider implementing a post-exit survey where you can ask more detailed questions about employee satisfaction and engagement while the person is still employed at your organization.
This allows you to better understand the motivations behind each employee’s decision to leave and take action to prevent similar situations from occurring in the future.
If you want to stay two steps ahead of the exit interview, however, stay interviews can be a potentially transformative addition to your employee engagement strategy. Currently deployed by only 27% of US HR decision-makers, stay interviews help you understand how well your current employees’ expectations are being met when it comes to meaningful connections.
How to measure employee engagement through key metrics
8. Internal communication receptiveness
Effective internal communication can be used to bridge the gap between managers and employees, build trust in the workplace, and boost employee engagement. But it’s not enough just to communicate – you need to measure how your employees actually react and respond to the content you share.
That’s where key metrics come in. From employee app usage data, to the amount of content employees interact with or create, there are a number of metrics that can give you valuable insights about employee engagement.
You can measure receptiveness to your internal communication by tracking how much of your content is consumed, whether it’s posts or newsletters.
Specific metrics like post likes and response rates, message opens, and even file analytics can tell you how receptive your teams are to internal communication efforts. If you’re using a super-app like Blink, you can track these metrics over time to monitor how well your internal messages are being received.
The data from these analytics can give you the confidence you need to leave certain channels of communication behind. If frontline workers are not engaging with email — or don't even have access to it! — then waste no more time sending email comms, for example. An accessible mobile tool like Blink can pave the way for greater internal communication receptiveness by giving everyone equal access to messages, wherever they log in from.
9. Voluntary turnover rate
If an employee voluntarily resigns from an organization, it’s voluntary turnover.
Voluntary turnover is on the rise. According to the Institute of Corporate Productivity (i4cp) and Fortune’s global survey of 1,195 respondents in Q1 of 2022, 77% of large organizations experienced high voluntary turnover in 2021.
To calculate the voluntary turnover rate, divide the number of employees that voluntarily left your company by the average number of workers you had during that period.
These are the top reasons of voluntary turnover outlined in Microsoft’s 2022 Work Index report:
Personal well-being or mental health (24%)
Work-life balance (24%)
Lack of confidence in senior management or leadership (21%)
Lack of flexible work hours or location (21%)
In other words, a high voluntary turnover rate means your workers struggle to stay engaged with the company due to a lack of support and direction.
If you notice high voluntary turnover, conduct a voluntary turnover analysis to know the exact cause:
Check for trends: Compare your voluntary turnover rate to the previous period and look for possible trends and early warnings. For instance, if you see many employees leaving after two years, it may be due to a lack of career advancement opportunities. And if you see new hires leaving within the first year, onboarding might be the issue.
Gather employee feedback: Collect qualitative data from surveys and exit interviews to determine why employees leave your organization.
Prepare an employee turnover report: Translate the voluntary turnover data into monetary value. That’ll help you follow up with different departments and levels of hierarchy and develop an actionable plan to increase retention rates.
Analyzing the voluntary turnover rates for the first year is especially important since new employees represent a lot of pure cost. A time-to-productivity analysis can tell you when an employee’s productivity has risen to a point where their contribution outweighs their cost.
For example, if the average threshold productivity occurs at the six-month mark, any employee who leaves before that incurs a financial loss to the company.
10. Employee absenteeism rate
Absenteeism is the habitual failure to come to work or stay there during working hours, and it is often unplanned and unannounced.
It’s important to differentiate unexcused absences from legitimate ones, and to be aware of the disruption that absenteeism can cause to your organization. That’s because it will negatively affect anyone working with this individual and undermine trust between employees and management and the employees themselves.
A high employee turnover rate is a strong indicator that your company needs to make adjustments before this behavior impacts your workforce’s productivity and relationships. Absenteeism is often also a reflection of poor management, so your managers must be aligned on the appropriate policies and be upskilled to develop their leadership abilities.
To measure the absenteeism rate, divide the number of unexcused absences in a given period by the total workdays. Multiply the result by 100 to get the absenteeism rate for that period.
As a rule of thumb, an absenteeism rate of 1.5% is considered healthy. Employees do fall ill and request time off for various reasons, so you shouldn’t expect a rate below 1.5%.
However, an absenteeism rate above 2% indicates issues. Your workers may be burnt out, feeling disengaged, or in conflict with their peers or supervisors.
The best way to prevent employee absenteeism is to intervene early.
Develop an action plan by:
Asking your managers to arrange regular check-in meetings, especially with underperforming employees.
Implementing flexible work policies for employees struggling with personal issues.
Getting your managers to address the problems between workers who are having conflicts.
Ensuring management forms meaningful connections with employees and their leadership style receives positive feedback.
Comparing employee engagement measurement methods
How not to measure employee engagement
Measuring employee engagement incorrectly often leads to unreliable results and an inaccurate view of how well your team is doing. Common mistakes when it comes to measuring engagement include:
Not setting KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) which can provide you with measurable goals to strive for. Without these, it can be difficult to determine whether the changes you've implemented have had a positive or negative impact on your employee engagement levels.
Relying on just one method to measure engagement, such as employee surveys. This can not only be a problem that stops you from capturing the full image of engagement for your employees but can also lead to the overuse and over-reliance on surveys to measure engagement.
Ineffective methods of communication. If you rely on a communication channel that employees aren’t engaging with today —like an intranet — then you're highly unlikely to capture the richness of data that you need. That’s why we would always recommend an employee super-app over a back-end intranet.
What should you do after measuring employee engagement?
Whatever your employee engagement metrics and methods show, it’s important to note that engagement is not an activity, project, or initiative. It's an outcome you earn from consistently offering value to your business.
Remember: as trends continue to change, so will employee expectations. Keep your finger on the pulse of employee engagement levels within your organization and take swift action where necessary.
There are many digital tools to keep a tab on employee engagement. However, the best solution is one that’s designed specifically for your employees, and can provide all of these solutions in one place.
If you have a frontline-focused workforce, check out Blink. Blink offers interactive employee surveys, cutting-edge content analytics, and intuitive communication tools to measure and actively improve employee engagement.
Blink provides a solution to fixing the broken feedback loop and filling the knowledge gap between leadership and frontline workers.
On May 7, Blink was named one of six ClearBox Choice award recipients — a recognition reserved for platforms that truly stand out in a strong, competitive market. ClearBox’s 2025 Intranet and Employee Experience Platforms report evaluated 20 solutions and honored Blink for its deep commitment to frontline workers and clear mobile-first design.
ClearBox’s recognition speaks volumes:
“Blink impresses us with their dedication to frontline workers. The vendor not only offers a mobile experience that clearly understands this audience’s needs, but they deliver boots-on-the-ground service that’s rare in this industry.”
Blink’s continued recognition highlights our commitment to frontline-first design and ease of use, setting us apart in a crowded field.
Blink receives top marks again from ClearBox
For the third year in a row, Blink has earned a top spot in ClearBox’s annual review of the intranet market. This prestigious report evaluates the leading modern intranet and employee experience solutions, recognizing standout platforms that excel in key areas.
Here’s what ClearBox had to say about Blink:
“Blink is a frontline-focused, mobile-first product that understands its target audience perfectly. The interface is reminiscent of social media tools (in a good way), so it’s instantly familiar and quick to adopt.”
Let’s dive into the report’s findings and see how Blink performed.
About ClearBox
ClearBox Consulting is an independent intranet consultancy that provides unbiased advice to help organizations find the right intranet solution. With a client roster that includes companies like Unilever, PlayStation, GlaxoSmithKline, and Bayer, ClearBox is a trusted name in the industry.
Each year, ClearBox evaluates 20 leading intranet vendors, assessing them across eight key criteria and providing detailed insights and recommendations.
About Blink
Every year, ClearBox compares 20 leading intranet vendors and their products, scoring them on eight criteria. It then releases a report to detail its findings. As part of the report, ClearBox highlights standout intranet vendors, giving them a ClearBox Choice Award. In 2024, Blink was among the award-winners for the second year running.
What does the report assess?
ClearBox evaluates every product against eight criteria. Criteria include user experience and visual appeal, community and engagement, publishing and communications management, and mobile and frontline support.
The organization also seeks customer opinions on the product and customer support from the vendor. It looks at information on pricing and each vendor’s development roadmap too.
Blink continues to lead the way in two crucial areas:
Mobile and frontline support
Like with the 2024 report, Blink was the only software provider to score maximum points for this criterion.
Blink is designed from the ground up with frontline workers in mind. ClearBox praises Blink’s approach, stating:
“The focus Blink places on the deskless audience is among the best we’ve seen in this report and makes a compelling choice for organizations with a frontline-heavy workforce.”
Unlike other platforms that require additional purchases for full mobile functionality, Blink provides an all-in-one mobile-first solution. Employees can easily access everything they need via a smartphone — without requiring a company email or desktop login. This ensures that frontline workers remain connected, engaged, and informed, no matter where they are.
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User experience and visual appeal
Blink once again earns top marks for its user-friendly interface and social media-inspired design. ClearBox highlights:
“Blink is a mobile-first solution that offers an easy-to-use interface on all device types. There is a good range of practical tools that complement the excellent social and communication features too.”
Blink’s platform is designed to be as intuitive as the consumer apps employees already use. The simple, visually appealing layout ensures quick adoption and ongoing engagement. Features like an interactive company news feed, multimedia content sharing, and Stories create a seamless and engaging user experience.
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Blink’s Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) rating
In this year’s report, ClearBox introduced an indicative “Total Cost of Ownership” (TCO) score, evaluating not just licensing costs but also set-up effort and ongoing administrative needs.
Blink stands out in two key quadrants:
Turnkey: A good value, easy-to-manage platform with minimal administrative burden.
Optimized: A comprehensive solution with robust out-of-the-box capabilities, requiring little ongoing maintenance.
This recognition confirms that Blink is both a powerful and cost-effective choice for organizations looking to improve employee experience without adding unnecessary complexity.
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Some more highlights from the ClearBox report
Here’s what else ClearBox had to say about Blink:
“Blink offers organizations alternatives to shadow technology like WhatsApp, while also offering an effective desktop experience that helps bring employees together.”
“The user experience across all device types is excellent and works particularly well for the community, social and communication focus of the platform.”
“It offers a good companion to desktop platforms too, meaning desk workers and frontline workers can be served by products that best suit their needs without clashing.”
And here’s what customers interviewed by ClearBox said about their experience with Blink:
“[Blink] really connects the workforce and helps you bring creative content to your frontline.”
“Blink has provided a reliable and dynamic communications platform with a diverse range of useful functionality backed up with outstanding customer support.”
“[Blink] are experts in what they do.”
“Our Blink partners have been fantastic and very supportive.”
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Why choose Blink?
Organizations across all industries or scopes — especially those with frontline employees — continue to turn to Blink as their employee experience platform of choice. Blink balances simplicity with robust functionality, ensuring that both frontline and desk-based employees can stay connected and engaged.
ClearBox sums it up best:
“Organizations of any size that have frontline workers or want to address community needs will find something to like about Blink.”
Cut through the noise with attention-grabbing internal communications
We’ll come clean. The idea that humans have an 8-second attention span is a myth. But — as with any enduring story — it’s a myth with its roots in truth.
In a technological age, we’re bombarded with more information than ever. And people looking to convey a message — be they marketers, influencers, or internal comms teams — have very limited time to grab our attention.
As such, the 8-second rule provides a useful frame of reference when designing employee communications content, particularly if you’re aiming to engage frontline workers or Gen Z employees, who prefer short, snappy instant messaging.
By drawing employees in quickly and effectively, you’re more likely to land critical messages. You cut through the noise and improve engagement across your internal communication channels — plus, you help to build a more captivating workplace culture.
Here, we explore all the ways your internal communication strategy can stop the scroll with attention-grabbing internal comms.
The attention economy at work
How many notifications do you get on your smartphone each day? Between news alerts, personal instant messaging, and work memos, there’s a lot of information competing for our attention.
To stand out, your internal communication app needs to adopt the tactics of the most effective players in the game. We’re talking social media platforms, with their rich multimedia content and addictive algorithms.
These platforms provide ample inspiration for internal communicators. They also establish employee communication expectations.
Away from work, employees are used to content that is dynamic, interactive, and concise. They’re accustomed to mobile-first communications and content that attracts their attention in a split second.
This is the challenge for internal communications teams. How do you replicate that experience and level of engagement in the digital workplace? How do you make sure your content is seen, read, and remembered?
How to create attention-grabbing internal communications
To make your employee communications heard above the noise, you need modern internal communication tools with content that attracts employee interest within seconds. Here’s how.
Make your content snackable and visual
Short-form content is everywhere these days. And it tends to resonate well with modern employees.
Workers don’t always have time to read a long, text-based email, scan a PDF, or try to navigate your dense company intranet. Plus, this type of communication and document-sharing are unlikely to spark employee interest anyway.
With bite-sized content, employees can read and digest need-to-know information on the go. Think snappy company news feed posts, pulse checks and employee surveys, and employee recognition shout-outs — all in a single platform with a user-friendly interface.
Visuals are also key. They help you say more with less and, because they appeal to our senses and emotions much more effectively than a plain text document, they’re a surefire way to foster an engaged workforce. Try incorporating micro-videos, carousel posts, and behind-the-scenes photos into your company comms.
Hook ‘em with your headlines
With just a few seconds to convince employees to view your content, you need headlines and subject lines that do much of the heavy lifting.
Your headlines should be short and simple. They need to provoke curiosity without resorting to clickbait tactics — and they should hint at the value employees will gain by reading further.
To craft engaging headlines:
Keep it short and specific. Use a maximum of 40 characters in your subject lines. And ensure your headlines accurately reflect the rest of your content.
Adopt an employee-centric mindset. Make employees the hero of your headlines. Figure out what is most important to your workers, then lead with that.
Avoid corporate language and jargon. Use simple, easy-to-understand language and your headlines will be more engaging and quicker for employees to digest.
Create urgency or intrigue. When crafting urgent updates, mention upcoming deadlines to improve message open and read rates. Also, pique employee curiosity by hinting at what lies within.
Here are a few examples of high-impact internal message headlines:
Create a sense of exclusivity and intrigue
Not this: What you need to know about the new product launch next week.
But this: Be the first to see our new product!
Empower action and counter known hesitations
Not this: Please fill out the latest employee engagement pulse check survey.
But this: Have your say — share your feedback in minutes.
Focus on clear benefits with simple language
Not this: Sign up for our newly implemented training programs to improve your productivity.
But this: Career goals unlocked! Discover new training programs.
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Embrace the Stories format
The Stories format has been popularized by Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. It provides an easy way to share short-form video content, a current favorite among social media users, in a way that highlights human connection.
The beauty of this type of video format is the ease with which you can create it. It doesn’t have to look polished and professional. In fact, DIY, smartphone-filmed content has an air of authenticity that boosts employee engagement and trust, particularly with Gen Z employees.
When exploring this format with your internal communication tools, you can feature daily updates, employee recognition and spotlights, and even shift announcements. Make Stories available on mobile and give your deskless employees a quick and engaging way to access the latest company content, too.
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Make your communications a two-way conversation
Interaction and engagement go hand in hand. So — to create compelling internal comms content that positively impacts the employee experience — you need to prioritize two-way communication and team collaboration.
You can do this with the help of key features like:
Polls and quizzes. Quick, easy, and engaging. Polls and quizzes allow you to gather instant employee feedback and insights while giving employees the chance to make their voices heard.
Emoji reactions. A simple way for employees to interact with your news feed content, emoji reactions allow them to express opinions and show support on company updates.
Employee-generated content. The ultimate in interaction, employee-generated content is sure to attract the attention of co-workers and offers a centralized platform for employee content creators too.
Manager video updates. Leadership and management posts break down barriers and make comms more personal, particularly if you throw in the occasional Q&A.
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Harness the power of FOMO and urgency
The best marketers understand consumer psychology. They know what makes prospective customers sit up, take notice, and take action.
Internal comms teams can harness this psychology to maintain high levels of employee engagement across communication channels. Here are a few ideas:
Time-limited content. Content — like Stories — that disappears after 24 hours is great at grabbing employee attention. It also encourages regular use of your employee app or internal communications platform, because employees don’t want to miss out on the latest company news. A quick video from the CEO, a behind-the-scenes look at an event, or a snapshot of a team milestone feels more valuable when it’s only available for a limited time.
A sense of urgency. As with the 24-hour news cycle, regularly posting real-time updates creates a sense of urgency. Employees want to check in with your internal comms to find out what’s new. Deadlines are also effective. So launch limited-time challenges — and use time-sensitive language like “now,” “today,” “don’t miss out,” and “last chance” — to spark interest and encourage participation when it comes to urgent updates.
Exclusivity. We’re drawn to content that creates a sense of prestige. So offer “sneak peeks” and “first looks” at new products, initiatives, or instant messaging from leadership. Positioning messages to employees as exclusive makes employees feel valued and part of an elite group. It also taps into employees’ natural curiosity and desire to stay in the loop.
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Adopt a mobile-first approach
The best internal communication tools are mobile-first. They make it easy for employees to comment, react, and participate in real-time conversations.
For a mobile workforce without desktop access and for Gen Z workers who live on their smartphones, mobile-first communication approach supports quick social interactions without a significant time investment.
Make your internal communication platforms available on employee smartphones and you also have the option to use push notifications — the ultimate attention-grabber.
But be careful — don’t overdo it. To prevent notification fatigue, reserve alerts for priority messages and allow your employees to customize their notification preferences, particularly when it comes to lower-stakes content like internal newsletters and direct messaging.
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Measure, learn, and iterate
When adapting your comms so they catch the attention of employees, it takes more than guesswork. You need to measure your success by tracking engagement metrics, views, and interactions.
You can also make like your marketing team by A/B testing your internal content. Switch up images, thumbnails, colors, headlines, and calls to action to find and roll out the most eye-catching options.
Using the data on employee behavior and gathering feedback you get from your internal communication tool — along with real-time feedback from employee surveys — you can evolve your internal communications strategy to better spark the interest of employees.
Does your comms content meet the 8-second rule?
Attention-grabbing internal communications are short, visual, interactive, and mobile-first. They communicate key information — and draw recipients in — in a matter of seconds.
In a time when it’s hard to maintain the edge in the attention economy, content like this stands out. It helps you share important information and urgent updates with employees and keep everyone on the same page.
Not only does this foster more effective communication, it also improves the employee experience. When people feel informed and connected to their organization, they enjoy higher levels of employee satisfaction.
So do you accept the challenge? Will you strive to meet the 8-second rule with your internal comms?
Audit your current content, explore the capabilities of your internal communication software, and experiment with new formats to find out what works for your entire organization. Because, by going beyond old-fashioned, text-based comms, you stand to make a big impact on your audience and create a more engaging company culture.
