Employee app features to boost employee engagement

While 80% of the global workforce doesn’t work at a desk, too many organisations are still relying on desk-based intranets that have no capability to reach the deskless workforce. Employee apps are the ideal tools to bridge the connectivity gap with your frontline and deskless workers, but do you know which employee app features will work best to engage these previously disconnected colleagues? Let’s explore together:

Why traditional intranets fail the modern workforce 

Historically, intranets were a static space for company documentation and policies to sit. Desk-based portals were accessible only to office staff and line managers, while deskless colleagues were left to rely on information cascades in team briefings. Want to book time off? Fill out a form and pass it to your manager. Order new uniform? Fill out a form and pass it on. Claim expenses? You guessed it, fill out a form.

In a world where every other aspect of our lives is digital-first, employee apps and community features really are a necessity and critical for frontline, deskless and remote workers to access company information on the go. 

Our Gen Z vs Millennials research found that 73% of Gen Z are frustrated with outdated workplace tech - and 63% of Millennials agree. This is a huge proportion of the current and future workforce, so change needs to happen - now.

Summary: key takeaways 

Utility drives adoption

Your people will open up their employee app for daily necessities like rotas or payslips; they will stay for the community, video updates, and peer recognition.

Mobile-first is mandatory

If frontline staff cannot access the tool easily on their personal or assigned corporate mobile devices, your app project will fail. Make sure you check in with your IT teams to put the right infrastructure in place. Once you’re confident with that, you can prioritise which employee app features matter most for your workforce.

Prioritise connection and feedback

Integrating social communities, polls, pulse surveys and peer-to-peer recognition turns a dry necessary tool into a vibrant digital workspace culture that people are keen to revisit time and again.

Nine essential employee app features for high engagement

We expect to be able to do almost everything in the palm of our hands with our mobile devices. Work-related tasks are no different. When looking at must-have employee app features, remember that they shouldn’t just be a top-down broadcast channel. They need to become a hub that people trust, that makes their jobs easier and a space for peer-to-peer connectivity. So with that in mind, let’s dig into the essential employee app features for high engagement.

1) Social feeds

Hearing from the same voices all the time gets a little dull, doesn’t it? That’s why top-down communications from the same leaders can feel dry and - no offence to them - but it can make things feel a little stale.

Variety is the spice of life, as they say. The same applies when we’re looking at employee app features and community features like social feeds. Creating spaces for people across the whole workforce to share insights into their worlds offers an exciting peek behind the curtain at what other teams do. 

Interactive social feeds that echo the familiarity of the social media apps we're used to in our personal lives can really open up organic communication and connectivity amongst peers who might never usually get the opportunity to interact.

Remember to look out for rich media compatibility with employee app features like images and GIFs, along with reactions, comments and social sharing.

2) Employee recognition

Another of our favourite employee engagement app features is employee recognition. 

It’s nice to feel appreciated for a job well done, and publicly celebrated peer-to-peer recognition is a massive driver of belonging. There is certainly no underestimating how much a small gesture like this can make individuals feel seen and valued for their efforts.. 

A strong sense of belonging can be a huge contributor to whether people stick around during the tougher times or jump ship, so we’d definitely recommend including recognition among the must-haves on your employee app features list.

Behaviour breeds behaviour, so the easier you make it to give a colleague a shout-out, the more others will follow suit and share their appreciation for peers in the moment. In just a few clicks on their app, they can make someone’s day.

3) Short-form internal communications videos

Many modern workforces consume information visually and we each have our own different learning styles and working patterns. If you only have 5 minutes on shift to catch up on what you missed from a leadership update, which are you most likely to do: watch a 45 second video or read the full write up with every segment explained in detail? 

We can’t expect colleagues to spend their whole break catching up on work-related updates. If you’re finding that key company news isn’t reaching the frontline as quickly as you’d like, delivering these updates in a quicker-to-absorb manner in short, snappy videos could be the answer. Plus, it doesn’t need to be polished. In fact, polished is not advised with short-form video. Just keep it short and sweet, inject a little humour and post.

Whether this is one of the employee app features that you ringfence for leadership or department-specific updates, or you open it up to the wider workforce, there is so much potential to reach the previously unreachable colleagues. Whether that’s with updates that matter or silly recaps of internal events and activities remains your choice! 

4) Push notifications and mandatory reads

It’s crucial to strike the right balance between daily updates and critical information. If someone opens their app to multiple notifications, they may have a quick skim and move on with their day.

When there are more urgent notifications that you need to ensure have been read and understood by your whole workforce or a segment of them, there are specialist employee app features for that.

Push notifications direct to mobile devices can be delivered to the chosen groups of the workforce. With the ‘mandatory read’ feature you can instruct employees to click to confirm they have read the update which can help your tracking for audits and compliance. This is particularly valuable when implementing new policies, sharing allergens in new menu items  or sending emergency alerts to factory or warehouse staff to ensure nobody misses the update.

Remember to keep the push notifications targeted for only the most important updates to avoid notification fatigue. 

5) Hubs and communities

Create a space for cross-department collaboration. We’re talking employee resource groups (ERGs), hobby groups and wellbeing hubs where staff can connect over shared interests.

There’s no underestimating what employee apps and community features that bring together people across different sites, roles and working patterns can do. Bringing more like-minded people together with employee-managed  Hubs can combine creativity and passions that would never have been able to collaborate previously, whether this is for charity or fitness initiatives, mental health and wellbeing communities, new projects or just connecting over shared interests.

6) Pulse surveys and real-time feedback loops

Increasingly more modern organisations are shifting away from the annual company-wide survey. After all, a lot can happen in a year. If you’re in a high turnover industry you might rarely be getting year-on-year feedback from the same people, so it’s time to consider employee app features that offer real-time feedback.

On mobile devices, you want to make sure that your feedback options are short and sweet. A poll is a dream. An in-app interactive pulse survey that takes 1 minute to complete is perfect. Gathering incremental feedback at regular intervals can help you to target efforts to improve certain areas of focus at a time. 

And let’s not forget the final stage of gathering employee feedback that often gets missed: closing the loop. The “you said, we did” update demonstrates back to the workforce that their feedback is actually being listened to and acted on - once they know this, they’ll be more likely to contribute to more feedback opportunities.

7) Self-service access to everything work-related

To get employees to revisit the app daily, it needs to stay practical and useful, in addition to the fun employee app features. The key element of implementing an employee app is to provide instant digital access to payslips, rotas, leave requests and the tools we need to get our job done each day.

Once they have a reason to get onto the app regularly, they will naturally stick around to check out and engage with the social and community features. 

8) Personalised onboarding

First impressions count. They can also play a huge part in how connected new hires feel to the organisation which can impact retention in the long run. If your people feel safe, valued and fully informed from day one, they’ll be more bought into the future of the company. 

Dedicated onboarding spaces are one of the most impactful employee app features that can guide new hires through their first few weeks and months - and even before their first day with ease-access preboarding!

Outlining key company information, introducing their team and highlighting what people need to know straight away to get stuck into their role, while staggering the less urgent information, can really benefit new starters by reducing overwhelm and helping them settle in gradually.‍

9) Powerful AI search

Finding information should be effortless. In addition to intuitive navigation, a strong and reliable search function is another invaluable employee app feature. Strengthening search with AI and natural language processing can help people to find what they’re looking for and ask further questions to dig deeper where necessary.

Bringing AI search into the palm of their hands reduces the frustration in trying to find a certain clause in a particular policy, a specific instruction from an allergen update or the latest expenses process, for example. 

Speed up time to productivity by making it really easy for people to find information within your company knowledge base. The only caveat - make sure all of your policies and documents are up to date to ensure the right information is being served every time.

Choosing the right platform: a step-by-step selection framework

1) Audit your workforce demographics and accessibility needs

It’s important to really understand your workforce to ensure you’re providing a solution that works for the way they work. 

Consider what percentage of your workforce is desk-based and how many of them are currently unreachable via existing internal communications tools like email or a desktop intranet. What is your IT policy on work-issued devices vs bring-your-own-device (BYOD)?

Find out from your users what they are missing from company comms and access to key resources - the best way is to either run a pulse survey or focus groups to dive deeper into problem areas which will help to populate your vendor shortlist.

2) Identify your primary culture, and operations friction areas

This will come when you hear from your people. There’s no point making assumptions on what people think or how they feel. Go direct to them, make sure they know that their contributions will be listened to and acted on, even if they’re anonymous.

Frame the right questions to understand alignment with culture and operations, and ensure that key themes are noted down to refer back to later when building your employee app.

3) Map the employee lifecycle and required integrations

Taking the time to understand how each segment of your workforce will use the employee app day-to-day and zooming out to see how onboarding, connection and engagement fits into the bigger picture of a smooth daily routine will be very helpful.

Again - do not assume! Gather key spokespeople from each department who can clarify all of the tools their colleagues use every day, and ensure that they can all be integrated into the employee app for a seamless user experience.

4) Evaluate user experience and data analytics

Measure, monitor, evaluate. Gather as much data as you can at the starting point to understand your benchmark. As you launch your employee app you can track how much better connected your workforce is.

It’s even easier when analytics are built into your platform and this is yet another crucial employee engagement app feature that makes monitoring and evaluation easy to keep track of over time. Plus, with auto-generated reports and intuitive dashboards, admins can dive into the data and report back to leaders on what matters most.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) 

Q: Do employee apps track personal phone data?

A: No. Modern employee apps isolate corporate data from personal data, upholding privacy under bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies. Your IT team is only responsible for the data security within your employee app and nothing more on your personal mobile device,

Q: How do we prevent notification fatigue?

A: Don’t make everything a priority. Implement strict governance around sending company-wide push notifications and make sure that your audiences are grouped effectively so that only the most relevant notifications are pushed to the right people. Equally, ensure that the rest of your content on the employee app is targeted to each type of employee, location or job type, so that everyone always sees a personalised feed.

Q: How do we measure the ROI of an engagement app?

A: Mapping your employee app performance to wider business outcomes is the best way to measure its ROI. We’re talking reductions in staff turnover, increased productivity, streamlined processes that allow tasks to be completed more quickly, in addition to survey responses and user trends before vs after launching the app.

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