Finding the best employee engagement app for your enterprise

In a fast-moving business landscape, an exceptional employee experience isn’t a luxury – it’s a competitive advantage.

One of the cornerstones of the employee experience is giving people the same experience they get as consumers. This is why employee engagement apps – also known as employee apps, frontline apps, staff engagement apps, or employee engagement mobile apps – have become a must-have for enterprises.

In this guide, we’ll look at the key elements of a modern employee engagement app, and showcase real-life examples of companies harnessing the full power of these apps.

What is an employee engagement app?

An employee engagement app is a digital application brings together the things employees need to get work done into a single platform – available over mobile. These include:

• Communication
• Collaboration
• Recognition
• Feedback
• Knowledge sharing
• Critical services

These employee experience apps streamline daily work, strengthen company culture, and unlock productivity. Unlike traditional intranets or generic communication tools, employee engagement apps are designed to be accessible and user-friendly to all employees – wherever they work.

Why every enterprise needs employee engagement applications

Modern enterprises are facing a range of challenges that are redefining how they operate. These challenges include increased operational complexity, unprecedented levels of change, and the growing trend of a globally dispersed workforce.

In this landscape, employee engagement applications have evolved from being a "nice-to-have" to a critical tool for success. Here’s how they can help:

Accelerates communication and collaboration

One of the biggest hurdles organizations face today is ensuring seamless communication across teams, especially when employees are scattered across different regions or working remotely. Traditional communication methods, such as emails or in-person meetings, are often inefficient in today’s fast-paced environment. Employee engagement apps provide a platform for real-time updates, instant messaging, and social feeds – helping to close the gap between headquarters and frontline workers. This in turn accelerates decision-making.

Company-wide empowerment

Employee engagement applications help break down barriers, allowing information, resources, and communication to flow freely across all levels of the organization. With these tools, people from the C-suite to technicians on-site have easy access to the knowledge and resources they need to do their jobs effectively.

For example, senior leaders can share strategic updates, while employees on the ground can provide feedback and insights that help leaders make adjustments.

Boosts retention and productivity

Employee engagement apps offer an intuitive, consumer-grade experience that employees are already familiar with from their personal lives, making it easy and enjoyable to use. When employees have an engaging experience at work, they are more likely to stay with the organization and perform at their best. According to Gallup, engaged employees help achieve 23% more profitability and are 21% less likely to leave.

Actionable insights

In a rapidly changing business environment, it’s critical to understand how employees are feeling, what challenges they’re facing, and where improvements can be made. Employee engagement apps gather valuable data through surveys, polls, feedback forms, and performance metrics.

This data can then be analyzed to provide HR and business leaders with actionable insights into trends, satisfaction levels, and potential areas for improvement. 

Why employee engagement mobile apps are essential for frontline and remote workforces

Frontline, remote, and deskless workers make up the majority of the global workforce – 70% in the U.S alone and approximately 2.8 billion people worldwide. 

These workers often face unique challenges, such as physical distance from the main office, varying work hours, and limited access to centralized resources. Nearly 30% of workers say they’re wasting an hour or more per day just looking for information. Employee engagement apps play a vital role in bridging these gaps, ensuring that all employees remain connected, informed, and motivated.

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Here are some key benefits you’ll specifically see with this segment of the workforce:

Fostering inclusion and connection

One of the biggest challenges for remote and frontline workers is feeling included and connected to the broader company culture. These employees may not have the same face-to-face interactions or visibility as those in traditional office roles, which can lead to feelings of isolation or disengagement. Employee engagement apps act as a bridge, helping these employees feel like they are part of the organization’s daily rhythm, even if they are physically distanced.

Providing real-time feedback and support

For frontline workers, who are often in high-pressure or fast-paced environments, having immediate access to feedback and support is crucial. An employee engagement app offers real-time channels for supervisors and peers to offer guidance and feedback. Whether it’s an employee seeking clarification on a task or even a manager offering praise for a job well done, these apps facilitate instant communication that can keep work moving forward without delay.

Interestingly, Unily’s research of frontline workers saw nearly three-quarters of frontline employees (72%) say they don’t have a strong grasp of company strategy, while only 24% feel their feedback ever reaches leadership. This disconnect is something which impacts the bottom line every single day – it’s impossible to pivot at speed and deliver exceptional customer experiences when your frontline isn’t in alignment with company strategy 

Improving access to learning and development resources

For remote and frontline workers, gaining access to professional development opportunities can be more challenging. These employees often lack the same access to in-person training and growth programs as their office-based counterparts. Unily’s research revealed:

• 55% of frontline workers are unaware of the training opportunities available to them
• 56% do not believe they receive adequate communications about the training opportunities available to them
• 36% believe there are better training opportunities available to their corporate colleagues than them

Employee engagement apps offer a solution by centralizing access to training materials, learning modules, and development resources. Kerzner International used their self-service 'Atlantis Learning' portal to connect employees with learning and development opportunities, seeing 24 thousand views in the first 12 months.

Guides

The Enterprise Guide to Onboarding Frontline Workers

+ Downloadable Onboarding Checklist

Guides

Empowering frontline teams: A guide to frontline staff training

Reducing safety and compliance risks

For many frontline workers, adherence to safety protocols and compliance standards is crucial. Employee engagement apps can ensure these workers stay up to date on the latest safety procedures, regulatory changes, and compliance requirements. By using things like real-time alerts and digital checklists, frontline workers can receive immediate guidance on safety measures. This reduces the risk of accidents and ensuring compliance across the board.

Key elements of the best employee experience apps

HR and employee experience leaders we work with have certain elements as non-negotiable when looking for an employee experience app. These are especially important for large enterprises – feel free to use this as a framework when conducting your own research:

A branded employee engagement app: Forging deeper connections

In a world where employee expectations are evolving, organizations must go beyond traditional engagement methods to truly connect with their workforce. A branded employee experience app, as opposed to a generic, off-the-shelf application, is a powerful tool for creating a deeper bond with employees. They align company values with everyday actions, fostering long-term loyalty.

Here are some of the outcomes you can expect:

• Strengthened trust: Employees instinctively trust and feel part of brands they recognize and interact with daily.
• Brand reinforcement: Your organizational tone, messaging, and values are consistently reinforced – especially important for dispersed and diverse workforces.
• Greater personalization: Branding tailors the user journey, allowing for personalized experiences and messaging, driving even greater staff engagement.

Real-world success stories: How enterprises use employee engagement applications to transform the workforce

Let’s look at how world-leading organizations are winning with modern employee engagement applications.

The Estée Lauder Companies: Designing the world’s best intranet

Estée Lauder Companies partnered with Unily to deliver a multilingual, mobile-first digital workplace platform accessible to 48,000+ employees across 150 countries. With seamless communication and robust personalization, they saw increased engagement and enhanced cultural alignment.

British Airways: Launching an award-winning employee engagement app at turbo speed

British Airways needed to unite a dispersed workforce of frontline and office-based employees – while having a more agile approach to communications in a turbulent industry. With Unily, they rolled out a mobile-first, frontline-friendly intranet in just 8 weeks, delivering an immediate £80,000 saving.

Baker Hughes: Uniting a global enterprise

Baker Hughes wanted to bring together its vast, diverse workforce. Their employee engagement app enabled robust two-way communication, community building, and knowledge sharing – connecting over 55,000 employees and empowering frontline teams.

These examples show how the best enterprise employee engagement apps – when well-designed and implemented – result  in measurable gains in alignment, speed, and productivity.

Using our own and analyst data we have developed an ROI calculator that looks at how much you could save across your enterprise with a modern employee platform. Looking at labor productivity (time saved looking for information, app switching, and more), cost reduction (reduce turnover, streamline tech stack, etc.), and risk mitigation (eliminate ungoverned tech and shadow IT, improve adherence with security policies, and more). Find out how much you could save:

Employee engagement apps: a strategic business imperative

Adopting a modern, branded employee engagement app isn’t just an IT or HR initiative – it’s a strategic business one. The organizations leading the way are the ones using technology to achieve results at a speed once thought impossible at enterprise scale.

By adopting an innovation-first mindset, and ensuring their employee experience app ticks off as many non-negotiables as possible, enterprises can transform culture and performance.

As global industry leaders, Unily brings more than 20 years’ expertise in empowering large, complex corporations to deliver extraordinary employee experiences. Book a demo and see how our award-winning app can unlock your boldest ambitions.

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