Sean Nolan, CEO and founder of Blink, talks about enhancing frontline worker productivity and engagement through streamlined app integration, AI-enhanced user experiences, and strategic partnerships at Blink:
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Tell us about yourself and your role at Blink. What does a day at work look like for you?
Hi! I’m Sean and the CEO and co-founder of Blink, the super-app for frontline organizations which gives employees everything they need to support their working life – communications, productivity tools, people and processes – all through one app on their phones.
Every working day is different. First, I’m up at 5am to feed our newborn Max and then I head straight into our Boston office to beat the traffic. The morning is usually spent on calls catching up with our UK team and then I use the afternoon to focus on things like recruiting, planning or product work as well as meeting with investors, partners and customers.
If I can, I try to leave the office no later than 5pm so I can get home to walk the dog (while catching up on calls or listening to a podcast) before spending the evening with my wife.
Blink is recognized for its high user engagement rates. How do you envision AI and machine learning playing a role in enhancing the user experience and engagement further?
Our engagement rates are a great measure of how sticky the product is, but we actually want people to use it as little as possible! If they are spending less time on our app, it means they can get stuff done more quickly and get back to what they care about or what they love doing. So, we’re not necessarily trying to drive engagement to anything other than pure utility.
AI will play a big role in driving the employee experience further. My hope is that it will improve the speed at which people can get things done. But it will only succeed if natural language is used. Engagement rates will drop if people feel like they’re talking to a robot.
What do you believe are the essential elements of a successful product strategy for a frontline employee app like Blink?
Keeping things simple! It’s about giving people access to everything they need, which can be very broad and involve dozens of systems, through one interface so they can get more of the things they need, in fewer clicks. For us, it’s also about building more features, use cases and intelligence into the app, but doing it in a way that doesn’t add complexity to the user.
In your view, how can collaboration and partnerships enhance the effectiveness and reach of digital tools for employee engagement in large enterprises?
Partnerships and integrations with other software vendors are at the core of Blink. We’re trying to be the ‘all through one app’, not the ‘all in one app’, so our ability to deliver a seamless user experience depends on our partners which include Workday (also one of our investors), Go1, Cornerstone, AlayaCare, Oracle, SAP, ADP and many more.
We’re also increasingly partnering with enterprises who want to rationalise their technology and IT architecture. At Blink, we can play an important role in simplifying the user experience, but it also means us integrating fully with their existing enterprise architecture given the complexity around security, data ownership, data sovereignty and so on.
What innovations at Blink are you particularly excited about, especially in terms of advancing employee engagement and productivity in the IT sector?
We’re working on an employee listening product which will allow managers to predict employee churn and understand why they are leaving. One feature we’re really excited about is that managers can be ‘nudged’ so they can make better decisions. For example, our tech might say ‘hey, if you change these two or three things about your team or your department, you’re going to see a big impact in terms of employee satisfaction and turnover’.
To build this, we need solid data. We’ve been using both our own data collected directly from users using AI-led questioning as well as the data collected from the entire lifecycle of every employee, including data synchronised from other systems integrated with our app. This gives us a unique people-first perspective, which to my knowledge hasn’t been done before.
We’re also working on a product that will change the way internal communications works, bringing in TikTok-style communication so employees can get creative and share new ideas with each other. Companies are crying out for user generated content like this, especially large multinational companies with distributed workforces who need more modern ways to engage everybody and make them feel part of a dynamic, 21st century culture.
Finally, we are working with a customer to create a personalized enterprise notification center that feeds all system notifications into Blink. This will allow users to take action all in one place, whether that’s opening a key attachment or progressing a workflow.
What critical components should CIOs consider when implementing a robust digital strategy to effectively engage and support their security teams?
First, it’s having the flexibility to integrate existing platforms and architecture, and adopting an open platform where you can easily integrate new technology platforms in the future. This means baking an open mindset into the company’s (and vendors’!) culture.
Second, it’s the transparency of data in third-party apps. You really want to partner with companies where it’s super transparent with what they’re doing with the data, where the data is stored and how the data is being processed. Being able to integrate both an application layer and a data layer into your own data lakes and data warehouses is critical too.
Third, it’s the user experience. Yes, tools like Blink are ultimately providing a digital front door to multiple applications but really it’s about prioritising that experience, especially on mobile, which in my view should come much higher in the list of criteria than it has been traditionally. Put it another way, it should be how the consumer grade experience is now expected.
Finally, what advice would you give to IT leaders who are looking to drive digital transformation and improve engagement among their frontline employees?
Start with understanding a day in the life of a frontline employee. When launching Blink, the first thing we did (and still do today as we iterate our product) was identify daily use cases where we can genuinely save frontline workers’ time and effort.
Only then can you look at ways to drive activation and adoption. Online projects often fail based on clunky logins, account claims and multifactor authentication processes. At Blink, we focus on simplifying these without compromising on security.
Then it’s about communication and change management. Warm employees up on what’s coming (and why) and create a user group for testing. Focus on what the benefits are to them and provide feedback forms for sharing any thoughts and concerns. Crucially, avoid the traditional IT style of communication and instead use a more empathetic style.
Thanks Sean for sharing your insights at CIO Influence.
[To share your insights with us as part of editorial or sponsored content, please write to psen@itechseries.com]
Sean Nolan founded Blink in 2014 after finding inspiration at his former company, which employed a team of more than 200 remote workers who met in-person just once a month. After being confronted with the hurdles of growing a cohesive team in a virtual setting, Sean created an employee experience portal to nurture meaningful interactions, knowing these would shape the company’s image and foster a strong sense of belonging among employees.
It was this experience that made Sean extremely passionate about the power of a great digital employee experience. He realised the enormous potential to dramatically change how people felt about the organisation they worked for, ensuring they felt valued, connected, part of a community on the frontline.
It was then that the idea for Blink was born. Despite some early setbacks, including running out of cash and initially targeting the wrong market, Sean’s tenacity and belief in Blink’s mission meant he refused to give up on the business.
In 2018, after pivoting Blink to serve the often-neglected community of deskless workers – of which there are 2.7 billion globally – Sean secured a major client win with Stagecoach and, after rolling out Blink to its workforce, the transport company witnessed employee satisfaction soar by 46% and reduced staff turnover by 26%.
Blink is a provider of a leading super-app designed for frontline organizations. The company aims to revolutionize employee work life by bridging the digital divide between deskless and desk-based employees, enabling effective communication and engagement in distributed organizations. Blink is used by industry-leading companies, including RATPDev, Elara Caring, and Domino’s. Each user opens the app an average of seven times a day, helping lower frontline attrition by up to 25%. Founded in 2015 and with offices in London, Boston, and Sydney, Blink is a Leader in the G2 Grid for Best Employee Engagement Software.
