In a mobile-first workplace, employee communication apps are ideal for connecting deskless employees with their supervisors. This helps companies eliminate confusion and improve operational efficiency.

The software should have an intuitive interface to minimize the learning curve and ensure adoption. Also, it should provide a variety of features to meet different communication needs.

Staffbase

Staffbase, the leading internal communications app, enables companies to reach all employees at a moment’s notice. It works on all workplace devices, including professional smartphones and desktop computers. It also synchronizes with important platforms, like Microsoft 365. This makes it easy to design a company-specific employee app that reflects a brand’s unique identity.

Other vendors, such as Beekeeper and Newsweaver, offer a similar employee communication app platform. Admins can create, design, and publish content to a personalized team channel, enabling frontline workers to find daily information that is relevant to their roles. They can also share documents, images, and videos with their colleagues via a chat messenger.

Both apps allow administrators to send schedulable push notifications, but Blink’s chat feature is designed for both socializing and collaboration. It features one-on-one and group chats, as well as a 128-user limit. It also offers a range of integrations, including Single Sign-On. This gives employees access to niche industry tools and Microsoft Teams without leaving the employee app.

Beekeeper

Designed for frontline employees, Beekeeper is the leading mobile platform that connects distributed teams across every shift, location, and language. Its real-time one-on-one and group messaging enables employees to stay informed and productive. Its dedicated streams deliver important operational communications and allow managers to automate workflows to increase productivity and engagement.

Beekeeper is used by over 130 customers in over 30 countries to communicate with their remote and frontline workers. The Swiss company’s operational communication software provides a suite of tools including messaging, surveys, video and voice chats, FAQ chatbots, workflow automation (e.g., new hire onboarding), shift scheduling, documents, and forms.

Its user-friendly interface is easy for software “newbees” to learn and implement, yet robust enough to support complex multi-location and lingual global operations. Beekeeper also integrates with other operational systems and provides a robust analytics dashboard to measure employee engagement. Get a free consultation with a Technology Advisor to see how Beekeeper can help your team improve employee communication and productivity.

Haiilo

Haiilo is a company communication software that brings people together to create meaningful dialog within the organization. It has scalable multichannel comms features, content creation tools, social intranet capabilities, analytics, engagement surveys and employee advocacy tools. It also provides an electronic library and a centralized information hub. Founded in 2022, it is based in Hamburg, Germany.

It has easy integrations, enabling it to connect with other systems and apps that employees already use. This helps to overcome the resistance that often occurs when new technology is introduced at an enterprise level. The product has an excellent score for ease of admin, which is a critical factor for the internal communications team when selecting software.

Haiilo’s social intranet gives employees a digital home that is completely branded to match their company culture and brand. It also provides a seamless experience for employees, regardless of their location or device. Companies such as Salesforce and KPMG are using it to scale their employer brands through employee advocacy and to increase the reach of internal communications across their organizations.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is an integrated workspace that connects with the rest of the Microsoft 365 suite. It brings together persistent chat, voice and video calling with a variety of other apps that support remote working.

Conversations in Microsoft Teams are threaded and searchable, with the activity feed providing a summary of messages, replies, mentions and other activity within each team channel. Users can create private channels within a team, which is useful for sharing specific information.

Meetings can be scheduled easily in Microsoft Teams and it includes a calendar that lists all upcoming meetings and enables users to click on an event to join the call. There are also some impressive new features such as interactive together emojis that can high-five or even clink glasses on video calls, transcriptions of meetings and the ability to easily transfer a call from one device to another.

Apps such as ZenDesk, Asana and Polly can be used in Microsoft Teams to help with collaboration, while a dedicated Tasks app launched earlier this year offers functionality to track project-based work, with options for Kanban-style views and workflow automation.