Blink employee app for frontline workers
The Blink employee app has been developed over the past 15 months to give frontline workers access to important information on the go. In partnership with Domino’s, NHS, and Stagecoach, Blink has raised around $10 million in capital thanks to Partech, a venture capital firm based in San Francisco and Paris, as well as a number of Angel Investors.
The app allows key workers to stay connected to important, possibly life-saving, information systems, for ease of coordination and instant messaging from a single app in case of an emergency (i.e: a fellow co-worker has been diagnosed with Covid-19). In doing so, quick action can be taken to mitigate any further harm or spread to the workforce.
The first deployment of the Blink employee app was in January 2019 when the transportation company Stagecoach gave access to its 22,000 employees. Blink has since rolled out to more than 100 companies and organizations including big names such as Amazon, Apple, Disney, and Google. Since lockdown, Blink has been accessed over 25 million times by frontline workers.
The Blink employee app allows team members to fill in digital forms, call in sick, report accidents, access rosters, send feedback to managers in real-time, and conduct other work-related interactions. Also, and perhaps more relevantly to the current pandemic, it allows employers to send notification to all employees on their personal phones for compliance, health and safety messages, and Covid-19 updates.
CEO of Blink, Sean Nolan, says that the outbreak of Covid-19 has highlighted the essential role that is played by frontline workers around the world. Investing in the Blink app enables the empowerment of these “deskless” workers who were previously “starved of investment”. This in turn allows them to perform their essential work more effectively, and stay connected to their peers and management.
“The organizations that will survive and thrive in the next decade” says Nolan, “will be those who put their frontline first.”