URGENT: Is email holding back your internal comms?
What’s that ping? Another email landing in an already overflowing inbox?
If you still rely heavily on email for internal communication, it’s time to rethink.
With a wealth of other digital tools available, email is no longer the de facto king of workplace comms. And if you have frontline employees working for your organization, there’s no doubt that email is falling short.
A retail assistant, a hospital nurse, a warehouse worker — these employees don’t have time to check their emails regularly. Some deskless workers don’t even have a company email address or corporate device, making them even harder to reach via traditional email communication.
So what’s the solution? Let’s take a closer look at why, in 2025, email can’t be your only internal communications strategy — and what makes for a standout alternative.
The pitfalls of email-only communication
Email-only communication is bad news for your business. Here’s why.
Information overload and inbox fatigue
Employees receive hundreds of emails every day, meaning it’s easy for important messages to get lost in the noise.
Critical updates compete with meeting invites, company newsletters, and automated system messages. There’s no clear message hierarchy and things can get pretty messy, pretty quickly.
The result? Employees end up missing essential communications so it’s hard for internal comms teams to keep everyone on the same page.
Poor engagement
Harsh but true: In a world of social media interactivity, emails are dull and uninspiring.
These text-based messages don’t tend to include eye-catching graphics, images, or videos. And they’re not particularly good at engaging employees.
This means workers have less incentive to check their inbox. And your internal communications do very little to boost employee engagement and the employee experience.
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The frontline connection gap
Frontline employees don’t have regular access to email. They work in hands-on roles that involve limited screen time, if any.
Unlike office-based staff, these workers aren’t sitting at a desktop computer being alerted to the latest inbox arrival. Instead, they rely on mobile devices and personal email accounts to check in with internal communications as and when they can.
This makes email a poor fit for real-time, relevant, on-the-go updates. Emails from HQ are lost among personal messages. Information can be outdated by the time workers see it.
You end up with a frontline connection gap that harms the employee experience and increases the risk of poor communication or miscommunication across your organization.
Delayed and one-way communication
A company-wide email is a monologue. You send it on behalf of senior management and everyone else (hopefully!) reads it. Employees are forced into a passive role — they don’t have the opportunity to reply, share their ideas, or ask questions. It’s the ultimate form of top-down communication.
Even one-to-one emails have their flaws. There’s often a delay between receipt of an email and a reply, which can make collaboration with remote workers challenging.
In a world that thrives on instant responses, interactivity, and two-way communication, email feels increasingly outdated. And it’s failing to deliver the employee engagement and culture-building benefits offered by modern internal communication tools.
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No analytics, no insights
When sending messages via email, you’re in the dark. There’s no way to track if employees have read or engaged with key messages. So it’s hard to know if emails serve as effective communications or if there's a better channel to use.
This makes it challenging to gauge employee feedback and make improvements. If you don’t know how your messages are landing, how can you make meaningful changes to your internal communication strategy?
The multigenerational workforce has different communication needs
Email was once a logical first choice for company communications. But times have changed.
Millennial and Gen Z workers — who now account for over 50% of the workforce — prefer mobile-first, instant communication. Think WhatsApp, Slack, and social media-style updates.
Gen X and Boomers may still be comfortable with email. They didn’t grow up with social media and the internet in the same way as younger generations.
But now that they too use social media apps in their personal lives, they’ve grown accustomed to the instant messaging experience — and they appreciate fast, direct access to critical information, just like their younger coworkers.
When looking at alternatives to email, you need to pick an internal communication tool that is accessible, engaging, and inclusive for all generations within the workforce. A mobile-first employee app can help you cover all the bases.
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Why a mobile-first app is the answer
A mobile-first employee experience platform brings internal communications to every employee smartphone. In just a couple of taps, they can access the latest company news, chat with coworkers, sign up for shifts, and track down that policy doc they’ve been meaning to reread.
An app beats email hands down. Let’s take a look at all the ways it can improve your internal communications.
Clearly defined communication channels
Over email, news about the latest company event, critical safety updates, and messages from coworkers are jumbled together.
You can flag important messages or write URGENT in dreaded capital letters. But as new messages still push emails down an employee’s inbox, there’s a good chance things will be missed.
An employee experience platform gives you defined internal communication channels. Depending on the needs of your company, this might include:
- Essential updates that have to be acknowledged by employees before they disappear from the dashboard
- A news feed, where employees can find company updates, culture, and connection
- Instant messaging tools for group and one-to-one chats
- A content hub, where you can keep documents like policies, FAQs, and safety guidelines
- Digital forms that make it easy for employees to contact HR about their next vacation or their shift availability
- Communities, where like-minded coworkers can connect over projects, interests, and hobbies
By putting everything in its place via a multi-channel approach, it’s easier for employees to see essential messages and find the information they need.
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Instant, real-time communication
Instant messaging tools are a standard feature of employee experience platforms. These social tools support real-time, remote conversations. And they can be used to replace emails and the unauthorized shadow IT, like WhatsApp, that frontline teams often resort to using.
In addition to real time chat, you can share fresh and relevant updates over the news feed, segmenting employees so they only see news that relates to them. You can also use push notifications to highlight time-sensitive information and ensure nothing is missed.
Better reach and accessibility
Employees can log into an employee experience platform without a company email address. This — along with the fact that the app is available via smartphone and doesn’t require a desktop computer — means that all employees, even those working on your frontline, have access to vital employee communications.
Sharing critical messages — think crisis communications, or timely updates to business goals — with everyone gets easier. But there are other benefits to improving internal communications for frontline workers. You also improve frontline employee engagement, boosting satisfaction and loyalty among a traditionally hard-to-reach, hard-to-retain group of workers.
More interactivity and engagement
Employee apps are built to offer an interactive experience. You can launch polls and employee surveys. Employees can comment or leave emoji reactions on news feed posts. With your permission, workers can even post their own content. Peer communication has never been easier.
Multimedia content is also a must, meaning you can move beyond text-based email communication to embrace Insta-worthy internal comms. You can use infographics, videos, and photos to distill complex messages into digestible, engaging content.
Easy-to-access analytics
Over email, it’s hard to keep track of who has read and responded to your messages. And it’s near impossible to understand how you’re doing in terms of employee engagement.
With an employee experience platform, you get access to the effective tools you need to make meaningful changes to your internal communications strategy and the wider workplace experience.
You can use analytics to understand how employees use your app and consume internal comms. You can track engagement trends and drill down into the data to find teams or locations where messages just don’t seem to land.
Armed with this insight, you can identify areas for improvement, setting internal communication KPIs and using data to make more informed decisions regarding your internal communication plan.
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Is it time your organization moved beyond email?
Email alone is no longer enough to drive an informed and engaged workforce. For a truly successful internal communication strategy, you need an internal comms tool that is:
- Instant. Everyone gets messages when they matter most.
- Interactive. Employees can engage, react, and be part of the conversation.
- Inclusive. Deskless and office-based workers should get equal access to internal comms.
- Insightful. Analytics help you understand what’s working and what isn’t.
The best employee apps support a strong company culture of connection and are built on bottom-up communication. They help you keep pace with the latest internal comms trends and put all the internal communications tools you need in one place.
By relegating email and elevating an employee experience platform, you create a single source of truth, where everyone can instantly access company news, share peer-to-peer communication, and collaborate with each other — right from their smartphone.
Blink. And replace outdated email comms with a modern employee experience platform.
