Blink, a “smart employee” app, has been officially launched to help support and protect frontline and key workers during the Covid-19 crisis.

The company, founded by CEO Sean Nolan, designed the app to empower key workers on the frontline. It provides them with a single app to access all important information and systems and the ability to connect with colleagues.

Blink has already raised £8.2m in funding, led by Paris- and San Francisco-based venture capital firm Partech, alongside several angel investors.

Frontline organisations

For the past year, Blink has been partnering with frontline organisations to solve real-life problems for their workers. The first major roll-out in January 2019 was for 22,000 employees at transport company Stagecoach. Employees can access rosters, complete digital forms for leave, absence and accidents, access digital payslips and feedback in real-time to managers on issues and concerns impacting them.

Since then, the company claims the app has been deployed in more than 100 organisations across 14 countries including the UK’s NHS and Prison Service. Two months into the lockdown, it reports, Blink had been accessed 25 million times by frontline workers.

“The Covid-19 crisis has underlined the critical role that frontline and key workers play in our society. The whole deskless workforce has been starved of investment. Now more than ever they need empowering with better tools so they can effectively perform their essential roles,” said Nolan.

“Every worker needs instant access to the latest information around staying safe, a voice for feeding back to management, and the capability to support their peers on the frontline.”

The app allows companies to push out information to employees’ personal phones, like wellbeing and compliance messages, including Covid-19 updates.

“Every worker needs instant access to the latest information around staying safe, a voice for feeding back to management, and the capability to support their peers on the frontline.”

Crucially, according to Blink, it supports employees who were previously disconnected from the workplace; it gives them a voice to feedback to managers; and protects them through reducing transference risks from paper by introducing digital forms.

Empower workers

“We started Blink to make it easy to empower workers wherever they are; with information at their fingertips but also have a voice in improving day-to-day operations,” added Nolan.

“We believe if you empower and equip those on the frontline, they are best positioned to make a difference. The organisations that will survive and thrive in the next decade will be those [which] put their frontline first.”

Blink said it is opening up the platform so any company can get started immediately with a simple online set-up process via the company’s website.

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