How Engage Helped itsu Reach Its Deskless Workforce - Engage Colleague

How Engage Helped itsu Reach Its Deskless Workforce

13 Jun 2025, posted in

  • Connecting 1,300 employees across 80+ locations
  • Tripled volume of recognition shared through the app
  • More personalised, data-led engagement across the business

The Challenge

As a fast-paced, people-first food brand, itsu relies on a workforce that’s predominantly on the move – from kitchen teams to store managers. With only around 110 of its 1,300 employees working at desks, its internal comms team needed a better way to reach everyone else.

Its previous system wasn’t built for a business like itsu. It didn’t allow the team to target messages to different audiences, limiting the effectiveness of communications. Engagement data was minimal. And as a desktop-only tool, it simply didn’t reflect the realities of itsu’s mostly deskless workforce.

The Solution

Working with Engage, itsu launched its’us, a mobile-first app designed to reflect itsu’s brand, values and vibrant culture.

With its’us, the team can now segment audiences and schedule messages to land at the right time, with the right people – something that wasn’t possible before. From weekly updates to tailored team comms, it’s all now streamlined in one place.

The app has also unlocked two-way communication. Colleagues can share thoughts and feedback through group chats, private messages and quarterly surveys. That means more data, more insight, and more trust, a key value for the brand.

Engage has become a single, secure space for everything from onboarding and recognition to planning internal events. Previously scattered across different platforms, these activities are now centralised and easy to manage. The ability to customise rewards, including fun touches like animated GIFs, makes recognition feel more human, more personal, and more in tune with itsu’s culture.

The Impact

The difference has been dramatic.

The number of recognitions given across the business has more than tripled. Colleague engagement with internal content like news articles and newsletters is at an all-time high. Trust is growing too, with the app enabling bottom-up as well as top-down communication.

Most importantly, its’us has brought itsu’s people together. From store to head office, teams can now connect, collaborate, and celebrate each other, no matter where they’re based.

And by streamlining platforms, the internal team has saved time, gained clearer insights, and built a strategy that flexes with the business. Engage hasn’t just made communication easier, it’s made it matter more.

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