Atlas FM is one of the UK’s leading facilities management companies, employing over 15,000 frontline workers across the country. Cleaners, security officers, maintenance engineers — people who keep hospitals, offices, and public buildings running every day.

The problem? Most of those 15,000 people had no reliable way to hear from their employer, access company updates, or feel connected to the wider organisation. They weren’t at desks. They didn’t have company email addresses. Many didn’t have regular access to a computer at all.

Atlas FM came to us with a clear brief: build a communications platform that reaches every single employee, regardless of their role, location, or device.

The Challenge

Facilities management is one of the hardest industries for internal communications. The workforce is dispersed across hundreds of sites. Shift patterns mean people are working at all hours. Many employees speak English as a second language. Traditional intranet solutions — the kind that require a laptop, a VPN, and a corporate email — simply don’t work.

Atlas FM had tried various approaches over the years: notice boards, printed newsletters, manager cascades. None of them could deliver timely, consistent information to 15,000 people spread across the UK. Important updates were getting lost. Employee engagement scores were suffering. And the HR and communications teams were spending enormous effort on channels that weren’t reaching the people who needed them most.

They needed something that worked on any device, required no training, and could be deployed to thousands of users without an IT rollout.

Our Approach

We started where we always start: understanding the end users. Not the executives commissioning the platform, but the cleaners, the security staff, the engineers who would actually use it every day. We spent time on-site, observing how frontline workers accessed information, what devices they carried, and what their working day actually looked like.

This research shaped every technical decision we made. A native app was out — too much friction to download, too many different devices, too many people who wouldn’t install a work app on their personal phone. A traditional web app was out — too slow, no offline capability, no push notifications.

The answer was a Progressive Web App (PWA). Accessible via any browser, installable on any device with a single tap, capable of push notifications and offline access. No app store approval process. No IT department required. Just a URL that works.

What We Built

Personalised news feed. Every employee sees content relevant to their role, location, and division. A cleaner at a hospital in Birmingham sees different content to a security officer at an office building in London — but both see company-wide announcements at the same time.

Push notifications. Critical updates reach every employee in real time. During COVID-19, this became essential — Atlas FM could push updated safety protocols to 15,000 people within minutes, with read receipts confirming who had seen the information.

Multi-language support. Content could be published in multiple languages simultaneously, ensuring non-native English speakers weren’t excluded from important communications.

Document hub. Payslips, policies, training materials, health and safety documentation — all accessible in one place, replacing the physical notice boards and paper-based systems that had been the only option for frontline workers.

Recognition and engagement. Peer-to-peer recognition, employee of the month features, and team achievements — giving frontline workers the same visibility and appreciation that office-based staff take for granted.

Analytics dashboard. The communications team could see exactly how many people had read each piece of content, which divisions were most engaged, and where the gaps were — replacing guesswork with data.

The Impact

Within three months of launch, over 10,000 of Atlas FM’s 15,000 employees had registered on the platform. Engagement rates exceeded every benchmark the company had set. For the first time, the communications team could reach the majority of their workforce directly, instantly, and measurably.

The platform became especially critical during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Atlas FM needed to communicate rapidly changing government guidance, site-specific protocols, and wellbeing resources to a workforce that was still physically going to work every day while much of the country was working from home.

Employee engagement scores improved significantly. The HR team reported a measurable reduction in the time spent handling queries that were now self-service through the platform. And Atlas FM’s leadership had, for the first time, a clear picture of how connected their workforce actually was.

Tech Stack

  • PWA — Progressive Web App for universal device access with offline capability and push notifications
  • Vue.js — Frontend framework for a responsive, app-like user experience
  • Node.js — Backend API handling content management, user authentication, and notification delivery
  • Cloud-hosted — Scalable infrastructure handling 15,000+ concurrent users across the UK
  • Integration APIs — Connected to Atlas FM’s existing HR systems for automated user provisioning and role-based content targeting

Key Takeaway

The technology wasn’t the hard part. Understanding the users was. Every decision — from the PWA architecture to the notification strategy to the multi-language support — came from spending time with the people who would actually use the platform, not just the people who were paying for it.

When you build for the frontline, you can’t assume anything about devices, connectivity, technical literacy, or motivation to engage with yet another work tool. You have to meet people where they are — and build something so useful and so frictionless that adoption happens naturally.

Atlas FM gave us a URL. 10,000 people showed up within three months. That’s the standard we hold ourselves to.