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Introduction – Digital Signage Displays

Digital signage design provides a versatile solution for displaying messaging and notifications throughout an organization’s locations. The displays can be mounted on pylons and walls in offices, conference rooms and waiting rooms for the benefit of visitors and staff alike. 

The most common usage of digital signage is for displaying ads and helpful information to clients and visitors to an organization’s facilities. It makes sense as they have proven to be quite useful for branding and creating interest in products and services offered at their respective locations.

It has been observed that 70% of Americans admit they’ve seen a digital signage display in the past month while recall among viewers has jumped to 55% after viewing content on outdoor digital billboards. In fact, 80% of shoppers say they visited a store because a digital sign piqued their interest.

The benefits to an organization don’t stop at customer-facing communication. Employees and teams also stand to gain huge benefits from digital signage design. They play an increasingly big role in effective employee communication strategies.

The Benefits of Improved Employee Communication

For teams to operate at their best there needs to be clear lines of communication between team members. Sharing key updates about your organization or changes to projects at the right time can make a difference in productivity, scheduling and downtime. 

Reduce Employee Turnovers

Effective employee communication reduces problems within teams that can affect the quality of their work. This can be achieved through better employee engagement. A study from The Harvard Business Review found that improvements to employee engagement resulted in high-turnover organizations reporting 25% lower turnover, while low-turnover organizations report 65% lower turnover.

BetterUp reports that employees who experience high levels of belonging have a drop in turnover risk, an increase in job performance, a reduction in sick days and are less likely to leave their jobs.

Hiring a new employee and training them costs organizations 6-9 months of salary for the position being replaced. 

Improve Response Times for Shorter Downtimes

Sometimes things go wrong and when that happens you want your best people on it right away. Unscheduled downtimes cost companies thousands of dollars and this can go up further the longer it takes to get someone to handle the issue. 

To cut down on unscheduled downtime it’s important to share communication to all necessary parties in a timely manner. This can be achieved with digital signage displays in the right locations.

Elements of an effective employee communication strategy

There are important factors to adhere to when creating employee communication strategies. These factors will align with company goals and follow guidelines for creation, design and distribution.

Provide tools for internal communication and employee engagement

As covered earlier it is important to make employees feel heard. This can be accomplished with communication channels that are used regularly for receiving messages from team members and responding quickly and effectively. 

Some organizations rely purely on email while others prefer a more real-time approach with internal chat and video conferencing applications. Whichever methods are decided upon it is important to make sure that employees feel included.

Send Communications in a Timely Manner

It’s not just about where you send communications, it’s about when. They should reach their intended audience quickly. Increase productivity by getting the message out there as soon as possible to allow for better planning and faster turnaround times.

Avoid missed deadlines, and duplication of work. A survey conducted by Ponopto found that  employees spend an average of 5 hours a week waiting to get in touch with people that have the unique knowledge they need. In that time work can be delayed or even canceled. 

1 in 3 employees reported that they spend more than 6 hours every week on redundant tasks. For 14 percent of them, duplicate work can take up to 10 hours.

Depending on the type of company and its offerings that could mean lost revenue, delays in emergency services and canceled services. At the very least it presents a less than desirable customer experience which can in turn hurt customer retention. 

Create Consistency in Tasks and Procedures

Repetition and easily recognizable formatting helps information to be absorbed much faster than non-standardized formatting. It’s noted that today on average attention time is 8 seconds. Making information concise, formatted consistently and delivered in a timely manner helps make the best use of those 8 seconds. 

Create a Central Hub

In order to get messaging to staff there should be a central system for managing and distributing content. This is a good way to disseminate policies, procedures, task lists and notifications. The company intranet can tie into the messaging system in order to distribute content from core systems while reducing redundant work.

A common problem that can arise even with systems like this in place is that many employees don’t get to see them. With deskless roles it can be difficult for employees to gain access to screens in order to retrieve information when it’s needed. Based on research from Poppulo, only 20% of companies have mobile-friendly internal communications tools. Other research suggests that only 13% of employees use their intranets on a daily basis while 31% of employees never use it.

How digital signage fits into employee communication

Digital signage displays provide a means to distribute messaging to employees whether they have a desk position or not. With the sizes available and mounting capabilities, organizations also have a wider range of options for digital signage design strategies. 

Where are the best places to install Digital Signage

To get employees to use digital signage displays they first need to be in the right locations. It’s a good idea to place the displays in areas that employees frequent, either because they are stationed there or pass by often while carrying out their duties.

Conference Rooms

Conference room digital displays are useful for a number of reasons. As employees are grouped in these areas quite often it makes sense to display guidelines and meeting notes there. Conference room displays can be programmed to show information from the company intranet to enhance presentations.

Another great feature is that with employees away from their stations for extended amounts of time they can still receive notifications. Employees can be trained to send important information to meeting rooms based on who is in attendance. Attendee information is normally held in the conference room booking software. Meeting attendees can also be shown on digital signage outside of the conference room for the benefit of other parties.

Break Rooms and Storerooms

Everyone deserves downtime but when there are critical systems where quick response times are important it is best to make information available where employees might be resting away from their work areas. 

Shared Offices

Digital signage displays in the office can do a lot for employee morale. Digital signage can be a way to share employee achievements, welcome messages, birthday notifications, sabbaticals and other choice pieces of information to help employees feel included and have something to look forward to. 

By showing off employee achievements and increasing employee engagement companies more often than not experience huge gains in productivity. The Harvard Business Review reports that companies that actively work to improve employee engagement have recorded 22% higher productivity than those that don’t. 

Best Practices for Employee Communication with Digital Signage

Keep Content Fresh with Regular Updates

Since the digital displays will be in high traffic areas employees will be seeing them a lot. It’s a good idea to rotate information throughout employee shifts. Some content will be related to work that is happening in real-time but for the times in between work updates other pre-planned messages can be added to the mix.

Use the Digital Signage Displays Often

Putting up digital signage designed for employee communications and leaving them to play with a prompt to the staff might catch a few eyeballs at first but then employees might lose interest. To prevent that from happening it’s best to incorporate them into activities happening around the location. 

Team leaders should take charge to use them in meetings for multimedia and presentations. Teach employees to seek help from screens for certain types of information for specific work processes. Digital signage can also be incorporated into employee training sessions.

Collect Employee Feedback to Feel Out User Engagement

Employee happiness is important for employee retention. An organization invested in increasing employee happiness and productivity would be wise to collect employee feedback often in order to stay on top of what’s going on with them and the environment they place them in. As employee communications are translated to digital displays the next step would be to get feedback from those employees. This can happen within meetings and employee surveys.

Conclusion

Strong employee communication strategies are important for holding an organization together. Better communication means faster response times, not only for work related issues but also any concerns that employees may have. This directly affects the company’s bottom line and customer satisfaction.

Digital signage displays help fill the gap by getting information to employees quickly. And in a clear manner no matter where they are working or taking a break. Engage employees effectively and get feedback regularly to work out any breaks in communication until everyone feels like they are being heard.

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