What’s Stopping You from Communicating Consistently?
Consistency is a cornerstone of Content Strategy, but it can be difficult to communicate consistently when day-to-day duties get in the way. Implementing strategy, procedures, and a little technology makes a big difference in your effectiveness. We asked Jon VanderMeer, CEO of Kiosk & Display, a full-service digital signage and content partner based in Atlanta to give us his thoughts on how to “feed the beast” with a consistent flow of content. Connect with Jon on LinkedIn or email jon@kioskanddisplay.com.
As companies grow, the knowledge and vision that the founders brought to the start-up becomes increasingly more difficult to capture, without a dedicated effort. The who, what, where, when, how, and most importantly, why of the business needs to be shared with new staffers. New employees who come from varying backgrounds and industries bringing their own expertise – but also their own habits. When you’re shaping your company’s brand and culture, the consistency of your message plays a key role.
Decrease perceived wait time and communicate benefits to customer and patients.
Why Consistency is Important
Consistency in communication and in your internal processes are important for your employees and customers. New employees gain confidence when they can perform a task, complete a report, or fulfill an order in the way that is expected of them. Customers appreciate consistency when they have the same helpful, memorable experience each time they visit your place of business, regardless of the individual they speak with. This holds even more true when your customers conduct business at multiple locations.
Digital signage in the workplace is an ideal way to visually reinforce best practices and reminders.
How do you train on consistency? Repetition, of course, but there’s more. Communicating your expectations with purpose and clarity will go a long way to make everyone on your team to be successful. Communication can take many forms, such as all employee meetings, team huddles, employee handbooks, email communication, and intranet messages.
Visual Communication Communicates Consistency
Another method of communicating that employers often overlook is visual communication. Edgar Dale’s Cone of Experience taught us that we remember more of what we see than what we read. Digital signage in the workplace is an ideal way to visually reinforce best practices and reminders, as well as recognize top performers and those who go above and beyond.
Employee-facing digital signage can take many forms. In our 20 years of helping companies create winning digital signage content we have helped companies create perfect playlists that that focus on these areas:
- HR/benefits reminders. Remind your employees all that they receive from you beyond their paycheck. Health insurance, commuter benefits, tuition reimbursement, and wellness programs should be explained and promoted regularly, not only at open enrollment time.
- Recognizing top performers. Spotlight an employee or department to shine a light on how they improved profits or reduced expenses. Additionally, feature anyone who has gone above and beyond – whatever that means for your business.
- Management statistics. Although front line employees may not feel that they are impacting the bottom line every day, sharing a few of your KPIs will help them understand the bigger picture and how their efforts contribute to achieving the company’s goals.
- Volunteer opportunities. Invite employees help out in the community or even job share in another department. Many will welcome the chance to do something different for a day or a week.
- Personal/family announcements. Work families spend a lot of time together. Digital signs are another way to celebrate service anniversaries, promotions, new hires, and birthdays.
Novelis saw employee engagement increase by 13%.
How to Use Digital Signage in the Workplace
The number of hours each day that you use employee-facing digital signage content will depend on your industry. For example, digital signage can perform double duty in retail or financial services locations, or medical practices by displaying customer-facing content during open hours and employee-facing content after hours. Manufacturing clients may choose to display different messages to different shifts. Kiosk & Display’s playlists allow custom programming of each digital screen in your network to accommodate an infinite number of shifts and locations.
Communicate employee benefits and HR deadlines on digital screens.
Our client Novelis, the world’s largest aluminum recycler, implemented digital screens at its worldwide locations as part of a company-wide employee engagement initiative. Novelis saw employee engagement increase by 13% thanks to increased communication and better-informed employees.
Think of all the communicating you do with your employees in a week, month or year. If you reinforce some or all of that with digital signage, your employees will be better informed, have greater focus, and together your company will achieve more. There’s a reason we call digital screens HR’s communication tool of the future.
Continually engage your employees by keeping your messages fresh. If you don’t have time to manage content yourself, you can let us manage it for you or delegate it internally. Either way, you get to review completed messages before they go live. What are you waiting for? Digital screens are a small investment that yields big results in communication, teamwork, and culture.
Bryan Garner
Bryan Garner is our Director of Content Strategy & Technology, charged with helping our clients create, distribute, and manage their content more easily and effectively. In an age where content management is a standalone science, Bryan brings his years of large-scale web content management experience to the worlds of franchising and emergency response documentation.
