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The Value of Employee Signage is driven by its Content: Part 2

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Bad CorpComm Digital signage Example

In part 1 of this blog we discussed some common missteps in the execution of employee signage and three areas of consideration in developing your content strategy. As discussed, shaping your corporate culture, focusing on your core objectives and reinforcing best practices and learning are great places to start. So let’s take that a step further.

It’s clear that the ROI of any Employee Signage platform is driven by its content. When care is taken in curating content, the results are positive and measurable across a wide range of business metrics.

There are two key elements in optimizing the value of your Employee Signage content:
1. Align your messaging and content strategy with your desired business outcomes.
2. Visually represent your content in a dynamic and engaging manner.

Think of your signage in terms of Content and Form. Messaging that is clear, concise, and on-point, coupled with visualizations that attract and engage viewers. These principles have been central to art and advertising for centuries.

Three Key Items to Consider When Developing Your Content Strategy

Engaging Employees – This speaks to the core benefit of Employee Signage. Engaged employees are critical to an organization’s success, with engaged employees outperforming disengaged employees across metrics including quality, reduced absenteeism, reduced medical costs, and improved employee retention.

If your company has invested in an Employee Engagement Survey, we recommend that you use it as your guide in developing your content strategy. We also recommend that – after implementing your content strategy – you repeat the survey. This will provide measures on the effectiveness of your content.

In lieu of an Employee Engagement Survey, some insights can be gained from common findings in other organizations.

Stagnation is a common complaint of employees in organizations with heightened levels of disengagement. These employees tend to feel isolated from company news and information and do not believe that their organization is invested in their personal and professional growth.

This is readily addressed by Employee Signage . Some recommended best practices include:

• Use the platform to highlight “good news” across a variety of departments in your organization. This extends beyond Human Resources, to include Sales, Operations, Learning, etc. This helps create a kinetic environment that directly addresses stagnation.
• Use the platform to promote Employee Wellness. This can include integration of syndicated feeds on healthy eating, healthy lifestyles, and personal finance.
• Celebrate your employees with content that welcomes New Hires, recognizes Employee Contribution, and celebrates Employee Milestones.
• Promote Career Opportunities and encourage participation in benefits programs, such as 401K programs and tuition reimbursement.

It is again worth noting that the quality of this content is a determining factor in its effectiveness.

Mitigating Risk – Employee Signage also adds benefit in helping mitigating risk in the areas of Cyber Security, Sexual Harassment, Trade Compliance, and Diversity.

We recommend that organizations plan campaigns throughout the year focused on creating awareness around these issues.

The benefit of these campaigns is achieved in avoiding occurrences of violations. In addition, should litigation occur, demonstrating that the company proactively engaged in these campaigns can help lower the costs of fines and penalties.

News & Information – Incorporating News and Information into your Employee Signage has multiple benefits. For starters, it helps keep your employees informed of events outside the workplace. In this regard, we do not recommend 24-hour cable news, but rather sanitized content feeds that are designed to avoid polarization and dissent.

We also believe in incorporating feeds that directly value your workforce. For example, having a live local traffic map displaying towards the close of the business day.

The other benefit of News and Information is that it helps ensure fresh content is regularly appearing on the display. This helps maintain the effectiveness of your corporate messaging.

It is all about the Content

When deploying Employee Signage, it is important to note the value of the solution is driven by the effectiveness of the content. Optimizing this value is best accomplished by:

• Aligning your content strategy with your business objectives.
• Understanding that effective signage requires impactful Content and Form. Quality graphics matter.
• Keeping content fresh and meaningful.

If you do these things well, you will soon realize that Employee Signage creates a positive Return on Investment, helping to drive superior business outcomes.

If you would like to better understand how an Employee Signage network can be integrated with your communications strategy to drive better engagement and performance, please schedule a 30-minute call with us here .

The post The Value of Employee Signage is driven by its Content: Part 2 appeared first on Blog by Convergent .

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The Value of Employee Signage for Crisis Management

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starbucks digital signage employee communication

This week’s business headlines were largely focused on Starbucks and the uproar associated with an employee having two men arrested for sitting in a Philadelphia coffee shop without making a purchase. Other events in this week’s news include the explosion of an engine on a Southwest Airlines jet, resulting in a passenger fatality, and an IRS software glitch that prevented taxpayers from submitting payments ahead of the filing deadline.

Last week, the driving business story was Facebook and the 87 million users affected by their data breach and privacy policy implementation.

In the current business and media climate, any organization – large or small – faces an increased probability that it will be confronted with a business crisis. How that organization reacts and performs is almost certain to be the subject of public scrutiny.

Employee Communications in these moments is of paramount importance

With all eyes on your organization, communications is key; not just to the public, but to your employees. In these moments, employees look for clarity and direction. They need to understand their role in the response, the messaging they are to provide to outside stakeholders, and where to turn for support, guidance, and leadership.

Social media heightens the importance of strong employee communications, as the things your employees say – and do – during a crisis are often amplified on social media.

The key attributes of Employee Signage in Crisis Management

Networked Employee Signage is a uniquely valuable communications channel during an emergency; standing as an integrated part of your blended communications strategy and offering key attributes, that include:

• Immediacy
• Direct Communications from Leadership
• Reaching non-digital employees
• Offering a Visual Medium that allows you to share rich media and data visualizations while improving message retention.

In addition, advanced Employee Signage solutions allow for cross-departmental utilization, internal social media integration, support for external news feeds, and live video transmission.

The Impact of Employee Signage: Before, During, & After a Crisis

One of the best ways to appreciate the value of Employee Signage in Crisis Management is to consider its utility before, during, and after the crisis.

In ordinary day-to-day operation, Employee Signage brings value in helping shape your culture to better respond to negative situations, or, better yet, avoid the instances altogether. In addition, there are a host of activities you can preplan for that will allow you to rapidly respond to crises when they occur.

Best practices for leveraging your Employee Digital Signage to better prepare your organization ahead of a crisis include:

• Engaging your employees with high-quality content that establishes and reinforces your culture, brand, and public posture. An engaged workforce will outperform other workers during an emergency.
• Mitigating Risk by using your signage to reinforce key corporate policies and promoting best practices. It is also useful to run awareness campaigns for items such as information security, sexual harassment, and a host of other topics that represent a risk to your business.
• Preparing for emergencies in advance by creating messaging and graphics that can be rapidly deployed. Consider the various constituencies within your organization and create content playlists to serve those displays with the most relevant content for that audience.

During a crisis, Employee Signage represents a critical channel in your communications strategy. Best practices include:

• Deliver crisp, concise messaging – everywhere. This helps:
o Eliminate confusion, frustration, and rumors.
o Reinforce operational response and messaging.
o Direct people to critical information repositories and other communication channels.
• Establish situational awareness through data integration with critical business systems and external information feeds.
• Leverage an Internal Social Media platform – such as Slack – in your Employee Signage. This will allow you to listen to your employees, facilitate non-leadership knowledge transfer, and keep your organization synchronized in its response.
• Utilize Live Streaming to your signage to more effectively deliver your leadership messaging. These messages can also be rebroadcast to the signage to heighten their effectiveness.

After the crisis has subsided, Employee Signage helps the organization in the following ways:

• Employee Recognition – Congratulating teams and individuals for their performance during the crisis.
• External Messaging – Ensuring that your team is informed of the key talking points and posture for communicating outside the organization.
• Temperature Checking – Point employees to support mechanisms. You can also leverage interactive survey features to better gauge if there are concerns that need to be addressed.
• Lessons Learned – Similar to best practices, use your signage to communicate lessons learned. This will help prepare your organization for the next crisis.
• Create Normalcy – Aid your organization in returning to “normal” by incorporating messaging to lighten up the atmosphere and instill a sense of routine.

Incorporate Employee Signage in Your Crisis Management Strategy

The recent events at Starbucks, Facebook, and Southwest Airlines serve as a reminder that events can occur at any time, placing your organization in the public spotlight. Your preparedness and response – whether positive or negative – will define market perception and impact your bottom line.

Employee Signage offers a valuable tool in your communications strategy , allowing you to better mitigate risk and engage your workforce before an event, better manage communications during the event, and helping your organization restore normalcy in its aftermath.

Employee Signage helps ensure that your organization excels when it matters most.

Learn more about our INSPIRE solution .

The post The Value of Employee Signage for Crisis Management appeared first on Blog by Convergent .

To view our Partner blog, click here