Although 2020 has been a year of unprecedented challenges, it has also been one of tremendous opportunity – especially in the Financial Services Industry (FSI). Innovations in FinTech have drastically changed the way the world banks. But it’s not just consumer-driven technologies that are changing the game. Enterprises worldwide are turning to Microsoft Teams for webcasting and videoconferencing to bolster internal communications and reach remote employees in new and unique ways.

The Value of One-to-Many Communication Tools for Employee Engagement

The reason so many banking, insurance and capital market organizations have flocked to Microsoft Teams for live video broadcasts is simple: there is a lot to gain but even more to lose by not supporting employee engagement.

Let’s look at the numbers:

• A survey of 400 companies with 100,000 employees each cited an average loss per company of $62.4 million per year because of inadequate communication to and between employees
• For every 0.1 percentage point employee engagement increased, individual Best Buy stores saw a $100,000 uptick in annual operating income
• Quantum Workplace surveyed 75,000 employees across 18 industries and found that the finance industry ranked 10th for employee engagement

Quantum Workplace also found that leadership’s commitment to creating a positive work culture is the number one driver of employee engagement. According to their report, Employee Engagement in Finance, “Coming out of the shadow of distrust that dampened recruiting and retention efforts since the Great Recession, it’s not surprising that today’s finance employees expect a positive and supportive culture from their employers.”

A study released by Qualtrics in April 2020 examined employees’ mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the biggest issues plaguing employee wellbeing is a lack of communication and unclear expectations. In fact, an employee whose manager is not good at communicating is 23% more likely to experience mental health declines.

One of the best ways to create a positive culture – particularly during troubling or uncertain times – is to implement video into your communications strategy.

Business Benefits of Enterprise Video

One of the biggest benefits of using video for enterprise communications is that is can be used asynchronously, meaning viewers can watch it when it is convenient for them, not just for corporate headquarters. This helps avoid long, complex email chains that can be difficult to follow given the number of new emails arriving in an employee’s inbox daily (120 on average).

Recent research shared by AIHR Digital supplies even greater context:

• Employees are likely to retain 95% of a message when they watch a video
• 93% of internal communicators believe video is a valuable tool
• 59% of executives would rather watch a video than read text

In addition to a general preference for it, video can help increase executive visibility to build trust between leadership and employees. While virtual updates cannot replace face-to-face communication, video helps create a culture of informed credibility and authenticity.

How to Scale Live Events in Teams and Stream

For financial institutions with global offices and employees, this is all great news, especially with new features for Microsoft Teams and Stream releasing monthly. You can broadcast Teams Live Events like CEO Town Halls and All Hands Meetings to up to 20,000 employees, and when the event is over, it will automatically save to and populate in Stream for those who were unable to attend to watch later.

There is one caveat though: bandwidth in corporate offices.

Not having enough can mean buffering at best and event failure and disruption of business-critical applications at worst.

With the majority of the workforce still at home, this might not seem like a problem; however, even a limited number of staff onsite (roughly 20%) pulling video directly from the source can overload your network. Before COVID, it was commonplace for organizations to broadcast live events from theaters and auditoriums. With physical distancing measures the new normal, anyone who once sat in the auditorium will now be streaming video individually at their desk.

While your first thought might be to call up your internet provider to purchase more bandwidth or to go out and buy hardware that will extend your network, it’s not the most cost-effective solution…or the fastest .

An enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) built on a foundation of WebRTC technology is.

Kollective ECDN for Microsoft 365 and Financial Services: KBC Bank Case Study

A Microsoft Gold Partner, Kollective is trusted by more than 135 Global 2000 enterprises to deliver seamless live event broadcasts. Our end-to-end ECDN platform and services enable organizations to reach all employees, unlocking new levels of productivity and collaboration – just ask KBC Bank.

With Kollective ECDN, they were able to achieve:

• Engagement and collaboration at every level
• Ability to broadcast simultaneously to KBC’s 42,000 employees worldwide
• 1500% increase in video production and distribution
• Video distribution times reduced from two days to under two minutes
• HD-quality video streamed from any location and on any device

If you’d like to learn more about how Kollective helped transform digital communications at KBC Bank, download the case study.