Why You Should Use Digital Signage in the Workplace
Digital signage is an overlooked way to communicate in the enterprise. Let’s face it, most employees don’t enjoy checking internal social networks and other internal portals for daily/weekly company updates. Most of us get into the office, and are busy with meetings, work, emails, projects, and client communications.
It’s hard to make time to learn about a new hire via their personal bio, or to check out the latest HR update on an internal communications portal. We just don’t have the time or bandwidth.
That’s where digital signage can be a huge boost. Think of it as the corporate water cooler. It’s easy to disseminate bite size pieces of information, and get employees curious about upcoming changes. Quickly digestible images, video clips and tickers allow employees to easily absorb important information without too much effort. Let’s take a closer look.
Practical digital signage examples
We’ll start with an example:
The accounting department requires a new way to submit expense reports using a new application on an iPhone or Android. An email blast gets sent out, maybe even a communication is published on your intranet. Since people aren’t making new expense reports everyday, they will forget. In addition to the regular communications, you can broadcast a condensed message on screens throughout your offices, reinforcing your message and leading to better adoption of the new expense report process.
With the low cost of high resolution, large monitors, it’s easy to put these displays in corporate cafeterias, highly trafficked corridors, and in front of major entry ways. Since people will encounter these screens several times a day, it reinforces your message on a subconscious level.
For example, we see a picture of a new marketing manager and her name, so we’ll be more likely to recognize her, and engage her in a conversation. Or, we want to remind employees to update their computers before the end of the month, where typically, many email communications are required to get users to do so. Instead, use digital signage to reinforce those behaviors.
What makes a good digital signage system?
At this point, hopefully you’re on board with the value of digital signage, but what makes a good digital signage system? Good digital signage systems allow for multiple and simultaneous dynamic multimedia content plus granularity. Think a CNN news broadcast as the main video feed, a bottom ticker and maybe a side bar of rotating content on a regular basis, plus local content which speaks to that person’s department on the corresponding display (IT people see IT related news, sales people see the sales dashboard, etc…).
Another important aspect to consider is how the signage system supports delivery content to hundreds of displays. As we know, video content can take up a large amount of bandwidth, and the last thing we’d want to do is strain internal networks with a digital signage system. So before reaching for that consumer solution or something hacked together, speak with an AV integrator and see what exists for enterprise level clients, preferably a solution with multicast. Also, you’ll want to make sure that your digital signage system is secured.
How businesses are using signage
When our client Catamaran redesigned their corporate campus, they wanted to bring information sharing into the digital age with a lot of dynamic content which informed their teams not just on what’s going on in the company/department, but the pharmaceutical industry as a whole. After they implemented our digital signage system, adherence to new policies increased, employees were more knowledgeable about company wide initiatives and local departmental projects. In addition, Catamaran employees began to rely on the display to grab bite-sized pieces of information about industry trends.
You can engage your employees with digital signage, too
Dynamic content in the enterprise is so important. Employees often feel so overwhelmed by the amount of resources and information floating around that it can be hard to make sense of it all. Digital signage helps cut through the noise, and delivers the message on a medium which everyone feels comfortable with and requires little to no effort for your audience. Just program your message, and your employees will receive the information.
