Can Digital Signage Increase Organizational Transparency?

We’ve all heard the news; more transparent organizations are in. This seems to be the case regardless of whether you’re a startup, SME or big corporate. At ScreenCloud we know that more transparency helps our company to flow better, particularly between a distributed team. We have an investor email report that goes out every month and the same insights are detailed in our monthly Medium blog as part of the ScreenCloud Journey. 

We collect small pieces of data, review them and share often. For some organizations, perhaps this isn’t obtainable. There may be financials which can’t be shared outside of the C-suite, internal changes not for social media or certain statistics which could erode your reputation if misunderstood.

This is where the power of good internal communications comes into play. We think all day about how we communicate with the outside world (social media, email, website, advertising) but we rarely build the same depth of strategy for our employees.

Let’s think for a moment here; who has the best knowledge of your company and the best ability to sell it? It’s probably the 20 people you sit next to everyday. 92 percent of people trust recommendations from individuals (even if they don’t know them) over brands (Nielsen), well guess what folks; those individuals are your employees as much as they are your customers.

This had us thinking; if organizational transparency is so important and clueing our staff members up on what they should be doing is too, then what’s the easiest route to get there?

One of the most underutilized strategies is digital signage. Here’s why:

Provide information that employees are already looking for

People, employees included, don’t make decisions lightly. When we head on holiday we might check TripAdvisor, before we purchase anything on eBay we look for stars and ratings and when it comes to who we work for the same is true. 

As we’ve said before, digital screens by their very nature are a company culture signpost. They tell anyone interviewing who you are through visual manifestations of your values, activities and customer testimonials.

Furthermore, details on company success, financials, employee count and staff turnover is information your employees are already searching for. Why not present it to them in the same manner? 

By doing so, you show that you value them enough to share and that there’s nothing to hide on the company health check. Sure, they don’t need to know every in and out but a simple company dashboard up on the digital screen in your office is a great start. 

Give employees more creative control

With any transparency exercise you could be forgiven for thinking it’s another stream of data farming that you, or your IT department, could do without. Here’s the thing; employees can be in charge of what shows on your digital signage screens as much as anyone else.

Just like many companies now provide the social media reins to employees in house rather than agencies or anyone else, digital signage can and perhaps should, be given to the people.

This opens the door to what can be shared and increases transparency not just from the top down but across the company as a whole. Employees have the ability to implement or raise new ideas (digital voting board anyone?) and when there are popular ideas, they gain traction quickly and are discussed from around a digital campfire. 

According to studies, the key to happiness at work is autonomy. Why not let your employees show off their ideas and creativity by letting them decide on the office communications that get shared on your digital signage network?

Create a message board that can be easily consumed

The last thing any organization needs is another stream of information employees have to actively consume. There’s a ton of empty space in the physical environment, from walls to corridors and space in the lunchroom. These are perfect spots to throw up a couple of screens and create a cheap, digital signage display as an electronic bulletin board that can be populated with information that makes transparency much more obtainable.

The key is to let people take in information in periods of rest or passive interest - not creating yet another channel they have to log into or receive slack notifications for. 

Monitor and adapt information easily 

The reason many of us don’t share information as often as we should is because of the difficulty of getting it out. Pulling reports and creating documents in a way that can be transferable to the company intranet or big screen are all progress blocks. 

But what if you could make use of information you already have and know? The report that went out last week, the Trello boards that show your product progress or your web traffic stats? Of course, then it would be much easier to pull them into a dashboard tool like Screenful or Dash and have them update automatically with each development. 

Digital signage displays can be created as easily as they can be changed. As soon as the information becomes out of date you can click ‘delete’ and then ‘upload’ to replace a slide or photo. We say it’s as easy as uploading an image to Facebook or creating a tweet because really, that’s how simple it is!

Monitoring and adapting information becomes easy and when it’s easy your entire company gets a glance at what’s going on. Here are a few of the content choices you could make that allow you to adapt or create content in ten minutes or less. 

Increase the transparency of your organization with digital signage

Digital signage is a project that anyone could implement and that leads to better internal communications, more employee control and a much more adaptable, smarter office. Why not give it a try? Use your 14-day free trial at https://screencloud.com to see for yourself.