4 Ways Workplace Digital Signage Can Power Your Workforce Engagement

Deskless workers are the unsung heroes of the modern world. They keep the wheels of most industries turning, including production, manufacturing, labor, delivery, development, healthcare, education, and so on. Despite their invaluable contributions and importance, we still see a consistently high turnover rate and skills gap across industries that employ a deskless workforce. Why is this happening and can engagement methods, like workplace digital signage, make an impact on workforce engagement?

With over 80% of the global workforce consisting of deskless workers who keep essential operations running, businesses need to examine how they can improve their employee satisfaction and drive productivity through better workforce engagement. 

This is, of course, easier said than done. The remote nature of deskless roles means that employees spend large portions of their day in a factory, warehouse, or on the road, disengaged from what’s happening at ground level on the business. 

This makes engagement more challenging. Most companies have no formal communication methods for speaking or relaying important information to employees, relying on more social platforms like WhatsApp to communicate. 

As businesses, we need to ask ourselves: Is this really the best way to communicate with employees? How can we uplift and improve our communication methods to drive better employee engagement at work?

What Are The Benefits of a Fully Engaged Workforce?

If you look up employee engagement online you’ll find over 50 definitions floating around the internet! However, the general academic consensus is that we can define employee engagement as a psychological state experienced by employees that compels them to perform at work. 

Engaged workers tend to demonstrate three essential characteristics:

• Vigor 
• Dedication
• Absorption

Research from Gallup has shown that employees who are engaged at their workplace are more productive, which translates into greater benefits for businesses on the front end. Engaged employees act differently compared to disengaged colleagues, consciously aiming to surpass expectations in their efforts at work, giving their business a greater competitive advantage.

Disengaged employees are 60% more likely to make costly mistakes while at work, while companies with higher employee engagement show 21% greater profitability. Keeping employees engaged and motivated over the last 20 months has, however, been tough. 

Thanks to almost two years of an ongoing pandemic and resultant stress and anxiety, global employee engagement levels are at a low of 20%. 

This means that, around the world, 80% of the global workforce feels disengaged while at work, affecting business productivity and profitability. Gallup estimates that lost productivity through low workforce engagement costs the global economy $8.1 trillion each year. 

It’s clear that we need to prioritize improving workforce engagement levels, particularly for deskless workers who generally work long hours and often spend large portions of their workday alone.

What is Workplace Digital Signage?

Workplace digital signage is essentially signage consisting of multiple screens distributed across a business. These screens provide a highly visible internal communication platform, acting as a singular source of truth where employees can access accurate, up-to-date company information and just-in updates. 

But workplace digital signage can do more than that. When utilized strategically, workplace digital signage can educate, entertain, motivate and inspire employees no matter where they’re located. 

How Can Workplace Digital Signage Power Workforce Engagement?

On their own, screens are nothing special. But they have latent potential that, when harnessed with intention, can amplify messaging and supercharge employee engagement at every level. The visual and auditory capabilities of screens uniquely enable them, as a communication medium, to convey ideas and messages with more impact compared to static, text-based emails and SMSes. 

Here are just a few of the ways workplace digital signage can be harnessed to power better engagement at work 

1. Improve training methods
   
   A thorough training and onboarding process is crucial to ensure that employees have a solid grasp of their responsibilities and can perform effectively at work without unnecessary supervision. Workplace digital signage can help facilitate training sessions that are more interactive and engaging at a speedier rate, without employees having to be confined to a single physical room to complete their training. 
   
2. Streamline communication
   
   Effective communication is a challenge for any company, but especially for companies that employ a deskless workforce. Relying on unofficial messaging channels and platforms runs the risk of employees missing important company communications and messages. 
   
   It also makes it harder for employees to distinguish between work and personal time when they receive company messages on the same platform they use for communicating with family and friends, particularly if automated work messages come in after hours. Workplace digital signage keeps messages within a strictly work environment and ensures employees all have the same access to any company messaging. 
   
3. Make employees feel heard 
   
   It’s no secret that deskless workers often feel undervalued and unappreciated by their managers and CEOs, who often don’t have the time to listen to their ideas, frustrations, and concerns. Companies should actively work harder to make their workforce heard within the workplace. Workplace digital signage can help facilitate this by sharing employee feedback, ideas, and suggestions across the company. 
   
4. Develop an ideal workplace culture
   
   The state of a company’s workplace culture can make or break an employee’s experience. Toxic workplace culture has been a driving factor in the great resignation that’s dominated 2020 and 2021. If businesses want to retain their workforce, it’s imperative that they focus their efforts on creating a positive, inclusive company culture. 
   
   Workplace digital signage can assist in building better company culture, by sharing and celebrating employee achievements and team accomplishments, as well as company milestones and victories, all of which reinforce a sense of connection and purpose among a deskless workforce.
   

Conclusion

As we employ more remote and deskless workers in our organizations, it’s important that we continuously review how we interact with and support employees so they feel sufficiently engaged and productive when performing their roles at work. 

At ScreenCloud, we help companies optimize their workforce engagement with extensive digital signage software. Book a demo with us and we’ll show you how we can help to transform your workforce engagement.