5 Ways Digital Signage Can Save You Time and Money

Organizations with higher levels of employee engagement vastly outperform competitors in every area. Strong engagement equals less absenteeism, less turnover, less theft and defects. More safety, more profitability and better quality. And happier customers! 

Organizations with engaged employees reported 81% less absenteeism, 43% less turnover, 28% less shrinkage, and 64% fewer safety incidents. Gallup.

HR leaders working through the Great Resignation and/or the Great Regret and battening down the hatches ahead of the other ‘great R’ – recession – understand how business-critical engagement is, and that every cent and minute matters. How do you execute an employee engagement strategy fit for the times, that’s resource-lean and doesn’t break the bank? 

Sometimes, the solution is right under your nose. Digital display screens – which may already be on the walls of your warehouses, offices, corridors and break rooms – allow you to communicate cost-effectively, dynamically, and at scale. 

Screens have the potential to be the central digital touchpoint for deskless workers, and, while not an employee engagement tool, can be a driver of the same.

Leveraged properly, they help your organization to meet your employees' need for connection, and forge that all-important ‘psychological contract’ with their employer, and each other. 

Many workforces in the manufacturing, transportation, and supply chain and logistics industries lack a company email address, or are ‘digitally detached’, without access to personal devices when they’re on the clock. Even when they do, engagement with company-wide emails in real-time may be low, and research shows that content viewed on smaller screens (phones, laptops) has poorer recall.

Curious about how content across various devices and display sizes is processed by your brain? Check out The Neuroscience of Visual Media eBook, produced in partnership with University College London.

Across all industries, the opening and click through rates for internal emails is 79% and 15%, respectively. Bananatag.

While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, ‘saying it with a screen’ can play a role in keeping your deskless workforce up-to-date with key company announcements, health and safety notices, operational data, performance metrics, birthday messages, and even the news, sport, and weather. 

Displays are dynamic and interactive and your internal HR or communications team should have full control of what’s screened; via tools and apps that are already part of their workflows.

When implemented effectively, digital signage shows a significant return-on-investment (ROI). But how?

Going paperless

The use of physical documentation (leaflets, flyers, posters on notice boards) is generally being phased out, yet remains common in certain deskless sectors. 

Going sans paper saves the trees, as well as your precious time. By using digital signage to, say, promote the annual holiday dinner, you can create content online quickly – with design tools you already use, or editable templates – and start playing it to one or many screens, in one or many locations, at the touch of a button. 

“The Canvas app on ScreenCloud is a dream to use. The templates are all so useful and are great for when you want to create a new announcement quickly, but still want it looking professional.” Mark Hunter, Section Manager, Healthcare

Made a typo? Fix it in a second and see your edits reflected in real time. Want to know numbers? Add a QR code that your colleagues simply scan to RSVP. Simple, and, most importantly, scalable!

Digital signage will also save you tens of thousands in printing and photocopying costs. 

Going paperless pays off. On average, an employee in the US spends $80 per year on paper! Indigital.

Increasing productivity

Productivity suffers when your people don’t know what’s going on – who’s ill that day, what the delivery schedule is, which van is offsite for repairs. Displaying this information in a way that fits into your team’s workflows and is easily accessible and visible means employees in every corner of your organization are on the same page.

As well as announcements, digital signage solutions can display actionable and real-time data – dashboards, production analytics, and performance metrics and insights that help teams stay on track, on time and on budget. 

They’re also a great medium for educational health and safety messaging, and likely to be better received than paper posters covered in big red crosses. In fact, digital signage receives 400% more views than static media! Databeat.

Reducing churn

Did you know that 69% of disengaged employees leave their company for a mere 5% salary increase? Best Companies.

Churn is incredibly costly in terms of recruitment and retraining.

Engaged employees are the ones who feel listened to and valued, and privy to important information. Desk-based employees in office environments shouldn’t have a monopoly on this sense of inclusion and direct communication with management. Your deskless workers deserve the same level and transparency of dialogue, and to be met where they are – physically, and figuratively. 

Closing the gap between so-called ‘blue’ and ‘white’ collar workers is a key step in reducing turnover in traditionally high-churn sectors such as third-party logistics. 

The total cost of disengaged employees in the US is a whopping $450-500 billion per year. Best Companies.

Want to see how ScreenCloud can help streamline and scale internal communications at your organization? Book a chat with an in-house expert now.

Reducing overheads

Managing internal communications programs and initiatives is time-intensive. Imagine overseeing a team of 4,000, and having to distribute work anniversary or birthday announcements via email or internal messaging apps… that’s multiple a day, every day!

Even if you utilize screens, managing more than a few is impractical, as you’ll need to update the content manually for each and every screen. This takes time (and plenty of USBs), and you’ll likely run into formatting and scaling issues.  

Digital signage automates these morale-boosting processes, and many solutions include ‘behind the screens’ templating and scheduling modules. There’s no need to worry about the opportunity cost, and hard cost, of your HR or communications teams spending large chunks of the day on manual, repetitive tasks.   

Improving learning and development opportunities 

Every room with a connected screen is a potential training space. Use your displays to deliver training and upskilling videos in a format and duration that appeals to your deskless workforce, and supplements how they learn. Gone are the days of long sessions in conference rooms!

With digital signage, training is more accessible than ever, with larger-sized screens offering impressive viewing distances. Surfacing repeated and relevant facts, tips and guides is a great way to ‘learn by osmosis’, and seep into your employees’ subconscious.  

“Previously, our associates would only see safety videos during a safety meeting; now we can put them up on the screens all the time. ScreenCloud is a tool that we can use to spread the world about anything to anyone.” John Kindy, Training and Development Specialist, Granger Waste Services. 

In a time of hiring freezes, reduced budgets, economic uncertainty and a seismic shift in how we work; digital signage may seem like a nice to have, or lower down an HR professional’s to-do-list. 

Yet, informed and engaged employees have a direct and quantifiable impact on hard metrics such as retention and productivity, and even company performance. Getting the messaging right, and pairing that message with the right medium – screens! – is an important step in building community within your organization. 

The ROI of an affordable and feature-rich digital signage solution like ScreenCloud is great; a business investment that will deliver bang for its buck and position your organization as one that’s ahead of the curve in communicating with, and caring for, its people.  

Digital signage: dynamic, cost-effective, scalable

ScreenCloud is the only solution you need to drive engagement, productivity and sales with digital signage. To get a free trial or demo today, visit https://screencloud.com/contact.