5 Ways to Use Digital Signage in Offices

Digital signage has the potential to revolutionize the modern workplace, improving internal communications, boosting the employee experience, and making the office more efficient and productive.

Digital signage is mostly talked about as a great marketing tool with the ability to draw in customers, increase sales, increase customer engagement and customer loyalty, and spread brand awareness. But digital signage also works on the other side of the equation: the people behind the business, doing the work that makes retail possible, and even coordinating marketing strategies that draw upon the advantages of digital signage.

In this article, we will go over the basics of what digital signage is, the benefits that digital signage can have for the office, and then we delve into five concrete examples of how you can make the most out of workplace digital signage.

What is Digital Signage?

Digital Signage involves the use of digital displays, such as TVs, LED displays, LCD displays, tablets, and pretty much anything that can project digital content, along with digital signage solutions, such as digital signage hardware, digital signage software, content management software, templates, and media players (all of which make of the digital signage system) to display digital content.

The different types of content that can be displayed on a digital signage display screen is astounding: images, text, animations, social media feeds and social media walls, video content and video walls, interactive apps, wayfinding information, real-time data analytics, infographics and company performance metrics, testimonials, birthday shout outs, and so much more.

Moreover, you digital signage display might be as big as a billboard or as small as a tablet or anywhere in between, so there are countless opportunities for strategic placement of the right types of screens for the right types of content.

How Do You Set Up a Digital Signage System?

The first thing you need to do is get a screen, whether it be a tablet, a flat-screen TV, or a giant LED display. With this, you will also want to procure a wall mount to mount your display to the wall. Mounting the display to the wall will increase visibility and save space.

The next thing you have to do is find the right digital signage solution for you. You can either get digital signage hardware, complete with a media player and in-house digital signage software, or you can go with a cloud-based digital signage solution, in which case you will need solid wifi connectivity since your content management will happen off base in the cloud. Going with the hardware option is typically a one-time investment while going with a cloud-based digital signage solution will typically be paid for by the month.

Once you have your screen, your mount, and your digital signage solution, you are all set to put your digital signage system to use, which will typically involve using the templates provided with the digital signage software to create content and digital signage playlists to be displayed as you see fit.

How Can Digital Signage Benefit Your Office?

1) Clear and Convenient Group Messaging

Workers often suffer from message overload due to the time it takes out of the workday; important messages can thus get lost in the mix. With digital signage, you can display critical internal communications that need to reach your team in real-time. Time for open enrollment in the company health plan? Remind your workforce through digital signage where they can’t be missed.

2) Automated Internal Communication

Curate digital signage content through an automated system. You can create original content, or you can import it from other internal communication streams. It’s the perfect outlet to share reminders, new policies, and employee recognition in an interactive way. It can even display basic information like a conference room schedule.

3) High-Visibility for Your Mobile Workforce and Digital Signage Benefits

Whether it’s a hotel, a construction site, or a manufacturing plant, frontline employees are on-the-move. Checking mobile devices for work messages often happens during breaks and after hours, and time-sensitive information might be missed. The digital signage benefits make it the perfect team communication tool to distribute information in real-time.

4) Improved Workplace Safety and the Benefits of Digital Communication

Digital signage can help ensure workplace safety. If there’s an equipment failure on the factory floor, that message needs to be distributed immediately so it’s seen by all workers right away. Digital signage offers an internal communication channel that’s perfect for immediate alerts, which is a great benefit of digital communication.

5) Fosters Workforce Collaboration

When employees are gathered together in one place, like in a break room, digital signage displays can offer conversation starters: a new company policy, results of an employee survey, or the employee of the month. As the information streams, employees can read and discuss the topics together. This creates connections for better teamwork and increased collaboration.

6) Increases Transparency with Corporate Digital Signage Communications

Transparency is a big-ticket item when it comes to increasing employee engagement. It’s the ultimate trust-builder, and a growing trend in corporate culture. Sharing company metrics and performance flattens company hierarchy and engages workers. They get a visual of where the company is and where it’s headed and can align their goals accordingly for digital signage corporate communications.

7) Creates a Better Company Culture

Corporate culture is shaped by internal communication. Digital signage can be an integral part of creating a thriving company culture with more workforce-focused content, such as celebrating employee birthdays, introducing new workers, and baby announcements. When employees feel acknowledged and appreciated in the workplace, it creates a culture of support and camaraderie which help with employee retention.

5 Ways to Use Digital Signage in the Office

1) Share Important Company Information

It is well known that data-driven businesses are more likely to succeed in general because they can quickly identify problem areas. However, this business-critical data is often segregated and unavailable to the grassroots level workers who bring about the actual impact.

Displaying your company’s sales and customer statistics on your digital signage screen will align your employees' and top-management ambitions. Employees are better equipped to comprehend client behavior and discover how close they are to achieving the actual figures.

It is important to show other information as well to contextualize company statistics. By creating a digital signage playlist with company statistics combined with industry trends, company forecasts, company metrics like KPIs, and company goals, an employee will be able to fully understand their role in the company and their company’s role among other competitors, the company’s goals, and how their own work contributes to these goals, and will overall have a better comprehension of their company’s situation.

All of this information could be sent in an email, but it is a fantasy to think that an employee would read such a detailed report while they are busy working on their specific jobs. Not only is digital signage more eye-catching than email, but digital signage also makes comprehension of such data so much easier because of the use of visual aids and other innovative methods that help to explain complex information in a clear and understandable way.

This kind of information is incredibly beneficial for an employee since the employee will go about their job with a clear idea of what they have to do. Moreover, in knowing how their role at the company connects to the broader goals of the company, the employee is likely to feel a stronger sense of community among their fellow employees and management.

2) News and RSS Feeds

Everything happening in the world affects business. That is why at least one screen in your corporate office needs to be tuned into the live news feeds all the time. Adding the top global news apps to your digital signage playlists, such as CNN News, BBC is a must-have in places like the breakroom. News feeds also serve as infotainment for your corporate clients waiting in the reception bay or meeting rooms.

RSS feeds is another fantastic example of digital signage content. RSS feeds are live updates from news channels, blogs and practically any website. Corporates can follow RSS feeds of industry-specific news channels or their competitors to stay updated on the latest trends.

By prioritizing the dissemination of this kind of information, managers send a message to their employees that it matters to them that they know what is going on in the world. Sometimes work in an office can feel isolated from the outside world, but by showing news and RSS feeds, employees are better able to contextualize what they are doing and potentially come up with innovative ideas that they would not have come up with otherwise.

3) CSR Contributions

Another interesting example of corporate digital signage media is showcasing the corporate social responsibilities of any company. Your organization can display images and text-based messages that remind employees of your CSR principles. Screens in high-traffic areas such as waiting-lounges and entrances are the best locations to showcase your CSR initiatives.

Volunteer opportunities, images from community efforts, real-time data indicating how much waste or energy is being saved across the organization, donation amounts, and anything else that can be useful to your company culture can all be included in your display content. The overarching purpose is to remind and reassure everyone in the firm about the good that is being done because of their efforts.

4) Employee Recognition and Photos

Frequent employee recognition, preferably once per week, results in better work output. And yet, only a small amount of corporate management understands the importance of employee recognition. Corporate offices can leverage installed displays to show an employee of the week or star employee of the month. Photos from company events are enjoyable to look at and help strengthen community connections.

Team profiles also serve to represent the office culture. Displaying some behind-the-curtain images or videos of office fun and frolic can prove to be a fantastic first impression to clients and visitors. Another great piece of information to add would be the recognition of employee birthdays. While a shout-out isn’t exactly the same as a cake and an office full of people trying to sing happy birthday in unison, it can still feel really nice that the company recognizes the importance of the birthdays of individual employees.

After the shout-out, that employee will probably get a lot more happy birthdays from their fellow employees who might not have known that it was their birthday if not for the announcement. Overall, displaying this kind of content can significantly boost employee morale and also foster a greater sense of community among employees.

A happier workforce is surely a more productive workforce, and if management shows that it cares about its employees, it is quite likely that those employees will return the care in the form of good work.

5) Time, Calendar, Appointments, Schedules, and Directories

If there is one place that needs a calendar and a mammoth-sized digital clock, it is the corporate workplace. There can be no argument against the fact that manually managing hundreds of meeting schedules and appointments calls for miscommunications and business losses.

Digital door signs, meeting room signs, bulletin boards, and chamber displays are the best strategic locations to show appointments and daily timetables. Scratching out canceled appointments & overwriting the new dates is already sounding repulsive. Instead, a digital signage software is ten times more organized, and the company receptionists can update schedules within moments.

Towards a Revolution of the Modern Office

Digital signage may at times seem to be overhyped, but when you look at all the things that can be accomplished by digital signage both as a marketing tool and as a means for employee communications, one can’t help but be convinced that the hype is justified.

Of course, integrating office digital signage into the everyday affairs of an office does not happen overnight and there may be some speed bumps. It's important to get feedback from employees about the company’s approach to digital signs and to make changes according to common themes. Eventually, the digital signage system will be running smoothly and the work that it took to implement it will surely pay off.