When you use digital signage as part of your communications with employees, does the content broadcast mainly come from the head office? Or are you also trying to involve local offices or teams?
▶️ Creating content that can get everyone's attention, while acting in a centralized manner, can be challenging, especially for large organizations. In this article, you will find out how to set up a “glocal” internal digital signage strategy, by creating locally relevant content, without losing the graphic aspects and values associated with a global brand.
❔ Why move towards a “glocal” internal dynamic signage strategy?
For a company, it is important to develop an effective internal communication strategy in order to encourage the involvement of employees and to create in them a feeling of belonging to a group. However, it's not always easy, especially in larger organizations. In fact, the larger the structure, the more complex the task is, given the increase in the number of obstacles, sites and collaborators. It is necessary to overcome the barriers of language and time zones and to master cultural differences. Information that seems important to one office may easily not be important to another.
In the context of an international business, a central internal communications team may seem cut off from the realities of “in the field” and may lose sight of what the various teams need to know. This can lead to the feeling of unaffordable and conceptual communications, missing out on local data that creates context and makes sense of the information being disseminated;
in fact, assuming that there is an internal communication team (often, this function is assigned to another team, which works on it part-time and lacks resources). It is therefore not surprising that 74% of employees feel that they are missing out on company information and news, according to a study by Gallup.
What is the solution? What can a company do to share information with its employees more effectively? One method is to adopt a “glocal” approach, i.e., think globally and act locally. This requires abandoning the top-down communication strategy and being more open to sharing information.
🌐 Create “glocal” content
“Glocal” content is a blend of local and global information, not only from headquarters but also from local offices, factories, and warehouses. The content also has a global aspect (consistent tone and brand strategy), while presenting local data.
Here is an example with Diana Pet Food, a Cenareo customer who uses digital signage to communicate internally with its 1,000 employees: ”Our screens broadcast information about the company and current projects, they allow you to share best practices and introduce new employees. They also provide local information, for example by announcing the presence of a food truck in the factory parking lot” . Studies carried out by the company reveal that 90% of employees are satisfied with this system.
👨 💼👩 💼 Engaging more people in content creation
The abandonment of a top-down communication strategy requires the participation of a greater number of people, by allowing employees to share local information and news. The advantages are multiple: the content created is more interesting and attractive, employees feel supported and heard, and their successes recognized, and the organization shows a consultative communication strategy.
It also reduces the workload of the central communication team, which must constantly create content. Local communication is also more effective. The role of the central internal communication team is becoming more strategic. In the case of Diana Pet Food, local sites have the possibility to take control of their own communication: “Currently, nearly 80 people have access to the management platform and have user rights administered by the head office. Each piece of information can thus be local (in connection with a site), regional (in connection with a content) or international (in case of company-wide communication). The latter case represents 70% of the messages.”
🎨 Create consistency with models and a strong brand strategy
Brand strategy and corporate messages bring harmony and coherence to a company's communication; but a “glocal” approach does not mean abandoning these aspects. They are even more essential. By providing local content creators with a content model to use, you maintain consistency and make each message a perfect example of corporate values. The use of a content management platform makes it possible to develop a custom graphic charter for your brand; You can thus be sure that each of your employees will respect the colors, the font or the logo of your company in all the content intended to be displayed.
🚚 A “glocal” broadcast
Not all employees need to see all the messages sent. Bombarding your employees with messages is the surest way to transform your digital signage screen into a pure decorative object. You need to identify which information is relevant for all employees and which is relevant to a single operational division or department. It is then a question of disseminating this information to the public concerned, after having translated it into the local language. Use a dynamic content management system that offers an audience targeting function. At Diana Pet Food, for example, “distributing company content in English to Brazilian employees would not make much sense. Thanks to the content management platform, we can easily feed each of the screens according to the language spoken, via the “screen groups” function.”
Allowing more people to participate in internal communications may seem risky; however, implementing the right technology (such as user rights management to automate the approval process) will benefit you. By implementing a “glocal” digital signage model for your internal communications, your content will be more interesting, your employees will feel better informed and your central communication team will be able to devote more time to strategy, information filtering and distribution channels.
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