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A research partnership between award-winning digital signage provider ScreenCloud and the Department of Psychology at Durham University.
Effective Communication in the Workplace
Effective Communication in the Workplace
Effective Communication in the Workplace
Six behavioral science insights to help you connect with your deskless employees
Most lack access to a company email and intranet, leaving the bulk of manufacturing’s frontline deskless workers out of reach of traditional internal communication methods. In fact, 84% of deskless workers say they don’t receive enough direct communication from management. However, advances in digital signage technologies offer a powerful channel to engage the deskless workforce.
The screens on the walls of your factories and break rooms are one of the best ways to communicate with your deskless employees — cost-effectively, dynamically, and at scale. The fact is, digital signage receives 400% more views than static media.
While critical information is often prevalent in a manufacturing environment, it is only as valuable as its ability to reach its intended audience. With digital signage, all of your workforce can have access to the right data at the right time.
A research partnership between award-winning digital signage provider ScreenCloud and the Department of Psychology at Durham University reveals new behavioral science insights employers can leverage to better connect with deskless employees.
“We know about the cognitive processes that drive decision-making, how to influence behavior, and what engages people at work, but few people have combined these ideas and applied them to the deskless workforce.”
– Dr. Andrew Marcinko, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Durham University.
Processing Fluency and Framing
Processing Fluency and Framing
Marketing professionals have observed that being exposed to a brand’s advertising multiple times improves attitudes toward the brand.
Best Practices Include
simpler fonts
Users can easily process less text and larger, simpler fonts, which grab their attention and are more memorable.
and rhyme
Using alliteration or rhyming makes the text memorable, e.g., NHS’ successful blood donation campaign, Make a #DatetoDonate.
of numbers
Offer only one statistic at a time, which avoids increasing processing complexity or confusing the user.
conventional
top of screen
Share the most important information or key takeaway for the user at the top of the screen.
or gain frame
A loss frame is optimal for communications related to compliance, while a gain frame is best for something growth-related.
Avoiding Abstraction and Establishing the Norm
To navigate complexity, our brains rely on schemas, or socially shared scripts that kick into gear in response to a specific environmental cue.
Digital Highway Signs
Workplace Environment
When people talk about workplace culture, what they’re really talking about is a set of norms — in this case social — that guide employees’ behavior. Norms guide behavior interpersonally, too — we seek out leaders and role models we admire. These individuals can stimulate similar behaviors, as can the simple knowledge that other people are behaving in a particular socially/morally desirable way — also known as social proof.
Top Tips:
Highlight Dynamic Trends
Highlight dynamic trends (“A growing number of people ...”)
Positively Frame Information
Positively frame the information by emphasizing contextually high numbers (“98% of employees wear proper personal protective equipment.”)
Provide Visual Examples
On-screen, provide visual examples of individuals whom workers view as similar to themselves demonstrating a desirable behavior or attitude.
What is Attentional Spotlight?
Normative Influence
New Perspective
Normative Influence
Normative Influence
New Perspective
New Perspective
When thinking about how powerful a social norm might be, consider the lightbulb analogy — to increase brightness you may increase the number, strength/wattage, and proximity:
Just World Bias and Us Versus Them
Top Tips:
Incorporate People Images that Align with Your Audience
Include images of people similar to those you want to influence — “If the consequences are relevant to this person, they could be relevant to me.”
Build Empathy Among Colleagues
Build empathy among colleagues by promoting birthdays, anniversaries, and other informal accomplishments. Research shows that empathy can reduce the just-world attitude that “bad things happen to bad people.”
Social Exchange Theory
Top Tips:
Create Shared Identity
Use collective language to create a shared identity, more “us” and “we” and less “they” and “you.”
Avoid Creating Subgroups
Be conscious of cultural differences to avoid creating subgroups or alienating certain groups of employees. Take time to understand cultural differences within the target population (surveys, focus groups) and use images to convey information, when possible, to avoid language challenges.
Cross-Training
Leverage cross-training — where employees spend time working with a different team/business unit — or increase manager contact in the spirit of building trust and community amongst different teams.
Using digital signage to increase engagement
We wanted to transform our strategic corporate initiatives and make them more personal to our people. It wasn’t just about having an authentic voice as a business, we wanted to have a variety of voices – ones which more accurately reflected the business that it represents - a trusted voice.
Working with ScreenCloud we were able to achieve just that. Once we began to see the impact of using digital signage more effectively, we began to lean into it more, and it just became a virtuous cycle from there.
Example in Practice:
Find the Right Messenger
Behavioral science consultancy Spoon Agency worked with global construction company Skanska. They developed an effective safety compliance campaign using short films of employees’ children, parents, or partners expressing to them how important it was for them to return home each day. Employees were then given stickers for their helmets with similar messages from their own loved ones.
Digital screens offer a solution to present similarly personalized messages from high-impact messengers in various contexts.
What to consider when displaying content on screens
Additional Resources
