Digital signage for Glocal internal communication

When you use digital signage to communicate with your employees, does the content come mainly from head office? Or do you also try to involve local offices or teams?

▶️ Creating content that catches everyone's attention, while acting centrally, can be difficult, especially for large companies. In this article, you'll discover how to implement a "glocal" internal digital signage strategy, creating locally relevant content without losing the graphic aspects and values associated with a global brand.

❔ Why opt for a glocal digital signage strategy?

For a company, it's important to develop an effective internal communications strategy, to encourage employee involvement and foster a sense of belonging to a group. However, this is not always easy, especially in large organizations. In fact, the larger the structure, the more complex the task becomes, given the increasing number of obstacles, sites and employees. Language barriers, time zones and cultural differences have to be overcome. Information that seems important to one office may not be to another.  

In an international company, a central internal communications team can appear cut off from the realities of work "on the ground", and can lose sight of what different teams need to know. This can give the impression of unapproachable, conceptual communications, missing out on the local data that creates context and gives meaning to the information disseminated;  

And that's assuming there is an internal communications team (often, this function is assigned to another team, working on it part-time and under-resourced). So it's hardly surprising that 74% of employees feel they miss out on company news and information, according to a Gallup study. 

What's the solution? How can a company share information more effectively with its employees? One way is to adopt a "glocal" approach, i.e. to think globally and act locally. This means abandoning the top-down communication strategy and being more open to sharing information.

🌐 Create "glocal" content 

Glocal" content is a mix of local and global information, sourced not only from headquarters, but also from local offices, factories and warehouses. The content also has a global aspect (consistency of tone and branding), while presenting local data. 

Here's an example from 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, share best practices and introduce new employees. They also provide local information, such as the presence of a catering truck in the factory parking lot". Studies carried out by the company reveal that 90% of employees are satisfied with this system.

👨‍💼👩‍💼 Involve more people in content creation  

Moving away from a top-down communications strategy means involving more people, by allowing employees to share local news and information. The benefits are manifold: the content created is more interesting and attractive, employees feel supported and heard, and see their successes recognized, and the organization displays a consultative communication strategy. 

It also reduces the workload on the central communications team, which must constantly create content. Local communication is also more effective. The role of the central internal communications team becomes more strategic. In the case of Diana Pet Food, local sites are able to take control of their own communications: "At present, some 80 people have access to the management platform, with user rights administered by headquarters. Each piece of information can thus be local (linked to a site), regional (linked to content) or international (in the case of company-wide communication). The latter represents 70% of messages.

🎨 Create consistency with models and a strong brand strategy

Brand strategy and corporate messaging bring harmony and coherence to a company's communications, and a "glocal" approach doesn't mean abandoning these aspects. In fact, they are even more essential. By providing local content creators with a template of content to use, you maintain consistency and make each message a perfect example of the company's values. Using a content management platform allows you to create a customized graphic charter for your brand, so you can be sure that each and every one of your contributors will respect your corporate colors, fonts or logo in all content intended for display.

🚚 "Glocal" distribution 

Not all employees need to see all the messages transmitted. Bombarding your employees with messages is the surest way to turn your digital signage screen into a purely decorative object. You need to identify which information is relevant to all employees, and which is relevant to a single operating division or service. The next step is to distribute this information to the relevant audiences, after translating it into the local language. Use a dynamic content management system with audience targeting capabilities. At Diana Pet Food, for example, "distributing company content in English to Brazilian employees wouldn't make much sense. Thanks to the content management platform, we can easily feed each screen according to the language spoken, via the 'screen groups' function".  

Enabling more people to take part in internal communications may seem risky, but implementing the right technologies (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 communications team will be able to devote more time to strategy, information filtering and distribution channels.

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