The acronym KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, is ubiquitous in the business world. KPIs measure the progress of specific, success-oriented goals or targets. They help to make sure that promises made are promises kept.

KPIs, however, are only truly valuable when they are made actionable. Therefore, it is crucial that they are made widely available.

Sharing company-wide KPIs with your team can help keep them on track, encourage positive behavior, boost motivation, and in turn increase profits. Previous research by Gallup highlighted that highly engaged teams show 21% greater profitability.

This blog post will explore below workplace digital signage’s role in sharing KPIs in a visual, up-to-date, and intelligent way.

Why Use Digital Signage for KPIs?

Companies need an easier way to share important information to all their employees, even those who work remotely, that isn’t left in an unread email or forgotten from the last company meeting. KPIs should be made visible to keep accountability and engagement on your employees’ minds.

Workplace digital signage is a dynamic visual tool that makes the sharing of KPIs easier than ever particularly because of automation, integration, and reach.

Automation

Manually inputting your most important data to share on a visual screen is both time-consuming and laborious. Automation will allow your data to stay relevant and up-to-date in real time and with considerably less effort.

Workplace digital signage today is moving beyond traditional methods of sharing. As Kaijus Asteljoki, CEO of Valotalive, states:

“We are entering the era where employees expect the right information to find them. Not the other way around… The information – whether that’s company KPIs or a tweet regarding a new customer case study – should be in context, and in a visual format so that the essence is understood with a glance.”

Automation is key to ensuring that digital signage shares information more intelligently (i.e. set at the right time to the right target audience) to make it more valuable to your teams and employees.

Integration

Undoubtedly, companies today use a multitude of different applications to keep the wheels running and applications like Microsoft Power BI and QlikView, for example, can be used to visualize, track, and analyze KPIs. Integration of these applications in digital signage is essential to increasing transparency, staying informed, and helping to imagine actionable next steps.

Reach (Broadens Audience)

Workplace digital signage offers companies an easy and familiar platform to share KPIs (and other relevant data) while employees walk through the building, have a cup of coffee, or work from home.

Using digital displays to highlight the latest figures also moves the dissemination of vital information from a purely hierarchical form (i.e. from boss to employee) to a more open and communal form of communication, which can potentially broaden its sense of ownership and improve overall engagement. This makes sure everyone has a vested interest in their company’s success.

As Olli-Pekka Saksa, VP of Futurice, aptly said in an earlier blog post:

“Make it everyone’s business: top execs, managers, teams. Everyone should feel the ownership of continuously improving the engagement in everyday situations and with everyday decisions.”

It can also break down silos and make sure all departments or teams can have an opportunity to share ideas or offer alternative solutions to a given problem/goal.

Pro Tip: Quarterly Themes

It is crucial to be strategic in your choice of KPIs. Verne Harnish in his book, Scaling Up (2014), talks about the value of having themes that last only one quarter each.

Ask yourselves: “What is the single most important thing going on in the business in the next 90 days that we want everyone to be aligned on? (pg. 154)” and then identify some key metrics to ensure success.

You can make them as creative as you want. Harnish shared an example used by Gene Browne as he grew The City Bin Co. in Ireland. Browne created a campaign called “Saving Mrs. Ryan” (a play on words of the Hollywood Blockbuster “Saving Private Ryan”) to focus on attracting 10,000 new individual customers. Their target audience was homemakers identified as “Mrs. Ryan.”

Giant posters were placed in the company’s main office to “advertise” their rescue of “Mrs. Ryans from the ‘Soviet era’ service of a rival firm” and a board in the main office was used to track the success of “the door-to-door ‘assault’ team to rescue them” (i.e. new contracts being signed).

A bit of creativity will be needed to emulate such a fun ‘tacit’ but digital signage can be used to save time and energy (and be a greener company to boot) by ditching posters and boards and automating all the vital information in real-time.

Who knew sharing KPIs could be so fun and engaging!

Further reading you might find interesting

https://valota.live/workplace-digital-signage-for-internal-communications/

Writer: Jade Rosenkranz is a communications freelancer interested in building connections and storytelling.

Reference: Harnish, V. (2014). Scaling Up: How a few companies make it . . . and why the rest don’t. Gazelles, Inc.: Ashburn, VA.

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