“Cincera, how can we help convey to our staff, teams, suppliers and clients that we are ‘working through Covid-19 safely?” is the question we are being asked nearly weekly now.
With Covid-19, the government has released a set of guidelines to help employers keep their workplace as safe as possible. Employers have no choice but to think of some other, more creative ways to deliver the right information to the right employees at the right time. Over the past few months, we’ve produced a series of videos for businesses to help spread awareness and introduce any new processes.
Case Study: RATP Dev London
RATP Dev London is one of the largest bus operators in London, running 1,129 buses and carrying some 250 million customers every year safely to their destinations. We’ve been working with them for a number of months on their internal comms with graphics and videos.
To help them with Covid-19 comms, we produced a live action film which featured key members of the business talking about the measures they have introduced. We paired this with a motion graphics animation video which re-emphasised those messages. The purpose of these videos was to show and put at ease their staff, key stakeholders and clients that they are constantly reviewing the safety policies. Both of these videos have been used internally and shared on social media.https://www.youtube.com/embed/RR7djXgcEd0?feature=oembed
Here are some ideas and best practices to ensure your communications are effective speaking to all the people involved in your business.
1. Choose the right content formats
The type of content consumed whether you are a retail business with walk in customers would be very different to if you were for example a multi-national organisation with thousands of employees. Think about your people and where the ‘hang out’ often – this could be by their computers, on the road (so more on their smartphone), or even digital message boards within your premises.
2. Gather all Covid-19 updates in one place
Most businesses have multiple channels of communication – e-newsletters, social media pages, website, blogs etc. This makes it harder to convey your messages so ensure all key information is gathered in one place so they don’t miss anything.
3. Enable conversations
This is my most favourite and the most powerful one. Enable 2 way conversations with your people. This could be with using clear call to actions, having a dedicated member of staff they can come to with questions or even an email they can contact. You want to show your employees and clients that you are approachable and ready to hear from them with any concerns, fears or questions they may have.https://www.youtube.com/embed/rw4Db6hsAcU?feature=oembed
4. Personalise and humanise your messaging
With a lot of the content provided by the government and other bodies, it is very generic and all eventually ends up looking the same. If possible, try and create your own content to match your companies branding. This makes it more attractive for people within the organisation to stop and watch. We take this into consideration when creating videos – if we are creating videos for screens within an office, we try and make content go past faster as attention span is much lower than if you were to send a video to their smartphone.
5. Continue to re-emphasises key messages
All workplaces have a duty of care to their employees to ensure that they can work safely. During these unprecedented times there is now an increasing need for employers to provide clear communications and training around the new safe working practices in relation to Covid-19 in order to ensure compliance with the latest Government guidance. Here are some messages we’ve been pushing out through multiple clients:
- Wear a face covering where possible
- Maintain social distancing
- Regularly wash your hands for at least 25 seconds
- Try work from home where possible
- Call 111 when feeling unwell
- Use the hand sanitation stations around the office
If you are exploring creating Covid-19 communications and are looking for guidance, ideas or want to talk through how it could work, please get in touch. I’d love to chat and help you keep your organisation safe.
