Visual communication is the visual transmission of ideas and information through video, animation, images, GIFs, and other visual media.

Visual communication has proven to be a more effective way to organize important information and share it with your audience (whether that’s coworkers, team members, or external clients). This article takes a deeper look at the definition and history of visual communication, as well as its relevance to businesses and organizations of all sizes.

Since 65% of your workforce are visual learners,  it’s no wonder the business world is calling for a platform powered by strong collaboration and pro-level design capabilities, to support the creation and distribution of effective visual communication.

Just to be sure we are all on the same page. When we say, “Visual Communication” we are referring to the following:

• Print, digital, static, and video marketing & sales content
• Internal communications delivered visually
• Data visualization
• Illustrated, animated, or video how-to guides
• Posters
• GIFs
• Memes
• Live & recorded presentations
• Online conferences & events
• Training videos
• Live social media videos

There are a number of benefits of visual communication, but here are some of the most important ones. With visual communication you will be able to:

• Break through the digital noise & capture attention
• Bring visual order to confusing information
• Clarify the most important ideas
• Make personal connections, even at a distance
• Formats & platforms are optimized to share visual content
• Images, animation, and video make a deeper impact than text alone
• Tell a more powerful story

Traditional means of communication are breaking down as work, school, and play are moving online. In today’s globalized and virtual world, everything starts and ends with visual communication experiences. Organizations looking to set themselves apart are embracing visual communication. As a result they are creating experiences people enjoy while also delivering the right message, which is hard for many companies to achieve.

Why Communication Is Broken Today

The amount of information we deal with each day is astounding. Just look at the numbers.

A person receives an average of 94 texts per day, and in the last decade alone, the use of SMS has grown by 7,700%. That means that about 560 billion texts are sent around the world daily.

The average employee gets about 120 emails per day, with a response rate of between 5% to 25% on average. Despite the low response rate, employees spend about 2.6 hours per day in their email inboxes, going back to check them on average every 37 minutes.

In addition to personal and professional communication, the average pair of eyes unconsciously sees up to 10,000 ads per day. This is up from 5,000 ads just a year ago.

In other words, everyone is overwhelmed, and looking for ways to:

• Break through the noise
• Work remotely without a miscommunication nightmare
• Present messages in a way that actually gets them consumed
• Achieve the goals of your communication

This is where visual communication comes in. By leveraging multiple types of visual content, like video, presentations, images/GIFs, animation, etc.,  you can convey your message in a more powerful way.

To understand exactly how we got to this point, and how to actually benefit from visual communication, it’s important to review its evolution through the ages.

A Brief History of Visual Communication

Communicating visually isn’t new to humans. From cave paintings to the printing press, all the way through television and the World Wide Web, we’ve been on a quest to make communication more visual, more personal, and more instantaneous.

For businesses, the last 20 years brought us the cumbersome Learning Management System (LMS). Complicated software that could deliver course content online. While this model worked well for some organizations, as technology has evolved, the LMS morphed into the Learning Experience Platform (LXP).

While the name may have changed, the actual experience has not. A platform that only serves one department or situation can actually get in the way of serving timely, valuable information to your colleagues.

Fast forward just a bit and we find ourselves in the mobile revolution. Going mobile and the creation of social media platforms has only accelerated this phenomenon like no one could have predicted. Cisco notes over 70% of the world’s population will be connected via mobile device by 2023. The rise of mobile-first image and video-heavy platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram seem unstoppable, and changing the way we connect with friends, colleagues, causes, and communities.

It isn’t just the technology that’s found its way into the workplace. Younger Millennials and GenZs who have grown up using GIFs, images, and emojis make up a bigger share of the workforce by the day.

Today, we have instant connection with anyone, anywhere. We have generations with vastly different technological capabilities and communication styles, all working together. And we have an untold number of tools, with more launching every day, to create visual content.

But somehow, we remain overwhelmed, and true connection and communication seems even farther from our grasp.

Humanity Is Still Buffering

With all these changes, humans still process information the same way. The question is, are we giving our teams the tools they need to understand our message clearly? Or are we being carried away with over-communication, blind to the overabundance of screens, ads, emails, notifications, dings, and pings?

For the average human, the overload becomes stifling. For employees, constant distraction and unessential information slows down productivity and focus. In a company, thousands of messages get lost in translation.

So as organizations, we must ask ourselves, how can we keep evolving our communication styles to improve our connectivity, as opposed to feeling overwhelmed or disengaged?  

For those with crucial messages to communicate, how can we reach an oversaturated audience amidst the media madness in an effective, efficient, and engaging way?

Approaching Communication Visually — The Next Evolution

It’s time to transform everyday communication into more than senseless grunts, text overload, or pretty, yet overwhelming images, messages, and notification.

The next evolution of human communication calls for engaging with memorable experiences that actually create connection and deliver value. We must press pause on the need to communicate more, and instead, focus on the need to communicate more effectively.

It’s no longer enough to write an article, make a spreadsheet, or send an email. With an onslaught of incoming information, consumers and employees simply cannot consume it all.

We have what to learn from what our ancestors used for so many millennia before use and embrace the art of storytelling.

Why Is Visual Storytelling So Powerful?

The power of visual storytelling rests in the delivery and comprehension of a message. If we think about it, the story is the oldest form of content. It works because it’s a memorable and impactful way to deliver a message, or a moral. It‘s easily relatable, entertaining, and engaging. It’s a key tool for evoking emotion – and in a world living in somewhat self-isolation, we need as much connection as we can get.

Visual storytelling in the workplace takes this deeply human approach to delivering an important message to your audience, and uses state of the art technology and channels to engage and connect.

The difference between a visual communication platform and just another online content creation tool is in the approach which honors how we relay messages and how we receive messages — inviting a refreshing connection between creator and consumer.

In fact, it changes the passive consumer to an active “engager.”

Communicate Differently

The next wave of innovation is the intermingling of technology to support a more valuable form of communication, and so content, in terms of creation, delivery, and engagement.

Should we be surprised? After thousands of years spent grunting, we can acknowledge that our history speaks for itself. And that our future may only flourish with a more refined, essential, and effective approach to how we connect.

Of course, this is only just the beginning.

The post What Is Visual Communication? appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

As people consider the realities of a post-pandemic world, they are beginning to imagine what returning to work might look like. Up until this point, we’ve battled through noise interruptions and subpar home office set-ups, all while being tethered to endless video conferencing. We’ve been innovative, finding office space in corners we never even knew existed.

Even with some of us caring for kids full-time, we’ve accomplished more than we thought possible. One study revealed that working from home increased productivity and led to healthier lifestyles. According to Gallup, remote workers are even more effective than on-site workers.

The pandemic has had a negative impact on many aspects of daily life, as well as on entire industries, but it has also shown us that the workforce is resilient. The stigma of remote working is gone, thanks to the greatest work-from-home experiment in history. This “experiment” is proving to managers that working from home is a viable option.

Furthermore, there is now a call for greater efficiency and competitiveness and many industries are pivoting to keep up. For example, online streaming is ramping up competitive strategies to go head-to-head with Netflix. The National Institute of Health launched a competition for diagnostic testing, with NIH Director Francis Collins saying, “This is an effort to do at an unprecedented scale and speed what the world is waiting for.” 

All of this forward momentum is because crisis breeds innovation. It will be the companies that are able to adapt and use technology well that will find themselves ahead of the competition. In the race towards innovation, how we communicate between teams is going to play an even more pivotal role.

This pandemic is placing companies in an “innovation accelerator.” Everything is being shaken up and we need to establish new standards for collaboration in our organizations based on what we’ve learned during this time, regardless of if we continue working remotely or not.

Here are 3 ideas of how to do this effectively:  

Employee experience matters

Today, location is no longer an issue or an excuse for exclusion. Now, teams can collaborate from across the hallway or across the world. This means that it’s time to rethink the employee experience.

How are your remote employees communicating during this new world of work? What were the highlights and lowlights of their time at home? How can you make their experience more productive? How can you communicate better across teams?

Create a way for employees to easily and regularly provide concrete feedback. Then, make sure to incorporate that feedback strategically to optimize employee experience and simplify things when possible. The payoff will be happier employees and boosts in productivity.

Visual communication is more than Zoom

Video is an extremely effective tool for communicating, and can be used for trust-building between employees. While some employees see tools such as Zoom as infringing on their privacy while working remotely (we’ve all seen the pantsless newscasters), company management should be encouraged to use video in an effective way — especially to connect emotionally with teams — over other forms of communication.

It doesn’t always need to be live to be effective, but visual communication drives transformational efficiencies in all areas of business, making work more seamless for employees. So if it’s using video to train employees or send a message from the CEO, it’s been proven time and again that people generally tend to respond better to messages received via video over other forms of communication.

Invest in training

In order for employees to be able to leverage new technologies, they need to know how to use them. When companies plan their digital roadmap, it’s vital to consider whether their systems have a quick start-up time, as well as how much training these new systems require of their workforce.

Embrace a test-and-learn culture that communicates to teams that new technology uptake is an important effort. Driving home during training that new technology has the potential to make their lives easier, more productive, and to keep the company moving forward, may help with adoption.

Among other things, this pandemic will be remembered as the tipping point of a technological revolution that changed every aspect of routines and work-life balance. As airports and train stations sit empty, we’re witnessing the rise of remote learning, telemedicine is booming, and people are swapping out a morning commute for more hours of shut-eye.

While this has all happened quickly and unexpectedly, we can use these learnings to innovate for the long-term. As changes unfold in real-time, the steps outlined above will help ensure that your company stays agile and responsive. 

The post How Covid-19 Has Changed The Way We Communicate at Work appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

As a manager right now, the challenge with communication starts with the sheer amount of noise. Phone calls, Zoom, Slack messages, emails, text — the cost of communicating has our ears buzzing. And it isn’t only within your team, but from different departments around the clock.

The orchestra of buzzing demands for a concise and engaging way to communicate both with your team and across your organization. You need a strategy to turn the current mess of miscommunication into something crystal clear. This includes creating task alignment, summing up online meetings, and continuous training and upskilling.

Video calls play a part in allowing your team to see each other and connect, but they can’t solve all your challenges. You need to be making the transition from video calls to video creation for remote employee engagement. 

 By creating engaging videos with your team, you can easily explain, inform, and inspire your business to action. Even in the times when people feel isolated and stuck, video and visual communication has the power to move your talent to rise above.

My LinkedIn post addressing remote managers on the topic

Below are 7 ways that remote managers are using video creation to clear the noise around them and foster remote employee engagement: 

Weekly Updates

One of the toughest parts of your week comes right at the beginning, with your weekly updates meeting. Working remotely, it’s even more difficult to engage distracted employees during this sync. Make your updates crisp and easy for your colleagues to understand and take action.

Here are some visual communication ideas to help keep Weekly Updates organized:

• Use a video to open your meeting with last week’s wins or how projects performed. 
• Bring information top-down and loop in team members on a new piece of technology in a way that is visually engaging.
• Wrap up with a clip that maps out this week’s goals, priories, and assignment distribution.

EDIT THIS TEMPLATE!

Data & Knowledge Sharing

As a manager, data is the backbone of your strategy. Across communication channels, people are sharing stats left and right, but there’s no way to see them all at once. When presenting data remotely, employees can easily overlook these out-of-context numbers. You can change that.

Here are some visual communication ideas to share data and knowledge:

• Make an intriguing video that organizes all the data recently collected to show your team.
• If someone on your team finished up a research project, have them share a research summary video with their key insights.
• Present a video encouraging team members to share things they’ve learned work for them to be efficient at home. It can create a great sense of being connected and learning!

EDIT THIS TEMPLATE!

Online Meeting Recaps

Virtual meetings with your team, individual team members, and colleagues across departments can hold a lot of information. After any of these calls, coworkers can feel confused about what to do next. 

Here are some visual communication ideas to recap an online meeting:

• Help your coworkers in other departments by sending them a video with your meeting’s recap and what your teams will respectively do next.
• Offer a team member a quick video of post-meeting priorities so they don’t waste valuable time.

EDIT THIS TEMPLATE!

Training & Upskilling

As a manager, it’s never been a more important time to help train and upskill your employees. Use this time as your chance to offer professional development while working remotely.

 Here are some visual communication ideas to train and upskill your team members:

• Make them a video invitation about their upcoming training session, highlighting what they’ll be learning and how excited you are to see them grow.
• Send a soft skills training video, and challenge them to implement one skill every day.

EDIT THIS TEMPLATE!

Company Announcements & Updates

Turn company policy emails into captivating videos. With the new adjustment to remote work, now is not the time to bury them with emails, but to delight them with engaging, memorable content.

Here are some visual communication ideas for Company Announcements:

• Flip traditionally dry guidelines and company policies into engaging videos.
• Commit to sending 2 videos per week with all of the company-related updates delivered as animations. Your team will actually look forward to these since they’ll be visual, situational, and relatable!

EDIT THIS TEMPLATE!

Wellness & Remote Working Tips

This might be the first time anyone on your team has worked remotely, and that could be isolating. Be sure to make your employees know that as a manager, you put their wellbeing first. 

 Here are some visual communication ideas to help your team be mindful:

• Send your team members a quick video of how to set up a productive and calming workspace.
• Encourage them with a video to take time to walk around, exercise, and meditate.

EDIT THIS TEMPLATE!

Employee Recognition & Positive Company Culture

Without being around the office, employees can feel both literally and figurative unseen. As a manager, it’s important now more than ever to show employee recognition for all their hard work.

Zooming out, try to consider how your company’s culture is adapting to working remotely. This is your chance to set an example and establish employee recognition as a cornerstone of your positive remote culture.  

 Here are some visual communication ideas to show employee recognition:

• Create a video to show appreciation for someone who went above and beyond. 
• Take it to a macro level and send a video to the whole department or even company, telling them how much you value your team now more than ever.

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We’re Here For You!

Powtoon’s professionally designed video templates make it easy for managers to engage remote workers and keep positive vibes high! While you may be wary of adding more tools to your remote work stack, we promise that making videos with Powtoon is as simple as making the slide deck presentations you’re already making (but aren’t great at engaging). 

Got ideas of your own of how to use videos for remote employee engagement? We’re all ears! Let us know in the comments below. If there’s a video template that you need which you don’t see in our template gallery, also let us know! Your feedback is always valued and appreciated. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

See Remote Working Templates

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