The Ultimate Guide to Setting Up a Digital Bulletin Board to Connect with Your Team

Effective communication is essential in any workplace. Without the right form of communication, employees may not feel properly valued or engaged. Employees might not be able to share ideas and innovations effectively, grow as a team, and overall contribute to the achievement of company values and project performances.

Today, a digital bulletin board system is serving as a way to enhance communication. A digital employee bulletin board is a basic television display screen used to provide employees with pertinent and relevant information in real-time. This type of display differs from traditional bulletin boards in that it doesn't require papers to be physically managed and can have better designs and layouts that enhance communication instead of being overwhelmed and detracting from good communication. 

Learning how to create a digital bulletin board in your workplace can empower your organization to provide a modern solution to enhance team connectivity.

Steps to Setting Up a Digital Bulletin Board

Learning how to create a digital bulletin board hinges on successfully planning your communication needs and goals after which you can design things like the layout and the content, pick the hardware and software you want to install, and then maintain the digital bulletin board for office spaces based on things like feedback and regular monitoring.

Step 1: Planning Your Digital Bulletin Board:

The first step to a successful digital employee bulletin board is planning what you currently need and how a digital system would meet those needs.

Assessing Communication Needs

When planning your digital bulletin board for office spaces, you need to assess your communication needs.

• Does your office need a way to improve reservations for conference rooms?
• Does your company need a way to facilitate better onboarding or ongoing training for your employees?
• Does your company need a way to make wide-scale announcements to all employees regarding current IT issues or changes to policy from week to week?

Setting Goals

Once you have assessed your communication needs, you can set the goals. For example:

• A sales department might want to provide better communication about current promotions or known technical issues, even updated meeting schedules from week to week with a digital display, in which case the goal could be to implement content that is designed for three key areas including:

1. Weekly promotions that they can pitch
2. IT issues they need to be aware of
3. Announcements

Choosing the Right Content

You'll need to choose the right content based on your goals and needs. The sales department example above might not work effectively for your HR Department or your R&D department. However, something else might work better particularly things like a digital bulletin board outside of conference rooms or board rooms so that people can make reservations or see which meetings and trainings are coming up.

Step 2: Designing Your Digital Bulletin Board:

The second step is designing the layout and the type of content that you will display on that bulletin board.

Layout and Design

The layout and design, touched upon earlier, is based on the type of content you choose to display. The layout and design for meeting room availability is going to look different than the layout for onboarding for new employees.

Branding and Customization

Branding and customization are central components of any digital bulletin board system you have in your office. You might consider ways that you can use images, text, or even watermarks the same way you might have used traditional marketing to ensure that everything on your digital bulletin board is branded with colors that relate to your company, images, or other customization that enhances your company values. 

Content Categories

Decide on the categories of content you want to display based on your company's needs. This might include:

• Training
• Onboarding
• Notices
• IT announcements
• Office Hours
• Conference room availability 

Step 3: Setting Up and Installing Your Digital Bulletin Board:

The third step is setting up and installing the hardware and software for your digital bulletin board.

Hardware Installation

Hardware installation might be fairly easy if you are using basic television screens that you already have and mounting them to the wall or on a freestanding unit. Some companies might choose to invest more and mount them on the wall in a recessed design, which might require third-party contractors.

That said, hardware installation should take into consideration the angles at which content is displayed so that it can be easily viewed whether a patron or employee is sitting or standing. It should also take into consideration the height for the same.

For example:

A digital employee bulletin board in the lobby might be at eye level, whereas one that you install inside a conference room for updates during a meeting might be at eye level for patrons and employees who are sitting.

Software Setup

The next step is the software setup which typically involves connecting your primary hardware device like a computer to the physical display screen either wirelessly or with cables and then connecting that to the software you choose to use via Bluetooth settings or Wi-Fi. 

Content Upload and Management

Once this is all set up it's time to create and upload your content after which you'll need to regularly manage the material that you have on display.

Step 4: Launching Your Digital Bulletin Board:

When it comes time to launch your new digital bulletin board system you'll need to make sure that everyone is made aware of the process.

Employee Onboarding

This starts with employee onboarding so that employees understand where the screens will be, what type of information they will use, and how they will be used.

Communication Strategy

You will also want to provide employees with your current communication strategy using that digital bulletin board.

Initial Feedback

At this time, and moving forward throughout the coming weeks and months after your launch, ask for initial feedback. Be prepared to accept Insight from employees on what things seem to be working well and what things might need to be adjusted.

Step 5: Maintaining and Updating Your Digital Bulletin Board:

The final step is long-term maintenance.

Content Management

Content management is an essential component to making sure you get the most out of your digital bulletin board. The information that you share needs to be regularly managed and updated. 

Consider the example of the sales staff above. In order for that information to be pushed on a weekly basis with real-time updates, someone needs to manage either on-site or remotely the content being displayed.

Monitoring Engagement

A big part of this is monitoring the engagement as well to see what things are working and what key analytics are going up as a result of the digital communication.

Continuous Improvement

By tracking key metrics and seeing how your engagement is working, you can decide where to continuously improve. These improvements might be simple things like the layout and design or branding of the material you share, but they might also be location, type of display screen, or other insights.

Conclusion

Managers and business owners alike should consider implementing a digital bulletin board for office communication as a way to enhance and improve connectivity in the workplace, overall productivity, and effective management. Companies that choose to invest in a digital bulletin board system will enjoy many long-term benefits for improved engagement, better feedback, and overall employee satisfaction.