Whether or not you have a formal crisis communications plan in place, communicating with your workforce during difficult times is necessary to keep your team, customers, and business moving forward. With dispersed and remote workforces, video is a very successful form of communication that can help curb panic and instill confidence that things will get better.
Below, we have outlined seven benefits of live video communications during uncertain times:
1. Body language and tone matter
More than 90% of human communication occurs through body language. When you can see the person as they speak, you gain a better understanding of how they are feeling. Facial expressions communicate a deeper level of emotion and create a connection that has a significant impact on the delivery of your message. When you can hear the tone of their voice and see their facial expressions, it’s easier to understand the importance of the message being presented and it helps build trust, credibility and integrity that other forms of communication simply don’t offer.
2. Video builds relationships
The quality of your relationship helps you survive the ups and downs that inevitably occur in difficult times. Live video enables you to create a connection, which in turn, boosts the success and strength of your relationships. Using email, audio, or slide shows doesn’t provide the opportunity to build camaraderie with your audience. Face-to-face conversations are always most effective, but in this day and age, that simply doesn’t scale. Live video offers all the same attributes, providing the greatest form of persuasion, engagement, and leadership. Whether it be energizing the culture or navigating challenging times, live video gives you the ability leverage emotion and create a bond between you and your audience.
3. Demonstrate that you value your people
When you get in front of the camera and speak authentically, you show your audiences that you care about them. During a time of crisis or change, having senior leadership take the time to present to them what is known, what is being done, that this will end, and what to do in the meantime will help your workforce understand that you value them. Distributing live video updates will help inform them and help them feel connected and valued within the organization.
4. Create greater efficiency with effectiveness
Scale and efficiency are very important in both large and small organizations, but effectiveness is the true measure of success. If we only focused on efficiency, then why is email so ineffective? How many emails have you received this week that fell flat, lacked true emotion and made no connection? How many emails did you ignore completely? Live video if done in an authentic and transparent way, captures and holds people’s attention. It gives you an authentic and authoritative voice that demonstrates a commitment to your words.
5. Develop unity and alignment
High-functioning, successful organizations have a strong sense of unity and commitment within their teams. Live video is more effective at delivering a message with context and in a convincing manner. When your workforce believes in the vision and understands their role in achieving that vision, you have the ability to achieve employee buy-in and support, even with those employees located around the globe. This unity helps create organizational alignment for greater velocity and success in achieving your goals.
6. Create a common voice and values
We’ve all had it happen… There’s nothing worse than talking to five different people at a company and hearing them explain five different value propositions. You would think they worked at different companies. Achieving a common voice and set of values across a global organization is difficult, but necessary. Listening and watching a sincere leader share their voice and company values can help employees understand and take to heart these messages. Live video allows your leadership to deliver the context. It helps create a memorable narrative and connects concepts together creating a consistent voice and set of values across the company.
7. Create a sense of urgency
Live video has a unique quality of being real and in the moment. It grabs your attention and creates the unconscious feeling that if you look away, you risk missing something. It’s raw and captivating for an audience. Urgency is a powerful emotion that can rally organizations, creating the unity and motivation to take action.
In challenging times such as crisis or change management, the way you communicate is as important as what you communicate. Live video offers many of the benefits and effectiveness of face-to-face communication, while still achieving the scale required. For a limited time, Kollective is offering a free enterprise video strategy consultation with one of our experts. Get started doing video today with help from our experts. Learn more and sign up today: EVS Consultation.