Engaging Workers in a Hybrid Government Workspace

Quick Take:

Hybrid work can create a disconnect between in-office and remote employees. Engaging both groups keeps teams aligned, morale high, and productivity steady—no matter where people are working from.

• Foster a Community. Create a sense of belonging so remote staff feel just as “in the loop” as those in the office.
• Maintain Clarity. Ensure consistent messaging so no one misses important updates or policy changes.
• Support Collaboration. Bridge the distance gap with tools and communication that bring teams together.

Don’t let hybrid work create hybrid chaos. >> start the conversation today.

Whether facing natural disasters, civil unrest, cyber attacks or public health crises, city and county agencies must act swiftly and clearly. The four phases of emergency management (prevent, prepare, respond, recover) provide the blueprint. Let’s breakdown how municipalities can safeguard both staff and citizens at every stage.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the webinar on mastering communication, engaging frontline workers in a hybrid government workspace with digital signage. A lot of words. Basically, what we're gonna do first is just define those terms. Right? We talk about frontline workers. That's anyone who's critical or essential to the operation of the organization, who not necessarily, but quite likely engages with the public directly.

Then when we talk about communication and what engaging means, right, when we talk about engaging, the idea here is that you have an audience that needs to know something, you have a message, and when they engage, it means that they've obtained and retained that information. So the premise of this webinar is you have frontline personnel, you have messages that they have to know to operate effectively and to calls to action and things like that. How do we use digital signage and digital communication to bridge that gap beyond kinda what email used to be? So that's kinda the premise of the webinar today.

We'll do some introductions here in a second. The agenda, kind of what we're talking about to make sure that this webinar is useful to you, is we're gonna talk about beyond your typical digital signage of of screen on a wall, like how we do that engagement for people who might not be in front of those screens or they're mobile, or they have a phone, or they work from home. Like, what are all of our communication methods to get this message out to this audience? We'll talk too about very quick messages that have to go out to people, especially like emergency alerts, safety, how like security works.

And then we'll talk about users where a digital screen or digital message doesn't quite work for them. Right? So how do we make sure that if we have someone who has a visual impairment or doesn't walk by the screen, how do they have options to engage and get that message, in a way that works for them? Then we'll talk a little bit of security compliance, how it works, and then we also have a few customer stories sort of within the agenda.

So it doesn't really have its own section, but Davion will have some cool things to talk about as well.

So as far as who's on the call, I'll introduce myself first. I'm Colin Gross. I'm the sales engineer over here at Carousel. So I do a lot of demos and verification on, you know, the system's gonna work on a technical level.

But then we also have data visual. And I think when we talk about communications, it's not usually just one tool that kinda solves everything. It's a lot of different tools and a lot of different things that need to come together, to make that work. So someone like Data Visual can help tie all of that together in a nice package, and they have a lot of experience knowing what a customer needs, what the outcomes need to be, and picking the right tools for that.

So I will have Davian introduce yourself first, and then we'll have Peter introduce yourself, and then you can talk a little bit about who Data Visual is from your perspective.

Perfect. Good morning everyone. I'm Davian Badu, I'm the key account manager at Data Visual.

I also work with the consultants in the space. So as it pertains to Carousel, one of our great brands that we have on our Data Visual line cards. If in your markets, if you do see Carousel on your specification via consultant, there's a good chance I might be involved in it as well. So that's where I am and good morning once again.

And I'm Peter Chartrand. I'm the regional sales manager for Ottawa and the National Capital Region. And just want to say a few words about Data Visual.

We are the one of the largest AV distributors in Canada representing over fifty top tier AV lines. So those the tools that Chris just mentioned, we can certainly help you with those.

At the end of the presentation, we're going to talk a little bit more about data visual on display. It's a tour that is happening right now across Canada. And we'll have more information about that at the end. But for now, I'll turn it back over to Chris to start the presentation.

Perfect, thank you. I think my video froze, but you can enjoy that snapshot while I continue. A little bit about who we are at Carousel.

We're a software company, and we're focusing really on a tool and an ability to create your messages, like your content for your audience in a way that's easy, in a way that's effective. Right? So sort of our approach is we give you a tool that allows you to create, schedule, manage content, and then give you tools to send that out to specific endpoints so that the users who need to know this information can see it. You can kind of see it as sort of an evolution of of email.

Right? With email, you can message someone and they get it. With signage, same idea. You have these visual, empowering, effective communication options that you can kinda use Carousel for to sort of achieve that.

Now, what kind of brings us all together, right, digital signage has been around for a long time. It's been around, you know, even just signage in general, posters, things like that have been thousands of years, right? But what's kind of happening sort of in digital age and sort of as we seem to all have to, we all have more work, we all have more roles. Right? Something that we kind of are seeing now is that instead of communication being sort of a nice to have, right, and it's usually like a video wall or something nice, that becomes, you know, crucial. Right?

A crucial part of that communication strategy. A thing that does become vital, that does have a return, and that does improve the effectiveness of workforce or at least of a team when we're talking about kind of a smaller section of that.

So kind of the the end goals. Right? We always have to talk about, like, what are our goals. Right?

We can talk about features and and and cool stories and things like that. But, really, in the end of the day, the end goal is typically, I have a gap that I need to solve. I have users that need to know something. I have that information to give them.

I wanna improve that communication. Right? I think that we all have, yeah, our inboxes can get quite large, right, when we have them. Some users don't have email.

Sometimes they just have a shared computer. So, like, how do we bridge the gap and sort of make sure that the important messages are seen, and acted upon?

Now when we think of signage and digital signage, a lot of times we think of just stuff on screens on walls. Right? You're walking into a lobby, you're going through a hallway, you're in a meeting room, all these are still very important, But that isn't always where these personnel are gonna be. Right?

So when we talk about communicating directly with your audience, we need to target screens of all sizes. That's gonna include TVs on the wall still, that's gonna include personal devices, that include phones, desktops. Right? How do we make sure that one place that you put your messages can go to a different a bunch of different areas?

And I think you have a pretty good term for this Davion, if you wanna kind of go around. Obviously, we're talking about signage and I'm talking about communication, but I think you have a pretty good term. I wonder if you would share that and give your definition of Absolutely.

So I do a lot of presentations with digital signage or I coined a new term called digital messaging. So as Colin mentioned, normal signage, you're you're pretty much going to an organization. You have a static screen or maybe a screen that's just showing regular signage. What's unique and I think is pretty cool about Carousel is that your screensaver, for instance, they mentioned that you could have signage on different devices. So you could have your screensaver to be actual digital signage channel.

So what's unique about an experience that I had, a work anniversary came up and I walked away from my computer and I walked back to my laptop and so happens my screensaver was playing, it says happy work anniversary Damien. So right away I thought that's exactly how we would love to have our signage to be played. So I'm located in the Toronto region, and what's great about it also is the fact that there's like a, you know, I would say a hybrid workspace. So a person going to the office, sometimes they're not able to be a part of what's happening to the office space itself and in their back home.

So, imagine if you're able to then share the same content which shown in the office itself and then, being played at your desktop as a screensaver. So corporate culture is now, changing. And with that, we're able to now share that same content from your home office to the actual office space, so when you have to actually go in. So over to you, Colin.

Fantastic. Yeah, I think that kind of leads us to the idea that like people are in a lot of different places and when they feel like they're actually kind of being served, like when they're at home or in your case, right? It just kinda feels better and it kind of brings them together, right? This is kind of like, there's obviously like the feel good side of things.

And of course, there's also like some raw metrics and some real like stories of like how this actually improves things. I think too, it leads us to a going back a slide here. But it leads us to sort of the idea that it can also be sort of a two way communication. Right?

So like an example that Carousel has is we have a feature we call the Carousel daily. Essentially, the screenshot, it's what is happening up there in the upper left. The ability to have sort of like a widget on a Android or Apple device, right, that can just show your most important messages, things that might be also going to the screen, that when you click them, can also have calls to action. Right?

So think of an idea of like, you need to sign up for this thing, or there's this training, or this is a security compliance thing you have to finish. You can just have that message that lets them know, hey, don't forget to do this. Then when they click it, they can also get routed to, like, the login for that service or get routed to that portal that they need to use to fill something out. Right?

So now we can kind of not just get messages where people are, like, might be at home or they might be on the road or they might be like a sort of like a a room that, like, drivers go into before they they go out for the day. We can also sort of engage them directly in devices. So if there's something important that's a call to action, they can get there too. Right?

And I think that really goes into the idea of this being, you know, digital messaging. Right? And not just digital signage.

Perfect.

And then as far as, you know, like I said, there's there's like the community side of things. Right? It's nice when you're on a team and you you see that you're getting recognized for being your anniversary or you did something good, there's a shout out, something that just feels a little bit better than an email sometimes. But also on the back end, it it has to have metrics that it is it is successful and it is useful.

Right? So we'll talk about some more like outcome stories, but then we also have some like data tools. You can actually make sure that people are using these tools. They're actually engaging on those calls to actions.

Being able to have like on the back end, some like proof of success is important. And we have some of those tools as well. And then also just like engaging with customer stories. Right?

Typically, how these projects start is that there's a problem. Right? I have a gap and then you go to someone like data visual, right? You say what the gap is, and then we help you find that solution.

Rarely do like digital signage projects start with, I want digital signage. It sometimes starts with, I have emails that aren't getting opened, which seems like a weird way to kinda get there, but that's kind of where we see things start.

Getting that all together and making that seamless, where like you post a message, it's going onto a screen in the lobby or like in a in a back back room or a hallway or a meeting room. And that's also going to the app and it's also going to an Internet site. Right? And it's also going on the accessibility site, which we haven't talked about. That's, you know, part of what Carousel does. But then there's other tools that go beyond signage that can kinda work all together to just make this as seamless as possible.

And one of our best examples of that, and one of our best stories today is how we do emergency notifications. Right? So typically, there's like another tool, something like, single wire InformaCast or Rave mobile safety. There's a lot of them that essentially can take in emergency inputs, be it like an app or a, fire alarm or something like that.

They can send messages to like phones and desktops and things. And a cool thing that we can kind of do on a signage perspective is take that in. So when there's like an urgent message, like a very time reactive message, we can get that on the screen as well. Right? And that's just kind of one example.

And I'll kinda show you how that how that works.

But kind of an example of, like, signage, like, isn't a silo. It's it's a part of the whole solution. And finding that whole solution and finding the right things that work together, it's gonna reduce the amount of time that your users have to spend to manage that, and just approves the flow of that information.

David, I think I'll send it over to you. I think we have another story of I think we have a customer that to respect of their privacy and their NDA, we can't say who they are, but we can definitely talk about the issues that they had and kind of what we presented and kind of how we solve them with some engineering on many company sides.

Absolutely, thank you once again. Also, the opportunity that we're discussing is actually, it's actually not too unique in terms of where we install these type of systems. So, if you have any clientele, for instance, that wants an emergency notification and signage, we put it together as pretty much one package of data visual. So as Peter mentioned earlier, data visual we have over fifty lines and so what we try to do on a daily basis is bring those lines together to create one giant system.

So the opportunity again that was mentioned is the fact that there was a pain point that was presented to us via consultant and they decided that hey, let's assuming that there is a message and notification that's required and how Carousel can be a part of that. So if you guys are not familiar with a term called CAP, CAP integration or common alert protocol, where if there's an emergency notification system that's there and they're CAP certified, they can in turn send a message to a Carousel and then all the digital signage, displays or systems within that space will be able to change, in unison and simultaneously.

So once then it gets cleared, then it goes back to regular, signage messaging. So we're able to integrate that including the HLS, which is a streaming protocol, that is supported via Carousel. We're able to stream live video and then if there's a lockdown, shelter in place, whatever it is, and because we live in a different world now, we're able to send that message, to those students or through healthcare or corporate to either shelter in place, lockdown, and then once it's cleared, it goes right back. So another way of using digital signage or digital messaging to be actually a part of your working So it's no longer a static screen or just flip charts or whatever it is.

It's actually doing more than and really just to be a part of that corporate environment.

Absolutely. And I have a video here, and there it goes. So the idea the end of that so there's, like, a lot of complex stuff in the background of how that works, but how the front of it is is, you know, you have a system, you have an alert, you activate it, it goes on the screen. When the alert is over, it can have a clear alert, and then it can also just go back to what you had.

Right? So from from a viewer perspective, from a, quote, unquote, frontline perspective, it's very seamless. It's very quick, and it doesn't involve someone logging into a system or being at their computer. These are things that can happen together seamlessly altogether.

And that takes some engineering work to make sure that that's it's all gonna flow. But in the end, right, we're we're trying to do that engagement. And I think when there's an alert like, from an alert to an anniversary message, being seen, heard, and acted upon is engagement, right? And we wanna make sure that we improve that.

So I wanna talk about some other facets of engagement and how that can be effective.

Sort of an idea of, like, one size doesn't fit all. We have to think about the fringe cases and the edge cases. Right? I use this term a lot.

If you're on one of my last webinars, I had a whole webinar on accessibility. But when I look at accessibility, there's two versions of it. I call it lowercase a accessibility and uppercase a accessibility. Lowercase a is people are able to see it easily, access it easily, and update it easily.

But capital a accessible is really more of like a legal term. Right? So if I have a student body or if I have a personnel body, someone who maybe has a visual impairment, right, and a screen or a phone or something like that just doesn't work for them.

Like, the idea is that we're engaging people, and if they can't use it, then then we're missing. Right? So some just options that we have as well as being able to provide content in a way that as you post it and it goes to your screens and the phones and the app, you can also go to what we call the accessibility site. This allows your content to be listed in a way that's pretty easy to view, and anyone could use this. They could use this lowercase a accessibility wise if they need to.

But what's cool about this site and how boring it looks is when you have a system that has some accessibility tools like a screen reader, it's kinda designed to work with that. So someone who might have a visual impairment, I can load up the site on my device. It'll read me where the things are. If I do have some some messages, it'll read kind of what the alt text of that image is. So in this case, I could it would say something like, you know, players of this team and that team playing basketball, and then this is the text.

Then when you click it, it also just re renders the text. Right? So if if they have they don't have a screen reader, but they need this, you know, text to be blown up really big, they could have their text set to, like, eight hundred percent, and then it would just be text for them to read. Right?

Again, ways that when we say engage, right, we have to make sure that we're considering these as well.

I also wanna talk to, we live in a different age, like you said, but in a few different ways. Security is big, right? As digital signage and digital communication becomes more of a crucial part of an organization's communication strategy, more vital it is to make sure that that that cannot be hijacked. Right?

And that data is safe. Right? If you're relying on a screen as sort of the place of truth for your frontline workers, obviously, you don't want that to get hijacked. So I wanna talk a little bit about just the ideas of, you know, device management, being able to, like, own your content, knowing where your content lives.

I think we can talk a little bit about this. Carousel is with like, we're from the United States, right, we're kinda based in Minneapolis. Right? And we have a lot of customers that Data Visual works within Canada.

We do have two data centers. So if you want your data to live in Canada, we can totally do that as well. And then we have typical SOC two type two, heck that a lot of security documents that are audited by third parties. Right?

So sort of a you don't have to trust us. We'll provide you these industry standard options for you to sort of review yourself. And then I guess we didn't really talk about this, but, David, I don't know if you had any other insights on customer needs and requirements from a security perspective.

Possibly for government requirements, they require that the data be stored in Canada. A lot of corporate and also health care. So when you're when you have AWS server in Canada, it actually quite it helps us quite a bit to have the conversation with those clients if you're actually not on the line. But for those requirements, just reach out. We could definitely have a conversation with Carousel.

Bring them on the line if you have any security concerns, I'll be happy to provide that as well.

Fantastic.

I think too, there's kind of a shared responsibility model, right?

Where when it comes to our relationship with customers, right?

Doing your typical device security, physical security, setting up SSO, doing correct roles. Right? That's still vital. Right?

And we can kinda help with best practices for that. But then we have responsibility as well. Like making sure that your data is protected, that we're doing patches, that we're doing the yearly SOC two type two review, that we're doing external penetration tests. Right?

That everything's encrypted. Just things that we're we're focused on and we're sensitive to, and we put a lot of time and effort to make sure that, like, these things are solid for for those types of customers. And even even if you're, you know, you run a donut shop downtown and all you're doing is pricing or, you know, just menu boards, same idea, you get the same level of sort of respect and security in that regard.

So I wanna talk a little bit more about just Carousel and sort of some things that we do and offer from a signage perspective.

Like I said, there's a lot of tools, there's a lot of places that you can get content, that you can get data. Right? And having that tied together to make that communication seamless is a big metric of if things are gonna be successful. If you have a tool that you need to, log into every single day to make updates, at some point, it it will get behind.

It will someone will go on vacation, something like that. So you're able to connect to a lot of sources if you have data in Power BI or your employees like to use Canva to make content or you have a a sheet of, let's say, hate to say it, winter's coming. Right? Maybe we have some maybe we have a driver room for people who who run like the snow plows and they know what their routes are, things like that.

If you usually already have this data, someone's already updating a calendar. If you already have this data that can just feed the screens automatically, you kinda skip a step. Right? And that's sort of leaning more into that seamless communications.

Take things you're already doing, get it on the screen, get on accessibility site, get it on the app, engage those workers in a way that on the back end doesn't take a lot of creative or IT time to make that happen.

And then, David, you can hop in at any time too if you've seen any sort of effective integrations that that you're hearing about. Otherwise, we can continue on.

Continue. Perfect.

So it's kinda seems fun to do this at the end. But when it comes to doing a digital signage system, right? Again, we're a smaller part of the package.

Typically, what you need is a CMS. Carousel is a CMS or a kind of management system for signage to allow you to upload, schedule, create these content that you want to engage frontline workers with. You're gonna need some hardware to run that. Sometimes that can be a separate media player.

Sometimes that can be a screen that runs it directly. Right? And then you kinda need your content. Right?

And I think the the how this gets effective is when you start on that last tile, that content tile, and you ask yourself what information is being missed, where is the gap when you start there? And then you go to data visual to kinda say where the gap is, then the rest of these can sort of be we can give you options for kind of how it's gonna be. And sometimes, Carousel might not even be the best move depending on what you're trying to do. So just kind of use data visual as like a trusted advisor, and then we can kinda make sure that we get you in the right spot if Carousel is a good fit as well.

And if I could jump in as well. So look for those unique opportunities. As mentioned before, this is not just digital signage, it is messaging. And think of Carousel as they are actually as a software company. So if you're working with a building automation company, for instance, and you wanna pull data from let's say their power source and grid and their usage and consumption and also put that on a dynamic screen.

It's another point in which to go to clients or if you are the client something to look at where maybe you want to look at the ROI of why you want to invest into something.

Use these signage platforms to pull that data, put that metrics on the screen that is visible for everybody. So that's the concept that we're trying to convey today is not just digital signage but where the messaging comes in as well. Also look at the express players as we talked about. It doesn't matter where you are in the world anymore. We can share that information with you, your client, or just change your corporate culture. So that's some additional notes about this.

Fantastic. I think that's great insight.

I'm not gonna dive too much into the Carousel ecosystem. It kinda gets in the weeds a little bit, but sort of the general ideas that your screen could just be full screen stuff. Your messages could just be full screen. They could be zoned out.

So maybe you have, like, weather, date, and time, and then some important messages in the corner. The kind of the big idea here is that, like, how you approach that, we can kind of help you with that, but you're not really limited. Right? You could do full screen slides.

You could have it so that if you have, like, ten locations, and you want, like, the left side of every screen to be global communications, you can definitely do that. And then per location, maybe the right side is managed by a smaller team, right, for that location. A lot of things we can do with rights, roles, our approval processes, right? The idea from a carousel perspective is, because now we're kinda talking more about the back end, right?

How we're managing this, how we're making this effective in the long term is Carousel like does we don't charge for user seats. We don't charge for admin seats. We firmly believe that if you have more people contributing to the signage and you're using a lot of those automated integrations, it it just becomes more effective. Right?

It's kinda cool when you're in organization and you see like the organizational news, but then just so you're up updated and informed, but then also seeing things about your team, metrics, new personnel, retirements, things like that, things that are kind of like more specific to your team or to your area.

That's engaging, right? That is effective.

And just like your example earlier, David, like anniversaries, these are small things that just are kinda some feel good moments, but in the end, they do sort of increase the engagement. You wanna like look at what else is happening. You might wanna reach out to someone to say, you know, congratulations as well. But then when you get a message on there that says, hey, we have a new security process that we have to follow and you have to make sure that you go in here and you fill this out and you're, you know, protecting the organization from a security threat or something. Those are in the same spots, and then that just comes more effective.

That also ties into your user rights as well. So you could have granularity where you just have one person that is able to send out content and they could actually go through an approval process before they send that message out. So you have that level of security as well. So admin levels and then secondary, third and also fourth layers of access.

Absolutely.

And then some people might say, well, okay, well, I'm not creative. I don't have a marketing team. I can't make these beautiful graphics like where do we start? Just know that Carousel also includes free content, right, that you can just easily rebrand, feeds and and pre canned content that you can use, like, throughout the year as well.

And then training is also included. If you need some help, assistance, you can talk to us directly. And then of course, if you have any your goals change, like a year later, what you wanna have on the screen, where your gap is changes, back to data visual. Hey, this is my new communication strategy.

How do we execute it? Things like that. I would say that sort of if anyone here is new to the idea of digital science, digital communication, the number one thing that you can do is just ask yourself, do I have a communication gap? What is it?

And then ask data visual how to improve it. Like, that is that is the the call to action here. We also have available a build a stronger how digital signage will help digital signage helps build a stronger community. This link is is open.

You don't have to give us information. You don't have to send us your email or anything like that. I think Claire will have the link available too in the chat. So if you're on a computer, you can just grab that as well.

Some good information in there, kinda how to approach content, how to kinda streamline those processes, how, like, security fits into everything, real time communications, that idea of community, and how we sort of support that. That's all included there. Kind of a a nice little pamphlet summarizing what we've talked about today.

So I'll leave this on the screen for maybe another, thirty seconds or so. In the chat and then the chat too, the I see the link in there as well. A good resource, free resource. Prefer to use it at your at your leisure.

And before we sort of close it up and go to the the live q and a, I do wanna hand it back over to Data Visual to talk about Data Visual on display, maybe some other engagements they're doing throughout the years, or throughout the year, at a yearly basis.

Thank you very much, Chris. As I mentioned off the top, Data Visual On Display is a show that started last week. We've already covered Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina and Saskatoon. We're going to be in Winnipeg on Wednesday, then we take a two week break, and start up in the east, Toronto on the twenty eighth, Ottawa on the thirtieth, and, Montreal on the first, then we go on to Halifax and finish up in, in Quebec City. This is a great opportunity for you to come out and see all of our vendors showcasing their latest products, including Carousel and so on. But many of the the other vendors that Davian talked about, when we we look at Carousel and then look at the other product lines, this is a perfect opportunity for you to see some of those product lines and how they might help you provide solutions for some of the things that you need to do.

And I would encourage you to go to data visual on display data visual. Ca I should say.

Right on the homepage is a large banner. Click that. We'll give you all of the show dates and you'll be able to register. And this is free for audio visual resellers, end users, anybody who is interested in the AV world.

Yep, and I'll say that like sometimes seeing is believing and it's nice to, we have our employee here, Scott always goes every year.

But but seeing what's out there talking to people, talking to other people that have, you know, different issues that were solved in different ways. I mean, that networking is something that we we kinda lost in twenty twenty, twenty one, and it's it's coming back up. And I think emphasizing that importance, like, when when you have an event like this is is something to to focus on. Thank you so much, Peter.

Thanks.

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