Employee trends like the Great Resignation and quiet quitting are giving HR professionals worldwide serious headaches. After all, the latest Gallup survey on employee engagement is pretty daunting: only 32% of employees are actively engaged in their workplaces. It seems there’s a clear disconnect between employers and their employees, resulting in both financial and emotional losses.

So, what if I told you that I’ve cracked the code (or at least some of it) on how to enrich your employee engagement efforts and drive greater performance? The answer lies deep within our visual human brains. HR professionals must incorporate more visual communication into the workplace.

You’ve likely heard the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but the reality is better than that. Consider this:

• The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text-based information.
• People remember 10% of what they hear, 20% of what they read, and 80% of what they see and do.
• 93% of communication is non-verbal.

All this then begs the question – why are businesses still using standard (aka “boring” and “unengaging”) text-based materials to train, onboard, inspire, and communicate with their employees? Whether you’ve been the employee dying of boredom during handbook reviews and pictureless presentations, or you’ve been the one giving said presentations, let’s face it – we all know standard HR materials just don’t click the way they could or should. Fortunately, though, there is a way to make these seemingly tedious aspects of work culture work for you, not against you. I’ve narrowed it down to a few simple tips to help get you started:

1. START WITH RECRUITMENT:
Before we can dive into incorporating visual communication inside the workplace, we must first tackle the challenge of employee recruitment, which is especially difficult in a tight labor market. Candidates are often scrolling through job descriptions full of paragraphs and bullet points in their quests for the perfect opportunity. Instead of telling them about the position, show it to them! Visual communication (videos, employee spotlights and testimonies, photos of company events, etc.) is a great way to paint a picture of what this job could be. It gives them a feel for what type of company you are and how they might fit into the environment, helping them visualize a future there. If you want your open position to stand out from others, waking up your candidates’ brains and offering a visual demonstration of your dynamic workplace is a great place to start.

2. VISUALIZE YOUR VALUES:
Clearly articulated and adopted values are the cornerstone of a strong company culture. Done right, these values guide your employees in their everyday actions and decisions. Visualizing your values is the best way to make them “stick” better. Whatever your mission, vision, and values may be, don’t banish them to bullet-point prison. Values must have an emotional pull behind them to be truly….well, valuable. So instead of going the traditional route, consider turning your values into a large infographic with colors, typography, images, stories, and emotions. Or take it a step further by including customers and team members in a mosaic or video montage that pulls at the heartstrings.  If your values are as important to your company as you claim, then invest the time and resources into visualizing them in a way that’s understandable, memorable, and actionable for your team members.

3. LEAD WITH PICTURES:

Visual leadership doesn’t stop with a highly produced representation of your values. “Low-fi” spontaneous visuals are a great tool for day-to-day employee interactions and management as well. For example, when providing guidance, explaining a new process, or simply giving feedback, instead of an exchange of words, hop up on the whiteboard or grab a sheet of paper and draw it out. If you’re having a hard time articulating an idea, try doing so using simple sketches. You’d be astonished at how much time this will save you and your employees – you’ll be able to relay the same information to them, just richer in quality and much easier to absorb.

4. VISUAL SCOREBOARD:

Last but certainly not least, and perhaps a personal favorite tip that we use all the time at The Sketch Effect, is creating a visual “scoreboard.” A scoreboard is a visual that makes tracking progress towards goals that much simpler while keeping team members both motivated and accountable. This can be tailored to your company’s specific needs, but the general outline for a scoreboard contains these elements:

• Where you are
• Where you want to go
• When you want to get there
• What recurring, tracked actions will get you there
• Whether or not you are doing the actions
• Rewards associated with hitting certain milestones

Remember, it’s all about using visuals to aid in tracking progress and ultimately reaching goals, so you can get creative with it and make it fun!

Don’t get me wrong, visual communication won’t solve all your pain points when it comes to engagement in the workplace. But, if you’re doing the right things and need that differentiator to build an emotional connection with your prospective and existing employees, an image, graphic, animation, or video can go a long way. Next time you plan that onboarding presentation or lead your weekly team meeting, I challenge you to think of creative ways you can leverage visual aids, whether planned and polished or rough and spontaneous. The results might surprise you. After all, we all know the correlation between engagement and performance. By engaging your team’s visual brains, we can more effectively communicate and inspire, impacting your bottom line while fostering more joy for your employees: a win-win.