In light of the current situation, interstate travel is limited as well as travel out of the country. If cleared for travel, you may need to quarantine for fourteen days upon arriving at a training location and another fourteen days upon returning. This is time consuming and disruptive to training and operations processes.
Here are five pitfalls of the impact of COVID on training and operations followed by our latest Speach and ways Speach can help you overcome and work through this new set of challenges.
Due to travel restrictions, we must get creative with the way we communicate to clients in order to continue supporting them.
In-person or OTJ (on the job training) is either not an option or requires safe distancing practices that can limit the impact of meaningful training operations. When you’re unable to travel and you have teams that are spread out across the globe, how can you be consistent with training operations?
Although WebEx and Zoom are great tools for meetings, they cannot support or scale effective training. We’ve all been on many Zoom calls and it’s just not enough. Participating in so many of these calls can also cause “Zoom fatigue“.
There are also limitations with organizing WebEx and Zoom calls across time zones. Finding a time that works for your team can be a challenge especially when working from different locations.
Communicating globally requires the need for translation. If you don’t communicate in the same language as your teammates how do you share your vital information with each other?
Lastly, the interruption in business can hinder the adoption of best practices, training and other initiatives. To learn more about how you can overcome these five challenges, watch our latest Speach here.
The possibilities of keeping your clients and teammates engaged with Speach are endless however the seven attributes below highlight the top uses of Speach for a better understanding of how you can achieve global success with the platform.
Enhance your training with asynchronous content with the following capabilities:
Working in this environment requires the adoption and creativity that remote workers have been practicing long before the health crisis. With tools like Speach you will be able to work within this new normal and on a global scale to help you remain connected despite time zone and location constraints.
Click here to request a demo.
Feelings of disconnection and loneliness can affect employee motivation. According to Buffer’s State of Remote Work in 2020 report, this is the biggest challenge facing employees, along with remote collaboration.
To strengthen social bonds at a time when interactions are becoming less frequent, videoconferencing is a safe bet. It allows for more humanized communication than cold emails whose tone can be subject to interpretation and often leads to misunderstandings. It also makes it possible to replace informal water cooler talk. But it must be properly used and not fall into the trap of meetings for the sake of having meetings.
In remote work, managers schedule more meetings via videoconference as a knee jerk reaction to prevent feelings of isolation. A study by Owl Labs found that teleworkers globally attend more meetings per week (14% of respondents had even more than 10 meetings per week, compared to only 3% of on-site workers).
I’m sure anyone reading this article will attest to the fact that videoconferencing can easily turn into a catastrophe with technical, audio and video problems (26% more common in remote work), meetings that go off on tangents, and children getting impatient in the background.
While video meetings are essential for remote work, it is worth asking whether it is the best use of everyone’s time and energy. Some experts even talk about “Zoom fatigue” to characterize the psychological impact of these repeated videoconferences. In It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, Basecamp founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson argue that meetings should be “a last resort”.
Real-time discussions often involve spontaneous answers. Indeed, when you are chatting live with someone, you consume the information as you receive it. In videoconferencing, even if employees can take notes, some of the ideas and documents exchanged during the meeting will inevitably get lost in the thread of exchanges. The time spent finding the main ideas, organizing them and getting real reflection out of them is often a waste of time.
As we know, video has the power to convey emotion and break the sense of isolation by putting voice and visuals back at the heart of communication. Words only represent 7% of our communication! Hence the importance of tone and body language in our exchanges.
Sending messages in video format with a solution such as Speach, allows you to avoid chaotic meetings without sacrificing the human aspect of communication. It also eliminates time zone barriers and the need to waste time organizing video conferences for employees around the world.
“Offset”, or “asynchronous” communication does not require a direct response from you. It gives you time to digest information, provide solutions and make decisions without pressure.
And for that dose of informal exchange, which is also necessary, employees can create more personal videos to share their teleworking experience and best practices on a daily basis: from tips for keeping children occupied to recipes or reading recommendations… Employees will not lack imagination!
At a time when social interaction is scarce, instant messaging apps such as Slack, Microsoft Teams or Fleep allow for quick exchanges, emergencies or more informal discussions. But if not used thoughtfully, enterprise social networks can have a negative impact on your productivity. Here’s why…
Like social networks, instant messaging apps are compulsively consulted during work time (or even more) and generate stress and frustration at the thought of missing part of the conversation. The famous “Fear Of Missing Out”. And what about the teams scattered around the globe, with different time zones?
In a constant stream of notifications and alerts, discussions take place and encourage an “always connected” culture, which often comes at the expense of productivity. The average employee is getting interrupted 50 to 60 times per day and about 80% of these interruptions are unimportant. These distractions disrupt the famous “deep work“, which requires concentration. According to Darius Foroux, a productivity blogger, our concentration decreases when we receive too much information. A University of California (Irvine) study showed that after an interruption, it takes an average of 23 minutes to re-focus on the initial task.
With Speach, you can gauge the company’s pulse without feeling drowned in information! Our asynchronous collaboration solution allows you to communicate at your own pace and track each other’s progress seamlessly.
Some companies are misusing enterprise social networks as monitoring or control tools for managers. On the employees side, it can be wrongly used as a mean of proving activity. But instant messaging apps are not intended to replace the roll-call taker. In remote work, managers prefer the culture of results to that of presenteeism.
With Speach, there is no need to define an online status! Everyone is free to move forward at their own pace. Speach’s statistics allow you to know who watched a video and whether it was watched all the way through. People can comment on the speach and answer quizzes or polls embedded in the video. Each speach can be co-edited by several people and be subject to an approval system.
On enterprise social networks, ideas are proposed, discussed and eventually get lost in the flow of conversation. Documents and links disappear as exchanges go by. The same questions and problems resurface regularly and always require the same answers.
And as if that wasn’t enough, last-minute requests on instant messaging apps are often raw and spontaneous, thus disconnected from their context. In short, instant messaging has many advantages, but it often results in fragmented and inferior communication.
With Speach, you go from a flow logic to a stock logic: information is centralized in one place, organized and accessible anywhere, at any time. Employees form a collaborative internal knowledge base that allows everyone to know what they need to do and find the resources they need.
With emojis and gifs, spontaneous exchanges on instant messaging apps help to maintain the social bond in these times of confinement. But what better than video to convey emotion and break the feeling of isolation? Body language is an important part of communication and visual cues reassure the viewer.
In writing, the tone of a message or the formality of an e-mail can be misinterpreted. Video has the power to show things rather than try to describe them!
With Speach, you can directly comment on a presentation, record your screen and share this interactive video in just a few minutes. Speach allows you to maintain the social link while avoiding misunderstandings and misinterpretations.
To better collaborate remotely, don't let yourself be distracted. Organize information, structure your messages and share short, visual explanations (without the drawbacks of live broadcasting). Speach is an asynchronous communication solution that allows you to quickly and easily record videos to collaborate with colleagues and clients.
We still rely too often on instantaneous exchanges, to the detriment of a communication that respects everyone’s pace.
Most of the time, remote conversations don’t need to be in real time. In this 3-point game, I will explain why asynchronous communication – i.e. offline, not real time – can give you back power over messaging and over time management (yours and that of others’!).
More often, the response time to an email does not exceed 2 minutes, according to a study conductions in 2015 by Yahoo Labs. When we receive an email or a message on Slack, we tend to give it priority over what we were doing. Yes responding to requests reactively doesn’t allow you to organize your day proactively.
This reliance on notifications and alerts encourages an “always-on” culture, which often comes at the expense of productivity. A University of California (Irvine) study showed that after an interruption, it takes an average of 23 minutes to re-focus on the initial task. These distractions punctuate the day and disrupt the “deep work” that requires concentration. And when everyone addresses their requests in a disjointed manner (without always recalling the context), it is easy to lose track! Some employees may even feel overwhelmed by constant interruption and even burn out.
I’m convinced that asynchronous communication frees you from distractions and repeated interruptions. It allows you to spend more time on value-added activities. Go from a flow logic to a stock logic: opt for a tool that centralizes and organizes information to make it accessible anywhere, anytime. Don’t be afraid to miss out on the flow of conversations and break away from the famous FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) once and for all!
In remote work, you are free to organize your day. What matters is the result. Remember: You are not required to be connected at all hours of the day and night, but to do your work in a timely manner! It is therefore your responsibility to manage your time efficiently and not spread yourself too thin.
Telephone or video conferences are often used for quick and spontaneous exchanges. Employees can easily ask questions live, have in-depth conversations and brainstorm. Synchronous communication is also suitable for “crisis” situations to deal with emergencies, discuss sensitive issues or announce strategic decisions to employees.
But spontaneous exchanges with off the cuff reactions and feedback are not always the best option. Certain types of missions and projects require a step back, a more in-depth reflection (and therefore well-thought out responses). With synchronous communication, you consume the information at the same time as you receive it. It implies immediate responses that are not often the best. Conversely, asynchronous communication allows you to digest information, find answers, provide solutions, draw conclusions and make decisions without pressure.
Moreover, real-time communication is not recorded: Unless you have a good memory, it is better to take notes during the exchange! Recording your communication in the form of a video or voice message allows the recipient to consult it later and as many times as necessary.
In remote work, it’s better to set up clear processes and have clear intentions. Everyone needs to know what they have to do, why they are doing it and how they should do it. Asynchronous communication allows you to think about your communication upstream by putting yourself in the recipient’s shoes. It provides a context, formulates a request, sets a deadline and makes all the necessary resources available. Rather than sending information in bits and pieces, in a fragmented way, get straight to the point! With asynchronous communication, you make the message audible and the information is received when the recipient is available (and therefore receptive). Asynchronous communication respects not only your time but also that of others!
The feeling of disconnection and loneliness can affect employees’ motivation. In these times of confinement, there is little opportunity for social interaction, synchronous communication is therefore conducive to simpler and less formal conversations. Videoconferencing replaces the “In Real Life” meeting: It alleviates the feeling of isolation and aims to re-create connection. Hearing your employees and seeing their smiling faces in their daily environment strengthens the social bond. Video reassures, brings nuance and has the power to convey emotions. The weight of words (only 7%) should be put into perspective in relation to the weight of tone (38%) and body language, which accounts for more than half of communication. To make up for the lack of everyday social interaction in the office, it is important to maintain this sense of belonging to keep employees motivated.
However, videoconferencing can easily get out of hand with technical problems of all kinds, meetings that drag on and go off on tangents, and so on. While it is indispensable in times of confinement, we must ask ourselves if it is always the best use of everyone’s time and energy.
With an asynchronous video collaboration solution, you can keep that social connection while avoiding the stress of consecutive meetings. And you don’t have to worry about time zones to collaborate with teams scattered around the globe. Short, asynchronous video communication allows you to work more efficiently without sacrificing the amount of interaction that’s essential in these confined times.
Avoid the systematic nature of instantaneous communication: Asynchronous exchange should be the default communication mode to remain effective at a distance. Opt for a visual collaboration tool that retains the advantages of video (human connection and enhanced understanding of the message), conducive to taking a step back and being productive!
To collaborate effectively, employees must be able to find the information they need quickly. With Speach, information is structured and easy to find, even months or years later. While creating a speach, you can talk and record your discussion points up to 6xs faster than you can type. Retention with video is as high as 95% in comparison to text, which is 10%.
Important information, in addition to being organized, must be accessible to your entire team. With Speach, you can confirm if your colleagues have seen your materials. Email attachments are easy to miss and we do not get instant confirmation of their review. Speach offers everyone the opportunity, wherever they are, to interact with other employees and easily access the knowledge they need. Our platform makes it possible to follow the progress of employees on a project, to know who has viewed a speach and whether it has been viewed through to the end.
Reduce back and forth communication with Speach. Who hasn’t wasted time looking for a conversation in their mailbox? Communicating via email can be tedious. With Speach, you can collaborate with your team and have instant feedback with comments, quizzes and polls. When you communicate via email, you may not get feedback for days and communication can drop off. In a speach, your collaboration notes are in one place with easy viewing for all.
Email text has its limits in expressing certain types of requests and may be interpreted differently. Video has this power to show more than the subject matter. You can read body language and cues from the speaker to connect in ways email does not allow. The speach is a short video format, structured in chapters, that allows you to comment on documents and screenshots to share clear, visual and guided “step-by-step” explanations. Forget about long emails: creating a speach will only take a few minutes and have more impact.
Collaborate remotely implies to put in place an organization that allows each employee to know what to do and how to do it, in complete autonomy. Centralizing your resources in Speach helps your colleagues achieve autonomy. Resources that are useful to your employees are gathered in one place and are accessible everytime, from any device: computer, tablet, smartphone, etc.
Speach is a video platform that makes it easy to create and share clear, visual and step by step explanations in just a few clicks. This short format, divided in chapters, combines video, slides, documents and text.
Are you facing the camera? Are you filming your actions using camera glasses? Or did you opt for a screencast? Regardless of your choice, there are several types of annotations that can enhance and illustrate your speech.
The most frequently used annotations are texts, but you can also insert a URL, an image, boxed text or arrows.
From a pedagogical point of view, adding an annotation makes memorizing key messages easier and also grasps the attention of the viewer. The most important aspect is finding the best type of annotation for your video.
When an operations manager needs to demonstrate a technical procedure, text can help support the demonstration. You can also add arrows that draw attention to specific details and important information.
Annotations can help you enrich your camera-facing presentation. They are also very useful when an expert has to present a new program or application to his or her colleagues.
By adding annotations to a video, you not only make it more convincing, you also enrich the learning experience of your viewers!
Speach is a video platform that makes it easy to create and share clear, visual and step by step explanations in just a few clicks. This short format, divided in chapters, combines video, slides, documents and text.
There is no shortage of statistics, books, or blogs citing the negative effects of meetings. In fact there is so much literature on the subject that it might just be the most discussed topic relating to the modern workplace.
Statistics like this:
Harvard Business Review surveyed 182 senior managers in a range of industries. 65% said meetings keep them from completing their own work. 71% said meetings are unproductive and inefficient. 64% said meetings come at the expense of deep thinking. 62% said meetings miss opportunities to bring their team closer together.
Or, this:
A recent study by Microsoft, America Online and Salary.com found that the average person really works only three days a week. The rest of working time was regarded as wasted, with “unproductive meetings” heading the list. Workers on average regard a third of any meeting as pointless.
Making matters worse is the fact that even if we do relate to the pain associated with meetings, we are failing to improve meeting conditions. In the last 50 years, meetings have actually increased in length and frequency to a point where executives spend an average of nearly 23 hours a week in them, up from less than 10 hours in the 60’s.
And, if all this research wasn’t bad enough, we are now being told that spending too much time in meetings may contribute to an early death. In other words, we are not just destroying our productivity, we may also be destroying ourselves.
You likely have a few meetings booked this week that may or may not relate to your role and responsibilities. Some of you might even be stuck in a meeting at this very second, and quietly from your mobile device looking for research or assurance that you aren’t the only one frustrated with your endless unproductive meetings.
So, why do we put ourselves through this if the research suggests too many meetings are bad?
Well, for the majority of us we’ve become accustomed to meetings and we rarely question them. They’ve become a continuous perfunctory series of events that most of us go along with even if we don’t quite understand why we are meeting. If Dilbert has to go to long unproductive meetings, then the rest of us have to endure them too right?
Yes, many meetings can be unproductive time wasters, but that doesn’t necessarily mean meetings should never occur. When executed correctly, meetings can produce a useful strategy and process for connecting with others, and collaborating on projects.
In other words the problem isn’t so much that we are meeting, or that we desire to meet, but rather the meetings themselves. Despite our angst and the plethora of information related to ineffective meetings, we aren’t aren’t doing much to improve them. Subsequently, we are also wasting a lot of money.
Have you ever wondered how much your meeting is costing you? Well thanks to a formula by the Harvard Business Review, you can calculate that exact cost. By factoring in the number of attendees, their salaries, and the time spent in the meeting you can determine how much your meeting is costing your workplace.
For example, a monthly department wide meeting with a duration of three hours consisting of 16 employees, can be costly. Factoring in five salaries at $40,000, 4 at $50,000, 3 at $60,000, 2 at $80,000, 1 at $110,000, 1 at $120,000, the total cost of one single meeting can be well over $2000. This equates to over $24,000 annually.
Another study by HBR in 2014, examined email schedules and concluded that one weekly executive meeting ate up 300,000 hours a year. The study also cited that meetings took up 7,000 person-hours for the executives involved, who also had to meet with unit heads to prepare for it, generating an additional 20,000 hours of meetings; those unit heads had to prepare for those meetings with team meetings (63,000 hours), and those team meetings generated numerous preparatory meetings (210,000 hours).
Assuming your meetings are engaging and productive, maybe you don’t have much to worry about. But, if your meetings fail to accomplish much, you could very well be wasting a significant amount of money.
While calculating meeting costs isn’t an exact science, and not always accurate, it does help remind us that every employee interaction has a cost associated with it. And whether we want to admit it or not, meetings impact the bottom line. The real challenge is finding a way to make the most of your team’s time when together, without having so many meetings.
If you Google the term ‘Meetings Suck’, your search results will exceed 14 pages. Or, you might even uncover ‘meeting bingo’, which is nothing more than a collection of commonly used events and phrases heard in meetings. As evidence in the meeting bingo categories, meetings are predictable, and haven’t really changed much in the last thirty years.
There are an interminable number of lists, infographics, and books you can read that give you all sorts of tips and tricks on why your meetings aren’t working and what you can do to make them better. Regardless of all of these so-called pieces of advice, I’d argue that your meeting attendees will likely continue to spend the duration of the meeting peering at their phones or tablets – pretending to take notes, or franticly trying not to fall asleep.
Why? Because you haven’t changed the actual format and structure of the meeting presentation. You might even be guilty of a phenomenon known as ‘death by PowerPoint’.
Up until recently many meeting formats were all pretty similar. They included a speaker of some sort, a topic, and were often presented through either PowerPoint or KeyNote. While these programs help visually convey a story, they fail to fully engage the attention of employees.
Those guilty of contributing to death by PowerPoint probably know exactly what I mean. Slides with too much text, ugly graphics, and reading out loud the contents to each one of those slides.
When your audience is emotionally disconnected from the content in your presentation, it’s time to rethink your presentation strategy. It’s time to really shake things up and do things radically differently in your meetings.
One of the main reasons meetings are held is to educate and inform employees about a particular topic. But what if employees could receive this knowledge on their own time, without sitting through long and unnecessary presentations? Wouldn’t this be a better use of company time and money?
By using Speach, an interactive video presentation technology employees can now receive brief and intuitive knowledge capsules. Rather than watching someone flip through long and unnecessary PowerPoint decks, the presentations can easily be created by their peers across multiple work locations.
When we examine some of the reasons why many employees despise meetings, it’s easy to see how a presentation platform like Speach address each one of the traditional meeting pain-points:
Meetings are too long: Speach aims to provide brief knowledge capsules in less than ten minutes.
Meetings are boring: Brief bursts of content gets straight to the point, without wasting time on introductions and agendas.
Meeting attendees are often late: Employees can access Speach content on their own time without waiting around for others.
Meetings don’t have clear outcomes: Because the content pieces are brief, Speach helps ensure each piece of content has a clear and definable purpose.
Meetings are uninspiring: With the right composition between video and rich media, Speach ensures your employees are never bored.
With Speach, employees benefit by acquiring the necessary knowledge and information they require, and workplaces benefit by substantially reducing the amount of meetings held across an organization.
If you are one of the thousands of organizations that is in a current cycle of pointless and ineffective meetings, it’s now time to take your meetings to a new level.
As workplaces become more globalized, and the demand for effective employee education increases, organizations must aim to find new and interactive ways of capturing employee interest and attention. An interactive video presentation is one of the best ways to immediately impact and improve extensive workplace meetings. After all, if meetings are truly impacting our health, isn’t any improvement worth it?
The field of knowledge management identifies two types of knowledge. Explicit knowledge is knowledge or skills that can easily be articulated, understood, and shared with others. Typically, in written work instructions or diagrams on the shop floor. Tacit knowledge, on the other hand, is knowledge that is difficult to articulate and share because it is usually intuitive skill sets such as an aesthetic sense or innovative thinking.
Companies are now recognizing that capturing and sharing both forms of knowledge is a primary goal that will help improve decision-making, build expertise and increase efficiencies that will lead to making more informed, faster and more profitable decisions.
Companies that are embracing knowledge management experience more collaboration and idea generation, recognize human capital as an asset, have a culture of knowledge sharing, and have captured and stored knowledge for their future workforce.
One of the biggest challenges of knowledge management, however, has been how to implement it. That is where the knowledge sharing platform comes into play.
A knowledge sharing platform is a technological solution that allows employees to easily connect with one another to collaborate on products, services, and operations of the company. There are many different platforms out there and choosing one is an important decision. You’ll want to make sure you do your homework before selecting a platform that is right for your business.
You’ll want to make sure that your platform encompasses the various needs of your company. Here are some tips on how to use a platform:
Speach takes knowledge sharing platforms to the next level. Digital visualization is at the heart of Speach. Speaches are interactive, how-to videos that any employee can use to capture, transfer, and store knowledge, and it can be used in every aspect of your business. Supporting both iOS and Android, you can use it on any device right on the factory floor.
If you are interested in learning more about a knowledge sharing solution that can keep pace with your changing operational environment, contact us to learn more about Speach or request a demo. We look forward to helping you transform the way you share knowledge.
Simplicity and ease of use have made PowerPoint a tool that can be leveraged by anyone, but it’s that simplicity that ends up hurting it as a presentation tool. PowerPoint has remained simple through all of its iterations, upgrades, and updates, but it fails to give people the things they need to present information to an audience effectively and efficiently. Especially now, in the age of the digital workplace, PowerPoint has fallen behind and just feels dated.
If you’re not convinced that PowerPoint isn’t as great of a presentation tool as you may think it is, here are the top 7 reasons that you should stop using it and find a different presentation tool instead.
Today, most people opt to get their daily dose of information through social media, logging on through their smartphone and scrolling through their feed to see the latest trending stories. Between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and all the other social platforms, it’s estimated that there are over 3 billion social media users around the globe. But what is it about the social media that makes it our favorite information resource? The fact that it’s interactive. The ability for people to comment, like, share, and much more puts power in the hands of the audience, which allows them to be more involved with the information they’re seeing.
Now, put those same 3 billion social media users in a room and give them a PowerPoint presentation, the likelihood is that they’ll be disinterested and disengaged. Their ability to involve themselves in the content isn’t an option with PowerPoint, so they tune it out or shift their focus elsewhere, because a PowerPoint presentation goes one way – to the audience. There’s no collaboration, no active participation, no outlet for the audience to share their thoughts, and just no reason to actually engage with the slides. Without that interactivity, the audience just doesn’t connect and is never engaged, and the information in the presentation never makes its way into their memory.
While presenters can still try to add interactive elements to their presentations, PowerPoint makes them difficult to carry out. For example, having a question and answer section in your deck requires you to stop the flow of your presentation and call on your audience for them to share their answers one at a time. This limits the amount of participation that you get based on how much time you can spend on that section, meaning that you’ll only be engaging the small percentage of your audience that actually gets to answer. If you don’t want to put a limit on the interactivity of your presentation, you can opt for a digital presentation with Q&A functionality to get answers from your viewers, in addition to other interactive features like quizzes or comments.
Whenever you’re working with something that’s heavily visual, the design plays a very important role, which is why there are people whose entire career is just graphic design. As any graphic designer could tell you, things like text font, image sizes, colors, and even empty space can make or break a piece of visual content, such as a PowerPoint slide. The issue here is that when you’re working with PowerPoint and you don’t have any knowledge of graphic design, the effectiveness of your presentation can plummet. Bad text placement, distracting font, or jarring transitions from slide to slide can disconnect your presentation from your audience rather quickly. To make matters worse, different audiences can respond to slide design differently, making it even more difficult to create an effective presentation with PowerPoint.
Beyond excessive time spent on slide design, users also run into a time issue just making all the slides they need. For an average presentation, a user will have 1 slide for every 2 minutes of the presentation. Let’s take the example of a 1-hour training session for a new group of employees at a company. That 1-hour training presentation would have 30 slides, which could take the presenter hours to make. Also, if the creator needs to update all the slides in the presentation, they may need to go through each slide one by one to make those changes. Compare that to filming a quick, interactive video for 5 to 10 minutes that also has versioning capabilities so the creator can simply update various components of their presentation in just a few quick steps, and you’ll find that you’re wasting valuable time by choosing PowerPoint.
During a PowerPoint presentation the audience has two sources of information that are vying for their attention at all times. They can either focus on the presenter’s speech and absorb the information they’re hearing, or they can focus on the PowerPoint and absorb what that they’re seeing. If the presenter is simply reading off the slides, this split wouldn’t really be a problem, but at the same time, it makes the presence of the presenter almost pointless.
On the contrary, if the presenter is offering more information than what’s present on the slide, or the slide contains visuals that are designed to complement the presenter, the audience now has the difficult task of splitting their attention to accommodate both information sources. Without being able to focus on one source, they become less likely to retain the information that’s being presented to them. Even worse, those in the audience who chose to focus solely on either the presenter or the PowerPoint potentially miss out on a great deal of important information.
While PowerPoint is widely considered a visual tool that can enhance presentations, it more often functions as a crutch for presenters. For those who don’t have the most fine-tuned presenting skills, it’s easy for them to simply read the slides or lean too heavily on the PowerPoint to convey the information. If one gets into this habit, it can be difficult to break out of it, while also preventing them from ever improving their own presentation skills.
PowerPoint also limits the presenter’s style, since PowerPoint presentations are mostly linear, going from one slide to the next. This puts more dynamic presenting approaches off the table, as they can interrupt the PowerPoint and break the audience’s engagement. For example, if a presenter wants to show an in-person demonstration during their presentation, there’s no way to smoothly transition into it after coming from slide format. The same idea applies to a situation where an audience member asks a question about some information on past slides, as the presenter would need to cycle back through the slides to the information and question, and then cycle all the way back to where they were.
To counteract the linear restriction, companies are moving towards a more narrative structure, due to our brains being naturally hardwired to process, understand, and engage a story. It’s the same reason that Amazon’s founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, has banned the use of PowerPoint in company meetings. Instead, his teams spend the first 30 minutes of the meeting reading a multi-page memo with a narrative structure in order to improve learning and engagement with everyone involved.
In situations where more than one person is involved in putting together a presentation, they will also come across some roadblocks, as PowerPoint limits the ability for teammates to collaborate easily. While PowerPoint slides can be shared and edited simultaneously, essential components of efficient and effective collaboration are not taken into consideration such as task management with assigned duties and notifications, seamless access on any device, approval workflow functionality, or integration into the existing communication and collaboration structure at a company. Without these features, PowerPoint users are left to their own devices and find other ways to collaborate, taking more time and lowering the team’s overall productivity.
Creating the perfect presentation isn’t impossible, but it is extremely rare and very hard to do. That’s why it’s so important to have solutions in place that will provide the presenter with feedback and data so the presentation itself can be updated and improved for the future. Unfortunately, PowerPoint does provide an analytics dashboard, leaving the presenter with no information that they can work off of, unless they follow up with the audience directly. This makes improving the presentation, let along gauging its effectiveness, extremely difficult.
Even something as simple as a ratings and comments system can provide presenters with invaluable information that can end up transforming presentations for the better. Imagine being able to get immediate responses from your audience, rating how informative or fun your presentation was. You could even take a quick poll to see if your audience felt that the presentation itself was even necessary, which could be useful for cutting out inefficiencies in things such as corporate training programs. Comments allow you to get even more insight from your viewers, cluing you into what they didn’t like about the presentation, why, and ways that you can improve your presentation.
Out of the 500 million PowerPoint users in the world, over 120 million of those people use PowerPoint to create presentations in a business environment, which means that it’s still very likely that you currently use and may continue to use PowerPoint for your own work. However, you should know that PowerPoint is not your only choice for presentations, as there are solutions available that are better for both you and your audience that you should be aware of.
There are methods for creating more engaging presentations that are easier than putting together a deck of slides and come fully equipped with tools that will set you up for success, from security and analytics to collaboration and content management.
While PowerPoint may seem like the simple, quick solution that you can turn to when you need to give a presentation, you don’t have to look far to find something that’s much better. SpeachMe allows you to quickly create brief interactive presentations optimized for maximum impact that feature video captured on a smartphone, tablet or webcam combined with existing media and documents. Hyperlinks, screen captures, and images can also be included. Speaches consistent of 60% video and 40% rich media and can be divided into chapters. They’re easy to share and secure.
By leaving PowerPoint behind and using an interactive video presentation solution, you’re preventing yourself and the quality of your presentations, from being dragged down or remaining stagnant. Instead, you will see all the new opportunities that become available to you with other presentation solutions, taking whatever you used to do with PowerPoint, and making it flat-out better.
Speach is a video platform that makes it easy to create and share clear, visual and step by step explanations in just a few clicks. This short format, divided in chapters, combines video, slides, documents and text.
More and more factory workplaces are embracing technology and digital tools to enhance their work techniques, productivity, and ultimately, make their job and the workplace a better place to work.
Within the digital factory, there is always room for improvement, despite these recent advances. Management and leadership teams are constantly looking to improve knowledge sharing across all teams, departments, and aspects of the business. One simple way to increase knowledge sharing is to enhance and promote collaboration in the digital factory. Collaboration can not only foster new ideas, but it can lead to more productive employees and a higher bottom line. At Speach, we are happy to aid any factory workplace by increasing collaboration through the use of specific digital videos.
Ensure all of your employees or teammates know what is expected of them in terms of collaboration. This should always be an ongoing conversation from the moment an individual starts at your workplace. Initially, this can be shown through training videos or meetings with examples of effective collaboration between individuals, teams, or departments. With digital technology, knowledge sharing and collaboration have really never been easier, but sometimes we need to remind our teams of the collaborative tools they possess.
Even when certain jobs do not seem like they can be done collaboratively, there are ways to promote a community work environment. Firstly, ensure that everyone has a space and time to share their opinion. This is essential to knowledge sharing. Secondly, you can create a digital space to foster commentary, discussions, and more. Within the growth of industry 4.0, these digital spaces are becoming ever more important. Some jobs may focus more on the individual, however, by giving your team the space to share comments and suggestions with other teams or departments, even if it isn’t always face-to-face, you allow them to collaborate. Creating a community work environment can truly make a company thrive in industry 4.0.
At Speach, we understand that the digital factory is constantly changing, which means our ways of collaboration may need to change as well. Our state-of-the-art knowledge sharing platforms and videos can be tailored to any company and ultimately increase the amount of collaboration that occurs. Contact us at Speach to learn how we can transform your workplace to keep up with the high set standards of industry 4.0.
Avoid the systematic nature of instantaneous communication: Asynchronous exchange should be the default communication mode to remain effective at a distance. Opt for a visual collaboration tool that retains the advantages of video (human connection and enhanced understanding of the message), conducive to taking a step back and being productive!
When the right person has easy access to the right information, expertise sharing can help employees reach operational excellence. Pharmaceutical companies should capitalize on the know-how and best practices of their SMEs in order to stay at the top of their game in such a fast-moving and highly competitive environment. Constant and quick access to in-house expertise actually makes it possible to speed up implementation of new tools, processes, and operating procedures.
The approach used to distribute GMPs (Good Manufacturing Practices) does not always facilitate practical implementation in production and QC laboratories. However, pharmaceutical companies must continuously train employees on best practices to ensure safety and guarantee that regulatory requirements for manufacturing, packaging, analysis, and storage processes are respected.
Though digital technology has become an integral part of our world, most companies continue to depend, for example, on paper documents to specify their operational procedures and ensure the best practices. It’s no secret that reading resource articles and partaking in PowerPoint training classes takes time for both student and trainer. Furthermore, these knowledge transfer methods aren’t always the most effective or engaging.
To respond to these challenges, companies can turn to step-by-step immersive video instructions filled with presentations, PDF documents, voice-overs, and notes… Pharmaceutical companies evolve in a highly controlled context and therefore have at their disposal an excellent means to promote and share knowledge and skills among peers.
Videos are more appealing and easier to use than written documents. The use of microlearning videos within a company allows it to enhance knowledge transfer. Work instructions through an immersive video contribute to the digitization of the best practices in manufacturing and quality control. They complement paper documents—or are a step towards going completely paperless!
In the pharmaceutical industry, instructions must always be clear and precise and can in no way be modified or incomplete. Operating procedures allow technicians to carry out tasks without the risk of error or omission. Adopting the best industry procedures and permanently optimizing processes prevents manufacturing incidents, delays, or issues from recurring while also contributing to reducing non-quality costs.
Microlearning videos make it easy to record the best practices and can be further enriched with diagrams, illustrations, photos, text, and markers. Laboratory technicians and operators can consult the interactive how-to video at any time and as often as they wish in order to fully comprehend a specific procedure.
The video format helps certain topics—oftentimes quite complex within the pharmaceutical industry—be more easily understood. It is reassuring for technicians to receive work instructions via an immersive video; showing rather than telling considerably improves precision and dramatically reduces the way in which something can be interpreted. video format helps certain topics—oftentimes quite complex within the pharmaceutical industry—be more easily understood. It is reassuring for technicians to receive work instructions via an immersive video; showing rather than telling considerably improves precision and dramatically reduces the way in which something can be interpreted.
Furthermore, the tutorial format makes it easy to organize and showcase information. SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) must have a logical arrangement. Step-by-step immersive videos make it possible to divide a specific operating procedure up into multiple segments and can therefore focus on how every single action should be done in great detail. How-to videos can also evolve and be easily updated at any time. This is a great time saver for laboratory operators who no longer need to look up the latest operating procedure through paper documents.
To benefit from new technology and automation, every employee must proactively and continuously self-train in order to update their skill set. Expertise sharing empowers employees and allows them to independently upskill the handling of new tools and new procedures. Work instructions in video format can be accessed on demand and through any kind of media, directly in-house.
The P4 approach to medicine (Predictive, Preventative, Personalized, Participatory) largely relies on constant health data digitization, collection, and use through new technology. However, professionals within the pharmaceutical industry are constantly surrounded by new knowledge and material. This makes it difficult for them to find the exact information they need when they need it.
Microlearning videos can instantly respond to and remotely resolve these operational issues. Laboratory operators have direct in-house access to the information they need, which allows them to avoid manufacturing delays or standstills. Gathering the best practices for manufacturing and laboratory quality control will allow employees to access the required knowledge when they need it and help them in their decision-making process.
As it is better to predict rather than heal, QC analysts, in an effort to work towards continuous improvement, must be able to anticipate the smallest issue that could appear or become redundant. Managing inconsistencies and controlling risks therefore represent a major challenge for pharmaceutical companies. Implementing a knowledge management strategy will allow you to keep your competitive edge in an already highly competitive sector.
SMEs can therefore distribute their knowledge on a large scale and have it exponentially shared as a result of the network effect. Employees will consequently feel connected with each other and their SME peers.
Distributing a team’s best practices to other sites also places it in the global spotlight. Once SMEs see how their know-how is valued after being shared, they’ll feel further recognized and become more engaged. Sharing knowledge between employees also makes it possible to identify the most talented players.
Sharing the best practices through step-by-step immersive videos drives performance by improving on-the-job skills. It significantly improves processes and operational procedures. Each speach, which is in an immersive video format, facilitates continuous and independent employee upskilling to help reduce training costs. It also reduces non-quality costs by reducing non-conformities and therefore legal sanctions. Interactive how-to videos complement and complete manufacturing and quality documents. With this dynamic format, your SMEs’ knowledge and best practices are transferred efficiently and used to their fullest.
By improving the onboarding process, companies can craft a better environment for employees throughout their time at the firm by starting with the moment they are hired. To learn more about why leveraging interactive How-To video in the onboarding process can improve employee retention and build strong, reliable teams, check out the information below.
Nothing can disconnect an employee with their new place of work faster than the feeling that they aren’t valuable, and when a company doesn’t put forth the resources necessary to create a high-quality onboarding experience for new hires, it sends the message that your organization doesn’t care about them enough to dedicate those resources. With the right solution, you can create professional quality video content that can be used to enhance onboarding, providing your new hires with not only a more engaging learning experience but also a collection of information that they are free to access and reference at any time, so they will always have the tools that they need to do their job effectively and efficiently. Micro-training video solutions make new video content easy to create and distribute to your employees, so your new hires will always be able to get the most recent and relevant information that can prepare them for the challenges they’ll face in their new role.
A key element to any good training program is the ability to adapt to different types of learners. You may have new hires that will absorb information best if they get to read through a wealth of text or analyze images and graphics, while others may learn best in a collaborative group setting, watching others perform an action, or by trying out certain actions and tasks themselves. With a video onboarding presentation, you can now offer something to all of these types of learners, allowing you to combine elements such as graphics, text annotations, audio, and much more. This makes your organization’s training process more adaptive, as a wider range of learners now have the information presented to them in the form that they prefer.
As an example, let’s say that you just created a How-To training video to show a new employee joining the mergers and acquisitions team how to understand the basics of financial modeling and best practices for building a simple one in Excel. With narration audio present in the video that walks the viewer through each section, you’re catering to the auditory focused learners. By enhancing the video with annotations or captions that put the audio narration into a text format throughout the video, you appeal to the visual learners who are able to retain the information best by reading the text and seeing the financial model come together.
Breaking the video down into simple chapters, you help learners organize the information while encouraging them to follow along and try it for themselves if they prefer. Finally, since the video is available anytime and anywhere, learners can watch and discuss the video in a group setting or watch it on their own time and at their own pace. By creating a training experience that caters to as many types of learners as possible, your new-hires are more likely to have a positive experience during the onboarding stage that they will carry with them into the later months and even years of employment.
Cognitive stress is the effort we put into understanding or absorbing new and complicated information. If it’s something simple like learning someone’s name, the cognitive stress level is low, but for understanding complicated banking concepts and best practices as a new hire, the cognitive stress can be high. Unfortunately, humans are hardwired to avoid cognitive stress as much as possible, instead seeking out the most efficient and stress-free approach to obtaining the information that is deemed necessary. Training programs that don’t effectively simplify the information or organize it in a fashion that is easier to understand, will typically result in newly trained employees retaining very little of the information they were just presented with, leaving them unprepared for the trials that accompany their new job.
The natural solution to reducing cognitive stress during the learning process is to use video, which is actually processed 60,000 times faster than other formats such as text. While you may think that video has a greater amount of information that needs to be absorbed between the collection of various visual and auditory stimuli, what makes video reduce the amount of cognitive stress is the fact that the viewer is taking a passive role in the learning process.
When a new hire going through onboarding reads through a text-heavy training guide, their brain needs to actively process every word, sentence, and idea that they read through to effectively comprehend it, resulting in a high level of cognitive stress. With a video that presents the exact same information as that text-based training guide, the trainee is presented with a variety of stimuli that their brain can select from based on their learning preferences, piecing together a more complete understanding of the material. Looking at information retention by the numbers, new employees retain approximately 95% of the information presented in a video, compared to a mere 10% of the information that they read in text format. Armed with more information, your new employees are more likely to feel prepared to start their new job and help them feel more comfortable at the organization.
While managing the amount of cognitive stress that your new-hires face during training is already a challenge, keeping them interested and engaged in the process is another barrier that learning and development managers must overcome. Engagement plays a big role in the realm of information retention for new hires, meaning the more engaging your company’s training program is, the better your employees will perform in their role and the more comfortable they will feel at the company. The good news is that just like with the case of cognitive stress, video is a perfect solution for improving engagement levels for new employees during onboarding.
One of the most important factors to consider when trying to maintain employee engagement during the start of their tenure at your organization is the pacing of training. If the pace is too slow, your new hires will quickly become disinterested and tune out, but if the pace is too fast, they will be left scrambling and failing to retain large portions of valuable information while they simply try to keep up. With an onboarding strategy that is built around a micro-training video solution, you not only ensure that the pacing of training is always consistent, but you also give your new hires more control. While they may watch the video once during their initial training, they can always go back to access the video later and watch it as many times as necessary to absorb every bit of vital information.
Another way in which video further boosts the engagement of your new hires is a phenomenon called the “mirroring effect”. Simply put, when a person watches a video of someone performing an action, the viewer feels as if they are performing that action. For example, watching a video of someone running will give you the feeling that you were also running without having the physically taxing effect on your body. While most of the time you may not notice the mirroring effect, the subtle sensation is something that will keep you engaged with the video, while also improving the rate of information retention for many learners.
Just like a video of someone running, the mirroring effect can take place for anyone watching a training video for creating a financial model, giving your new hires the feeling that they are following along and putting the model together themselves and getting hands on experience, even though they are just watching a video.
What separates good onboarding from great onboarding is how far it goes beyond the initial training. Providing your employees with high-quality information resources during their first few weeks into their new job will create a strong foundation of knowledge, but that foundation is not everlasting. Months and years down the road, that foundation can start to become shaky, as your employees fail to retain some of those crucial bits of information that they learned long ago during their onboarding, or the information that makes up their foundation becomes outdated.
With an interactive How-To video solution, your onboarding library becomes a long-term information repository that your team can access anytime, anywhere, and on any device, so they can get the information they need to keep that foundation of knowledge strong. With easy video creation and seamless sharing, your company can even send out an update regarding best practices, a groundbreaking strategy, or an adjustment to a previous video that was missing information to your entire team, from new hires to senior employees, making sure that outdated information never becomes an issue.
When the right person has easy access to the right information, expertise sharing can help employees reach operational excellence. Pharmaceutical companies should capitalize on the know-how and best practices of their SMEs in order to stay at the top of their game in such a fast-moving and highly competitive environment. Constant and quick access to in-house expertise actually makes it possible to speed up implementation of new tools, processes, and operating procedures.
The approach used to distribute GMPs (Good Manufacturing Practices) does not always facilitate practical implementation in production and QC laboratories. However, pharmaceutical companies must continuously train employees on best practices to ensure safety and guarantee that regulatory requirements for manufacturing, packaging, analysis, and storage processes are respected.
Though digital technology has become an integral part of our world, most companies continue to depend, for example, on paper documents to specify their operational procedures and ensure the best practices. It’s no secret that reading resource articles and partaking in PowerPoint training classes takes time for both student and trainer. Furthermore, these knowledge transfer methods aren’t always the most effective or engaging.
To respond to these challenges, companies can turn to step-by-step immersive video instructions filled with presentations, PDF documents, voice-overs, and notes… Pharmaceutical companies evolve in a highly controlled context and therefore have at their disposal an excellent means to promote and share knowledge and skills among peers.
Videos are more appealing and easier to use than written documents. The use of microlearning videos within a company allows it to enhance knowledge transfer. Work instructions through an immersive video contribute to the digitization of the best practices in manufacturing and quality control. They complement paper documents—or are a step towards going completely paperless!
In the pharmaceutical industry, instructions must always be clear and precise and can in no way be modified or incomplete. Operating procedures allow technicians to carry out tasks without the risk of error or omission. Adopting the best industry procedures and permanently optimizing processes prevents manufacturing incidents, delays, or issues from recurring while also contributing to reducing non-quality costs.
Microlearning videos make it easy to record the best practices and can be further enriched with diagrams, illustrations, photos, text, and markers. Laboratory technicians and operators can consult the interactive how-to video at any time and as often as they wish in order to fully comprehend a specific procedure.
The video format helps certain topics—oftentimes quite complex within the pharmaceutical industry—be more easily understood. It is reassuring for technicians to receive work instructions via an immersive video; showing rather than telling considerably improves precision and dramatically reduces the way in which something can be interpreted. video format helps certain topics—oftentimes quite complex within the pharmaceutical industry—be more easily understood. It is reassuring for technicians to receive work instructions via an immersive video; showing rather than telling considerably improves precision and dramatically reduces the way in which something can be interpreted.
Furthermore, the tutorial format makes it easy to organize and showcase information. SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) must have a logical arrangement. Step-by-step immersive videos make it possible to divide a specific operating procedure up into multiple segments and can therefore focus on how every single action should be done in great detail. How-to videos can also evolve and be easily updated at any time. This is a great time saver for laboratory operators who no longer need to look up the latest operating procedure through paper documents.
To benefit from new technology and automation, every employee must proactively and continuously self-train in order to update their skill set. Expertise sharing empowers employees and allows them to independently upskill the handling of new tools and new procedures. Work instructions in video format can be accessed on demand and through any kind of media, directly in-house.
The P4 approach to medicine (Predictive, Preventative, Personalized, Participatory) largely relies on constant health data digitization, collection, and use through new technology. However, professionals within the pharmaceutical industry are constantly surrounded by new knowledge and material. This makes it difficult for them to find the exact information they need when they need it.
Microlearning videos can instantly respond to and remotely resolve these operational issues. Laboratory operators have direct in-house access to the information they need, which allows them to avoid manufacturing delays or standstills. Gathering the best practices for manufacturing and laboratory quality control will allow employees to access the required knowledge when they need it and help them in their decision-making process.
As it is better to predict rather than heal, QC analysts, in an effort to work towards continuous improvement, must be able to anticipate the smallest issue that could appear or become redundant. Managing inconsistencies and controlling risks therefore represent a major challenge for pharmaceutical companies. Implementing a knowledge management strategy will allow you to keep your competitive edge in an already highly competitive sector.
SMEs can therefore distribute their knowledge on a large scale and have it exponentially shared as a result of the network effect. Employees will consequently feel connected with each other and their SME peers.
Distributing a team’s best practices to other sites also places it in the global spotlight. Once SMEs see how their know-how is valued after being shared, they’ll feel further recognized and become more engaged. Sharing knowledge between employees also makes it possible to identify the most talented players.
“We’re living in a world that’s changing; it’s a revolution. Digital technology and networks are shaking up companies’ rules of the game. A good customer experience does not exist without a good employee experience.” – Olivier Delabroy, VP Digital Transformation, Air Liquide
Sharing the best practices through step-by-step immersive videos drives performance by improving on-the-job skills. It significantly improves processes and operational procedures. Each speach, which is in an immersive video format, facilitates continuous and independent employee upskilling to help reduce training costs. It also reduces non-quality costs by reducing non-conformities and therefore legal sanctions. Interactive how-to videos complement and complete manufacturing and quality documents. With this dynamic format, your SMEs’ knowledge and best practices are transferred efficiently and used to their fullest.
About Speach
Speach is a video instruction format that guides operators step by step in performing a technical method. These immersive videos can be enriched with other elements to detail a process, describe a technical method, share know-how or best practices.
Learn step by step how to get into Industry 4.0 by leveraging your three most powerful internal resources: people, processes and technologies.
To take full advantage of automation, operators need to develop and upgrade their skills. The modernization production also involves process optimization to facilitate decision-making in operational daily life in order to increase productivity.
The transition to Industry 4.0 is relevant to these three levels of your company: the employees, the processes and equipment used. Each of resource contains critical information to identify potential areas for improvement:
Let’s see together how to rethink the organization of your means of production in order to optimize the “cost-time-quality triptych”.
According to a 2018 World Economic Forum report, more than half of employees (54%) will need to upgrade their skills by 2022. To take advantage of technology, companies must capitalize on the continuous development of employee skills. Indeed, the promise of automation in terms of productivity and cost reduction will only be maximized if industries make “upskilling” a priority.
With the digitalization of production chains, operators must acquire new technical skills and integrate new modes of operation. For example, employees may have to change how they course correct, manage data or define a maintenance plan. In Industry 4.0, employees learn to work online, on the go, to instruct robots, or to repair an engine with step-by-step visual instruction.
The development of technologies and data in real time on production lines also requires operators to have “soft skills” such as autonomy in decision-making and the ability to “learn to learn” to grow.
Promoting knowledge sharing and supporting employees’ daily skills development is therefore a key challenge for the factory of the future. In addition, generations Y and Z are entering the workforce and have unique learning methods. They want short, immersive content, available anywhere, anytime and on demand, according to their needs.
A continuous improvement approach constantly challenges current practices to optimize existing processes. This can be done, for example, by improving work stations, eliminating waste and reducing risks.
One of the founding principles of Kaizen is to appeal to collective intelligence and to promote the empowerment of employees. Facilitating the sharing of knowledge between employees and the feedback of information from the field makes it possible to obtain regular and progressive improvements in the process. Employees on the production line know the machines used and have already experienced certain situations. They are therefore able to give context to events that have occurred. By offering the possibility to each operator to contribute to the improvement of a process in the form of short and simple content, you will develop their autonomy and their commitment.
Despite the ubiquity of digital, operational procedures, there is still a dependency on written documentation. Written documentation can sometimes be difficult to find and consult, especially for younger generations, who are used to consuming short, interactive and immersive content. Work instructions in video format take less time to produce than written formats and are more easily viewed by employees.
Employee errors are the number one cause of quality control problems in manufacturers today. Interactive video provides a clear and concise explanation without the risk of misinterpretation.
Today, too many companies are finding temporary solutions to recurring problems. Even when a process is improved, it is not always communicated quickly and on a large scale to other production sites. An operating procedure filmed step by step in the form of enriched video can be instantly shared with all other sites and factories around the world.
In addition, watching a technical procedure filmed step by step can provide improvement opportunities which help gauge performance or efficiency. Operators can also quickly document a problem on the production line.
In the era of Industry 4.0, renewing machines and integrating new technologies offers a more connected, better controlled and more profitable production tool. Updating equipment and digitizing the production line will increase the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and therefore reduce machine downtime.
As we have seen, digital transformation is driven by people who develop their skills and rethink processes to take advantage of technology. The gradual digitization of the production tool will make it possible to entrust repetitive tasks to robots to free up time for employees with missions that have a higher added value. Technology should not decrease the capabilities of employees. In fact, technology applied effectively will empower employees. Connected operators will use the power of artificial intelligence and real-time data to make informed decisions. Thus, investing in technology will expand your capabilities for increased productivity.
Immersive video instructions assist your operators on a daily basis. They are part of a process of continuous learning and improvement for the use of new machines. With Speach, employees get accustomed to digital by using a digital mobility solution, which facilitates their daily operational life. Your teams can develop skills independently and proactively, according to their needs. Thanks to a structured and easily updated knowledge base, they will be able to make decisions more quickly and unlock situations on the ground. Your employees can quickly consult and optimize the processes and operating modes on the machines that enter the company each year. With Speach, deliver the right expertise to the right person, when they need it.
About Speach
Speach is a video instruction format that guides operators step by step in performing a technical method. These immersive videos can be enriched with other elements to detail a process, describe a technical method, share know-how or best practices.
Imagine you have just been hired as the new Operations Excellence Manager for a company that has already been in business for a number of years. And you’ve been tasked with managing the development of tools and methodologies that improve the skills and knowledge of your employees.
As you’ve done successfully in your previous companies, you immediately begin distributing a new list of standard operating procedures to all workers. No sweat for you–you’ve done this many times before, and with great success. Unfortunately, this time the results aren’t quite what you expected.
Times have changed: A few of your new hires had difficulty understanding the language the material was presented in; some of them were absent the day it was distributed, and many don’t see the relevance for trying to improve anything they have done for the last 10 years. Regardless, it is still your job to ensure that everyone is following the process as you deem necessary to achieve operational excellence.
Fortunately, technology is changing the way work instructions are created, shared and consumed. By incorporating How-To video solution into your workflow, you can now easily capture critical work instructions for distribution across your entire company. The result? Continuous improvement, enhanced productivity, reduced downtime, and of course, operational excellence.
Standard operating procedures are nothing new. They can be as easy as ensuring all employees on the floor are wearing steel-toed boots or as complex as how to make certain all medical and hazardous waste is properly secured for transport to the waste disposal facility. Many organizations rely on standard operating procedures to ensure consistency, safety and of course, profitability.
Unfortunately, in many industries, this important information is still maintained and distributed in thick binders of physical documents. Many manufacturing organizations will even print out large booklets of instructions, and then reprint that same documentation every time processes change. Imagine the cost if your procedures are modified four to five times a year?
As organizations around the world have evolved to paperless environments, digital work instructions can now be shared with employees much more effectively on mobile screens. Digital work instructions make it easy for any worker to create guidelines and share them with colleagues quickly and efficiently.
By digitizing these documents, employees within a manufacturing organization can be connected to each other and therefore improve organizational efficiency, flexibility, and safety. Digitized work instructions also make it easier to track production levels. Having this information makes it easier to address challenges while aligning everyone to the same goals.
Digitizing work instructions further benefits organizations interested in demonstrating a more ecological approach to doing business and lowering their carbon footprint. And of course, going paperless has the potential to save thousands of dollars in paper and printing costs.
But before you venture down the road of digitizing your work instructions, there are a few things to keep in mind:
Delivering and enforcing effective work instructions and SOPs is critical to an organization’s success both as a quality manufacturer as well as to regulatory compliance. But simply throwing paper-based procedures and policies at employees and expecting compliance is no longer reasonable. By utilizing video work instruction software, organizations can create an accessible online library of digital work instructions as well as teachable moments. After all, workplace learning should still be fun. The technology and tools definitely exist to make it possible.
In the manufacturing industry, safety is always at the forefront of leadership’s concerns. Workers often operate in potentially dangerous settings, operating heavy tools and handling hazardous materials alongside large, complex machinery. In that kind of environment, accidents are always a risk. But modern technology can help make the factory floor safer than ever before, and at SpeachMe, we’re helping make manufacturing everywhere safer through video.
Even with a highly-skilled workforce, the primary cause of manufacturing accidents is operator error. New workers may not feel confident with company protocol, seasoned veterans may get too comfortable, or there may be miscommunication in the training process – wherever it comes from, many accidents occur due to slip-ups on process or procedure.
Enterprise cloud video technology can change that. A robust knowledge sharing solution for work instructions and best practices videos offers a new way for workers to access and interact with the information they need to do their jobs – eliminating the knowledge gap between employee and procedure.
Digital tools put best practices videos directly at employees’ fingertips, 24/7, making it easy for them to brush up on skills or perform an action correctly. For new employees, cloud software such as Speach offers detailed analytics on watch time, engagement rate, and quiz results, providing a surefire check to ensure that every new employee understands company procedures 100%. This new level of interaction and control helps make sure nothing falls through the cracks so that when your employees start a task, they know the SOP through and through – and that makes the plant floor a safer place for everyone.
When it comes to safety, organizations cannot take shortcuts. An interactive digital format like Speach means your safety training process is more efficient and effective, creating a safer environment for each and every work at your company. See the difference that 21st-century digital work instruction software can make in a smart manufacturing organization: talk to us about how Speach can help your company today.
There are often many stakeholders involved in the development of new products, and the expectation is to do it faster and at lower prices.
Streamlining product development and product improvements processes requires knowledge sharing tools that are an integral part of ideation, design, and manufacturing so that everyone involved can effectively and efficiently work together.
Forward-thinking companies are using digital visualization to develop and improve products on a knowledge sharing platform that can capture information, communicate changes, track feedback, shorten the review cycle, and expedite the time to market.
Digital visualization is a knowledge sharing tool that can combine video, audio, webcam recordings, screen captures and data to create engaging content that can be used for product development by unifying stakeholders as they move through a product life cycle.
With the advances in the cloud and mobile devices, the digital connection is now greater than ever, even if workers are worlds apart. The knowledge sharing platform is where it all comes together. It’s a central hub that allows all stakeholders to connect, share knowledge, make changes, and communicated it throughout the company in mere minutes.
Now imagine how you can develop and improve products with a dynamic, interactive video interface knowledge sharing tool. The possibilities for product development and improvement are virtually endless.
Speach is a knowledge sharing platform that operates in real-time. You can combine video, audio, data, and other elements to unite stakeholders while working on product improvement and development. A speach can be created to work on any aspect of a product by using the power of video to bring it to life, making the process and communication more efficient and effective. Humans are visual and social creatures. Speach is a knowledge sharing tool that capitalizes on that notion, bringing together workers knowledge and skills to develop and deliver better quality products to their customers.
Speach is helping transform the way companies develop products. To learn how our innovative knowledge sharing platform can do that for your company, request a demo today. We can’t wait to show you how Speach can improve your product quality.
Avoid the systematic nature of instantaneous communication: Asynchronous exchange should be the default communication mode to remain effective at a distance. Opt for a visual collaboration tool that retains the advantages of video (human connection and enhanced understanding of the message), conducive to taking a step back and being productive!
