Communicating Transformation And Change Using Animation

Communicate changes easily

If there’s ever been a time for animation to communicate company messages, it’s now. Animation can help companies communicate changes easier, increase engagement, soften negative responses to wholesale changes, and alleviate fears your employees have post-pandemic.

Disruptive technologies have been turning the screw on the need for digital transformation in the corporate world for some time now.

The switch has been relatively slow, but post-pandemic this is set to accelerate the transformation at an unprecedented pace.

The pandemic has influenced the way companies manage operations and communicate with employees. But there is no choice. For businesses to survive, a restructuring of traditional working practices has to take place. And a lot of changes will need to be made.

Not only do business owners have to think about protecting employees, but it’s also important not to lose sight of delivering customer experience in the post-pandemic world. With a raft of changes required in a short space of time, having the right tools in place to communicate the transformation and change is crucial.

Better communication through animation

Whilst communicating changes to your company is necessary, it’s a boring topic. Let’s face it, your employees don’t really want to know about the change. Subsequently, they are only partially engaged during meetings.

Newsletters are usually ignored, emails are laborious to read and using the intranet relies on your employees to be proactive.

Animated videos provide a solution. A slick, professionally made video is entertaining and can increase engagement levels. Moreover, people are more inclined to revisit the content than they are to re-read an email. Cartoons are powerful.

Animation conveys a lot of information in a short space of time.

According to a study performed by Forester Research, one minute of animated video is worth 1.8 million words. What’s more, visuals enable viewers to remember and recall a greater percentage of the information. Ninety per cent of the information the brain absorbs is visual. Studies have found that meaningful images increase memory recall.

Animation also makes it possible to add light-hearted comedy that makes dry topics more entertaining and allows you to create situations you couldn’t show with live-action video.

Using humour is a useful tool to increase engagement with your internal communications as it helps to create a more relaxed working environment.

Post-Pandemic corporate restructuring

The most difficult challenge companies face during a process of change is your employees. People systematically complain about change because they prefer to stay in the comfort zones their habitual mind has created for them.

Humans are creatures of habit because we have a fear of the unknown. Post-pandemic businesses will be fraught with changes and one has to question how some people will cope with this amount of disruption on a personal level.

Animation is proven to reduce stress. As a matter of fact, some therapist recommends watching cartoons to their anxiety patients. The simplicity of animation is also why millions of “kidults” rave over made-for-adult cartoons such as the Simpson, South Park and Family Guy. GIFs are so popular on social media networks because they are fun.

People relate to animation because visual information is processed in the medial temporal lobe of the brain which is where emotions are also processed. Thus visual stimuli and emotions are inextricably linked in the brain. Animation also encourages conversation. Once employees start talking about the proposed changes with their employees, they share ideas and can provide inspiration for one another than allays any lingering concerns.

Communicating values and visions 

In a post-pandemic world, team members will spend more time apart. With the majority of team meetings conducted through video-hosting platforms, a lot of innovation and creativity will be lost. Animation can help businesses communicate major pipeline plans more effectively.

Animation helps businesses to define strategic direction and focus on organisational goals far easier than oral conversation and written documents. Words spoken in a virtual environment can easily be misunderstood, and unless you’re able to communicate your vision, the various departments that you need to collaborate end up pulling in different directions.

Visuals have been found to improve learning and understanding by up to 400 per cent. Animation stimulates cognitive function and imagination which makes it easier for the brain to process large amounts of information more quickly. Animated videos can also be easily tweaked. Or retweaked.

If your plans change over time, it’s a relatively quick process to make amendments to the content. There is no doubt that most businesses will have to make significant changes and the smartest way to make a stress-free impact is through animated videos.

If you have an idea for a project, you can contact us here, or drop us an email at info@sbanimation.com or give us a call on +44 (0)207 148 0526.