The ability to effectively communicate information to your employees and stakeholders is vital. There are many ways of using humour within your internal communications, that will encourage engagement and the retention of your intended message.
Maintaining professional relationships is obviously important within the workplace, however it is just as important to ensure that employees and stakeholders are not left feeling un-involved or alienated. Using a degree of humour in your internal communications can help create a more relaxed and open working environment, meaning that employees are more likely to feel comfortable with the information being displayed, and embrace change as it is implemented. The use of humour can create a sense of community, and in doing so establish a more informal setting for discussion in order to encourage staff to share their ideas.
MTR – Health & Safety from Sliced Bread Animation on Vimeo.
Lengthy videos communicating safety procedures or new working processes can often lose an audience’s attention, despite the information displayed being hugely important. Humour keeps a viewer interested, and can actually help them remember the material. A study found that viewers of comedy news programmes such as The Daily Show have a higher level of retention and are much more informed about current events than viewers of straight news programming.
We are more likely to discuss something funny or shocking that we have seen with our colleagues, as videos of this nature are inherently more interesting to us. When used correctly, using humour in your communications strategy will not only increase retention, but will prompt discussion between employees. Discussing what they have seen is a positive way of actively engaging with the information.
Animation is the perfect medium for adding a bit of comedy into your internal communications, as it allows you to create situations that you couldn’t show with live action video. It also holds the viewers’ attention better than text or audio, with visuals sticking in the memory for up to 6 times longer, leading to higher levels of information retention. Adding a sense of humour will only add to this, allowing you to convey key messages to staff, and creating a positive reception of the information.
If you are thinking of incorporating animation or humour into your communications strategy, training or branding. Drop us an email at info@sbanimation.com or give us a call on +44 (0)207 148 0526.
