An easy way to save money and engage employees at the same time

I recently attended a morning seminar in London called Employer branding is dead, so what now? hosted by SAS Design – the design agency, not the design arm of the elite special forces regiment (nor the airline or software company for that matter). I’ll be posting an in depth review of the event, which featured very timely and interesting presentations from Coca-Cola and BT, in the next edition of www.simply-communicate.com, but I wanted to share something mentioned briefly ahead of the keynotes that was very interesting to me.

Every company is looking for a way to reduce costs right now. If you can increase engagement in a positive way at the same time it’s a bonus. “Flat is the new up/growth” as I’m sure you’ve heard, and will continue to hear, many say. However one top four professional services firm has saved thousands of pounds that went with its internal marketing and probably increased engagement at the same time.

How did they do it? It stopped using stock imagery in internal communication and marketing material and started using photos that its staff had taken and uploaded to an internal version of photosharing site Flickr they had running instead. It makes sense doesn’t it? There are plenty of budding photographers in every company, taking more and more photos of anything and everything with their cameras. Why not give them a place to upload shots that they’ve taken at work (and ones that they haven’t too) and use them both internally and externally.

It means that you get a unique photograph that's probably more relevant to whatever it’s beside than the stock image you would have run instead, and people will get a kick out of seeing their work published. Engagement and money saved all round.

Daniel

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