Covid-19 changed everything, and the post-covid handbook will guide you to stay ahead of that change.
When Covid-19 blew into our cities and towns, it emptied our schools and offices, closed our shops and restaurants, and changed the way we live and work. The pandemic has shown us what it means to be isolated, disconnected and alone.
Now it’s time to get used to the “New Normal”; to design our post-covid workplaces with intention. To improve our workplace communication.
As remote working may become that new normal, many corporate communicators may immediately think to replicate the in-person presentation with Zoom. But is that really the right model to fall back on? When we conducted a trial at the University of Amsterdam to see whether animated videos were a more effective training tool than the traditional, text-heavy PowerPoint method.
The result?
The group shown a much shorter animation scored higher on comprehension, higher on inclination to share the material and higher on engagement with the material.
Sometimes you don’t need to reinvent the wheel – you can just make it better and faster.
The challenge is not only visual. Many communicators will stumble on the unseen problem of workers not having English as a native language, due to globalisation, expansion, outsourcing and hiring. English is used by most multinational companies, despite 80% of workers being non-native speakers of English.
The upshot? Visual communication and digital storytelling can be a universal language.
Storytelling has been with us for millennia. Ever since the first cave-dweller accentuated their stories with paintings and carvings, using metaphor and mysticism, informing, entertaining and building that all-important emotional connection necessary to our survival. Long before there was the first written word, appearing just 5,000 years ago, there were pictures telling stories, evidence of which appearing 40.000 years earlier.
Today’s Master Storytellers recreate the stars and the fire in our Zoom caves. Long-form text is no longer our friend in a crisis. And good crisis response is a competitive business advantage.
Why wait any longer, when the post-covid handbook is already here?
