Beyond Housing, one of the largest housing associations in the North East and North Yorkshire, has selected Signagelive, a Digital Signage solutions provider, to support and build on the success of its corporate communications.

Since Beyond Housing adopted the Digital Signage software for its Redcar premises in October 2022, Signagelive has become a cornerstone of the association’s strategy, helping to drive home its customer-centric corporate values.

With Signagelive support, Beyond Housing has been able to ramp up its corporate story-telling to great effect, rolling out up-to-the-minute, real-time company updates as they happen. 

The solution has streamlined management processes, enabling the company to update and schedule content remotely and pave the way for hourly on-screen key performance indicator (KPI) reporting with secure dashboards.

This speed, efficiency and immediacy are, according to Ben Fletcher, Beyond Housing’s ICT Operations Manager, what first drew the company to the platform: “We needed an advanced cloud-based Digital Signage solution that could help us engage with colleagues and customers in today’s fast-paced world of communications.

With Signagelive, we have the flexibility to do this. We can share updates as they happen, as well as the content we want, exactly when and where we believe it will have the most impact.” 

At the touch of a button, colleagues can remotely schedule content to appear on any of the company’s fifteen 32-inch LG system-on chip-screens, making it easier than ever before for them to build on Beyond Housing’s distinctive corporate identity.

About Beyond Housing

Established in 2018, Beyond Housing provides 15,000 homes and a wide range of services, including work, training and learning opportunities across Tees Valley and North Yorkshire. A housing provider with a difference, its purpose is to help customers and communities succeed and thrive. 

As such, it has developed an ambitious corporate communications strategy to support its mission, and help colleagues demonstrate, in every customer interaction, the community care for which it strives to be renowned.

Victoria Taylor, Beyond Housing Communications & Digital Service Manager explains, “Living Our Values Every Day (LOVED) is a twelve-step training programme that has been specially rolled out to help our teams communicate our corporate values and put them into practice every time they engage with customers.

Simply by scheduling the frequent on-screen display of LOVED communication tools with Signagelive, we can reinforce our team training, and immerse colleagues in the best practices we need to deliver a caring, results-driven customer service for our local communities.  

Data-driven work culture

To help empower its colleagues, Beyond Housing has also developed next-level support for finger-on-the-pulse, data-driven decision making, with the roll out of Signagelive secure dashboards.
Historically, Beyond Housing had a manual process to share insights and analytics, as much of its data was stored in different systems and formats. Before any data could be rolled out via the company’s internal communications platform, Workplace, KPIs would have to be extracted manually from the relevant system, and then an individual graphic created for each indicator.
With Signagelive’s secure dashboards, this has all changed and metrics from virtually any business intelligence platform are quick, easy and secure to display on-screen.

Power BI data

Beyond Housing can now use its current preferred business intelligence platform – Microsoft Power BI to extract, combine and model datasets from different systems and then securely display the analytical reports created through secure dashboards.
Without the need for any manual input, or multiple graphics, Power BI KPIs can be displayed together on-screen in a pre-prepared template, and automatically updated every sixty minutes.
The impact on the business has, according to Victoria Taylor, been game-changing: “Instead of having to view each KPI separately and on a weekly basis, we can now see, at a glance, a top-line overview of all the most important, real-time insights. These include everything from the number of calls answered to the volume of repairs in progress.
The on-screen display of this data has empowered our colleagues, giving them a more informed and holistic view of the company’s performance, as well as hour-by-hour insights to help them make faster, more informed decisions.”

Gamification

Signagelive-powered Digital Signage has also proven valuable for gamifying the workplace and reinforcing the company’s collaborative work culture. The on-screen promotion of incentive-based training schemes, such as Digital Genius has ultimately helped ensure the smooth company-wide roll-out of Office 365 by motivating more colleagues to sign up for training. 

With Digital Signage campaigns, such as this, colleagues only need to take a quick look at the screens to understand what the programme entails, and importantly, what incentives are available – like, for instance a badge upon completion of training.

Events

Similarly, the build-up and promotion of yearly company events, such as the reward and recognition event, the Star Awards, have helped to boost collaboration and motivate colleagues to find more ways to contribute to the company’s success. 

Victoria Taylor explains, “Seeing imagery from the event itself, as well as the names of award nominees and winners up on our big screens always generates a lot of interest, and often inspires people to become involved.”

Diversity and inclusion

The on-screen promotion of incentives, such as Be an Ally has also helped Beyond Housing build on its reputation for being considered one of the UK’s most inclusive workplaces.

Reflecting the company’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace, the initiative invites colleagues to sign up to Be an Ally, receiving a lanyard and information pack to show their support for marginalised community groups.

“Featuring such initiatives prominently on our Digital Signage content line-up is a way”, Victoria Taylor says, “to encourage conversations around diversity, and keep them front of mind.”

Colleague wellness

Updates about colleague wellness and mental health are also regularly scheduled in the Digital Signage line-up, signposting each month’s mental health leads and how to get in touch.

Other content for colleagues that is frequently displayed on-screen to strengthen the company’s corporate identity and culture, include:

• Business awards/achievement news
• Conference updates 
• Colleague events 
• Motivational customer feedback
• Meet the Senior Leadership team opportunities.

Customer-facing communications

Signagelive-powered Digital Signage is, however, not just a tool for internal communications; it’s also a powerful way for Beyond Housing to communicate with its customers. 

An unmissable focal point in the Beyond Housing customer reception area, it serves as contextual marketing, enabling the company to showcase its achievements, services, and success stories, as customers wait to meet with colleagues.

For both its colleague and customer communications, Beyond Housing has made full use of Signagelive’s vast range of built-in features, which include:

• The advanced scheduling tool to set campaign end dates/times, so colleagues don’t have to remove and update old content manually
• Multiple layout options to suit different kinds of content
• Multi-file format support to roll out a more dynamic, multimedia strategy.

Data protection

As data protection is a top priority for the company, Beyond Housing has also opted to enable the Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) feature, which adds an additional layer of security to the already robust and secure platform. The product of an ISO-27001-certified company, Signagelive offers one of the most secure content management platforms on the market.

Of the Beyond Housing project, Tim Baker, Signagelive Marketing Manager says: “We’re proud to be working with Beyond Housing. This project perfectly exemplifies the unlimited potential of cloud-based Digital Signage to power an ambitious corporate communications strategy at scale. Capable of delivering so much more than basic colleague notices, it can bring corporate brand identities to life with everything from real-time data to imagery, while also helping organisations to streamline content management.”

Victoria Taylor concludes: “Signagelive has delivered transformational support, enabling us to become custodians of our own corporate story. Fundamental to the delivery of both our colleague and customer communications strategies, it has allowed us to capture and share, in our own style and voice, real-time snapshots and updates of our company’s on-going day-to-day progress.

It also happens to be easy-to-use with an intuitive portal, and fantastic on-going support and training.

We’re already looking at how to bring this great service to our other Beyond Housing office locations.”