The numbers paint a grim picture. According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 report, global employee engagement dropped to 21% in 2024, costing the world economy $438 billion in lost productivity. Poor communication sits at the heart of this disconnect. When employees don’t receive timely information about company goals, policy changes, or even basic operational updates, they disengage.
Digital signage offers a practical workaround. A media player for Windows devices transforms any screen into a communication channel that reaches people where they actually work. Break rooms, production floors, hallways, entrances. The information comes to employees instead of expecting employees to hunt for it.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Why Email Fails Deskless Workers
Deskless employees make up roughly 80% of the global workforce. Retail associates, manufacturing workers, hospitality staff, healthcare providers, and logistics teams. These people physically cannot check email during their shifts because their jobs don’t involve sitting at computers.
The Staffbase 2025 Employee Communication Impact Study found that only 29% of non-desk employees are satisfied with the quality of internal communication they receive. Compare that to 47% satisfaction among desk-based employees. The gap exists because most communication strategies were built around people who work at computers all day.
Even when deskless workers have company email addresses, checking them requires logging into a shared terminal or pulling out a personal phone during breaks. That friction means messages go unread. Urgent updates arrive too late. Policy changes get missed entirely.
The result is a two-tier information system where office workers know what’s happening, and everyone else learns through the grapevine, if they learn at all.
The Business Case for Visual Communication
Disengaged employees aren’t just unhappy. They cost money.
Gallup research shows that highly engaged teams see 23% higher productivity and 51% lower turnover compared to disengaged teams. When employees feel informed and connected to company goals, they perform better and stick around longer.
Digital signage addresses the reach problem directly. A screen in the break room doesn’t require employees to take action. They glance up while getting coffee and absorb information passively. Safety reminders, production targets, recognition announcements, and upcoming schedule changes. The content appears whether someone seeks it out or not.
This passive exposure model mirrors how advertising works. Repeated visual impressions build awareness without demanding active attention. The difference is you’re selling employees on company priorities instead of products.
What to Display and Where
Location determines content. A screen near the time clock serves different purposes than one in a customer-facing lobby.
Break rooms and common areas: Company news, employee recognition, wellness programs, event announcements, and benefits reminders. This is a social space where people linger and have time to absorb longer messages.
Production floors and warehouses: Safety alerts, shift schedules, real-time KPIs, and quality metrics. Keep content brief and highly visible from a distance. Workers passing by should grasp the message in seconds.
Entrances and exits: Daily priorities, weather updates, parking alerts, emergency information. This is a transition space where attention is limited but foot traffic is guaranteed.
Customer-facing areas: Content shifts toward external messaging, but employee-relevant information can still appear during off-hours or on back-of-house screens.
Match the display size to viewing distance. A 55-inch screen works well at 10 to 15 feet. Larger venues need bigger displays or video walls to maintain readability.
Setting Up Without Breaking the Budget
Purpose-built digital signage hardware exists, but you don’t need it. Most organizations already have Windows PCs sitting underused or ready for retirement from their primary roles. These machines work perfectly as signage players.
Requirements are minimal: Windows 10 Pro or Windows 11 Pro for kiosk mode lockdown, HDMI or DisplayPort output, network connectivity, and enough processing power to handle video playback. A five-year-old office computer typically meets these specs.
Cloud-based content management systems handle the software side. Upload content from anywhere, schedule it across locations, and push updates instantly. No need for IT to physically visit each display.
The ongoing cost comes down to software subscription fees and content creation time. Hardware investment approaches zero if you’re repurposing existing equipment.
Content That Actually Gets Noticed
The biggest mistake is treating digital signage like a PowerPoint presentation. Walls of text don’t work when people are walking past at normal speed.
Keep text minimal. If a message takes more than five seconds to read, it’s too long for signage. Save detailed explanations for other channels.
Use high-contrast visuals. Bold colors, large fonts, and clear imagery. Ambient lighting in industrial environments washes out subtle designs.
Rotate content regularly. Stale displays become invisible. People stop looking when they expect to see the same thing every day.
Mix informational and recognition content. Production metrics matter, but employee birthdays and service anniversaries build culture. Balance both.
Include real-time data where possible. Live dashboards showing progress toward goals create urgency and accountability that static content can’t match.
Measuring Whether It Works
Digital signage success is harder to measure than email open rates, but not impossible.
Track indirect metrics first. Survey employees about whether they feel informed. Monitor safety incident rates after displaying reminders. Compare engagement scores before and after rollout.
Content management platforms provide some direct data. How often content plays, which playlists run on which screens, and uptime statistics. These help optimize scheduling but don’t capture whether anyone actually looked.
For higher-stakes deployments, consider pairing signage with QR codes linking to surveys or additional information. Scan rates indicate active engagement beyond passive viewing.
The honest answer is that digital signage works best as part of a broader communication strategy, not a replacement for all other channels. It fills a specific gap: reaching people who don’t use computers during their workday. That gap matters more than most organizations realize until they start measuring how much of their workforce operates in an information vacuum.
