What's a better communication tool than email?

Imagine if you could communicate to all your staff with a tool more productive than email?
Where your staff in Singapore could watch, learn and communicate with colleagues in the next office, next building or your regional HQ half way across the globe.

Imagine if you could train with this device, a training device so effective that it would be limited by your imagination only and where you could literally throw out the whiteboard! Want to know what it is? Well you might already own one – and if I say your kids may well be using one then perhaps it’s time to catch up!

I am a cameraman and consultant. Shooting back in the UK, frequently for the BBC, I know what a powerful message a camera can provide. The visual image: more powerful than a 100 or 1000 emails?

The power of the visual image
Video production communicates to a massive audience, it supplies knowledge and information, it documents, entertains even, informs – and used professionally – the power of the visual message is limited only by your and your staff’s imagination. And with the public, (let’s face it they can make movies now with their own smart phones), and your kids using cameras, it’s now time, aided by a few broadcast skills, that the business sector harnesses and benefits from an opportunity that is as bright as the sun gleaming off the corporate offices in Shenton Way!

A company I know in the UK has offices within just a few square miles of each other. But a couple of their staff, who were always keen to have a go at making movies, (I dare you not to have a few of those in your own team), now shoot a weekly news story streamed out via the company intranet.

The directive from above was for their colleagues to know what every department was doing. The two guys have been so successful that they put their short productions now onto the company’s own You Tube Channel – it is not just your employees who will benefit: you can take your message to the customer base too.

I know of another company that doesn’t bother getting staff into a classroom for flipchart training – instead they use video production – their own employees making films about themselves. They shoot in documentary fashion, about the job they do, the issues and how they deal with them, they speak from the heart to the camera – how much more effective is that? The films are watched by employees all over the world wherever they are – because they can watch on their smartphone or laptop! And don’t forget you and your staff get something intrinsic out of producing this material in the first place – the very fact that all this creativity is buzzing around has a huge empowering and cohesive effect on the general well-being and productivity of staff – your staff.

Singapore can harness this potential
Singapore isn’t just at the gateway to Asia, but it is also a pioneer - of new systems and organisation, of making business more effective and cost efficient when budgets are tight.

Now, with multiplatform potential, where short films viewed anytime and anyplace are the norm, we need to use the same methods the public and our kids are using to communicate and promote our company and business to the workforce and customer. I can vouch for the camera being an incredibly, powerful communication tool – harness its potential, use your team’s imagination and see what it can do for you.

Jeremy Humphries is Managing Director of Skills2Film.