Lightspeed is a unified point of sale and payment platform for the world’s leading retail, restaurant and golf businesses in over 100 countries around the world.
Internal communication across the global offices is incredibly important, with a requirement to keep all employees up-to-date with what’s happening with the business, products, customers and employees’ experiences. Lizzie Gohier, Senior Manager, Employee Experience Communications and Elina Barklon, Senior Manager, Industry Communications are both responsible for ensuring information is shared across the global business in a way that’s engaging, useful and easy to understand.
Video has become an exciting new communications tool in their toolbox to get messages across to teams. For the Lightspeed internal communications team, access to an easy video-creation platform was a barrier to experimentation.
The challenge: Elevating their existing content strategy to reach distributed employees in creative ways
Lightspeed has offices and employees around the world, and it’s important that each team feels connected with one another. Not only do they want to make sure information is being shared, but they also need to ensure that each individual, no matter their location, feels as though they’re part of a wider community within the organization.
The Internal Communication team struggles to efficiently share a wealth of information tailored to each team. With employees accessing information through email, Slack, and myLightspeed (their internal intranet platform), the challenge is to ensure relevance and ease of absorption. While iMovie was previously used for basic video editing, the team has decided to integrate video into their content strategy for a more engaging approach to "cut through the noise."
“When you have a large employee base, you need to be strategic in the information you share, ensuring that the teams learn that which is going to make their jobs easier while making sure they feel connected to the organization regardless of location.”
Elina Barklon, Senior Manager, Industry Communications
The team was keen to find a solution that would enable them to create their own content in-house.
This is where PlayPlay came in – by providing a full suite of professional video creation and editing features that anybody can use, no previous experience required.
The solution: Complete freedom to create branded internal communications, as needed
After two onboarding training sessions with their dedicated PlayPlay Customer Success Manager, the Lightspeed Internal Communications team were able to start creating studio-quality videos, without any previous experience.
“Last year we had to lean on the marketing team to put together a video message from the executives, and this year I was able to do it myself. For the ‘Save the Date’ video, we heard feedback that some employees thought we’d outsourced the videos for this event, but it was just me using PlayPlay.”
Lizzie Gohier, Senior Manager, Employee Experience Communications
A number of features embedded within PlayPlay were pivotal to helping the team to pick up the process of video creation quickly.
- Easy-to-use templates: A library packed with hundreds of fully-customizable options unique to different types of videos the team wants to create.
- Aspect ratio editing: Quick and responsive aspect ratio reformatting available for different platform and video needs.
- Image, video and illustration library: Helping the team find inspiration for new video projects with the ability to fill in any content gaps or add a bit of fun to their videos with stock content.
- Music library: An easily accessible library packed with royalty-free music that they can use in all videos without worrying about copyright laws.
- Quick and simple branding: With the ability to upload all of their own branding and music tracks, Lightspeed can create on-brand videos without the need to check-in with the branding team.
- Subtitles: Fast and effective subtitling to ensure the videos are accessible across a range of different languages, especially important for their global business.
The Lightspeed team have found that these features allow them to confidently create high-quality videos in little time.
“You can upload all of your own branding - photos, logos, little outros - and then every single time the template is going straight into your branded environment and you can customize from there. It just saves so much time you don't have to worry about anything.”
Lizzie Gohier, Senior Manager, Employee Experience Communications
The Result? PlayPlay provided Lightspeed with a much-needed resource that allowed their internal teams to communicate with all teams across the world on a more personalized and intimate level, ensuring team satisfaction and clear communication across the organization.
PlayPlay helped Lightspeed build an engaging and insightful library of video content for their teams across the globe
As soon as the Internal Communications team at Lightspeed started using PlayPlay, they realized there were a number of different ways that they could benefit from the tool, including:
- Executive announcements: Bitesize snippets of information from the team of executives, keeping employees up-to-date in a new, fresh way to further enhance existing content formats.
- Explainer videos: Explainer videos to introduce new initiatives, using infographics and statistics to bring the information to life.
- Industry-specific videos: A library of industry-specific videos to share information that’s useful for other teams.
- Interview-style videos: A series of interviews with different team members, sharing actionable tips for teams in other departments and countries.
- Employee experience videos: A portfolio of videos that show the employee experience or promote programs to elevate their experience.
- Internal ‘accolade’ videos: Turn accolades for the company in the press into videos to show wins, internally.
- Recognition programme videos: Reels showcasing the nominees of their quarterly awards ceremony or put a callout to nominate.
- Highlighting promotions: By creating reels of employees who have been promoted or moved internally, Lightspeed can celebrate these career milestones and let others across different teams and offices know about any employee-related news.
Lizzie, Elina and the rest of Lightspeed’s Internal Communications team now feel empowered to create videos that are impactful and add value for employees, without having to pull resources from other areas of the business.
“PlayPlay allowed us to elevate our messaging in a new way. Video we found is really engaging for employees… they can click and watch it on the side and absorb information in a different way. Or see subtitled video content on our in-office screens to catch up on what’s important as they move through their day.”
Lizzie Gohier, Senior Manager, Employee Experience Communications
The result: Elevated employee engagement through swift, on-brand internal comms videos created in minutes
While the team at Lightspeed weren’t previously creating many internal videos, since introducing PlayPlay, they’ve seen their video production increase dramatically, creating at least 1 internal communications video every week.
They’ve also seen employee engagement increase hugely thanks to their videos – with content views on their preferred distribution channels growing each week. Lizzie and Elina are both excited by how much the introduction of internal video communications have brought their teams across the world together, helping them feel more connected to what’s happening within each department and learning more about the company. This has been especially prevalent with videos that celebrate successes of different individuals in their organization.
“We’ve had so much feedback on our videos that celebrate our people, so I'm really proud of that.”
Lizzie Gohier, Senior Manager, Employee Experience Communications
The time it takes for Lizzie to create videos has also improved.
“The whole thing is taking me less and less time now, to create new series, new templates, new one-offs. I just feel more and more excited to explore what else we can do with PlayPlay.”
Lizzie Gohier, Senior Manager, Employee Experience Communications
As a power user of the PlayPlay platform, Lizzie was also able to pass on her knowledge to other members of the team. As Elina had no previous experience with video editing, she was conscious that introducing this into her role might take up too much time.
“Luckily, we had Lizzie on our team who was showing us a lot of what PlayPlay could do. I also had a meeting with the PlayPlay designated Customer Success Manager and she helped me create a template. That's really made it a lot easier.”
Elina Barklon, Senior Manager, Internal Industry Communications
Video is one of their best performing forms of content, with their teams across different offices being more likely to click on information that includes a video to text or static images. Overall, elevating the organization’s communication across their regional and international teams.
“With PlayPlay, we're exploring more and more of what we can do with it and expanding our repertoire.”
Lizzie Gohier, Senior Manager, Employee Experience Communications
