The lunch menu on the cafeteria screen probably isn’t saving lives. But what if that same screen could?
Conversations with facilities managers across manufacturing, healthcare, and corporate environments reveal the same frustration: When something goes wrong, whether it’s a chemical spill, a weather emergency, or a security incident, there’s no reliable way to instantly communicate with everyone in the building. Email doesn’t reach people on the floor. Text messages assume everyone has their phone. And those printed safety posters? They’re still showing protocols from 2019.
Meanwhile, there are screens everywhere. In lobbies, break rooms, conference areas, manufacturing floors. Most of them are either off or cycling through content that nobody looks at.
The Communication Gap in Modern Workplaces
Many critical employees lack immediate access to computers or email. Frontline workers in manufacturing facilities, distribution centers, and healthcare environments spend their days in spaces where traditional communication infrastructure doesn’t reach them effectively.
This gap becomes most dangerous during actual emergencies. Facilities managers need to communicate instantly with every person in the building, regardless of their role or location. Traditional approaches create unnecessary risk. Manual processes are slow and inconsistent, paper-based systems can’t be updated in real time, and there’s no way to verify that mandatory safety information has been displayed for required durations to meet regulatory requirements.
What Digital Signage Actually Enables
The immediate benefit is instant communication during emergencies. But several less obvious advantages matter just as much for facilities management.
The audit trail: When managing safety compliance across multiple locations, you need to prove that required safety information was displayed, when it was displayed, and for how long. Modern systems can provide automatic compliance reporting—invaluable during audits.
Customization: Digital signs offer the ability to customize by location while maintaining central control. A manufacturing plant in Ohio has different safety requirements than a distribution center in Texas. But people responsible for emergency communications need to ensure consistent standards. The right infrastructure allows facilities managers to set templates and mandatory messaging centrally while giving local teams flexibility to address site-specific needs.
Mutli-purpose use: The same infrastructure that serves day-to-day operations also assists in crisis response. Screens showing lunch menus and meeting schedules train employees to look at those displays regularly, which means when you push an emergency alert, people will actually notice it.
Instant mass communication across facilities: High-visibility displays function as immediate focal points instantly across a single building, an entire campus, or multiple locations, enabling critical updates to be noticed in real time across wide or distributed areas.
Multiple Communication Channels Matter
Emergency communications infrastructure should leverage every available device. This means not just shared screens in common areas, but conference room displays, and eventually personal devices like laptops and mobile phones as well. When managing an emergency, having multiple channels ensures the message reaches everyone, regardless of where they are or what they’re doing.
This multi-channel approach proves especially valuable in areas where personal devices aren’t permitted—certain manufacturing environments, secure facilities, or clean rooms where phones can’t be brought in. In those locations, digital displays become the primary real-time communication method.
The Implementation Reality
Most facilities already have screens, but are they actually being used? Legacy digital signage systems were often designed for marketing departments, not safety teams. They require specialized hardware, complex setup, and IT involvement for simple changes. When a facilities manager needs to push an urgent safety alert, waiting for IT approval isn’t an option.
Budget constraints are real, especially when managing multiple locations. The barrier to entry needs to be low. If displays can work through standard web browsers, organizations can deploy solutions across existing hardware without massive infrastructure investments.
The Safety-First Evaluation
Facilities managers should think about digital displays as core safety infrastructure, not as amenity features. They should take into consideration not only what’s being shared, but how it’s being shared, ensuring that critical safety and operational content can travel securely across internal networks without exposing sensitive data. This shifts the evaluation criteria fundamentally.
The purchasing decision should involve safety and compliance teams, not just IT or facilities operations. During a chemical spill or security incident, what matters is whether you can get critical information to everyone in the building within seconds.
Integration with other emergency systems matters too. Digital signage shouldn’t exist in isolation—it should coordinate with emergency notification platforms, visitor management systems, and other workplace safety tools to create a comprehensive response capability.
Making Technology Work for Safety
Part of the goal is taking care of the operational friction in employees’ day-to-day work and returning time to them. The other part is managing an emergency efficiently by delivering increased confidence when people’s brains are probably in maximum panic mode.
A successful workplace measures what matters. Just as organizations measure sales metrics and engineering velocity, creating reliable measurement and communication tools for workplace safety gives facilities managers the ability to optimize one of their most important responsibilities. Digital signage represents one part of a larger shift toward using technology to improve both safety outcomes and operational efficiency.
Arnab Bhattacharya is the director of engineering at Envoy, an integrated workplace platform that connects people, spaces, and data.