What's Up with Tech?
Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
The Future of Workplace Communications
Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com
Communication lies at the heart of every successful organization, but in today's information-saturated workplace, getting messages to resonate has never been more challenging. Frank Gauld CPTO @ Poppulo reveals a startling paradox: while companies are struggling to connect with their workforce despite more communication tools than ever, employees are simultaneously craving deeper connection and belonging.
The numbers tell a compelling story. Poppulo's employee communications platform reaches about 50 million people daily, with companies sending over 2.2 billion messages last year. Yet their research shows only 45% of communicators believe their change messaging is effective. Why? Information overload has employees tuning out generic communications from email, chat apps, and digital signage. Meanwhile, landmark research indicates that belonging—not pay or flexibility—is the primary driver of employee wellbeing and productivity.
Artificial Intelligence is emerging as the bridge between these disconnected worlds. For often under-resourced internal communicators, AI offers productivity enhancements through features like auto-translation, content generation that maintains brand voice, and sophisticated analytics. Frank shares how Poppulo's upcoming "analyze agent" will use semantic interfaces to make communications data more accessible, while future iterations aim to proactively assess message impact before sending. The most exciting potential lies in AI's ability to close the feedback loop between "voice of the company" and "voice of the employee," creating truly resonant communications.
Looking toward the future, Frank suggests we're on the cusp of a fundamental shift in human-computer interaction. Just as Steve Jobs' visit to Xerox PARC revolutionized interfaces through the GUI, agentic AI may move us beyond traditional desktop metaphors toward something entirely new. As he puts it with a smile, these AI agents are like "minions" with specialized skills—and they're already transforming how organizations connect with their people in meaningful ways.
Ready to cut through the noise and create communications that foster genuine belonging? Subscribe to our podcast for more insights on navigating the evolving landscape of workplace technology.
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Hey everybody. Interesting chat today, as we talked about workplace communications and what's next. Lots of changes going on, from AI to digital signage, managing change and more with Populo Frank, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm good. Thank you, evan, delighted to join your podcast today.
Speaker 1:Delighted to have you here. You reminded me that Populo means people in Latin. I'm a little rusty on my Latin, but how would you describe Populo these days to the listeners, viewers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, let me tell you about Populo. I mean, it's the simplest. We're a communications business. Let's face it communications at the heart of every successful company, whether it's instructions or policies, leadership messages or just connecting conversations across teams. It's all communication, and externally to customers as well, it can be giving vital flight information, operational progress, wayfinding, advertising, scoreboards, welcoming event information. Basically, we help organizations connect with their people and their customers in ways that matter. And so we have two lines of business employee communications, which reaches about 50 million employees every day, and digital signage. We reach hundreds of millions more around the world.
Speaker 2:And then the employee communications side. Companies sent more than 2.2 billion messages through our platform last year, and the biggest topics being leadership updates and employee wellbeing, which says a lot about what's going on in the workplace right now. And then we work with internal communications, hr, it, anyone who's responsible for employee communication, engagement in large, complex organization with distributed workforces in multiple languages. And we're lucky we're really fortunate to have some of the most recognized brands in the world. At Digital Signage, we deliver content across multiple industries, notably hotels, gaming, higher education and corporate manufacturing, where there's an overlap with employee communications. We rank number five globally in Invitus Yearbook, which is the sort of industry leader in reporting and digital signage. And some examples MGM Hotels in Las Vegas, delta Airlines, flight Information across the US and even National Exhibition Center in Abu Dhabi. Whether it's inside the company or out in the world, it's all about getting the right message to the right people at the right time in a way that resonates. So hopefully that gives you the picture, evan.
Speaker 1:Wow, what an elevator pitch. That's phenomenal. You do your own research in many cases. You did a recent survey showing that only 45% of companies' communicators think that their change messaging is working. Why do you think it's so hard to get right and what are they doing wrong, do you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is why I love the title of your podcast. So what is up with communications tech? I'd say today there are companies with more communications technology than ever to do this, but that's part of the problem. We're seeing huge information overload. Apart from always-on notifications, which I switched off to during your podcast, or screen time, in their personal lives, employees are bombarded with messages from email, chat apps, different signage at work, and that's really what's happening.
Speaker 2:People are beginning to tune out, and that's what we're getting at is they're not getting what's relevant to them, and that's what's key. Communications are overwhelming in companies, with genetic information that's not at use and, ironically, while companies are struggling to connect with their people, research that we've done is showing that employees are craving something deeper, that sense of belonging, and that's the dichotomy that we're working with, that sense of connection with the colleagues in the company they work for. And so we've highlighted some landmark research that the biggest driver of employee well-being, which is the top two areas of our communications we're sending, which is a massive impact on productivity, isn't pay or flexibility. It's, as many leaders think, it's actually belonging, and that's that remarkable tension.
Speaker 2:We're seeing Organizations finding it harder to connect with their people and, at the same time, employees crying out for feeling connected, and so that's where we dig in and try and help the communicators and connect more with their employees.
Speaker 1:Enter AI and authentic AI and LLMs, and I think it's making a lot of us that is more like robots. How is AI changing or shaping the way companies communicate for the good and the bad?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is the current, this is the future for me and my role, heading up product and engineering and we're targeting the agentic AI that we're building towards helping the communicators. And so what do we see? Quite often, internal communicators are the least resourced in a company. So increasing their productivity, speeding up the communications process. You know, if there's delays in creating or distributing messages, especially in multiple languages which was one of our first AI releases to do email auto-translate it can have an impact on strategic alignment around leadership messages. It can weaken change initiatives. Also, improving research and time to context.
Speaker 2:We talk a lot in popular about the voice of the company versus the voice of the employee. Ai can easily generate content based on all of the previous voice of the company messages and help take the input of the voice of the employee at the same time to bridge that gap. We see AI as bridging the gap between voice of the employee and voice of the company. Personalization and targeting really is critical to get through a lot of the noise, so it can help tailor content, adhere to company brand and voice guidelines. Especially as we democratize communication, whether it's within digital signage or internal communications you need AI to be that sort of angel on the shoulder that checks you within brand guidelines. It can help modify our target tone, target audiences you know best timeframes. Simulation is an area we're getting into.
Speaker 2:Next, our first release will be the brains of the operation, which will be our analyze agent, which really does help internal communicators and who quite often create a semantic people who struggle sometimes with the advanced analytics in our systems.
Speaker 2:Ai gives them a semantic interface to ask questions and queries and then it can come back with tailored results about how things are going, how things are targeting. We want to take it to the next level and use analytics to proactively assess the impact of communication before sending it, so that it can think about what you've created, who you're targeting, the times and the ways in which you'll share it in such a way that you'll be able to assess the impact. And then, finally, in signage one area which is different we think about the availability of the network of signage, not only to sort of AI alerting proactively with agentic AI what's happening in network, but also proactively looking at maybe some resources in the signage network I know you've got a communications background, evan thinking about proactively looking at resources across the network to sort of say, hey, this sign could end up freezing. It's all different ways of bringing power to the network, being able to do things in different ways. It's just a fascinating journey and, yeah, I'm enjoying it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's nothing worse than a sign, a digital sign, glitching and showing some sort of Windows 95. I assume you're beyond that blue screen of death, so maybe we can solve that problem. And my favorite digital signage example in the movies was Minority Report, where Tom Cruise is being, you know, shown advertising that's personalized to him. So fast forward to today, with AI, do you think you can tailor messages for every human, every employee, even in a workplace or anywhere else?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what we do already, even with 4EI, was a lot of segmentation of customers, whether it's language or different organizations. We deal with some massive global organizations who have different messages that go out, so we've always been able to target it down to different segments. I think where we want to go is to flip to the consumption site, you know, and actually begin to there, begin to give assistance. You know we're adding assistance to various parts of the workplace to be able to get people to consume. Ai is fantastic at summarization and being able to get to the messages.
Speaker 2:And then you know, in some ways, when we are doing content creation, we use source citations, which is part of explainable AI, which is how did you come up with this? You know how should I believe this? Because for internal communicators, adoption of AI is one of the challenges. You know where in content creation, you know that's a pool of water. You tiptoe into where you're dealing with professional content creators and you have AI doing the same thing. They've got to want to believe in this area. So we do a lot of work basically helping in the content side. Creators know where we came from the information and they can click on it with hyperlinks that take you back to the information. They go.
Speaker 2:Ah it yeah with hyperlinks that take you back to the information they go. Ah, okay, I know what I mean. We can flip that on the consumption side to be able to summarize for someone with a lot of content hitting their way, what's relevant to them and their role, or something that ei's learned about them, and then get use the source citations to click them back if they actually want to read more on that specific topic. But, yeah, cutting through that noise, ai should be fantastic at that both to help tailor it on the way out with the voice of the company, but also to bring it back in, yeah, and provide that feedback look of the voice of the employee, of what's mattering, such that more and more, even in a general sense, the communications are hitting the mark.
Speaker 1:Brilliant, and how should organizations measure success in communications? When you talk about ROI, does that really even make sense here when it comes to internal communications, and how could you possibly measure it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is one of the challenges. You know we have customer advisory boards and you know that topic often comes up. I think, of four areas. You know. Better alignment with company strategy Are we getting that? You know, in terms of the feedback loop, are the messages getting out in the right tone, being received and then, in surveys or whatever, are people beginning to understand that and act on it? You know I talked about employee engagement and well-being of employees. Are we helping that regard? Is it boosting morale, engagement and retention? Are we helping improve productivity?
Speaker 2:You know, on the signage side, if you think, in the corporate setting, in the manufacturing setting, in a frontline worker setting, it can be in a call center looking at statistics Is it operations? Is it improving productivity, reducing time? And then even as simple as you know my role, I travel a lot. I always think, you know I'm going through the airports, like Delta home in Atlanta, giving the customers the information they need when and where they need it at a glance. You know I can just go through the airport or in any way that we have our signage people in a queue going through a quick serve restaurant, if they can get it in a glance, then we're beginning to work. You know it's all about that send, receive and feedback loop and communications. That's what we aim for.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. And how do you avoid? You know the phenomenon of people tuning out to so much noise. I think of billboards, not your space, but no one looks at them anymore. They're driving down the road, they're looking at their phone or hopefully not driving but passengers aren't looking at billboard. Is it about making the communications clearer or making it more interesting? What's? What are some best practices there?
Speaker 2:I think that I mean targeting is one of those you know, understanding where it is, how long people have to see it, what they're actually doing. Context is everything for targeting. Shading can just be the times, the refresh rate of the screens. Have you ever sat in the one flight that you have as the fifth screen that's coming up? It can be annoying. There is technology now. From a tech point of view it sounds really exciting.
Speaker 2:Some of the sensor technologies that can actually measure the length of time people gaze at screens, you know, versus the throughput of going past, and that can help us think about the locations of technology and AI. You know, what we're really interested in there is whether most companies now are producing AI agents, and so the platform we've built for agentic AI. We really thought about the agent agent protocols that Google put out, and we're a partner of Google in that concern. Agents talking to agents has been part of how we designed our platform. So we're really interested in partnerships with different companies, be it in employee communications or in digital signage. Or in digital signage, to the difference between a Gentic AI and, say, a chatbot.
Speaker 2:A Gentic AI doesn't only respond to you typing a prompt in. It can asynchronously make an alert. So, whether it's survey companies some of the leading survey companies we were partnering with that can essentially, across an organization, begin to know areas of concern or some topics that are coming up can, proactively, an agent from that company alert our communication agent and our agent could literally come up with a campaign and propose it. On the digital signage side, looking at people walking past versus gazing how long they gaze, can they even get the sentiment of the person looking at it and begin to either feedback or begin to modify in real time the signage. The ideas are endless. You know it's a fantastic journey we're going on of whether it's intelligence on the edge and digital signage or whether it's that constant voice of the employee feeding voice of the company and back out again to get that sense of belonging going Brilliant.
Speaker 1:What are some of the more far-out concepts that you're thinking about? You know, holograms or avatars or other kinds of sci-fi-like technology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, evan, you worked out when we were meeting at the start of this. I'm Scottish, so that does make me outrageously pragmatic, and so I don't like to think too far ahead. But you touched on an area where we're beginning to research, which is, you know, I've been in tech industry a while, and one of my favorite books ever was a book called Dealers of Lightning, and it talks about the time Steve Jobs went to Zedek Park and they thought he was there to suss out their new computer, and actually he was looking at the GUI interface and it influenced the Macintosh and, in turn, windows 95. And essentially it's still here today. Look at the desktops we're looking at today.
Speaker 2:I think that user interface metaphor is not best suited for agentic AI. Yeah, and so I'm watching with real interest Johnny Ive and Sam Altman getting together. They talk companion, and so I think we're entering a new world of human-computer interaction where the agentic AI could take on a different space. And then you get to movies. You know it is fascinating where movies have touched on interfaces with technology that suddenly come to the fore, and so this is an area for us where we're studying, which is what is the agentic interface of the future.
Speaker 2:You know, working with researchers in that area and begin to understand voice could be one of the main interfaces to agentic Because essentially, whether it's a virtual or human resource, it's a communication and that's our world. But then, as you talked about some of the points where you get holographic, there'll always be a visual element as well. I do think the GUI interface of the desktop metaphor will probably begin to shift as more and more we deal with agentics. So that's an area in the future. Call it space age, I don't know, but it'll be exciting, Very exciting.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe you can help us navigate our space hotels and space stations of the future. Very exciting. So you're in Edinburgh. You'll probably have a few more weeks of summer-like weather before the rain, the fog and the dark nights roll in. But what are you looking forward to? I assume you have a lot of events and meetups and other activities over the next few months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we're lucky in that we have sites in Ireland, we have sites in Denver and across the world. So a lot of traveling, meeting customers as well, whether it was Infocom in the US or meeting customers whether it was across the world. Tomorrow I've got customer advisory boards. It's interesting, ai is like the number one topic and what we've noticed in advisory boards of recently is there's not a lot of discussion in the open between each one of their peers, but individually there's a fascination with what we're doing. You know and that's something in our own company that we're trying to get people to, get this open discussion. There is a fear, whether it's a fear of the technology or a fear of maybe not sounding so smart. It's get that conversation going, get technology in the hands of customers. Um, you know it's um we're to.
Speaker 2:This week we're releasing an agentic um release of the analyze agent. And something for me that's been fascinating, you know, having developed technology over years, is that that you're confronted with an interface much like ChudgyPT or any one of the large language models, and essentially it's an open interface. Somebody could type in into there and then behind that you've got a software system, a language model, being able to anticipate the use cases of customers and to what they will use these agents for, what it has to respond with. I can see now why the language models not only because of their learning but what they have to respond to have evolved through versions 2, 3, 4, 5. And so that's a focus for us, which is to get out in the market, mature our agentic AI, but interacting with customers, understanding where they want to go, and at the same time, you know, it reminds me of the movie Despicable Me. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say these things.
Speaker 2:The agents are like minions. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Good analogy. I'm going to steal that. Very fun.
Speaker 2:Go for it. You know, and we have various to steal that Very fun it's really very fun. Various skills. Sometimes the hardest part is keeping them to the swim lane, because you could ask it to write your poem and analyze it, because it's got such great technology behind it. We're learning in the market as much as we're learning from our research. Working with our customers on advisory boards, beta trials is everything. It's going to be a journey, this AI, and we've got to keep focusing on our customers and know where we're going with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, brilliant, well, fantastic chat. Really enjoyed your insights and thanks for your time.
Speaker 2:Thank you, evan, and thanks to all the listeners. I hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks everyone for listening and watching, sharing this episode, and be sure to check out the new TV show TechImpact TV now on Bloomberg TV and Fox Business. Thanks everyone. Thanks, frank, thank you.