How Hindustan Unilever Offices Galvanized Internal Communication & Employee Engagement
A 3-screen cafeteria pilot at Hindustan Unilever expanded to every display across its Bangalore and Mumbai offices within one month, replacing email and posters as the main channel for employee communication.
Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), ranked #45 on the Fortune India 500 in 2020, runs offices in Bangalore and Mumbai where email and printed posters were failing to reach employees. HUL wanted to distribute video content for internal communication and visitor engagement but had no software to manage or schedule it across screens. Pickcel's cloud-based digital signage platform launched as a 3-screen pilot in the office cafeteria, then expanded to every display in both offices within one month. The rollout improved referral program participation, training attendance, canteen food-wastage tracking, elevator usage efficiency, and security compliance, while giving HUL one consistent channel for brand messaging.
Client
Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), #45 on the Fortune India 500 (2020)
Industry
FMCG
Locations
Bangalore and Mumbai offices
Pilot
3 cafeteria screens
Full rollout
All displays across both offices, completed within one month
Platform
Pickcel cloud-based digital signage
Email and Posters Weren't Reaching Employees Fast Enough
The company needed a single channel that could reach both offices at once, update instantly, and support video.
Email and posters were failing to reach employees
Before Pickcel, Hindustan Unilever's Bangalore and Mumbai offices relied on email and printed posters to reach employees. Email announcements competed with dozens of other messages in a crowded inbox and rarely got opened in time to matter. Posters took time to design, print, and physically distribute to noticeboards across multiple floors and buildings, and by the time they went up, the information was often already stale.
No software to manage video across office screens
HUL also wanted to use video content, both for internal updates and to greet visitors in a more engaging way, but had no software in place to manage or schedule that content across its offices. Screens, where they existed, ran static or manually updated material with no central control. Any change to a company-wide announcement meant redoing the same work at every location, with no way to confirm employees had actually seen it.
One channel was needed across both offices
The company needed a single channel that could reach both offices at once, update instantly, and support video, without adding operational overhead for the internal communications team.
“The company needed a single channel that could reach both offices at once, update instantly, and support video, without adding operational overhead for the internal communications team.”
From a 3-Screen Cafeteria Pilot to a Company-Wide Rollout
A 3-screen cafeteria pilot before the full commit
HUL brought in Pickcel's digital signage software to run on a small scale first: three screens in the office cafeteria. The pilot let the internal communications team test content scheduling and remote updates in a live setting before committing budget or IT resources to a full rollout.
Expanded to every display across Bangalore and Mumbai
Within one month, HUL expanded the deployment from those three cafeteria screens to every display across its Bangalore and Mumbai offices. The Pickcel platform gave the team one dashboard to push updates to every screen at once, replacing the manual, location-by-location process that email and posters required. Video content, previously unusable without a distribution system, became a standard part of the communication mix, from training reminders to visitor greetings on entry-point displays, using the same employee communication tools HUL relied on to reach staff beyond email.
Centralized scheduling across cities and screen types
Centralized scheduling meant a single update reached the cafeteria, elevators, and lobby screens in both cities simultaneously, with no reprinting and no waiting for a physical noticeboard swap.
Better Engagement Across Referrals, Training, and Office Operations
Effects beyond internal messaging
Once every screen in both offices was live, the effects reached beyond internal messaging into several parts of daily office operations.
Referral programs saw stronger participation once the opportunities were visible on screens employees passed daily instead of buried in email threads. Training events drew higher attendance after reminders moved from static posters to screens near high-traffic areas like the cafeteria and elevators.
The cafeteria screens also gave the facilities team a way to communicate directly about food wastage, contributing to a reduction in waste at HUL's canteens. Elevator screens improved how efficiently employees used elevator banks during peak hours, and security-related messaging on entry screens supported better compliance with office security procedures. Branding across the premises became more consistent, since every screen pulled from the same centrally managed content library rather than whatever poster happened to be printed last.
Pickcel is a cloud-based digital signage software platform trusted by 9,000+ businesses across 70+ countries, managing 150,000+ screens. Certified ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II. Pickcel has deployed similar internal-communication rollouts for other corporate and FMCG offices, including Novo Nordisk's multi-office India deployment and Mercedes-Benz's corporate communication network (see Related Case Studies above for the full write-ups), using the same centralized scheduling approach HUL relied on for its own rollout.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does adding a new office screen to an existing rollout require reconfiguring it on site?+
No. Because content is scheduled and pushed from a central cloud dashboard, a new screen joining an existing office network can typically be configured remotely rather than needing an on-site technician visit for every unit. That is what let HUL's pilot expand to every display across two cities without adding installation time at each new location.
Can Bangalore and Mumbai run different content on their screens, or does centralized management mean every office sees the same messages?+
Centralized management does not mean identical content everywhere. Pickcel lets administrators assign specific content or schedules to individual locations or screen groups within one account, so a Bangalore-specific notice does not need to appear on Mumbai's screens, even though both offices are managed from the same dashboard.
What happens to screens that were already running static content when a company adopts a platform like this?+
Existing screens generally do not need to be replaced. Pickcel's software supports a wide range of display hardware, so screens that previously ran static or manually updated material can typically be brought onto the centralized dashboard rather than requiring new hardware purchases before scheduling can begin.
Does an internal communications team need design or video-editing skills to keep two office locations updated?+
Not necessarily. Once content templates and schedules are set up, day-to-day updates usually mean swapping scheduled items or uploading new material rather than building layouts from scratch each time. That is what lets a small internal communications team manage two offices without adding dedicated design headcount.
Without a percentage or screen-view metric, how can a company tell whether an internal communication rollout is actually working?+
Participation-based signals are often the most reliable indicator when a platform cannot report exact view counts. At HUL, engagement in referral programs and training events rose after those messages moved to screens, a workable proxy for whether content is being seen and acted on even without a formal impression count.
What should a company confirm during a small pilot before rolling out to every screen across multiple offices?+
The most useful things to confirm are whether updates reach every pilot screen in the same format and whether the remote-scheduling workflow holds up under everyday use, not just a demo. HUL used its cafeteria pilot for exactly this kind of check before expanding to every display across both offices.
See How Others Use Pickcel
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