Too many fantastic ideas fall flat in the workplace because they are presented as chunks of text on a page. The culprit in many cases? It’s a lack of design literacy, which ultimately hurts a company’s productivity in a market that increasingly calls for visual content.

We live in a visual world, where videos, GIFs, presentations and smartphone pictures (with a little help from filters) are emerging as the most impactful communication methods, making such content an almost universal expectation for today’s brands. As a result, visual communication, which requires a baseline of design literacy, has become critical across nearly every aspect of running a company—from marketing campaigns and new business pitches to employee recruitment and retention materials and all-hands presentations.

Embedding visual communication skills into our recruitment and retention strategies is more than just a tactical move—it’s a strategic imperative. In a competitive talent market, candidates are increasingly attracted to organizations that showcase their culture, values and growth opportunities through compelling visual narratives. From visually rich job postings, captivating employer brands and immersive onboarding experiences to engaging internal communications and career development content, HR can create a workplace where employees feel welcomed, connected and included, as well as empowered to contribute creatively. This approach strengthens the employer brand and enhances employee engagement and retention, ensuring that the team feels valued and inspired to grow with us.

Effective design work has historically been the domain of creative teams, but business leaders are increasingly expecting all employees to have design skills because they can unlock benefits across an organization. Canva’s new Visual Economy Report found that 92% of company leaders want employees in non-design roles to possess some level of design acumen, no matter the job title, and 77% of them believe visual communication lifts business performance, whether it’s by accelerating content creation, driving team collaboration or building stronger audience engagement.

Meet employees where they are

First of all, every staffer will be a little different in where they are in their design skills journey, including those on the top end of the org chart. Indeed, despite business leaders’ belief in the value of creativity and design skills, the Canva study found that 69% believe senior stakeholder resistance to new tech trends and tools can hinder progress on this front.

Whether a company has 12 people or 12,000, it’s best to know how many learning curves exist before implementing a design literacy curriculum. First, gauge every team’s baseline design knowledge, attitudes and experience through a short questionnaire.

Multiple-choice questions can help you understand who is bought in on the benefits of design literacy. Quiz them on which creativity and workflow tools they have experience with so you can explain the tech stack their company will be using.

In other words, meet them where they are to ensure the investment in design literacy is well-spent. According to the previously mentioned study, 68% of company leaders are now budgeting for employee training to meet a certain threshold of cross-organization design competency.

Create a visual learning path

Next, use visual communication to help people more easily imagine the journey ahead. Most of the U.S. workforce identifies as visual learners, so brands should offer “trainees” a visual road map that depicts every step of the way. Technology will be involved, potentially intimidating some folks, especially if they feel their generative AI awareness and skills are lacking with the technology dominating conversations these past two years.

So, take the pressure off by making learning a group effort. Whether through offline conversations or the design literacy questionnaire results, find a few people who are already adept at creating visual content. Recruit one of them to be the “spokesperson,” appearing on the creative materials, depicting them along their design-education journey and humanizing the process for the company. “Here’s Margaret before she knew how to make a digital whiteboard (scratching her chin with a concerned face). And here she is after taking this design course (thumbs-up and smiling).”

This step is chiefly about organizational alignment and will help make the technology investments pay off. This is important because the Canva study found that 73% of company leaders are allocating more budget to visual tools in 2024 compared to last year.

Embed AI in the creative process

In today’s visual economy, brands are tasked with creating thousands of pieces of external and internal content a week, and practitioners from companies of all sizes know that increasing content demands mean fast-paced production. The aforementioned study found that tighter budgets and increased content demands have led 82% of leaders to explore AI-powered tools to accelerate their production needs, and 90% agree that the quality of visual content has improved business because of AI.

Generative AI is now crucial to keeping pace with the need for external and internal content. So, AI literacy is part of design literacy. AI is making design even more accessible, helping individuals bring their ideas to life with as little friction as possible. Most brands realize that, as the same study found that 96% of them are providing AI-powered tool training, and nearly three-quarters believe generative AI tools enhance productivity (73%) and creativity (71%).

Elevate brilliant ideas across the org

Truly, design literacy is no longer a luxury but a necessity in today’s visually driven marketplace. As companies increasingly rely on captivating visual communications to enhance their digital marketing, brand development, employee recruiting/retention and internal presentations, the ability to create visual content becomes a need-to-have skill across organizations.

Words are still hugely important for brands and organizations. But the game has changed, and being competent at visual storytelling is becoming the difference between brilliant ideas falling by the wayside and being at the top of the agenda at the next company meeting.

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