How Can HR Use Email Signatures to Represent Company Culture?

Email signatures are used by over 62% of marketers, acting as a valuable tool that can further expand the brand awareness around a company. As an easy addition to emails, you’re able to use this marketing tool to bring an element of professionality to every email you send, as well as attaching useful information that helps people stay in contact with your work accounts.

Yet, aside from promoting the company and ensuring a higher degree of brand visibility, email signatures can also be used to further represent company culture and boost communication. In fact, this final point of increasing the ease of communication has been echoed around various major marketing agencies, with 89% of marketers using signaturesto include further contact information.

In this article, we’ll be exploring the benefits of using an email signature throughout a company, moving through key advantages as well as demonstrating how one can help inform and develop internal company culture.

Let’s get right into it.

How Do I Add an Email Signature in Outlook?

Adding an email signature in outlook is surprisingly easy, allowing you to create and upload a signature in only a few minutes. With highly customizable options and a range of online creators that you can turn to, implementing a company-wide signature isn’t nearly as hard as you would think.

In outlook, there is a specific process you can follow:

• Preferences – After opening your Outlook email account, navigate to preferences, which should be in the window bar toward the top left of your screen.
• Signatures – Either navigate to Signatures by moving down the alphabetical list or select ‘Help’ and then directly search for it. Click on this to open the signature page within Outlook.
• Edit – Click on the plus (+) sign to add a new signature. You’ll then be able to edit the type and name of your signature before customizing it with personalized fields and responses. Equally, this is where you can directly upload a pre-made signature if you’ve created one with a third-party application or service.
• Publish – After customizing your email signature, you’re then able to hit apply, with the changes then being published onto your account. Make sure you have the email signature selected. If it is, then the next email you send from your account with automatically include the email signature at the bottom of the page.

With this, you’ve rapidly created and included an email signature that you can equally distribute across your company.

Why Should My Company Use Email Signatures?

Once you’ve created an email signature, you’ll be set to start experiencing the benefits of this useful email addition. Typically, email signatures have both an instant benefit and one that mounts over time. For example, while there is an instant benefit of these signatures, which we will discuss shortly, using one now means that every email you send into the future will permanently have this additional information on it.

If anyone consults their email and looks back through past emails to see what you may have said, your email signature will be a permanent reminder of your company’s branding, its information, and future details you may have included.

The instant benefits of using an email signature are vast, with this simple addition making a big difference. Online email signatures can:

• Improve Professionality – Over 82% of businesses are now actively using email signatures. One of the main reasons this is the case is that it promotes an image of professionality. Companies can use them to show their branding, include further details, and use company colors. Not only is this convenient, but it increases a sense of professionality online.
• Streamline Contact – Another benefit of using email signatures is that employees can include further points of contact. Email, although widely used, is far from the most efficient means of communication. Due to this, including a phone number, an alternative email address, or another point of contact will help people to stay in touch with the company.
• Boost Brand Recognition – Brand recognition is a huge part of online marketing. In fact, even just including color in your email, reflecting your company colors, can improve brand recognition by up to 80%. Your company’s email signature provides a fantastic opportunity to include marketing materials, your brand logo, and your company name. Over time, this will contribute to increasing the likelihood of people recognizing and associating positive customer service with your brand.

While these are the main benefits you’ll get from including an email signature, they are only scratching the surface, with this being one of the low-cost changes you can make to your business.

How Can HR Use Email Signatures For Internal Company Culture Progress?

Although we have discussed the external benefits of introducing an email signature into your business, you’re also able to reap internal advantages, with the HR department using email signatures for company culture progress.

Email is a core method of communication within business, with employees using this stream to talk to each other throughout the day. With this precedent, HR departments can include a range of additional information within their communications.

For example, HR can use email signatures to

• Run company surveys – Within email signatures sent from within the HR department, employees can include a link to a recent survey that HR is running. This could include a link to an anonymous survey on worker conditions, a place to give feedback, or any other survey that is currently running. This provides employees with an easy method of accessing a place to share their feelings, with this being in an HR email saving everyone time while giving a central location to search for surveys.

• Schedule meetings – Many employees in HR are now using their email signature as a location to store ‘Book a Meeting’ links. These will take other employees to an online platform where they can choose from available meeting slots. When an HR employee has to schedule lots of meetings, this can save them a lot of back and forth, while also ensuring that employees can find a time that slots into their day. This is one of the best ways to streamline the creation and distribution of new meetings within a company.

• Announce news – Finally, HR can distribute messages and company news through their email signatures. From large-scale announcements to daily bulletins that they can distribute, the email signature is a great place to keep people involved and updated without focusing them to read through a company news portal. WIth this non-committal way of distributing information, your HR team can communicate messages with ease, without having to go that extra mile.

Here are 7 internal email signature campaign ideas to engage your employees, strengthen your company culture and drive real performance results…

As a singular location that can be seen and accessed by anyone whom the HR department sends an email to, an email signature is a great place to include elements that will further the company culture. Often underutilized, this is a singular change that you could incorporate into your HR department that can make a huge difference.

Final Thoughts

While email signatures are widely discussed as a useful tool that can be used to refine professional communication and boost brand recognition, it is rarely posed as a useful tool for internal communication. Alongside simply giving employees more possible methods to contact their HR representatives, email signatures are often a great noticeboard for further communication.

From including a schedule meeting button to designing a place where company news can be inserted, email signatures are a wonderful place to boost company connection and culture within a corporate environment.