Bulletin Board Ideas

Remember back to your childhood and the first day back to school. Your new teacher for the year spent the month of August putting together her welcoming bulletin boards for you to see and hopefully build excitement about the upcoming school year. Bulletin boards are excellent tools for making learning fun! Not only do bulletin boards make the classroom look brighter, they can also serve as excellent platforms for students and teachers to work together and express their creativity.

As business professionals, can we tap into this same creative approach to get our employees excited about upcoming change and transition? I think so. Let’s take a few minutes to see how ideas that teachers embrace can easily be translated into a professional work environment.

Communication

Remember, bulletin boards are about communicating. Teachers can divide students into groups and make each group responsible for the bulletin board for a month. Students can be asked to work with different themes or focus on a particular subject each month. This can easily be translated into departments. We’ve all heard the complaints that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. And for the most part the compartmentalization is done on purpose—but not always. Using a bulletin board to share what is happening within departments can help improve communication between employees, which then translates into a better bottom line financially.

Topics or Subjects

Teachers normally give students a lot of creative room with assignments such as these. In fact, when students work with themes or topics they have opportunities to learn a lot about not only their own culture and heritage but possibly others. In business, set priorities as to what type of information needs to be communicated or shared with others in the company via the bulletin board. Teachers actively participate in the bulletin board project and encourage students to brainstorm and come up with new ideas. As a manager or team leader you can use monthly strategy meetings to identify anything new that may need to be added to the bulletin board while also identifying ways to share successes of both the team and individual accomplishments.

Schedules or Time Lines

Teachers encourage students to make charts and posters related to various aspects of a subject. In business you can encourage employees to use the bulletin board to chart out timelines of which the team needs to be so milestones and due dates are known by all. It is also a great way to show progress of certain projects that are completed over a longer length of time. Employees then are able to easily identify if an issue of when a due date arises and are empowered to take corrective action.

Visually Pleasing

Teachers also encourage students to pick up themes related to social and environmental issues. This, in fact, is an excellent idea for making students more aware and compassionate. In a business environment the cosmetic look and feel of the bulletin board can make the information more appealing to notice and ultimately read. We all become “sign blind” at one time or another, so remember the bulletin can be moved around the office to help attract more readers; further, the colors used, the font size and style can be adjusted to help encourage readership. This part of the creation process empowers your employees to get in touch with their inner artists.

These are just a few examples of how using “teacher tactics” can translate into supportive management tools—since technically as a manager or leader you are also a teacher! I encourage you to allow yourself to be as creative as you want with bulletin boards as well as provide the freedom and flexibility to your employees.

Until next time, embrace your inner wisdom.

Namaste,
Karen