Probably the most iconic portrait in the world is created by Leonardo da Vinci – and we don’t have to say more, you know already, that it’s Mona Lisa. The portrait was painted more than 500 years ago and is considered to be the best known, most visited, most written about, most sung about and most parodied work of art in the world. Da Vinci used a different technique than many other painters. Instead of hard and very realistic lines, da Vinci used soft and blended brush strokes. While the Mona Lisa is an incredible painting with her playful smile and expressive eyes, this painting probably got most of its notability due to its infamous theft in 1911.

The art of portraits goes much more then 500 years back. For as long as humans has drawn – portraits has existed. Portrait paintings goes at least 5,000 years back in time to ancient Egypt, but one could wonder if it goes even further back in time – since the longing to carry an image of one’s loved ones lies deep in the human nature.

Modern art

Throughout the history of art, the portrait has evolved through many stages. In the early days, portraits was often used simply as a way to represent the person and the institution behind. In our time the artistic portrait has evolved to fulfill many roles and sources of inspiration. This is also because the photographic technique now represents the exact reproduction, so the painted portrait must capture moods and personality to a greater extent to stay relevant.

Whatever the subject might be, the portrait attempts to reveal the true expression of the face, to capture the emotion of the moment, which otherwise would be lost forever.

In the early 1900s artists began exploring the inner psyche of their sitter, more so than their facial features or expressions. Portraiture emerged as an exploration into human psychology, with artists such as Matisse and Picasso playing with colour, line, and form like never before.

In the mid 1900s, portrait artistry began to become less popular – instead making way for abstract and conceptual arts. In the 1960s, however, artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein brought portraits back in focus with the introduction of pop art. And just like Mona Lisa – we can all imagine the portraits of Marilyn Monroe from Warhol’s Factory.

Visualising Company values with Employee portraits

Today, companies use mostly photographic portraits when the employees of the company are shown to stakeholders. Portraits are important to everybody, and they help transform companies from a faceless business to a corporate brand of real people – people to whom you can relate. Best example of an iconic portrait done by a photographer recently is the picture of Steve jobs shot in 2006 by Albert Watson.

With the increasing digitalisation, employee portraits has become much more important – but also more complicated and time consuming for organisations to handle. And Eikonice is on mission to change that. In broad sense the use of portraits today is multifaceted – employee portraits for identification or presentation. Our platform introduces digital automation for both reasons to an area with thousands of years history.

The General Data Protection Regulation act, better known as GDPR, has defined personal data and a number of requirements for companies collecting, storing and managing personal data. Personal data is any information about an identified or identifiable person.

Portraits are considered a part of personal biometric data and categorized in the group of sensitive personal data. With the increasing use surveillance and security system, the use of face-detection systems is attracting more and more focus. It is expected that privacy around portraits will get a much higher attention when it comes to future revisions of the regulations and when companies are being GDPR autited by external companies.

Requirements for the company

With the increasing digitalization and use of portraits in many different company platforms, managing and handling employee portraits it has become much more critical for the company to comply with GDPR.

The Company has the obligation to:

• Collect individual employee consent for the company to use their portraits on marketing material, on web-sties and in internal systems.
• Manage change of consent from the employee during the employee journey
• Respond to request from the employee to identify where portraits are used
• Respond to request from the employee to delete portraits in all company systems.
• Manage individual employee consent for the company to use their portraits on marketing material, on web-sties and in internal systems.
• Manage change of consent from the employee during the employee journey
• Respond to request from the employee to delete portraits in all company systems, when the employee leaves the company.

In order to be GDPR compliant the company should therefore evaluate:

Where are the portraits stored – on a local PC or a central storage? Is storage made on a shared drive where everybody has access to the individual portraits? How do the company protect privacy and avoid copying and distribution? Are the portraits stored with at filename of the person? In which systems are they used? Does the company have consent from everybody and how do you keep track of this? How is the consent list updated when a new employee start or an existing employee leave the company or the organization. When using external photographers, does the photographer have systems and processes in place to handle portraits in compliance with GDPR, from photoshoot through processing and delivery.

Many systems will have their own functionality to support the system related GDPR compliance issues, but it is a tedious and time consuming task, to keep track on portraits across different systems and in different locations.

GDPR compliance through-out the employee journey

In terms of integration, Eikonice is very flexible and can be used in a semi-automated way – and still give the company the full advantage, when it comes to GDPR compliance. Full integration means that Eikonice stays updated via the company ADD or HR system. Upload of portraits to the company website and other digital platforms is done directly. For implementation of the integrated eikonice solution we need to have a dialogue with the IT-department to understand the IT-architecture and how we optimize the use of Eikonice. But in a Semi-automated solution, Eikonice will simply act as an external support for your photo processing – and integration to Eikonice will be done through uploads from excel/csv files and bulk downloads of final portraits to your server. In this way, Eikonice will still be an important and effective tool for you creating increased efficiency and savings, in relation to your current way of working.

To engage and motivate employees can be accomplished in many different ways, but the development and implementation of an improved culture depends on the will, ability and behaviour of the overall management. It’s that simple.

Since table football took its place in the hip companies and start-ups, a lot has happened. Diversity has become a goal for a healthy work environment in startups and established companies.

There is no better way to demonstrate diversity than by simply showing your people. Thus the corporate portraits have become an important tool in the way you describe and profilerate your organisation.

Employee portraits transform organisations from a faceless entity to a corporate brand consisting of real people with whom your clients can relate. But further it makes people feel part of the team; it builds and supports the common culture and brand.

Eikonice help execute the HR strategy: demonstrate diversity, deliver engagement

With the increasing digitalisation and the growing number of platforms and systems, managing employee portraits has not only become much more important, but also more complicated and time-consuming. By automating all aspects of the process, we eliminate internal handling and reduce cost – but more importantly, we facilitate employee involvement as well as provide executive overview and GDPR compliance.

On-boarding happens immediately with our mobile app – and makes the portrait available in all touch points from the first day. That’s how to welcome new people and make them fell as a part of the team from the very beginning.

It is essential to maintain the overall corporate identity as well as to enable employees to express their personality within the company’s framework. Our automation garantees that all portraits comply fully with the chosen standards.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but shows only a fraction of the entire organisation. The many portraits provide the full picture of a unified team.

Treat people, for what they are – the most important asset of the company. They not only deserve it, but it actually also helps to create increased employee engagement and loyalty. Employee portraits could play a major role in this, because it gives companies the possibility of treating them as “stars”. A portrait is a highly personal thing, so instead of being sent into a cabin, the company has the opportunity to make it a personal experience. It’s about staging the personality of the employees through guidance and professionalism – or simply; to be seen as a VIP.

It is important to look great

Beautiful people are hardly happier. But high quality portraits help build greater self-esteem. The feeling that your company actually cares about you and makes an effort in the way they present you makes you feel appreciated – and this builds loyalty towards the company. The sense of “looking great” ensures a confident appearance – this has always been equally important, in private life as well as in work life. Successful companies are focused on strengthening their “employer branding” and the corporate portrait is an important element in this. They know that it makes a visible difference on the bottom line. When the employee’s act as ambassadors for the company and its products, the overall reputation of the company grows – and so does sales.

Increase engagement  through automation

With the increasing digitalisation and the growing number of platforms and systems, managing employee portraits has not only become much more important, but also more complicated and time-consuming. By automating all aspects of the process, Eikonice eliminates internal handling and reduces cost – but even better, we facilitate employee involvement as well as executive overview and GDPR compliance. On-boarding of  people will happen immediately with our mobile app and make the portrait available in all touch points from the first day. Thats how to welcome new people and make them fell as a part of the team from the very beginning.

Automation will in the coming year become an increasingly mainstream concept for all industries. Driven by trends such as personalization and customer journeys, demands for transparency in companies’ use of data and new technologies. Marketing automation is not a new concept, but many of the things that characterize this area of marketing will in the coming years see a shift towards greater use of customer data and a democratization of new technologies such as machine learning and AI. In the future automation will move on and we will see it play a role between several disciplines. Eikonice is an example of this and we offer simplicity through digital automation in the area between Facility Management, Marketing and Human Resource.

Trend 1: New areas due to corona

The pandemic has brought in constraints in human interaction due to health concerns, which has rocked the foundations of human interaction prior corona. Contactless and touch less mechanisms of consumer and employee interaction will therefore gain more adoption in 2021. Public touchscreens is not anymore a big thing. This trend extends the application of automation technologies to the areas requiring human-to-human contact, which can refine the overall customer experience.

Trend 2: Reduce complexity

Automating yesterday’s problems was yesterday’s mind-set. Automating tomorrow’s growth is today’s future. These words express the background for why automation is going from a focus of efficiency to in a greater extend create simplicity. Automation tend to be discussed in tandem with efficiency, but another dimension need to be added and that’s simplicity. Simplicity in processes, in people’s jobs and in overall workflows for companies. It’s al about reduce complexity.

Trend 3: More orchestration by automation

Now that the lowest-hanging fruit has been harvested on the efficiency tree, it’s time to take a more holistic approach for automation – that’s why the new black in automation will be “Orchestration”. Simply put, orchestration can make IT operation and maintenance more efficient and gain efficiency across different disciplines. It takes automation further – bringing it all together.

We live in a period where technology day by day plays a bigger role in everyday life. Machine learning, AI, robot technology, blockchains, IoT, etc – all areas that are in rapid development and all offering enormous opportunities to all of us. As these technologies become more and more deeply integrated in our everyday lives, the role and visibility of “humanity” will become increasingly important – because it is still individual people, who has the biggest impact on companies, on society and on the world as a whole.

For companies, it will become important to strike the right balance between the employee’s personality and the corporate identity, as we shift from having a technological focus, to a period where technology is taken for granted – and thus the organisations’ focus will be on humanisinge and personalising their presense. Or you could say, that we are heading towards a new human era. Precisely for this reason, the employee portrait will hold more and more value – not just on external digital platforms, but also internally due to the new ways we work and collaborate.

From research we know that employee cares about personal appearance and like to have a role in the process.

Employee portraits has a great potential for organizations to visualize and demonstrate their values and the corporate identity – and get everybody to feel a part of the team. All to often employee portraits are overlooked as an important and strategic part of showing how an organisation appreciates and values its employees. Eikonice optimize large scale handling of employee portraits into one smooth digital operation.

90% of all employees find that having a good corporate portrait is important.