Employee portraits are a key part of a company’s visual identity. In a world where businesses are increasingly spread across multiple offices and locations, managing employee portraits efficiently and consistently is essential. Whether for internal use, such as directories and access control, or external-facing purposes like marketing and communication materials, an organization’s approach to handling portraits can significantly impact both culture and operational efficiency.

Before the digital revolution, companies would typically hire a professional photographer or use expensive solutions like photo robots or photo booths for employee portraits. While these methods could deliver high-quality results, they came with several drawbacks – such as:

• High Costs: Hiring photographers and maintaining photo booths or robots can be costly. In addition to the equipment or service fees, the time required for employees to coordinate and attend photography sessions adds to the expense.
• Inconsistent Quality: When relying on different photographers or equipment across various locations, companies often experienced inconsistencies in photo quality, lighting, and style, which could detract from a unified corporate image.
• Complex Management: The manual nature of organizing, storing, editing, and uploading photos across departments and platforms was cumbersome. This often resulted in delays and inefficiencies, particularly when employees changed roles or new hires came on board.

The importance of portraits in multi-location companies

For businesses with multiple offices, creating a sense of unity and a cohesive company culture is vital. Employee portraits play a critical role in fostering this cohesion by visually representing the team and the brand. However, the larger and more geographically dispersed a company becomes, the more challenging it is to maintain consistent employee portraits across locations. A unified set of employee portraits can:

• Reinforce branding: Consistent employee portraits across all locations help establish and reinforce the company’s visual identity. This is particularly important for customer-facing teams where branding consistency is crucial.
• Promote inclusion and belonging: Having a standardized approach to portraits across all offices ensures that employees, no matter their location, feel equally valued and represented.
• Streamline internal communication: Portraits in directories and on internal communication platforms, such as collaboration tools, email signatures, and intranet systems, foster familiarity between employees who may not have met in person, especially in global or remote teams.

By aligning portrait standards with corporate branding guidelines, companies can maintain consistency, strengthen their culture, and ensure employees feel part of the larger organization, regardless of where they are located.

Efficiency across all locations

To address the challenges of managing portraits in multiple locations, many companies are turning to automated solutions like Eikonice. Eikonice’s cloud-based SaaS platform eliminates manual processes, cuts costs, and ensures consistency, no matter how many locations a business has. The key features of Eikonice’s solution are:

• AI-powered automation: Eikonice’s platform automates all processes related to employee portraits, from initial capture to the final upload. It ensures every photo meets the company’s standards for branding, quality, and consistency. Adjustments like cropping, color correction, and resizing are handled automatically by the system.
• Centralized portrait management: With all portraits stored in a centralized cloud-based system, companies can easily manage, update, and synchronize images across all their platforms—whether for internal systems or external directories—without duplication of effort.
• Scalability across locations: The system is designed to scale with the company, meaning whether you have one office or 100, Eikonice can support seamless portrait management. Every new hire or role change can be quickly reflected across all platforms, ensuring up-to-date photos are always available.
• Cost efficiency: By automating the editing and uploading process, companies can reduce the costs traditionally associated with photo sessions, editing, and storage. The AI-powered solution eliminates the need for expensive photo robots or recurring professional photography services.

Embracing digital identity cards for streamlined operations

As part of an integrated Identity and Access Management (IAM) strategy, many companies are adopting digital identity cards that link directly to employee portraits. These identity cards, often used as apps on smartphones, offer several advantages:

• Enhanced security: Digital identity cards can be easily updated and synced with access control systems, ensuring only current employees have the necessary credentials to access different areas or systems.
• Operational efficiency: When portraits are integrated into digital identity cards, they can be instantly updated across multiple locations, reducing the need for separate photo sessions and ensuring employee photos are always up to date.
• Improved employee experience: Digital identity cards, coupled with a streamlined portrait process, create a smooth onboarding experience for new hires, as photos are uploaded quickly, and their credentials are issued in real time.

Eikonice supports this digital transformation by offering tools that automate the portrait integration into IAM systems, making it easier to manage employee identities across various offices while keeping everything compliant with GDPR.

Eikonice is the prove of, that managing employee portraits across multiple locations doesn’t need to be a costly, time-consuming, or disjointed process. With automation, AI-driven tools, and centralized management systems like Eikonice, companies can ensure their employee portraits are consistent, high-quality, and compliant with data protection regulations. By incorporating digital identity cards as part of an IAM strategy, businesses can further streamline their operations and enhance both security and employee satisfaction. Embracing these best practices not only saves time and money – but very important, also strengthens company culture across geographically dispersed teams.