Safeway spreads internal messages with companywide broadcasts

Each year, the supermarket chain makes around 1,000 live broadcasts that go to stores and offices, says Dan Pryor, Safeway’s vice president of corporate communications. Most are specific to particular regions, but a few go to the entire chain.

“What we’ve done is created a channel where people can come into the studio and broadcast live to either televisions in our store environment or stream it to desktops,” he says.

Those studios—two at Safeway’s headquarters and another 10 in various division offices—have “a news broadcast look and feel,” Pryor says. From there, executives can provide managers with information about how things stand and where they’re going, which those managers can then share during in-person meetings with employees.

Recently, front-line employees have gotten in on the internal video act as well.

Decades in the making

Safeway has had the capability to broadcast videos to its stores and offices for a long time, Pryor says. Decades, even.