If you’re planning to integrate employee training videos to your onboarding process, how do you know you’re shooting a compelling video?
It’s nonetheless a good move – studies show that 88% of companies now use on-demand training videos to coach new employees, and almost 70% of employees say they prefer receiving training via video over handbooks or written resources. But don’t stop at these numbers. Your videos still have to train your employees so that they not only perform well in their position but become good stewards of the business as well. Here’s how you do that:
Organization overview
From the get-go, your new employees should have a complete sense of your company, and not just what they’ll be doing in the confines of their cubicles. Feature other departments and teams in your orientation video, what they contribute to the business, how they’re interrelated, and where they are in both the organizational and physical structure. This gives your new employees a sense of belongingness and fulfillment since they know where their role fits in the scheme of things.
Compliance training
“Compliance training” sounds a little severe when it’s supposed to orient the newcomer to the company culture. Welcome your new worker by showing in your training video how colleagues socialize, communicate, and collaborate.
The part where they are trained comes when you have to show company guidelines. Now, this is where it has to be firm. Environmental policies, grievance policies, and policies regarding harassment and the consequences of violating them should be made clear in your video as well.
Context is key
Since most on-demand training videos are shot as generalized instructional materials for a given position, they tend to be broad and lack perspective.
Don’t be afraid to get creative when educating your recruit on their role. Make the presentation interactive. Visualize possible circumstances of conflict in their new job and give live critiques to their responses to fine-tune their approach.
You can even gamify the learning process for them – provide a checklist of vital skills that they can “unlock” as they progress or reward them for each correct response during their learning process.
Product performance
If you’re a retail or service business, you must show your new employee how your business is faring in your video. Skip the stats and product information. Show them the relationship between your customers and your product or service. Feature unique ways of how your customers are uniquely using the product or leveraging the service. Tell them about the last successful sale or the previous sale that went sour.
Setting realistic expectations about your product gives your new employee the idea that their future contributions are valued.
Star power
Being a bonus to your video, this is entirely optional to add, though it never hurts to have a cameo of a famous executive or a celebrity endorser in it. Seeing and knowing that a high-level executive is game to appear in front of the camera gives new employees the necessary morale boost for their first day!
Shooting employee-training videos is mostly about empathy. Don’t look at videos as a tool to reshape new employees into a restrictive mold. The videos should show them all the places where they can perform at their best and their reward if they do so.
