The power of video in today’s social and corporate environments is all but undisputed. And the reach of video is immense—and still growing, especially on mobile devices. According to a 2015 report by IAB, 35 percent of respondents said they were watching more content on their smartphones than a year earlier. Furthermore, 36 percent of the viewers were watching long-form videos (longer than five minutes) on a daily or more frequent basis. These numbers reinforce what training specialists have known for some time: Corporate training videos aren’t just a novelty, but rather an essential strategy for training employees, especially those in a distributed workforce.
Most often, tablets are the mobile device of choice for viewing, taking, and distributing corporate training videos. However, any video strategy will fall flat if the videos themselves are of poor quality. And we’re not talking about poor picture or playback quality, which are still both important to ensure your workers watch and keep watching training videos. What we’re emphasizing is quality of the content itself—how well videos teach employees and invites them to engage in their jobs. Here are some ways to improve corporate training videos for a distributed workforce:
Don’t Be Phony
Corporate training videos may not have the best reputation with baby boomers and Generation X, who remember what such content was like 20 or 30 years ago: overproduced, sleep-inducing, preachy, and somewhat embarrassing for a new hire to watch. Of course, creating videos last century took no small amount of work because of the technology available, so companies felt they had to turn them into serious productions. Two things have changed over the years: technology has improved so that anyone can shoot or record video, and Generation Y and millennials do not bring high expectations on production values to the table—they simply want content that directly teaches them the skills they require. Keep your corporate training videos simple, informative, and personal.
No Process Is Unimportant
Your company likely has dozens, even hundreds of processes at every level of the organization. Some of these procedures may seem like no-brainers, not worth the effort to create a training video for. However, what happens if, for example, a restaurant’s prep staffers all fall sick and a waiter is pressed into chopping the vegetables for that day’s lunch rush. Watching a quick video can give him the knowledge he needs to adequately fill in. With today’s mobile training solutions, creating an entire video training library is possible, and distributing and accessing this video is easy.
Integrate with Documents
Video on its own is an effective training medium. Integrating documents and pictures with video provides a 1-2 punch that can enhance the learning process. Going back to the restaurant example, if a cook is learning a new recipe, he or she could use a tablet to read about the menu item’s preparation, then switch to the video to see the preparation in action. This multimedia experience will leave no stone unturned and give your employees the deepest understanding possible when learning something new.
Empower Your Employees
The ability to shoot video on a tablet or smartphone isn’t just for your benefit—your employees can use mobile devices to create their own content. If our cook from the previous example discovers a better process to prepare the new menu item, he or she can capture that improvement via an iPad or Surface. Then, that content can be shared to other cooks throughout the company, whether they are across town or across the country. In this way, employees create their own best practices that, ideally, will boost productivity and positively affect the bottom line.
How have corporate training videos helped your company?
