A thorough onboarding process ensures a smooth start for employees and that all team members are rowing in the same direction. But distributed workforces, the breakneck pace of business today, and other realities can get in the way of effective onboarding.
It’s now common to see people in a wide range of industries working remotely from different locations around the world. The result is that, for many businesses, relying on person-to-person training alone to get new hires up to speed just isn’t practical.
Training videos provide a way for companies to add a new dimension to their onboarding programs that solves many of the problems presented by a modern, distributed workforce. And with advances in video and streaming technology, the costs of producing those videos – in terms of time, money, and technical expertise – are lower than ever.
Advantages of video-based onboarding
Onboarding videos provide a lasting knowledge base for new and experienced employees alike. We’ll take you through five compelling reasons you should make video part of your onboarding process.
1. Record lessons easily
Corporate video production is simpler than ever. There are options for companies of all sizes at a wide range of price points. Modern consumer AV equipment can deliver pro-quality results at a fraction of the cost, while some companies offer complete video solutions for organizations hoping to leave video production to someone else.
But for companies seeking to do it themselves, creating memorable onboarding videos doesn’t require a large team of technicians or production space. With a camera, microphone, and a few lights, any space can be turned into an impromptu video studio, while the right hardware can record a digital copy for review at any time – and even automatically upload finished videos to a content management system (CMS) for easy access.
2. Keep costs low
HR experts say a good onboarding process can take between three months to a year. Meanwhile, new employees want training to be led by their direct managers or supervisors to ensure the clearest understanding of their job. That’s reasonable, but not always realistic. The best trainers are often also your best employees, and taking those people away from their projects again and again over several months or a year just doesn’t make sense.
The time your senior staff are away from their core responsibilities costs time and money. It can be difficult to ask a team leader to allocate time for training for each new hire, but those live training sessions can easily be recorded and saved for the future. Even a very basic video with minimal editing provides ongoing value as it’s viewed again and again. Video lowers costs associated with onboarding new employees and ensures the quality of learning doesn’t drop from one trainer to the next.
3. Make messaging consistent
Employees want consistency. They want consistent expectations, guidelines, and messaging. Ambiguous or inconsistent messaging are among the most frustrating issues for new employees. Well-planned onboarding videos can eliminate inconsistencies to deliver clear, concise messaging your employees can internalize easily. Have the right information before you press the record button and the right information will be delivered to your employees every single time they watch that video.
The best onboarding videos can also become valuable reference points for everyone in your company. Even rockstar employees can forget the details of certain initiatives or policies. With a library of high-quality onboarding videos, they’ll be able to get the clarification they need at any time.
4. Learn on demand
When organizations start creating onboarding videos, they often accumulate large libraries of content. Stored in a CMS, these video libraries serve as treasure troves of knowledge at staff’s fingertips.
A CMS lets employees watch training videos when it works for them, whether that’s during business hours or not. For very small organizations, this can be as simple as uploading them to YouTube. For more content control, there’s a wide range of content management systems on the market. Platforms such as Kaltura and Panopto boast learning-oriented features like video indexing, which marries video content to transcripts of what’s said during the video and any text that appears on screen. With this feature, employees looking for specific lessons or segments of video can search by what’s said in the video, not just keywords or tag phrases that can sometimes yield imprecise results.
Video on-demand learning, combined with features like video indexing, gives employees incredible control over what they learn and when. People can learn in small, bite-sized chunks. Research supports this kind of microlearning, suggesting it makes for a more digestible, more memorable onboarding experience.
5. Engage your employees
Most video platforms offer features and services tailored for learning. This includes interactive video elements that, for example, quiz viewers on what they’ve just learned.
Many platforms also offer detailed analytics you can act on: engagement rates, view durations, drop-off numbers, and so on. You can see how long a new hire watches an onboarding video, how long before they move on, and perhaps most important, what areas are giving them problems.
It’s not uncommon for people to be reluctant to admit that they’re not grasping certain concepts. But if the analytics say an employee is watching a particular video or segment again and again, that could be a sign they need support. If other staff members are having the same problem, that could be a signal that it’s time to review that lesson or ask your employees if that info can be communicated in a better, clearer way.
Enable employee learning with video
More organizations than ever before are turning to video to overcome today’s challenges with traditional, person-to-person training and onboarding. However, it’s not enough to simply turn on a webcam and record. You need high-quality videos your employees will want to watch. Nobody wants to watch something that looks like it was shot on a potato, with audio that sounds like a drive-thru speaker.
Pearl-2 and Pearl Mini hardware encoders are ideal solutions for companies eager to create high-quality employee onboarding videos – without the need for specialized staff to handle every aspect of production. Both appliances accept a wide range of audio and video sources, from computer screens to high-end professional video cameras. Pearl systems also feature comprehensive integration with Panopto and Kaltura, simplifying the process of building a video library for onboarding or training.
Learn more about how Pearl-2 and Pearl Mini can enable your company’s video onboarding plans. Contact one of our product specialists with questions or arrange a demo to see firsthand what Pearl systems can deliver.