The first days at a new job involve tons of paperwork and lots of listening. It’s often a tidal wave of information, much more than most new team members can realistically consume. Before their eyes completely glaze over, save the day with an employee onboarding video.
Bringing video into your employee onboarding process lets you deliver essential information in an accessible and engaging way.
Onboarding video can:
- Be more memorable than text
- Let employees revisit information on demand
- Help scale your onboarding process
- Integrate with other training tools
Since video is a versatile medium, companies can create a wide range of content that guides new employees through the hiring process.
What is an Employee Onboarding Video?
Onboarding is the process of bringing employees into the business and getting them excited about their role. Any video you use for this purpose is an employee onboarding video.
Some onboarding videos may include procedural training, but many take a broader approach. They may educate new employees about the company goals, illustrate business values, or give an inside look at how the organization operates.
Using video helps free up resources and gives employees a break from long presentations. You can create videos that reiterate important points from your handbook or answer common new hire questions.
They’re especially useful if your employees work remotely and in different time zones. Scheduling live training for everyone can be a challenge, but a video is always available to re-watch if the employee has questions.
How to Use Employee Onboarding Video
There are half a dozen ways you might incorporate employee onboarding video. The best place to start is to review your current hiring process. Zero in on common questions and the areas that tend to be the most boring. Those are ideal places to mix in videos.
Here are some common ways that businesses use employee onboarding video.
Set Expectations For The Role
The onboarding process should start before the employee’s first day in the office. An introductory video can help set expectations for what’s to come.
This video from Google gives employees a sense of what it’s like to work there. It speaks directly to the new employee. You might notice the CTA on this video invites viewers to apply. At this stage, there’s a lot of overlap between employee onboarding and recruitment videos.
If interviewing multiple employees feels like too much work, consider a recorded message from the CEO or a day-in-the-life video highlighting the employee’s new role.
Get New Employees Excited About the Mission
According to Deloitte, companies that are “mission-driven” and uphold clear company values are more likely to see stronger employee retention rates. Company culture videos can help explain your company mission. For example, this video we created for AAA to showcase employees as “everyday heroes:”
Share Company Culture and History
Animating your founder’s story or company history can help new employees find their role in your ongoing story. We share our Founder’s Story video with new employees so they can see how we started and where we’re going. It’s a lot more engaging than a standard timeline or about us page.
Introduce Your Product Or Service
If you have a product or service that is complex or nuanced, an explainer video can help break it down. Animated explainer videos also help employees retain key information. You might recycle explainer videos you created for marketing, or create more customized videos to share extra information with employees.
The video below explains how Ensono partners with customers. It shares valuable information about the promise the company is making.
Skills Training
Step-by-step training videos allow companies to clearly outline and define expectations for specific tasks employees will tackle every day. When integrated into initial onboarding, skills training videos let you get granular in an engaging way. Research shows that video is also more accessible for neurodiverse viewers, who may struggle to retain information delivered only through conversation.
You can also store these videos in an on-demand format, allowing employees to access and review training anywhere, at any time.
Promote Health, Safety, And Compliance
Compliance information can often be complex, and filled with legal jargon. An HR video can make a clear statement about your policies surrounding equal opportunity, anti-harassment, whistle-blowing and safety procedures. And just because training is mandated, doesn’t mean it has to be boring.
This whiteboard explainer aimed at educating managers on the values of company culture is a great example.
Tour the Office or Facility
For larger companies with multiple offices, video is a great way to show employees different parts of the organization, and unite global teams.
“New employees can see areas they’d never get to step in during a tour,” Gerry Seymour, President, Quantum Point, said. “Later, as they move to learning about their individual department, chances are they’ll see and hear things they were first shown in that video. That creates context for each next level of learning.”
Do You Need Better Employee Onboarding Video?
We’ve been talking about what video can do in your employee onboarding process. But there’s a catch. Some organizations have managed to create boring onboarding videos that don’t energize new team members.
Instead of using video to its full advantage, boring videos rely on talking heads or slide shows. Often they are simply recordings of a training exactly as it would have been delivered in person. Technically, these organizations are using video, but they’re also missing out on the best of what video has to offer.
Even the most boring and procedural information can benefit from imagination and animation. Explainer videos have the power to transform complex information into engaging, easy-to-understand formats, allowing new employees to absorb information faster.
Once you’ve aligned with internal stakeholders and created your video onboarding plan, you can work with your video production partner to help bring your vision to life.
Here are some quick tips to make Employee onboarding video more compelling.
Keep Them Short.
Shorter videos can help employees digest information quickly, without being overloaded. Break longer videos into shorts, no longer than a couple of minutes.
Be Specific
Videos are a powerful tool for conveying information. The more specific you are, the more useful your onboarding videos will be. Give your employee clear examples and straight-forward advice.
Be Personal
Employee orientation is a time to get new hires excited about their new opportunity. Don’t be afraid to be personal, and showcase what it really means to be a part of your company.
Create a System
“No matter how good your onboarding video might be, if it’s not included in a structured and logical onboarding plan, it’s likely to be missed,” said Fiona Adler, Director, HR Partner. Don’t just share a library of videos, instead, build checklists or guided HR systems that tell new employees which video to watch and when.
Get Feedback And Improve Your Process
As your company grows, your onboarding process may change. Periodically evaluate your onboarding program to identify gaps and areas for improvement. Collecting feedback during and after the onboarding process can help.
“New employees can give you a unique perspective as people who are coming from outside your company, while seasoned employees should have a strong grasp of the most important information to share about your company,” said Nina LaRosa, Marketing Director, Moxie Media. We’ve worked with leading companies to help produce quality internal videos for employee education. Get in touch to learn more about how we can help bring your next big idea to life.
