A great onboarding experience can improve employee retention by 82%. It’s important to engage new hires from day one with a comprehensive onboarding process that helps them ramp up faster, so they can be productive sooner. A strong onboarding process can improve their productivity by over 70% in the first 90 days.
Yet according to new hires, 88% of organizations don’t do a great job of onboarding, which isn’t as surprising as you’d think. The Human Capital Institute (HCI), an organization that includes Fortune 1000 and Forbes Global 2000 corporations as members, finds more than half of organizations focus their employee onboarding on processes and paperwork.
What many organizations are realizing today is that the best employee onboarding programs are structured and strategic, rather than administrative, and focus on people, not paperwork. That’s where video is a game-changer.
Integrating video production into your employee onboarding process is a powerful tool that can provide an engaging and familiar experience for recruits during the hiring process – and beyond. Companies can hire a video production company to create a wide range of videos such as corporate video content, simple explainer videos, and others that can ease the paperwork overload and add a personal touch or friendliness to corporate communication.
Filming corporate videos can:
- Foster an emotional and welcoming connection with new hires
- Introduce a company’s culture and way of work-life
- Build and executive’s trust and rapport
- Communicate consistent company messaging
- Explain product features or teach service benefits clearly
- Enable robust mobile onboarding
- Enable self-paced learning
- Create a library of video resources for reuse
- Lower on-site training costs
Here are 10 productive ways to train and onboard new employees with videos.
1.Onboarding and Cross-Boarding Videos
The average new hire onboarding experience consists of 54 activities, including signing, uploading or acknowledging at least three documents and completing 41 administrative tasks, such as desk set-up. New hires will also have 10 outcomes, described by HR departments as achieved learning goals around the company culture, market knowledge, and “role alignment.”
In addition, HCI reports that 81% of organizations agree that onboarding internal hires is just as important as onboarding external hires, even though only 27% of organizations say they effectively onboard employees who are promoted or moved to a new position.
Whether you’re onboarding new hires or promoted employees, the ultimate goals are still to bring them up-to-speed as quickly as possible and to integrate them into their work environment. A corporate explainer video can provide an onboarding overview – and companies with a formal onboarding process have an average employee retention rate that’s a full 30 points better than those that don’t, according to the Aberdeen Group.
Video is also a key component in mobile onboarding, where your employees can acknowledge important policies, procedures, documents, forms, and checklists and can complete the process from home, on their phone or tablet before they even start work.
2.Welcome Videos
Nothing creates good feelings in a new recruit more than a personal message that helps them feel like part of the team, even before they start working. A welcome video message from the company’s CEO, from the line manager, or from staff members they will be working with can alleviate first-day-at-the-office nerves or connection for a remote employee.
3.COVID-19 Safety Videos
In the midst of a global pandemic, returning to the workplace is likely a whole new experience for both employers and employees. A COVID-19 safety video is one of the most effective ways to communicate new information and to show the new procedures and employee training that accompany it. A corporate explainer video can answer common employee questions that need answers, such as:
- How will my workplace avoid becoming a transmission hub for COVID-19?
- Will my workplace conduct testing and screening of employees, contractors, vendors, and visitors?
- How will I know if I’m at direct risk for exposure?
- What happens after a colleague or I test positive?
- Will we be providing contact tracing information to local and state health departments?
- What about HIPAA, ADA, and OSHA compliance?
4.Technology Training Videos
Every company expects new employees to use dedicated technology and follow workflows and processes. And every new employee will need help understanding new software or unfamiliar tools and setting up their work station. A tech explainer video shows new hires what they’re using and how to use it, rather than relying on hours poring over technical, jargon-heavy, complicated, and confusing manuals. In fact, you can create an entire library of tutorial videos to answer common employee FAQs.
5.On-site Safety Videos
Safety videos for manufacturing, construction, healthcare, agriculture, maritime, and other industries can help employers explain the complexity of safety measures in a quick, memorable way. Video has long been an efficient medium to educate and train employees in safety tips, assembly-line procedures, industry health topics, equipment protocols, new employee orientation, human resources procedures, and OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) laws and regulations.
6.Product or Service Breakdown Videos
These videos educate employees on the attributes, benefits, and uses of the product their company manufactures and the services their company provides. It is critical for employees to have full knowledge and understanding of their products and services from the very start and to be updated on major product or service upgrades, too.
7. Management Coaching Videos
The average organization is 50% as productive as it should be due to poor leadership practices. Employees who are moving into a management role must know what’s expected of them, so they can perform at their best.
Management coaching videos are effective at breaking down complicated information into easily digestible chunks so employees can remember and retain new information. Employees can also refer to video as many times as they need to incorporate leadership practices into their daily working lives.
8.Company Policies and Procedures Videos
Employees may be familiar with company policies and procedures manuals that are often given out during the onboarding process. A video discussing company policies and procedures can memorably outline a complex policy in layman’s terms. These videos can also include a tour of the building with tips on how to get around. They can be watched again and again to add clarity or to refresh the memory.
9.General Training Videos
Employees who had a negative onboarding experience are twice as likely to look for other career opportunities in the future. The cost of vacancy, the decrease in productivity, and the impact on morale can add up fast. The average U.S. employer spends $4,000 and 24 days to hire a new worker. With a negative new hire onboarding experience, your new hire could walk out and effectively double your cost and time to hire.
Whether it’s a skills training video, a knowledge transfer video— where current staff members share job knowledge for new hires— a new hire goal-setting video, or another type of training, video is the preferred medium for people to learn and retain information.
10. Employee Directory Videos
Each new hire creates a video introduction that is incorporated into a directory of employee videos. The videos can exist in a digital organizational chart of the company with searchable meta tags, so employees can easily connect from location to location, department to department, or through common interests.
Ready to Produce Video for Your Employee Onboarding Process?
Since 2007, we’ve helped our corporate clients accomplish their marketing goals with corporate video production and explainer videos that illuminate their unique audiences and inspire them to action.
Find out how our simple four-step process for producing high-level corporate video content can work for you—and don’t forget to take a look at our featured work.
