How Instructional Videos Can Boost Internal Communication and Employee Engagement

February 10, 2023
Contents

The desire for greater flexibility in the workplace has played a vital role in turning remote and hybrid working into the norm for many businesses.

New data indicates that up to 75% of companies embrace hybrid working via various informal and formal arrangements. 

While this trend enhances flexibility, it also undeniably impacts internal communications. Communicating with your staff can be more complicated if they work in dispersed teams.

With demands coming in from all directions, ensuring your internal communications are running smoothly has never been more critical.

There are various methods and tools you can use to improve team communication. For instance, many companies now use unified communications platforms that include features such as video conferencing, real-time transcription, and visual voicemail apps

Another critical development is using short instructional videos, a highly effective way to communicate messages clearly and quickly 

Statistics demonstrating the popularity of instructional videos for internal communications
Image sourced from kannelle.io

Why Should You Use Video for Internal Communications?

From boosting engagement to supporting training efforts, video offers many business benefits. Let’s take a closer look.

It Helps Create an Emotional Connection

Sending out company-branded emails and newsletters to employees can make communication feel impersonal. 

Using video for internal communications, on the other hand, helps engage your staff deeper and provides a more human touch. 

Your company likely ensures it offers quality calls so that your customers feel more connected to your brand, but are the same efforts applied to your internal communications? 

Instructional videos can help inject warmth and personality into your internal comms, making your staff feel they are more than just a number.

More Interesting

More than 52% of employees prefer watching videos to reading content, which shows that video is a great way to grab your employees’ attention and pass on key messages and information.

Written workplace memos can get boring, while interactive videos can be much more fun and easier to digest.

It’s Cost and Time-Effective 

Many businesses operating on a small scale may believe that producing high-quality videos for internal communications is a lengthy and expensive business. 

However, many easy-to-use solutions can now help you streamline the video production process at a lower cost.

Once you have a simple system and practices, it will be easy to generate video content for all kinds of purposes, including interviews, onboarding, company announcements, and training.

Appeals to Various Learning Styles

Using videos for internal communications allows you to cater to staff with a wide range of learning styles. 

This is especially true for visual and auditory learners who find reading large volumes of text more tedious or challenging. 

Memory retention rates also vary widely. Let’s say you ask two people, “what is continuous testing?” two weeks after teaching them the concept simultaneously and with the same resources. 

Their ability to recall this information will likely differ because everyone processes information differently.  

Using video allows you to combine different learning approaches, which increases the likelihood that everyone will be able to retain the critical information and messages they need to know.

Quick Circulation

Videos make news more concrete and ensure information circulates faster within a company. This helps ensure change is initiated and implemented more quickly and supports daily operational tasks such as lead time production.

79% of employees believe using screenshots of video would improve their business
Image sourced from techsmith.com

How to Use Instructional Videos to Improve Internal Communication and Employee Engagement

We’ve covered the key benefits of using instructional videos to enhance internal communication and employee engagement, now, let’s take a look at some of the best ways to harness this technology for the best results.

Video for Announcements

Using videos to make internal announcements can generate excitement among your employees. 

For example, you could create a video to send a message to employees about a public holiday or a work-free day. Or, you could use video to announce the arrival of new employees or product developments.

These kinds of videos create even more impact if they include music and text because this triggers an emotional response, which allows the messages to be absorbed more readily.

Business Values

Explaining your company’s values and culture via video goes a long way to improving employee relations. When spelled out on a page, these messages can appear flat and meaningless, but when described and discussed by real people, they suddenly come alive and resonate more deeply.

Sharing behind-the-scenes videos of staff members is an excellent way to explain and enforce your company’s culture. 

This can help your staff develop a sense of belonging and pride. Videos can also serve as an inspiration and help to promote diversity and inclusion. 

Again, music will make them feel more powerful and excited.

Event Promotion 

Posters, newsletters, and emails are not the most effective way to promote events, as it’s almost impossible to guarantee every employee will read them. Video, on the other hand, can be a much more impactful communication tool.

Advertising a company-wide event through video helps get the word out to everyone. The process doesn’t have to be complicated, either. 

For example, you can use various video platforms and ad makers to make the process less stressful and seamless.  

Asking yourself the following questions can be helpful during the planning stage to ensure your instructional video is as clear and engaging as possible: 

  • What is the event about?
  • When is the event happening?
  • Why is the event being held?
  • Who will be at the event?
  • What is the order of play at the event?
  • What are the benefits of attending the event?
  • What kind of call to action will you use to encourage your staff to participate in the event?

Using video to capture attention and generate excitement about an event—whether a webinar, workshop or social event—is likely to achieve better results than an email or poster.

Free-to-use image sourced from Unsplash

Video Guides and Presentations

Investing in your staff’s professional development is essential for your business’s performance and employee satisfaction. 

Instructional videos make training more fun and immersive. Let’s say you’re introducing a new software platform. 

A video running through the latest procedures with engaging visuals will be easier to understand and remember than a 30-page document. 

Making your own instructional videos and tutorials can also save you the expense of paying specialists to instruct your staff.

Interviews

Conducting video interviews with your team is beneficial on many levels. You can cover topics such as insights into daily work routines and career development. 

This process not only helps your staff feel valued, but the content can be used as part of your employer branding and recruitment efforts to help candidates prepare for their interviews and the onboarding process. 

You can use many powerful tools and tricks to make the videos as dynamic and engaging as possible, such as using multiple cameras and creative thumbnails to make your videos more clickable. 

Free-to-use image sourced from Unsplash

Video Introductions for Onboarding

Starting a new job is a daunting time. Using onboarding videos is a more personal and friendlier approach than simply attaching a dry company handbook to a welcome email. 

It’s easier to convey the company’s culture and routines in a 10-minute video that includes plenty of intriguing imagery—as they say, a picture speaks a thousand words!

You can make the onboarding process more special for new hires by giving each video a customized introduction. 

Project Summary Videos

Instructional videos are a great way to provide easily digestible insights into recently completed projects. 

This can highlight lessons learned, inform future approaches, and celebrate accomplishments to boost confidence, morale, and productivity.

These reviews also keep everyone on the same page and prevent workplace miscommunication

Free-to-use image sourced from Unsplash

Forms of Internal Communication Videos

Here is a list of the types of videos you can create quickly and effortlessly to support internal communication within your organization. 

Toon Movies

When you need to convey a lot of complex and perhaps a little dry information, animated videos are a great option. A storyboard is a good place to start conceptualizing toon videos. 

Explainer Videos

Once considered more complicated to create; explainer videos are now much more straightforward. Due to the prevalence of online video creation tools, this is now a quick and easy process.

Visual Demonstrations

These films are similar to explainer videos and are great for updating your staff on any element of your work processes.

Whiteboard animated videos

Like presentations and animation videos, whiteboard animation is a great teaching tool for training. They save you the time and stress of meeting in person and preparing individual presentations. 

Conclusion

Using videos is a great way to boost employee engagement and satisfaction as they provide a more personal, fun, and varied mode of communication. 

They can help employees feel more valued and involved than standard written communication methods.

When many companies are using hybrid workplace solutions, video is becoming an indispensable part of any internal communications toolkit. 

They are an ideal way to engage employees and forge strong team relationships for a minimum amount of time and cost.

Written By
OFFEO Team

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