Video Communication Archives

For most office-based employees, “work” no longer represents a physical location. In fact, 84% of people who worked remotely during the pandemic said they intended to mix home and office-based work when the lockdown ended. Now, with hybrid and remote work models defining so much of modern work life, employers are rightfully concerned that employees are feeling increasingly disconnected and disengaged. This is why many are turning to technology like internal video to help improve employee communications.

For some time now, savvy HR and marketing professionals have recognized the importance of video communication. And they’re onto something. For example, research says employees are 75% more likely to watch a video than read an email. People have discovered the convenience and effectiveness of video. And they’re not going back.

How Can Internal Video Improve Employee Experience?

This post-pandemic era promises greater scheduling flexibility, improved work/life balance, and happier employees. But it is also introducing a variety of challenges for employers to address.

For example, it’s harder to reach and engage people who work on a remote or hybrid schedule. When left unchecked over time, this distance can erode connections with managers, colleagues, and company culture. Without access to clear, consistent communication and recognition from managers, employees are at risk of feeling increasingly undervalued, disillusioned, and unmotivated to work.

If the pandemic taught us anything about the future of work, it’s that organizations must evolve so people stay connected, even when they’re not at the office. Over the past three years, video has played an important role in filling that gap, connecting leaders and teams through video conferencing, webinars, online learning, and study resources.

Every great company wants to create a positive employee experience and a strong company culture. And one of the most effective ways to achieve this is through enhanced communication. So, in today’s digital world, what better way to ensure that team members stay connected and informed than through internal video?

Benefits of Internal Video

There are multiple reasons why it makes sense to leverage internal video to boost staff morale. For example:

1. Video is highly effective

Whether it’s a company update or new sales strategy, internal video is the best communication format available. But it can be even more effective when combined with the power of email. Email is a great tool — and it’s clearly the most dominant business communication tool. But you can achieve much more by incorporating video.

For instance, instead of writing a hefty block of static text to communicate an important employee update via email, try writing a brief introductory one-liner and embedding a video into the message.

Video is much more engaging than written copy. That’s because people absorb video content more quickly and effectively. You can also convey much more with video than a text-based message. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then as Dr. James McQuivey puts it, a single minute of video is worth about 1.8 million words.

2. Video can illustrate complex information in a simple way

The success of a business is measured by more than just revenue and profit. It’s also about communication. Without effective internal communication, important information can get lost in translation and employees can become frustrated. This is where videos can help to transmit information in a simple, clear, and digestible way.

Studies show that videos can improve a person’s ability to remember concepts and details. In fact, when people watch a video message, they retain 95% of the message, compared with only 10% if they read the same message in written form.

3. Video helps employers connect with employees

Communication is a two-way street. It’s not enough to simply pass information along to team members. Particularly when working remotely, it’s important that staff actively develop trusted working relationships, and feel they are working together toward the same goals.

By sending regular video updates, you can bridge the gap between your onsite team and those who work remotely at least part of the time. When employees feel more connected with each other and your organization, they’ll be in a frame of mind to collaborate and perform well.

When Internal Video Can Help You Improve Company Culture

For internal corporate videos that will improve your company culture and boost morale, you’ll want to build a library of video templates. This can help you jumpstart new content production, and simplify updates whenever they’re required. Here are some recommended types of internal video to help you improve employee morale:

1. Make onboarding easier for new employees

A proper new-hire orientation is a highly effective way to help people feel welcomed and valued. In fact, thoughtful onboarding is proven to help people become more excited about their role, which in turn reduces turnover.

But onboarding can be overwhelming. New hires are typically required to absorb huge amounts of information from Day One. Traditionally, this process involves serious paperwork and in-person training.

This is one reason why induction through video training is gaining popularity. Pre-recorded videos are an efficient, effective way to present orientation information in a reusable format that significantly reduces the need for one-on-one training. By watching and learning at their own pace, employees can quickly get a sense of your company’s culture and what’s expected of them.

2. CEO messages

In larger companies, employees — particularly newer or more junior staff — have minimal contact with the CEO. This limits opportunities to develop workforce trust and loyalty. However, by broadcasting internal video messages, a CEO can communicate about the organization’s ongoing objectives and challenges in a personal and convincing way.

It can be difficult to achieve this same direct connection with text-based email. That’s because a memo or letter can be written by anybody. Also, many people are better at in-person communication than in writing. A video demonstrates executive leadership qualities in real time, and shows how much your leaders value the opportunity to speak directly with employees about issues that matter to them.

3. Company updates

One thing is for certain — everything changes. But this doesn’t mean people are always comfortable with change. If employees are left in the dark about organizational change, it can damage staff morale as well as productivity. Timely, clear, transparent communication can minimize anxiety about business change. This is why well-crafted internal video content can help.

Internal video can be used not only to discuss the details of any organizational change, but also help employees understand the beneficial impact expected from these changes. Video gives organizations more control over the type of messages you’re sharing, as well as the pace and timing. This can minimize rumors, cut down on speculation, and give employees a forum where they can address common concerns.

4. Training and education

Training employees can be time-intensive. It can take days or weeks to address all the requirements of a role, and how to perform effectively in that context. But new learning tools make it easy to develop and deliver internal video content for job training, how-to tutorials, skills development, compliance, and more.

Video media is particularly valuable for continuous learning, because it lets people learn at their own pace, without disrupting day-to-day responsibilities. Whenever an employee has a break in their work schedule, they can simply click on a relevant training video and resume watching from wherever they left off in their previous session. It’s a highly convenient option.

What’s more, video can help employers standardize training content and learning experiences in ways that one-on-one or even group training cannot.

5. Team and morale building

Video is a highly personal form of communication. After watching a video, people are more likely to feel a connection with the speaker. By creating this type of personal relationship with employees, they’re likely to feel part of the same team.

To rejuvenate employee connections, create some fun and exciting video updates about what’s happening day-to-day across your company. Did you recently bring on a new client? Did you just close a huge deal? Are sales up from last quarter? Has a team just completed an ambitious new project?

These are things employees want to hear about. Everyone wants to feel they contribute to their company’s success. Seeing these accomplishments highlighted in video honors the moment and reminds employees how important they are to your organization’s achievements.

Final Notes on the Power of Internal Video

Communication is the backbone of any company’s culture. And video media is a highly personal way to reach out to employees, build connections, and strengthen cultural bonds.

Employee-focused videos keep everyone in the know. They offer understanding about rules and standards, shared values, accomplishments and business progress. Now that video communication has become a highly accessible medium for all of us, it’s worth investing time and energy to embed video messaging into every aspect of the employee experience.

These continue to be uncertain times, creating unfamiliar territory. In such conditions, it’s even more important for the company, leaders and managers, and individual employees, to focus on civility with each other and with customers. In essence, civility is being courteous, treating others with respect — being thoughtful of others, and being aware of how your actions (and those of other people) might affect someone. We are all fraying at the edges. Courtesy and respect go a long way.

Fewer Social Cues

Working remotely, we have fewer social cues to provide feedback about whether we’re being respectful and courteous. It’s harder to determine if someone’s having a bad day, or bad hour, unless they tell us, but we can’t stop by their area to check in. Yet those multiple, tiny in-person interactions help us get a sense of people and their moods, and give us a way to maintain a sense of connection.

Moreover, unless their homelife is onscreen, we can only know what’s going on for them — what their mental load is like — if they tell us. So leaders and managers need to encourage discussions about what civility means during this pandemic, and ask what’s going on in people’s lives. Make a point of not only asking, but also responding to what they say appropriately, saying something like, “I’m so sorry to hear about what’s happening. I appreciate your sharing that with me. What can I do to help?”

7 Effective Strategies

It pays to take a few extra steps to make sure communications with colleagues and customers are respectful and civil, particularly in this environment. Healthy relationships are the gel that holds us together, instead of breaking us apart. It’s the stuff that makes the difference in our daily outlook and the level of motivation. These seven strategies will help:

Small Talk is Big. Encourage employees, especially those running meetings, to make sure there are check-ins and some personal conversation prior to leaping right into talking/writing about work. Managers and leaders should ask about employees’ self-care and share about their own. Let employees recognize each other as people. It’s the same thing when talking to customers. That said, not everyone may want to partake, and individuals should respect that.

Take a Breath. Help employees develop greater tolerance and patience. For instance, if an employee bristles at something a coworker has said, done, or written, the employee can be encouraged to take a diaphragmatic breath — on an inhale, let their belly expand with air, hold briefly, and then slowly exhale. This is an easy skill for most employees to learn, and will actually will fake out the person’s brain to make him or her feel relaxed.

Be as Clear as You Can. Keep in mind that during the pandemic, it’s harder for most people to maintain the same level of focus as they could before. Try to be as clear as you can be so there’s less opportunity for miscommunication and misunderstanding.

When in Doubt, Ask. It’s easy to assume we know what someone means, and when we’re multi-tasking or distracted, we may be more likely to infer incorrectly. Don’t make assumptions about what someone meant. Help promote a culture in which it’s appreciated when a colleague asks for clarification. Asking instead of assuming will save time, energy, and heartache.

When Using Video Communication. Those “leading” a meeting should use agendas, distributed in advance, to make sure what needs to get discussed is actually discussed. Take extra time to consider who and who doesn’t need to attend a given meeting. Maybe a meeting needs to be more inclusive? Maybe it needs a smaller working group? Given the isolation of working at home, the criteria for inclusion may need to change. Additionally, reconsider how meetings are structured and run: How much of the meeting should be simply to connect with each other? The person running the meeting should set expectations for participation at the beginning. Try to set up the meeting for full participation so each person knows why they’re there and how they can contribute. That said, decide how much time should be spent with small talk. There should be at least some, unless you are all in frequent contact with each other during the day.

When Using Text-based Communication. People can make mistakes and read unintended emotions into words. At least with video calls, participants get non-verbal cues to help understand what other people’s words mean. Not so with text-based communication. Also, words can be vague. Even when a person thinks they are being clear with his or her writing, it may not necessarily be so.

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Why and How Can Internal Video Help You Boost Employee Morale?