Best Practices for Internal Videos: 7 Ways to Keep Your Team Engaged

The logic behind this affirmation is not hard to process. Video has become a huge part of our daily lives, and specialists expect that by 2020, as much as 82% of the internet content we consume will be video-based. We are now at 70%. As employees are constantly consuming video in their private lives, be it on YouTube, Netflix or Skype, they expect to be able to do the same in their professional lives. And whenever they are given a choice, they will always select short, interactive graphic presentations as opposed to lengthy instructional written guides.

External communication strategies are always targeting audiences with the right messages in the right format for growing their engagement. Internal communication specialists need to begin treating employees as another important audience with its own specific set of expectations. At the end of the day, your goal is to create a community that supports your business and your brand values and works side by side to develop your company. For your team to be open to doing so, its members need to feel important and esteemed.

Using video in your internal communication activities brings the same benefits seen in external PR campaigns. First, video is an easy-to-distribute format and can be watched on any device. By investing in a corporate video platform, you can enable 24/7 access to any visual presentation or information, and employees can adopt a self-paced instruction system any time they want. Second, videos allow you to measure your internal communication results by analyzing metrics such as views, the number of unique viewers or conversion rates. Such data can help you design better content and maximize your engagement efforts.

Treat your employees the same way you are treating your customers, or even better. Take action and begin investing in employee engagement through these seven best practices that are bound to improve your office dynamics.

Using video in training employees is not a new tactic. However, there is a deep-rooted concept that training videos should be hours long and presented in a serious setting. Usually, such presentations are extremely stiff and inefficient and do no good for the first impression a new hire gets about the company. People feel forced and subjected to the obligation of getting to know the company from the first day.

The alternative is much more effective. Instead of combining all the company presentations into one film, it’s better to split the information into several short, interactive videos that employees can access at any time of the day. Use the corporate video platform to create an educational channel, so that new hires know where they can find the necessary piece of information they might need in different work circumstances. In this way, you will allow everybody to catch up with the company’s principles and values at their own pace. Use motion graphics and animations to make procedures more understandable and easier to absorb. Your employees will be grateful.

One of the issues employees encounter is the lack of a channel of communication with their superiors. Casual filmed Q&As can help them perceive a certain level of interaction with their company’s management and make them believe that their voice matters.

Many times, people have the same questions and sometimes they fear the answers. Videos can  humanize a response better than an email can. These Q&A sessions can help disseminate a message faster so that it reaches all interested people in a less stressful manner. Also, there are online platforms that allow live transmissions, through which employees can send questions and comments right on the spot, thus increasing their level of engagement. This type of experience makes employees feel that they have a say in the way the business is conducted.

Product presentations are usually created for customers and external partners. However, bear in mind the fact that your employees are the first people that need to understand how your products work. Everyone in your organization should be familiar with the product specifics, features, and benefits.

Video presentations help not only salespersons in their interactions with customers, but also developers and other product team members to stay on track with every functionality. Keeping everybody in the loop helps with productivity and creates an environment of team interaction and improved communication.

Make the changes in your company known to every employee more easily with a News video segment. Every piece of information that impacts your team members can be easily absorbed if it is in a visual format. Whether you adopt a new health plan, impose a new rule, or update your policy, it is easier to share the explanations in a short, comprehensible video. Usually, Human Resources representatives are obligated to make sure each employee understands the company changes through email, personal presentations, and ongoing discussions. Videos come in handy as they decrease the amount of time needed to ensure that the message has been delivered to everybody. By filming these pieces of news and uploading them to the corporate video platform, employees have the opportunity to catch up whenever they have the  availability to watch your presentation session.

Almost all companies provide mobile phones to their field workers. Simplify your company’s procedures of solving issues by giving employees the chance to record any problems they encounter on the field in a video format, and upload them to your corporate video platform.

Troubleshooting through videos is becoming more and more common, and it is easy to understand why. Field workers can present their problems through videos, while another person is responsible for guiding them based on the visuals, thus decreasing the amount of time needed for solving the issue and simplifying the internal procedures.

Webcasts and vlogs are the new ways people communicate, and it represents a great form of creating online content for your business. Involve your team in producing videos that showcase your company and your products and give them the indications of how this should be done.

Corporate webcasts or vlogs are a great form of communicating with your audiences, and by involving your employees in the process, you will emphasize the company’s credibility. Some corporations or brands have even started their own Snapchat account, and they use it to show customers how the production process works or present their working environment. You need courage and openness to adopting this idea, and it might not resonate with the personality of your brand, but it is a great way to involve employees in your strategy creation and implementation and make them feel like they are a part of a community.

Corporate journalism is now a real thing. Take one of your IT guys and record a discussion about how the new SAP system improves productivity and add it to your internal newsletter about content strategy. Make your salespeople record presentations of your products and post them on your social media pages. Even better, allow your employees to create their own video content and use it for both your external and internal public relations strategies. It will make your employees feel like their presence matters to the company and that they are appreciated and regarded as professionals, trusted to share their business stories with the world.

Videos can boost your internal communications and help you create engagement inside and outside the company. Employees want to be given a voice, and their desires and needs to be heard and their involvement with the company to be appreciated. By giving employees the chance to communicate with your company in such interactive ways, you increase their level of job satisfaction.