Video Content: A Must-Try Tool To Surcharge Employee Engagement
Employees are, undebatably, the backbone of a company; one that will keep a company stand tall against the biggest challenges if you nurture it, or cripple it down paring the revenues to the bone when left overlooked. Who would have thought that the disengaged employees can cause U.S. companies to lose $550 billion a year? But, how will companies get engaged and passionate employees?
Do they need to reel in new employees on high wages as an attempt to keep the employee motivated from day one? Or should they invest in the present employees and offer them perks like free lunches, transportations, and indoor games to develop a sense of motivation and loyalty? Impressive payscales and perks do make the staff happier and keep the retention rate high, but they alone would not do much to keep everyone engaged. In fact, half of the employees are eager to sacrifice as much as 29% of their salary to get a job they enjoy, as stated by recent research commissioned by Kforce. Employees get frustrated at the office when feeling that the work they do daily is not worth doing. This explains why they then start to think negative about their workplace or just do their bare minimum to get through the day or why heavy paychecks and grilled steak burritos at the lunch have more of their attention than the company progress.
So what should one do to turn a grumpy employee into a motivated, diehard advocate of the company who calls in sick less, believe in what s/he has been doing, and don’t think about quitting. The answer is simple: connect with the employees, keep them away from distractions, and most importantly, make them aware of the company’s internal communications.
Employees of this era face more potential distractions at their workplace than any previous generation. According to the “2018 Workplace Distraction Report”, 70% of employees feel distracted at their workplace. To counter this distraction, many companies are turning towards “videos”.
Videos can be fun to watch, engaging, and informative all at the same time. Forbes says that 75% of executives watch work-related videos on business portals at least once a week. Here are some key reasons businesses should be using videos to improve employee engagement.
Videos Are A Great Way To Connect With Every Single Employee
There is no denying in that videos are far more powerful than text and email, as they can communicate the tone, bring in more attention, and convey the message through storytelling. Large enterprises with multiple offices and thousands of employees working (both in-house and remotely) can use video to add a personal touch into business communications. A short video or vlog by the manager or CEO can work wonders in engaging employees and make them feel valued. How great it would be to have a video message from the CEO congratulating a team on achieving monthly goals, or a motivating message to an individual who failed to achieve the desired results. This will make employees feel that their work does not go unnoticed. The employees, then, will get more motivated to outperform their present progress and struggle to ensure better results the next time. If you do not want to hire professionals to create videos, simply use OnlineVideoEditor, a drag-and-drop video maker for businesses. It is a user-friendly online platform that makes it easy and intuitive to make engaging videos with no expertise and barely any budget needed. WIth over 1+ million free images, videos, and sounds, as well as numerous video templates, you can create powerful video content in minutes.
See for yourself!
The CEO of TrueCar, Chip Perry, the CEO of, shares how skateboards become his means of transportation to the office every day while he welcomes new hires at TrueCar.
Dharmesh Shah, the HubSpot co-founder and CTO, explains in this video his life learned lessons for growing better in the digital era by providing solutions for the customers.
Videos Are A Powerful Medium For Employee Training And Career Advancement
Employees are less likely to leave the companies that invest in their staff’s training and career advancement. Videos, by far, are the best training medium and can be used in a number of ways. Companies can record a training session and make it available to the employees in all offices and departments; a collection of learning and development videos can train new employees; and knowledge-based, how-to videos from experienced employees can provide essential information to the less experienced staff. Besides, videos are a visually stimulating medium that improves the viewer’s ability to remember forgetful details. In facts, video-based presentations ensure 9% more comprehension than text-based training materials.
This video by LogoDesign.Net explains the newbie designers how to design a negative space logo. This video is not just helpful for logo designers, but it is also helpful for the employees of the design agencies who would want to learn. Don Crawley – The IT customer service expert—guides the viewers about a systematic process to ensure successful Tech support. Such videos can be made available to the tech support department to help them hone their skills.Videos Are Fun, Relatable And Empathetic
Human brains are hard-wired to respond to the expressions, tone, and body language; a text-based email lacks all of them. It makes email less relatable and empathetic as compared to videos.
With videos, it is easier to convey empathy and interact with the audience through humor, gestures, postures, expressions, and tone. It makes the audience feel a real connection and continue to watch until the end.
Videos can also create the wow moments that can delight your employees. Let’s say a Christmas greeting video form the HR department to the employees when they are on vacations can be far more fun to watch than a bland email, saying Merry Christmas.
Deloitte Global’s former CEO, Barry Salzberg, sent a special New Year message to the 210,000+ Deloitte employees across the globe, making them determine how they are going to make an impact in 2015.
After the sudden resignations of Research In Motion (RIM)’s co-chief executives and co-chairmen, the then-new CEO of the company, Thorsten Heins, recorded a motivational message for the RIM employees to dilute the uncertainties.
Videos Can Reveal Accurate Employee Engagement Metrics
Videos are also a hero without the cape when measuring the effectiveness of communication. Emails and text messages do have read-recipes, but it only tells you how many people have received/read the content. However, in the case of videos, it is possible to get in-depth analysis. Using the right video tools, employer/publisher can easily determine advanced analytics, such as the number of total views on the video, the drop-off points, which part of the video the viewers skipped or rewound, the average duration employees watch the video, and the list of videos that are watched the most. In short, you can know how more or less engaged they are.
Employers can use this data to tweak up their video content and make informed decisions, which is not yet possible with the company-wide emails that just allow open rates to be tracked.
Source: Harvard Business Review
Videos Make Company’s Values and Culture Easier to Grasp
How many people actually read terms and conditions before clicking on the “I agree to the terms and conditions” checkbox? 90% of consumers do not!
If that is the case, who’d want to dive into the ocean of text explaining what the company is all about and what it aspires to achieve?However, things can be their opposite if the same information is delivered right from the source (the CEO). It will also decrease the lack of connection between employees and senior management, without encroaching on the employees’ work time. Instead, it will make the employees feel valued.
Above all, if the staff knows what it company stands for, there will be a higher level of fulfillment at work; everybody will be contented knowing that s/he (in some ways) is contributing to the accomplishment of company’s goals and objective. This can make a real difference to employee engagement.
The Apple video explains why its employees see things differently within the company and why this perspective matters to future innovative discoveries.
See yourself at Google is a video that leaves you with a yearning to work here. The company culture, as shown in this video, is fun, innovative, and worth experiencing.
Videos Are Effective In Sharing Updates
Videos are real time-savers; they are asynchronous conversations, allowing the viewers to watch them at their own convenience. At least once a year, employees can get a sneak peek into company update video, comprising of news and customer reviews. It will unleash the organization’s achievements in the previous year and the benchmarks that are set for the year(s) to come. Such videos can be really inspiring and effective in making the employees feel valued and involved, which makes them a great option to start a meeting or conference.
Moreover, companies can also use videos to share product updates, the addition of new features, or a revision in the company’s policy with their employees. It will be helpful in making sure each of the employees stays on the same page.
The CRO of Electroneum, Richard Ells used a video to share some insights with the ETN community into the company’s new registration process and Gig Guru.
The video reveals a message from HII’s president and CEO, Mike Petters, on the holiday break highlighting the milestones and accomplishment of the year.
Videos Are Easily Shared By The Advocating Employees
As soon as employees turn into the powerful advocates, they will most probably share their company’s videos with their circles on different platforms. They will share everything from CEO’s messages to new products because they do not just believe in their company but are also proud of it. The more a company’s videos are shared by the employees, the greater will be its exposure, which eventually works as the word of mouth for prospective customers and future employees. This portrays the company as a great place to work and do business with. An email or a memo is also great, but it does not help the same way though. Businesses can work with a third party to get assistance in video creation and branding if they want to look professional. Agree! Not all videos should be shared considering the privacy and confidentiality of the company. However, the videos can be encrypted and made available only to a specific audience. In this way, the staff will be able to share only the videos that do not carry any sensitive data.
Through this video, Trish Devine, a managing director at J.P. Morgan, explains how she maintains a work-life balance in her life and lets her team take a load off whenever required to keep them on track.
Mark Zuckerberg let his apologies for the Facebook data scandals widely spread and shared across different social media platforms via a video, in which he also announced to rightfully testify before the authorities.
To Wrap Up
Happy and engaged employees are more productive; investing some time and money in making videos will never hurt a company. Videos, on the other hand, can be an important asset to any company and its internal communication strategy. What if all the viral corporate videos text-only blogs, would they bag the same amount of response and attention too as they enjoyed being a video?Another noteworthy point here is that videos may marvel anyone with their effects; they are not a magic wand that will change everything in a mere wave. Things take time and it will be better for businesses to start small until they learn how to make videos work for them and then gradually claw their way up once they get a hang of it. Ayesha Ambreen is a Creative Content Strategist, Partner at Quora, and Featured Graphic Designer. Best known for her creative visuals and viral content ideas, Ayesha’s work has been featured on blogs such as Entrepreneur.com, Smashing Magazine, CreativePro and more. A writer/designer by day and a reader by night, Ayesha loves to explore new realms of creativity and content through her work. Follow her on Twitter at @AyeshaAmbreen
