As a human resources professional, your role is all about people. Whether you’re finding & retaining top talent, welcoming & training new employees, keeping your people safe, recognizing their accomplishments or keeping them informed, you’re constantly communicating.
Today more than ever, the best way to reach your people (and keep them engaged) is through video. In fact, by 2021, 82% of all global internet traffic will be video.
In this article, we’ll reveal seven types of videos every HR departments needs to use.
1. The Recruitment Film
Ten thousand baby boomers reach retirement age every single day. This is going to leave a lot of gaps for you to fill in your workforce.
Recruiting talent is the life blood to every business and a recruitment film is the ultimate way to attract and retain them.
With a younger and more tech friendly workforce on the horizon, video is the way of the future. Recruitment agencies are already reporting 800% more engagement with job ads that have video embedded.
Today’s candidates want to know about the company culture and values of their potential employers. No two companies are the same and no two recruitment films should be the same.
Quick Tips
Show off your work culture
Encapsulate your company’s personality & work culture in a fast-paced, engaging sizzle video. If you want to show how exciting a workplace you deliver, put that energy and enthusiasm on the screen. In this video for Kraft Heinz, we show off their fast-paced and meritocracy-driven work culture with quick cuts and punchy music.
Express your company’s values
New hires want to know that you value the things that are important to them. Whether that is high performance workspaces, industry innovation, or anything else, make that the centre of your video.
Ask FAQs
Information is gold. Most applicants will have a number of questions prepared for their interviewer. To save time in the hiring process, address frequently asked questions upfront. This is also a great opportunity to show off your current employees on camera.
Show what it’s like to work at your company and the perks
Whether you have flexible work hours, great benefits or great education & training, let people know what else comes with the job besides their salary.
Show off your people
Who you work with is just as important as what you do. You know that your people are your best asset, so show them off in a meet-the-team style video like the one below.
Creating a recruitment video also allows you to grab the attention of potential talent on the platforms they spend the most amount of time: social media. Video content on social media gets 1200% more shares than text and image content.
82% of candidates now search for jobs on mobile, and 87% of mobile traffic will be video by 2021. To be certain your content is easy to view this way, always make sure you’re optimizing your content for the social platform it exists on.
2. Orientation & On-boarding
Once you’ve locked down great talent, you want to keep them excited about starting their journey with your company. Video is the perfect way to do that.
At one time or another, we’ve all been handed a thick orientation manual and been told to follow along. While it’s great to have access to a lot of information, it’s important that employees stay engaged during the onboarding process.
Your onboarding & orientation process should include a number of videos. The first is usually a general welcome address, but this series should also include vital information, a “what-to-expect” element and give them any additional resources they need. Here are some things to consider:
Quick Tips
Introduce your CEO, stakeholders & department heads
Let the new hires meet the leaders of your company. This is a great way to establish rapport early on and show off the dedication and excitement they have for the company. Have them present a welcome message to camera.
Showing off the workspace
Whether you’ve got foosball tables in the breakroom, sit-stand desks or boatloads of natural light, people love to see where they’ll be spending their workday. Give them a cinematic look at the workspace they’ll be in.
Where to get information
Starting a new job comes with a lot of new information and questions can arise long after your orientation. Be sure to include any resources, whether they are web, print or additional video content, and how to access them. This will make your new hires feel confident that they have the tools to succeed.
Company expectations
Define clear expectations for your new hire early on. This can include core company values and things like how you measure success & performance.
An additional benefit of using video in the onboarding process is the data it provides. Many content hosting sites like Vimeo & Wistia allow you to track a viewer’s engagement.
This includes whether they watched it to the end, how many times they watched it and if they replayed certain sections. You can also ensure that one video is watched all the way through before the next begins to play.
Not only does this allow you to monitor a viewer’s engagement, but it also gives you deep insight into which content is heavily engaged with and other content that might need tweaking.
3. Training
A knowledgeable employee is a productive employee. While there’s no substitution for in-person training, video can help supplement and enhance it.
The time spent coordinating all affected employees to attend mandatory live training can be cumbersome and expensive. Video allows employees to participate in training remotely and can greatly reduce the cost of the overall process.
Even if you are hosting a live training session, it’s a great idea to livestream it so that anyone who couldn’t attend can stay up to date.
Keep in mind that 65% of people identify as visuals learners, and knowledge retention is higher when presented through video compared to text.
Quick Tips
Use video in your live training
Having an instructor in the room is often vital, but some things are better explained visually. If you’ve got a lot of data-heavy information to present, supplement your instructor’s knowledge with additional information in the form of video.
Keep segments brief
Training is all about knowledge retention. Try to keep your video content short, concise and to the point. Try discussing the information in the video after each segment for added stick.
Highlight key points at end of video
Another great retention tactic is to repeat the most important points of your video at the end. This will leave a lasting impression on your viewers.
Another new and exciting use for video in training is virtual & augmented reality. When a job is particularly dangerous, virtual reality can be a great way to give employees zero-risk hands-on experience. This aids in reducing pressure, allows for practice outside of the job environment & has been shown to accelerate the learning process.
While flight simulators and combat video games have been to train pilots and military personal for a number of years, we are starting to see virtual reality applications across a number of industries like hospitality, engineering & trades, including some of the world’s largest companies like Microsoft:
4. Health & Safety
The health & safety of your employees is the ultimate HR responsibility.
Health & safety resources are also a crucial part of your catalogue of video content. These videos focus more on education than they do on training. This is vital information for your employees, so you’ll want to make sure they retain it. Remember that 65% of people are visual leaners. Use that to your advantage with video, and keep these key things in mind:
Quick Tips
Don’t rely on the do’s and don’ts, show human stories.
Instead of a laundry list of what’s right and wrong, appeal to people’s emotions. Hear from real people, not statistics.
Tell real life stories
A bold but effective move is to have someone speak about their real life health & safety incident. Show viewers how it changed their lives and what they learned in the process.
Show the real outcomes of not following procedures
When sharing these real life stories, make sure to drive home the real consequences and life altering realities of not following health & safety procedures.
5. Internal Communications
Another role of the HR department is to keep your people informed and in the know about changes to your company. These can include acquisitions, new hires and changes in mandates, among other things.
While crucial to maintaining transparency, these communications can often come across as long, dry documents that some employees won’t bother to read.
Quick Tips
Decide on a style
There are a few ways to get your message across. You can conduct a sit down interview with key stakeholders, or opt to have them read to a teleprompter. If your statement is data heavy, you might want to consider an infographic explainer to address financial & statistical information.
Get creative
Video gives you the flexibility to shake things up. You don’t need to rely on a formal presentation to get your message across. Think about how you can make it fun and keep engagement high.
Let new hires speak for themselves
If the goal is to introduce a particular person to the company, such as a new hire or stakeholder, have them introduce themselves. There’s no better way to welcome a new face than by hearing from them directly.
Include stills and video of big events
Take advantage of pre-existing assets you’ve collected. If you’re communicating about an event, be sure to include photos and videos. These can be taken by employees themselves at events, or done professionally if you have that content at your disposal.
The key to engaging and empowering content is to keep it conversational and direct. Don’t treat this content as a mandatory watch. Sell it as something your employees will want to see.
6. Events & Recognition
Your great people deserve to be acknowledged for all the hard work they do every day. Chances are, your company puts on some pretty great events to thank them. Whether it’s an annual Christmas party, an awards gala, a conference or a team building trip, help those memories live on by filming every minute of it.
Before you get going, make sure you find the right video production team for the job by asking these five questions.
Here are some types of content to consider:
Quick Tips
The Sizzle
A short, punchy sizzle video will remind people of how much fun your event was and will get them excited for the next one. This footage is also a great asset to have when it comes to showing off your company culture in your recruitment film.
In-Event Content
It’s always a good idea to add some entertainment to your event in the form of video. This can be a fun “dance-off” video of your employees, or a mockumentary about the day in the life of an executive at your company.
Stakeholder interviews
There’s also a good chance your event will bring a lot of important people into one room – something that might not happen very often. Why not take that unique opportunity to sit down with a few of them? Interviews with key stakeholders, executives and even employees, especially in the context of a fun event, are great assets that you can collect and use in a number of videos.
Save the Date
If you’re hosting a recurring event, it’s never a bad idea to create a video invitation from footage of the previous year. This can include some of the best moments from the previous years and key information like the date, place & time.
Here’s a look at some of those kinds of video in action:
7. Special Messages
Quarterly reports are used to get vital updates about the company out to your employees. But other events might shape your company’s day to day operation like, for example, a retirement. Creating special messages (in which your employees appear on camera) to honour specific people in your company is a great way to maintain good relationships and a sense of community among your employees.
These types of videos are great HR tools because they allow employees to get involved in your initiatives directly and keep them engaging with their fellow staff.
A study by Inc.com revealed that increasing employee engagement investments by 10% can increase company profits by $2,400 per employee per year.
Leveraging a conference, we talked to people about saying goodbye to a key stakeholder entering retirement.
The Takeaway
No matter what type of content you are creating, always remember to keep it viewer-focused. These video resources are meant to educate, inform, entertain & delight your people.
To boost that engagement, get your associates, executives & stakeholders in front of the camera and give them a chance to be the voice of your company. The right person for your video depends on the circumstance. The article here will help guide on when and where to use them.
And lastly, have some fun. Video opens the door to creativity so don’t limit yourself to what’s been done before. Try humour, try heartfelt & when the message requires it, try serious.
Follow Signature Video Group on social media and start your video conversation here.
