You invest a great deal of time and effort into assembling a dream team of employees for your business. You peruse what seems like reams of resumés and sit through countless hours of interviews with prospects. You take time out of your busy schedule to ensure that you make the right hire in line with your goals and mission statement. So when you’ve finally decided on the best fit for your business, you want to ensure that you get the best return on your investment. And that means investing in employee engagement.
And, as in most things pertaining to business, video can be a huge help in keeping employees actively engaged, productive and happy. Here are some great ways to unlock your workforce’s potential with video...
Make onboarding simple
What makes the difference between a great candidate and a great employee? In the majority of cases, it’s the onboarding process. Onboarding is the first and, arguably, most important step in a new employee’s journey as they learn the processes and competencies that they need to do their job well.
But onboarding is about more than processes. It’s also about your corporate culture, and making sure a new employee feels like a valued member of the team from day one and that the ideals implicit in your mission statement are aligned with their own.
Video can make employee onboarding quicker, easier and more likely to stick. We’re naturally predisposed to consume video content. We consume it, share it and talk about it on a daily basis — from the 2 minute clip we saw on YouTube to the latest Star Wars movie. And presenting new employees with what they need to do on video can be much more effective than something as dry as a handout or a Powerpoint presentation.
There’s a wealth of opportunity to use video to get employees engaged and enthusiastic about working with you from day one. For example, general “welcome aboard” videos which give a taste of your workplace culture and the working atmosphere you try to cultivate. You could even create skills training videos and videos explaining the policies that shape your company.
Just make sure you have a robust infrastructure for storing, archiving and retrieving your videos.
Training made interesting
If you think that employee training ends after the onboarding process, think again! While every day is its own learning experience, you should still have a program of ongoing professional development for every employee. That includes ongoing training. And video can come to your aid here too!
The problem with workplace training is much the same as teaching in schools. Everyone has a slightly different learning style and learns at their own pace. Some learn better by watching (visual), some by listening (audial) and some can only learn by doing (kinaesthetic). We all have the capacity to learn in all three of these ways, but we usually tend to favor one over the others.
The great thing about the format of video is that it can appeal to all learning styles, especially when paired with accompanying activities, or active watching and listening exercises. And unlike training seminars, training videos can be revisited by employees over and over again whenever they need a quick reference or to brush up on their skills.
Over 30% of employees say that they will be more loyal to an employer who gives them continuous training opportunities. Fail to provide this for them and you may see them sneak across the street to lend their talents to your competitors.
Close the bridge between senior management and employees
One unfortunate side effect of the typical management structure is that it can lead to a culture of “us” and “them”. The further removed senior management are from the employees working in entry-level positions, the more it impedes the building of meaningful working relationships between senior and junior employees.
No matter how many good-natured emails you send, the less you, as senior management, make an effort to be visible, the more likely you are to be seen as hiding away in your ivory tower.
Video blogging is a great way to not only share your unique insights, experiences, goals and vision (the things that make your company what it is), it’s also a fun way to make yourself more visible to employees. After all, many people (particularly those of the millennial generation) feel strong connections to their favorite YouTube personalities. If video works for them, it can work for you.
And the more faith your team has in you, the more likely they are to stay with your business.
Showcase your products with aplomb
If members of your team are selling your products, they need to know everything there is to know about them. Not only will this help them to answer and preempt customers’ questions about the products, it will also help them to feel engaged and empowered. Let’s face it, nobody wants to answer a barrage of customer questions about a product by peering meekly at a printed factsheet.
Outstanding sales aptitude starts with great product knowledge. Moreover, your team members who work in customer service and support should also be highly conversant in how your products work and what makes them great. And if you give them dry factsheets, or worse, leave them to look up the information they need for themselves on your website, you’re doing your team a disservice. Not only that, you’re preventing them from doing their jobs with confidence and assurance.
Product videos can help employees understand your products better while also strengthening their sense of personal investment in them. And when employees truly believe in a product, it comes across to customers.
Video management matters
As you can see, there are many fantastic and innovative ways in which video can help employees remain engaged, improving their efficacy from day one and improving your overall retention.
But as you rely increasingly on creating and curating more video content, it’s important to remember the importance of a reliable VAM platform. It can help provide faster access to the videos you need, help you to repurpose existing footage for new videos and search through archived video files you need as easily as you do with the ‘Ctrl+F’ function in a word processor. They’re also a super secure way to store video and work collaboratively with outsourced talent.
Unlock the potential of video to get the most out of your team!
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