Samantha Ferguson
In this article we’re going to take a look at different ways you can use video as an internal communications tool.
Videos are being used far and wide by marketers to increase brand awareness and support customers.
91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool.
But video can be a great way to spread information internally too! After all, videos are engaging and can be played on demand - meaning teams can watch them at their own pace or even re-watch them if they need a refresher.
Plus, there are tons of different ways you can use video as an internal communications tool. Let’s take a look at some examples…
1. Company updates
Company updates are important for keeping your employees in-the-know, and there are a few different ways you can do this.
You can send around an email or a report, but there’s no way to guarantee that everyone’s reading these.
You can schedule a meeting, which will ensure you have everyone’s full attention, but might not be the most efficient use of company time.
56% of people feel they regularly waste time in meetings.
Or, you could create a video. Videos are a great way to share information because people can watch them in their own time and they’re much more engaging than reading a document.
When asked how they’d like to learn, 63% of people say they’d most like to watch a short video. This comfortably beats off other materials, such as eBooks (4%) and text-based articles (12%).
2. Employee onboarding
After all of the time, effort, and money that you pour into finding and hiring the ideal candidate, you need to make sure that your employee onboarding is top-notch.
Video is the ideal tool to onboard new employees. It’s more engaging than text-based materials (as we’ve just mentioned), such as manuals and slide decks, and it’s a lot less expensive than classroom training.
Here’s an employee onboarding video we made for Paymentshield:
This video is very on-brand for the company as we used all of their brand colours, fonts, and took additional direction from their brand guidelines.
It’s short, humorous, and also gives employees context for why the training is important
3. Training and development
Similar to employee onboarding, videos can also help you with the training and development of your current employees.
Training videos offer many benefits over traditional training methods, including being more exciting and memorable, and a lot more cost effective! One of the biggest cost savings with training videos comes from the fact that you can reuse them.
You can invest in one training video and use that exact same video to train your workforce for years to come.
Here’s an example of a training video we made for Nikwax:
This animated video captures attention with engaging visuals and gives employees the information they need to feel confident in their role.
4. Employee experience/testimonial
An employee experience video is kind of like an internal testimonial for your business. It should feature an employee telling their story of working at your company, including how they got their start, how they’ve progressed and what they love about their role. Here’s an example from Nike:
These types of videos can be a great boost for morale and also help to better establish your culture for newly joined employees.
5. Troubleshooting video
IT issues can be such a pain! And explaining how to fix them without any visual aids to help can be even worse. Troubleshooting videos will help your IT team to support your staff, even when they are busy with other things.
When you have a catalogue of troubleshooting videos that cover the most common issues your employees face, you can send those out quickly and easily to ensure downtime is as low as possible.
With most devices coming with free built-in screen-recording software that make it easy to record videos, this one’s kind of a no-brainer!
6. Employee recognition
Here’s quite a disappointing statistic for you…
Almost 20% of people say they never (or almost never) receive any recognition in the workplace.
Creating a video spotlight about one of your employees is a lovely way to show them recognition. Here’s an example from Microsoft:
In addition to making the spotlighted employee feel special, the video - when rotated internally - can inspire other employees and encourage them to work harder and strive for more so that they can also be recognised for their accomplishments.
7. Celebrations and special events
If your business has a big milestone coming up then a video could be the perfect way to commemorate that. Here is a great example from LinkedIn:
Getting your team involved in internal communications videos like this one can be a lot of fun and can also help to increase pride and loyalty among employees.
Plus, celebration videos can have multiple purposes. You could reuse it to market your business to new employees, to increase brand awareness on social media, and even to humanise your brand for customers.
8. Change management
Change can be difficult to navigate as a business, especially if you are adopting a new way of doing things after many years or even decades of the same approach.
A video can help to make this transition smoother by giving you a chance to clearly explain why the change is happening and also to outline visually how your employees can implement those changes - whether they are new technologies, processes, or strategies.
9. Crisis communications
No one likes to think about the worst case scenario, but it’s important to be prepared. ‘Expect the best, plan for the worst’, as the saying goes!
Crisis communications videos should be a part of your internal communications strategy and can cover everything from how to handle a security breach to how to evacuate the building in an emergency.
Here’s an example we made for BRG:
This animated video delivers quite a heavy topic in the lightest way possible. We think using metaphors, fun characters, and stories in this way can make your crisis communications more memorable.
10. Promote internal campaigns
Just as video can be used to market external campaigns to your customers, it can also be used to market internal campaigns to your employees. If you’re unsure what this means, take a look at this video we made for Taylor Wessing:
This video encourages employees to use the internal platform Reach to stay in touch with one another and deepen connections among the team.
Just as video can persuade your customers to download an app or purchase a product, the same can be said for your employees.
11. Diversity & inclusion
Diversity and inclusion is extremely important to today’s workforce. And so it’s highly likely that people will want to know your company’s stance on such matters before coming to work for you.
1 in 2 Gen Z people won’t work in a place without diverse leadership.
Here is a really nice example of Allyship at Netflix:
Videos like this not only attract employees but they can help your existing team members to understand the role diversity and inclusion plays in your business. It can help them to join groups, seek advice, or take advantage of any initiatives that your company runs.
12. Employee FAQs
Most companies understand the benefit of an FAQs page for customers that need help. It saves time and money, and can increase customer satisfaction because they don’t have to reach out to your support team and wait for a solution to their problem. They can help themselves in real time and that feels empowering.
Well, the same applies to your employees! If you have common issues that happen, for example people don’t know the correct protocol for booking a meeting room or they often get stuck with a particular software, FAQ videos can come in handy!
These can be relatively inexpensive to make. You can batch them all and keep them in a shared drive that all of your employees can access. Simple!
13. Video newsletter
Newsletters help to keep your team informed and excited about things that are going on with your business.
But how many of your employees actually read them?
Video is always going to trump text so why not share a video newsletter with your team instead? It doesn’t need to be anything fancy, it could simply be a short message that you record in one take from your phone.
Plus, most video hosting sites will give you insights on how many views the video has gotten and how many people watched to the end. So you can see if your newsletter is really having an impact.
14. Annual reports
The success of your business matters to your employees. After all, their job is what allows them to put food on the table for themselves or their families.
An annual reports video can help to give a true insight into how your business is doing, including successes from the past year and new directions for the future. Here is an example from Disney:
Of course, we’re not all Disney and so we don’t all have to make a video on quite this scale. But we can learn from the information conveyed in the video and the way it is conveyed.
Even if your team is as small as 10 people (or less!) recording a video like this and dropping it into Slack so everyone can view it is a great way to share information internally.
Final thoughts
Internal communications are always going to be evolving as your business discovers new ways to share information over time.
Video is one of the tools that can really grow with you as you work to keep everyone aligned, informed, and engaged.
If you think you might be ready to dip your toe into the water of internal communications videos, a great place to start is with training videos.
For more information on that, check out this article next: 10 Reasons Video is Perfect for Internal Training.
