The secret to onboarding remote teams fast — with video
Written by Ioana Wilkinson | 16th September 2025
Table of Contents
New hires will quickly feel lost and disconnected if your remote onboarding process consists of piles of text-heavy documents with no human connection.
Short, clear explainer videos give every remote employee a consistent welcome, immediate context, and on-demand support—without burning out your team.
Let’s walk through why remote onboarding breaks down, how video solves those problems, and the concrete steps you can take to turn video into your onboarding secret weapon.
What you’ll learn:
- Why remote onboarding often fails and the core pain points.
- How video fixes those issues with consistency, clarity, and connection.
- Practical, easy-to-apply best practices for getting started (including before day one).
- How to scale and measure video onboarding without overloading leaders.
- Answers to common objections and quick wins.
The challenges of remote onboarding — Here’s why it often falls flat
Right now, remote onboarding isn’t working. Research by Paychex indicates that 63% of remote employees feel undertrained, compared to just 38% of in-office employees.
But why? Are there enough effective tools to create connections across distance?
Here are the main problems.
Lack of connection from day one
Remote hires usually get the same documents as everyone else but miss the informal moments that create belonging.
That distance matters: early workplace friendships help people understand their role, expectations, and who to turn to. Without those connections, new hires will likely overlook who owns what, how their work fits in, or where to get help.
Too many tools, not enough clarity
Companies expect remote hires to learn a suite of unfamiliar tools—often all at once.
Training frequently happens in one overloaded live session where names, logins, and processes are rushed through. Technical glitches, information overload, and a lack of on-demand reference material mean new hires forget what they saw and feel awkward asking again.
There are also critical security details that need to be shared with new team members during onboarding, ranging from access management policies to incident response tools to address data breaches and other cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Making sure this information is clear and understandable is best done through video.
Your remote onboarding program requires more than a collection of static PDFs from an outdated employee handbook. They need concise, visual guides to refer to at any time.
Leaders are stretched too thin
As your remote team grows, calendar chaos sets in. Live training sessions are hard to schedule across time zones and hybrid rhythms.
Even when those sessions happen, the experience varies by who’s presenting and when.
Video solves that: it delivers the same onboarding experience to everyone without requiring leaders to repeat themselves endlessly.
Why video onboarding works for your remote workforce
Explainer videos deliver a consistent, engaging, and scalable onboarding experience across roles and geographies.
New hires retain more when content is delivered visually
Video makes complex information easier to absorb.
Studies also report that explainer videos foster better knowledge transfer compared to plain slides or audio-only presentations, largely due to their ability to hold attention longer. Viewers remember 90% of the information when watching a video, when compared to the 10% they retain from text-based information.
With video training, new hires get the info they need — and it actually sticks.
One video = consistent onboarding for everyone
Explainer videos turn your onboarding content into repeatable, uniform walkthroughs.
Every new hire receives the same explanation of policies, tools, and expectations, so the experience doesn’t depend on who delivers it.
A human touch, no matter where they’re based
Many new hires say intro videos help them feel seen and connected from day one. A brief “Meet the Team” clip or cultural walkthrough brings faces, roles, and tone to life in a way text cannot. In fact, 78% of onboarding employees say intro videos help them feel seen and connected from day one.
While creating video might seem like extra work, tools like simpleshow simplify the process. With guided workflows and smart AI suggestions, even non-technical team leads can produce polished videos without mastering complicated editing software.
Best practices to turn video into your onboarding secret weapon
Videos build confidence and help new remote employees feel at home from the start. Here’s how to do it right:
Start before day one
Send a short welcome video before the new hire’s first day to set expectations and reduce anxiety. Examples of what to include:
Examples of what to include:
- Communication guidelines should be provided so they know how and when to ask questions.
- A personal welcome message from their manager or buddy.
- Timing and instructions for initial equipment setup.
- Tips for creating a productive home workspace.
- A clear outline of what to expect on Day 1.
- Login steps for critical tools (with links or walkthrough).
Quick win: Record a 60-second welcome message from the manager and send it 1–2 days before start. Track replies or engagement as your first onboarding metric.
Use AI-generated animated videos to simplify complex concepts
Some onboarding topics are tricky to explain. That’s where animated videos shine.
Take the Nurse Licensure Compact, for example.
This nationally recognized license allows registered nurses to practice across 38 states without the hassle of paying additional fees. Of course, there’s more to it, such as healthcare and privacy, HIPAA, compliance, etc.
Fortunately, companies can break down this sometimes hard-to-understand topic using AI-generated animated videos. Fun, bright visuals make it simple for skilled nurses working across multiple states to quickly get up to speed with complex compliance.
simpleshow’s AI tools do the creative heavy lifting for you.
You can turn ideas into clear, engaging videos that explain complex topics quickly. No need to start from scratch or master complicated video editing software.
Build and organize a video library
Once you have a few videos, centralize them:
- Store them in your onboarding platform, intranet, or a shared library.
- Tag by topic, role, version/date (to avoid stale information).
- Prioritize videos such as:
- Essential tools and communication platforms
- Role-specific expectations and deliverables
- Career growth and development paths
- Core workflows and internal process overviews
- HR, benefits, and policy explainers
- Security and compliance procedures
- Expense submission/invoicing
- Company culture and values
Make this library always accessible, and consider pinning critical videos in a dedicated Slack channel or whichever Slack alternatives you use so new hires can revisit and ask questions in context.
How to measure video onboarding success
To ensure your effort earns results, track a few key indicators:
- Time to productivity (how quickly new hires complete core tasks)
- Reduction in repeated questions or support tickets about basics
- Completion rate of pre-day-one and first-week videos
- New hire satisfaction/feedback scores after onboarding
- Early retention (first 30–90 days)
- Engagement with onboarding content (views, rewatches, replies to welcome videos)
Wrap up
Onboarding remote teams doesn’t have to feel disjointed or isolating. With explainer videos, you can deliver consistent, human, and efficient onboarding that builds a connection from day one.
Here’s a quick tip: start with one short video—welcome a new hire or explain a key tool. Then build again. You’ll see how easy it is to scale clarity and reduce ambiguity across the team.
Ready to simplify remote onboarding? Explore how simpleshow video maker can help now.
FAQs
What’s the fastest video to create to improve onboarding now?
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Author's bio
Ioana is a business strategist and content writer for B2B tech and SaaS brands. She also helps aspiring entrepreneurs build remote businesses. Born in Transylvania and raised in Texas, Ioana has been living the digital nomad life since 2016. When she’s not writing, you can catch her snorkeling, exploring, or enjoying a café con leche in Barcelona!
