Why Training Videos Are Vital For Employee Onboarding And Productivity

Since the beginning of 2020, the business world has changed immensely. The COVID-19 pandemic laid siege to the office-based foundation upon which so many companies relied, forcing everyone to embrace online operation (regardless of whether they were ready) and introducing major new challenges pertaining to onboarding and productivity.

Onboarding, of course, is wholly different at a distance. It’s fundamentally odd for a new hire to join a company without having the opportunity to spend time with their new colleagues in person, after all, with that peculiarity rather unlikely to fade in the near future. And then there’s the thorny matter of keeping people productive while they’re spread throughout the nation (or even the world) and far from direct supervision. It certainly isn’t easy to run a business.

So how can you most effectively face these tricky tests? One ingredient that must go into your recipe is the versatile training video. By making good use of training videos (explainer videos in particular), you can bolster your onboarding process and your productivity, strengthening your business — and in this post, we’re going to explain why. Let’s get started.

In-person training is no longer viable

The biggest reason why every company should be considering training videos is simple: Their old in-person training methods just aren’t viable given current circumstances, and they may never again be particularly useful. Suppose that the threat of COVID-19 dwindles to the extent that travel is no longer an issue, however many professionals will still choose to work from home, and it’ll be tough to convince them to come into the office just for training.

In truth, in-person training has never been all that great, and it’s largely due to how difficult it is to pay attention to lengthy training sessions. You can gather people in a room for a couple of hours and show them a few slides, but it won’t mean they’ll learn (or even remember) anything. So why is training via training videos so much better? Because video is far better for information retention, and because it’s convenient and flexible.

Your employees don’t need to go anywhere to access your training videos. They can watch them when it suits them, pausing them or winding them back whenever necessary. For new hires who feel self-conscious about what they don’t know, this is a huge selling point — and for long-time employees, this is a great way to avoid tedious mandatory sessions.

Productivity software is often difficult to learn

These days, we’re all hugely reliant upon online software. Without it, we just can’t get that much done. This is why huge businesses invest so heavily in the most powerful systems they can find for handling areas like HR, accounting, invoicing and task management. That last one is particularly common — and while the best task management apps are all designed to be reasonably intuitive, that doesn’t mean they’re easy to learn. It takes time.

Compounding this issue is the thorny problem of communication. Providing a written guide for a software tool is a tough task because of how ludicrously specific you often need to be: when you say a button is on the right toolbar, where exactly do you mean? But if you record an explainer video while actually using the tool (recording the screen output, of course, so the viewer can see it), then you can make it much easier to tell what actions you’re taking.

This can massively accelerate the onboarding process by helping a new hire get accustomed to a range of software tools that may be entirely unfamiliar to them. And the faster they feel comfortable with those tools, the faster they can start using them to good effect.

Videos are great at conveying personality

For modern businesses to optimize their productivity, they need to have their employees on good terms. Though many tasks will be siloed, there are others — often key tasks — that require extensive collaboration, and it’s hard for people to work together effectively when they feel awkward interacting with one another. Some employees are awkward in general, admittedly, but even they can be helped through patient effort.

Think of the new employee who doesn’t know anyone at their new company. They can start to get to know people through Zoom calls and the like, but video training can add to that in a way that’s easier for introverted types to handle. If you have your department heads helm some training videos in which they introduce themselves and show their personalities – their true personalities, as truth is at the heart of brand storytelling – it can hugely accelerate the process of getting new employees feeling comfortable.

Author’s Bio

Rodney Laws is an ecommerce expert with over a decade of experience in building online businesses. Check out his reviews on EcommercePlatforms.io and you’ll find practical tips that you can use to build the best online store for your business. Connect with him on Twitter @EcomPlatformsio