Doug Conant, former CEO of Campbell’s Soup Co. said, “To win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace.” In today’s fast paced work environment, companies are looking for new ways to communicate information to employees, in a format that saves time and increases consistency of message. Enter video! Video is the best way for management, HR, and internal communications professionals to deliver information to their workforce. Video is an engaging way to deliver a consistent message to employees. These tips will have you creating high quality, effective internal communications that keep your staff up to speed on company information.

1. Keep It Fresh

Memos and emails are one way to ensure that all employees get the same information, but they lack engagement that can help employees retain information. Video provides a nice change of pace when delivering important company information. Video provides an engaging, personal touch that can reinforce key messaging, and utilizes a different part of the employee’s brain to process that information.

2. Script It Out

Don’t skip the script! Before you start on a new video, you have to know what you want to say. By doing strong pre-production work, you can establish the who, what, when, where, and why for every training video. This ensures that your video messaging will achieve your desired outcome; from new product training, to changes in HR policies.

Writing a script ensures that you capture all the information you need to convey, and that your information is well organized. Scripting also gives you the opportunity to ensure that your team is on board with the content and language that will be used, and is branded, non-marketing messaging, consistent with other company communications and in-person training.

3. Keep It Concise

It’s inevitable that training videos become long very quickly. There is a lot that can be done to ensure that you get all the major points across without turning your video into an employee snooze-fest. Keep your videos visual, and cut out anything that isn’t essential. You can always point employees to detailed in-depth information from other sources. Have a number of people review your script to see what is non-essential and can be cut to keep the length down.

If you find that you have a lot of essential information that needs to be presented, consider chaptering your video. By chaptering, you can break your content down into a number of shorter, more consumable videos. This allows employees a break between videos, and allows them to consume the videos at a pace that best suits them.

4. Be Consistent

It’s easy when you’re working on a video create content that stands alone. Be careful to ensure that you’re video messaging is constant with company wide training programs, culture, values, and branding/messaging. Training should be constant across the entire organization, from different departments, to different locations. This ensures a cohesive workforce with consistent messaging.

5. Why So Serious?

While it’s important to communicate key information to your workforce, that doesn’t mean it has to be dry. Look for opportunities to create entertainment value in your training videos. Adding some flare and entertainment can communicate brand authenticity and create higher engagement. When the audience is entertained, they pay closer attention, have higher engagement, and are more likely to retain and learn the information being presented. When appropriate, have some fun. Just make sure you know your audience, and that any humor is brand appropriate.

6. Keep Up The Production Value

Just because your company training videos aren’t going to your customers doesn’t mean you should lower the quality of the videos you create. Companies often skimp on production value when creating internal videos, thinking it’s an easy place to pinch pennies. Creating high quality content will capture and keep the attention of your workforce. Treat your employees the same as your best customers…don’t create poor-quality training videos. Show your employees you care about their learning. Invest in your people!

7. Test Employees

Online learning is becoming a huge opportunity to engage and educate people. You can apply this to your employees; from a simple Google Forms quiz, to a complete online learning platform. Let your employees know that you’ll be testing them in advance. This will motivate them to pay attention. After viewing the video, you can include a link to an online quiz, or even a post-play screen that includes the quiz over the content employees just watched. This can ensure that employees are learning the key information from your videos. You can also include post-viewing surveys to get feedback from employees on things that are working or areas for improvement.

8. Track Results

In today’s world we track everything! Tracking results can help with continuous improvement. When possible, put your videos on a platform with quality analytics tools. Analytics will allow you to see when viewership drops off, whether around a specific topic area/time frame, or even entire chapters that employees are skipping. Armed with this information, you can start working to evaluate engagement behavior and how you can improve in the future. By continuing to improve your strategy, you can help make your training videos more engaging and more effective for your staff. It’s your job to get employees high-quality training videos so that they can learn the content you want them know.

Ian Murray is the President at SpotOn Productions, a full service, award-winning Cincinnati video production company, serving Greater Cincinnati and Greater Dayton from Liberty Township, Ohio.