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Wake Up Your Workforce!

By on February 21, 2014
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How innovative internal video can improve company communications.

No more cumbersome internal emails. No more boring presentations. Companies and organizations are using innovative internal video to engage and inspire.

We have all been on the receiving end of a long, tedious email or never-ending slide presentation from a boss or higher-up. Whether for news or explanatory purposes, or to improve internal relations, multi-paragraph internal emails and droning slide presentations leave everyone bored and un-inspired.

Lucky for all of us, forward-thinking companies have started using web videos for internal communications and professional development. Well-suited for training and team building, and often published through an online video platform, internal video is a more engaging, personal, and effective way to communicate with employees.

Ragan Communications recently published a survey of 713 communications professionals from a variety of companies, around the world. The Engaging Employees with Video report presents some compelling statistics, demonstrating a high percentage of companies already using video to improve internal communication and employee engagement:
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Why use internal video?

Maybe you’re already using video for marketing and public relations purposes. Why should you change your approach to internal communications? There’s no secret here. Companies are using internal video for the same reasons they use external video – to deliver a message and connect with an audience. The difference is the type of video that’s created. In many cases, external video is promotional, or focuses on educating the viewer. Internal video is used in those and a variety of other ways.
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TOP 5 USES FOR INTERNAL VIDEO

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Source: Engaging Employees with Video, Ragan Communications

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HOW VIDEO IMPROVES COMMUNICATIONS

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Source: Engaging Employees with Video, Ragan Communications

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Idea Bank

Want to give it a try, but don’t know where to begin? The possibilities are endless, but here are some ideas to get you started using innovative internal video in many different ways:

Improve Employee Engagement

When you were a kid going to school, do you remember creating classroom rules together with your teacher and classmates? Incorporate that approach in the workplace, and have employees defend or negotiate the policies that affect them.

Stage a friendly debate, and have employees make their case in a persuasive video. Your staff will buy into workplace policies if you actively involve them in the process.

Support Learning and Development

Adult learning theory suggests audience members that interact and participate in their own learning retain more information, and engage their brains more.

Break your organization into teams, and create a friendly “Family Feud” competition, where everyone learns about necessary topics. Or, enlist a creative and dramatic team of employees to create an entertaining, comical, and educational training video for new hires. It’s always fun to parody a popular television show. You could, for example, model a video on workplace dress codes after Extreme Makeover.

Increase Employee Interest

To foster workplace synergy, companies often devise experiences and incentives to get employees actively involved.

Create a trivia video! Request some interesting facts about staff members, and create a puzzle in your video newsletters, matching facts to the correct employees. Videotape the winner who has the most correct answers or the first to complete the matches. This is a great way to get your employees interacting and learning about each other.

Reduce Travel Costs

There are times when it’s almost impossible to physically gather all your remote employees in the same location, at the same time. But you can still get everyone on the same page, using video.

Follow the lead of a popular television show, like Trading Spaces, and put together a video focused on creating an ergonomic and productive home office. Explain the benefits of having ergonomic office equipment, and why it is important to have a dedicated space to get work done. This video will accomplish several things – first, it engages work-from-home employees. And second, it allows your organization to provide fun and useful suggestions, without delivering a mandate…and it doesn’t require any travel!

Announce Executive Mandates

One of today’s biggest challenges is keeping employees up to date with the latest policies, regulations, or company practices. Video can help solve this problem.

Instead of writing a lengthy email that addresses dress code violations, host a fashion police show. Or, rather than explaining why you must protect company trade secrets, create a video show that focuses on the issues involved with protecting trade secrets, and the consequences of not protecting them, using a Judge Judy format.

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So, Who Creates These Videos??

While the benefits of innovative internal video are clear, there are some logistical questions to consider. For instance, who will film and produce the video? There are a few options, depending on the your commitment to innovative internal video and of course your budget.

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Source: Engaging Employees with Video, Ragan Communications

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The numbers speak for themselves. But not everyone has the luxury of hiring an in-house production team, especially in the beginning. Here are some considerations to help you decide what’s best for you:
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Secrets to Success

In the end, we want you to be successful as you create and deliver innovative internal video. Stick close to this checklist, and you can’t go wrong:

  1. Determine which production option works for you, your organization, and your budget.
  2. Be sure you are delivering well-written, well-produced videos that are informative, engaging, timely, and honest.
  3. Offer diversity in the types of videos and video messaging. Make sure the videos include stories from the staff floor to the boardroom.

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How Do Companies and Organizations Store and Deliver Videos?

So what happens to all these videos after they are created? Are they uploaded to YouTube? In most cases, internal videos are not shared on YouTube. They usually contain proprietary company information, trade secrets, or personal information.

Today, many companies are uploading and delivering video content through a private, YouTube-like solution, referred to as an online video platform or video content management system. These tools enable easy management and delivery of your content through secure video portals, video playlists, or on public webpages. Additionally, an online video platform will offer ingestion and transcoding options, plus some of these video content management systems provide live-streaming and webcasting functionality.

One good example is Ensemble Video. Ensemble is an easy-to-use online video platform. It is built for organizations that want to effectively manage and control their video content. Here is a great online video platform-buying guide, if you want to know more about online video platforms. You can also view our articles:

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The Takeaway

  • Innovative internal video is an excellent way for an organization to communicate information with employees.
  • Innovative internal video helps build organization culture, and achieve consistent messaging that resonates with all employees.
  • Innovative internal videos can communicate a variety of topics, such as new organizational policies, updated procedures, company achievements, and employee stories.
  • No one said creating and using innovative internal video was easy, but it’s time to be honest about how useful it really is!

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