How Manufacturers Can Use Video, Part 3: Using Video for Internal Communications

What is the purpose of internal communications?

Internal communications helps build out your organization’s culture—the values and behaviors that contribute to your organization’s unique social and psychological environment.

Internal communications shares your vision and mission and works to bind your employees to the organization, giving them a sense of purpose. According to a Mercer study, a sense of purpose boosts employee motivation, productivity, morale, and overall job satisfaction.*

Internal communications helps ensure that all your employees are working collaboratively towards a common goal.

Using video for more efficient and effective internal communications

Now that we know the importance of having an internal communications strategy, what is the best way to execute that strategy and convey your message? In this post, we will be discussing the distribution of the message, not necessarily the message itself, since every organization’s message is unique.

Most organizations use email and meetings/presentations to communicate with employees. Email is great—you can carefully craft a message and send it out as a “must read.” But, as with any written communication, you run the risk of being misinterpreted or simply unread. And while meetings/presentations can be energizing, getting all the right people in the same room can be difficult, and sometimes a full-blown gathering isn’t necessary and takes away from productivity.

So what’s the answer? We think it’s video. For your message, it’s a great way to simplify and deliver complex information in a way that’s easy to understand, is highly engaging, and can be translated into different languages.  As for its delivery, it’s easy to scale and can be used on-demand and repeatedly. At the end of the day, video helps you get more value out of what you’re already doing.

Here are some suggestions on how you can use video for more effective internal communications:

1. Employee Onboarding

It is easy to suffer from information overload your first week of a new job. You’re trying to get through all of the paperwork, highlight policy and procedure documents, take rigorous notes during presentations—it can be very stressful.

Imagine, instead, if you provided new employees with a series of on-demand videos. Videos of the CEO welcoming them to the company, someone in marketing going over the company’s mission and vision, and peers giving them step-by-step directions on how to manage responsibilities of their job.

New employees could go back to these videos whenever they need a “refresher.” And you wouldn’t need to waste resources giving the same presentation over and over again to new hires.

2. Training

Training can be extremely time consuming, costly, and difficult to scale. But training is a necessity, whether it be for compliance or improving employee performance.

To ensure employees make the right decisions every day, organizations need to create a continuous learning environment. A proactive training program will help you drive safety, quality, and productivity. We’ve found the easiest way to start a video library is to start with presentations or processes you already have in place. We’ll add interviews, step-by-step execution of processes, and end benefits for your employees. We’ll help you construct video that’s educational and engaging to train and reinforce the compliance solutions you have in place. The best part? We can slice and dice the video to be used in a number of ways in addition to training, such as customer service, sales materials, and more. We’ve found that video works better than oral instructions or text-based manuals any day of the week.

3. Product/Company Updates

As we’ve touched on before, employees want to know why their work matters. Keeping them informed about product releases and other company news helps them understand how their responsibilities fit into the big picture.

We’ve found that interviewing employees from different departments and at various ranks or using a panel of experts works extremely well.

4. Sharing Knowledge/Staff Spotlight

Sharing knowledge and expertise from employees as they move on is unfortunately often missed. So what if you created short, easy-to-share videos of employees in unique job positions, employees of the month, or those who have been in their departments the longest?

Imagine the years of experience and knowledge you could save and share at scale with a simple video. Interviewees could share stories on how they were successful in their positions to inform and inspire.  Sharing your employees’ stories shows you care about them, boosts morale, and encourages employees to do their best.

If you want to learn more about how to effectively and efficiently connect employees in an authentic and engaging way, contact us to discuss your internal communications video strategy.

Check out the rest of our How Manufacturers Can Use Video series on Using Video to Enhance Your Company Image and Using Video to Drive Sales.

*https://info.totalwellnesshealth.com/blog/6-easy-ways-to-boost-employee-morale