Great training videos don’t just happen. They take time, focused efforts, meaningful content, strategy, and creativity. However, with a little know-how and a few great course authoring tools, you can create dynamic, interactive, and multimodal learning videos that learners will love and retain for a long time. Repeating the audience is a sure success outcome. Meaning if your audience (students or employees) enjoy the training videos and refer back to it, it means your content is savvy. Also if they take time to send a query, or request, if they await your next training video, you are sure to stay in the training business for long.
If you are training new employees, you probably want their training to be consistent and efficient. The best way to capture your employee’s attention is to ensure their training is entertaining.
What is a training video?
A training video presents video-based content that aims to show or teach people how to do something. Depending on the subject to be covered, the video’s purpose is to share knowledge on a generic or niche topic, help learners gain or improve a skill, or carry out specific tasks.
Why use training videos?
Training videos can have a tremendous impact on the effectiveness of a wider training program. Not only does it have the power to improve the overall learning experience and make it more interactive, but it can also transmit information faster, establish and serve an educational end goal.
Training videos can be used as part of a corporate or non-corporate training program. For example, In a business setting, training videos can complement employee training programs – as part of the employee onboarding process for new employees, or inside the department when new products are to be launched , or new process is to initiated, like for example SAP, etc
Training videos can also be used as part of your Customer Education Program or as explainer videos. These are usually short videos that introduce your product or service to your audience and provide great insights to your customers on how they can use them.
In non-business settings, training videos may cover topics like how to cook a specific meal or fix your printer machine – content that most DIY videos offer on YouTube.
Preliminary Considerations
Before you can begin making great training videos, you need to take a pragmatic approach to your video development. You must consider the amount of time and man hours that you have to spend on production, your tech capabilities, and the needs and expectations of your target audience.
Depending on what you need and want for your videos, you can explore options. One option is to embed short but non-interactive videos into your course. You can sequence the videos and embed access restrictions to ensure that students view one video in its entirety before moving on to the next.
Other forms of training videos could be a video tutorial, a screencast video, an instructor-led video, a how-to video, an animated video, and many more. More specific styles could be:
- Role-playing video
- Screen cast/Screen capture
- Presenter video
- Micro-video
- Interactive video
Fundamentals
Whether you’re going for a relatively basic course format or something a bit more ambitious, there are a few fundamentals that you’ll need to check to ensure that your videos are high quality. Starting with appropriate lighting and good sound quality throughout, your videos should have a cohesive format or pattern for easy understanding. If learners struggle to see or hear the content, or they have trouble with accent and vocabulary, your videos will not receive the desired response.
Encourage your trainer or narrator to strike the right balance between spontaneous and formulaic. You want your content to feel fresh but also well-crafted and nicely strategized. This will ensure that the videos are both relevant and smooth to follow, while avoiding the impression that you’re either making things up on the fly or recycling content.
Benefits of in-house training videos for employees?
There are a few benefits to creating training videos for your current and future employees.
CONSISTENCY – Making your own customised Training Videos can ensure all employees are trained the same way with the same information. And consistency allows your employees to be on the same page, reducing mistakes and issues once they are successfully on-boarded or promoted to join a different team or department.
AVOID DISCREPANCIES – Depending on your workplace, your training may include employee HR policies & Benefits, Insurance information, or employees’ health and safety information. By preparing videos to train employees, you won’t forget important details during their training.
COST-EFFECTIVE – Put your money into automating your training with a one-time production. Instead of spending long hours training employees in person on new business practices or software updates, send them an informative and engaging video.
INCREASED INFORMATION RETENTION – It has been proven that visuals help people retain information. By putting your training into a video format, there’s a greater chance your employees will remember the information.
BOOST PRODUCTIVITY – Avoid interrupting your employees by calling them to the conference room every time there’s a new safety policy. Send them a video instead and let them watch it when it’s convenient for them.
Types of employee training videos.
There are many different types of employee training videos, and that’s because there are so many things you need to train your employees on! Frequently used formats of employee training videos that could benefit your business are:
CORPORATE VIDEOS – Train your employees on corporate policies and standards with customer service training videos, workplace violence training videos, harassment training videos, diversity training videos, communication training videos, and management training videos.
EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS – Use employee training videos to educate your employees in any meaningful manner. Short and crisp reminder videos about simple office manners, or how to clean the lunchroom or operate a cash machine can go a long way to help maintain a good corporate conduct.
HEALTH AND SAFETY VIDEOS – Workplaces can avoid lawsuits, injuries, and dangerous situations with proper employee training. Use safety training videos to ensure the health and protection of your employees.
TUTORIALS – Use training videos to show employees how to use machinery and tools around your business. You can also use tutorial videos to increase your employees’ product knowledge to educate your customers better and make sales.
SCREEN RECORDINGS – If you’re attempting to train employees on software or programs your business uses, try creating a screen recording. This way, you can walk through all the steps necessary and give your employees a visual of what you’re teaching them.
PRESENTATION CAPTURES – Presentations within your business or industry that contain information will always benefit your employees. Capture the presentation and send everyone a video of it. Employees are 75% more likely to watch it, in place of written content.
DISTRIBUTE YOUR VIDEO
You can email your video to employees, post it in your communication channels, upload it to your project management program, or save it for your employee onboarding dashboard.
FOLLOW UP WITH YOUR EMPLOYEES
Get feedback from your trainees or employees to see how well your video resonated with them professionally and personally. Feedback will help you improve for the next employee training video you create.
How long should a training video be?
Training videos can be as short or as long as you need, depending on the subject at hand. Experts recommend keeping them short so that you don’t lose your audience’s interest. But you also want to include all the necessary information. If you find your training videos are too lengthy, try splitting them up into a series of training videos. This gives your employees a chance to retain information as they break between videos.
And remember, if your training content is entertaining, length of the training videos will not be a concern. On the other hand, If you are just trying to relay information, keep it as quick as possible.
Ready to try training your employees with videos? Connect with us for a free consultation at info@neonvideos.com
