Video quickly is becoming the most cost-effective and impactful medium to train and educate employees of all levels. Creating short instructional videos allows companies to ensure consistency and keep all employees up-to-date with the latest company standards in an efficient and cost-effective way. Here are five reasons to choose video to train and educate employees.
1. It’s Customizable
Using video to train employees makes it easy to stay true to your company’s branding and messaging standards, and reflect your organization’s culture and values. Video content can be twisted, pounded, and bent into the unique shape of your organization’s company culture. This makes it an especially effective tool for internal trainings that vary based on the information at hand. Video also accommodates different learning styles among employees. Since everyone learns differently—some may be reading/writing learners, while others may be audio learners—video can act as a compliment for employees who may struggle with more traditional offline formats of training. By supplementing your existing offline training documents with video content, you can capture the attention of more employees who may benefit from a blended learning approach.
2. It’s Scalable
Investopedia defines scalability as “the capability to cope and perform under an increased or expanding workload.” Whether you are training five or 50 employees, using video allows you to train your team according to the same standards, and allows you to inform and educate employees in a unified and systematic way. This allows you to be sure each employee receives the same quality of content.Video content also can be used and distributed to an unlimited number of employees as long as the content remains relevant. This scalability lends itself to being measured and evaluated, via enterprise video platform analytics such as Vidyard or Brightcove, and ensures you’re able to understand the effectiveness of your trainings using real data.
3. It’s Cost-Effective
Video is a cost-effective training method, saving time and money previously allocated to offline trainings. Using video content as a training medium eliminates travel costs and all of the associated expenses of offline trainings. It also saves employees time, by freeing them up to focus on other tasks rather than leading or attending trainings and the travel time associated with them. This is especially useful with the growing number of remote employees. The idea that video eliminates costs of all kinds is backed by research and case studies. Microsoft used video to cut classroom training costs by $303 per person, from $320 to just $17. According to an IOMA study, corporations save between 50 percent and 70 percent when they replace instructor-based training with e-learning. Additionally, according to Shift eLearning, 85 percent of every dollar spent on traditional, in-classroom training is spent delivering it (instructor time, travel, etc), leaving few resources for improving or supplementing trainings. For these reasons and many more, video eliminates time and money burdens from the employee training process.
4. It’s Accessible
As opposed to traditional training methods, video content can be accessed from any place and at any time. Depending on your content, storage capability, and distribution strategy, video can be accessible and available to your employees anytime, anywhere, and on any device. In emergency scenarios, for example, where “phone a friend” isn’t an option, a short explainer training video can help save the day. This accessibility also means courses can be delivered through shorter sessions and lessons can be dispersed throughout different days. This prevents businesses from losing employees for entire days at a time, as is typical with traditional training methods.
5. It’s Shareable
Whether your video is for training, ongoing employee education, or boosting internal morale, video’s digital format allows it to be easily shared by employees with friends, family, and other coworkers. Because videos provide useful information and are designed to engage and entertain viewers, people tend to pass them onto their circle of friends and colleagues. Science reinforces this and shows us that people like to share information with others. Video’s online format allows it to be easily shared on social media Websites such as YouTube or Facebook, or among professional groups, and creating engaging video content encourages employees to do so.
Video quickly is becoming one of the most effective media to educate and train employees. Using video provides many benefits over traditional training methods, including the fact that it is customizable, scalable, cost-effective, accessible, and easily shareable. Delivering company education and training through video is a cost-effective and impactful way to keep employees up-to-date with the latest company and industry standards.
Chad Lakin is VP of North America at Shootsta, a startup that enables organizations to create quality video content to engage and inspire employees far and wide. Since joining Shootsta in 2015, Lakin’s wealth of experience across video and digital—combined with his strong leadership and commercial talent—have propelled the brand’s growth into multiple new markets. Lakin currently oversees Shootsta’s U.S. operations, bringing the transformational power of video to more brands and people around the globe than ever before. Lakin can be reached at chad@shootsta.com.
