4 Insights On Using Videos To Elevate Remote Employee Onboarding

Onboarding is your company’s way to welcome and position new hires for success. It sets the tone for their journey and gives them the tools they need to excel.

Done right, it seamlessly integrates incoming talent into your company’s culture and ongoing operations. But doing onboarding right goes beyond a generic “Welcome aboard!” email.

Remote work setups require companies to create an onboarding experience that is as optimized and engaging as it is informative. One that does not just introduce your brand but integrates new hires into the very ideas and passion that drive your organization forward.

To help you accomplish that, here are four actionable ways you can use videos to revamp and enhance your remote work onboarding process—and do so in ways that help you foster better engagement, retention, and commitment among your new hires.

1. Assess Your Current Onboarding Challenges

From choosing a style that fits your needs — a live-action walkthrough has wildly different production needs than an animated explainer, for example — to deciding on the length, narrative, and even distribution platform, there are multiple factors to consider before diving into the creative process of producing high-quality onboarding videos.

• First, consider the challenge of engagement. Without the interpersonal warmth of in-person interactions, remote onboarding can quickly feel dry and even irrelevant. Excellent video content has the unique advantage of being able to convey nuance, tone, and even emotion to bridge the gap where other media falls short.
• Then there’s the issue of information retention. A barrage of documents and manuals can be overwhelming — and, let’s be honest, they’re not the most digestible type of content you can put in front of new remote hires. A professionally optimized video transforms those yawning pages of text into engaging visual narratives designed to aid understand and recall.
• Last but not least, let’s not forget that consistency in conveying information is a hurdle that needs attention. Each manager or team lead has their style, which can result in an inconsistent experience for new remote hires, especially for those in remote positions with interdepartmental functions.

A series of well-crafted, informative, and consistent videos ensures everyone receives the same foundational knowledge and experience to get people up to speed.

2. Consider Personalized Video Content for Remote Positions

Personalization in onboarding material is a great way to welcome new talent into your corporate family. However, rather than crafting one-off productions for each new team member, it’s more efficient to create role-specific videos designed to resonate with anyone who steps into a given position or department.

To make videos like that, start by identifying the nuances of each department you are creating onboarding content for. What does a day in the life of a content marketer look like at your company? Which tools are indispensable for your remote outreach team?

Put yourself in your new hires’ shoes to get a uniquely helpful perspective that will inform your video content’s production process, bringing you closer to a piece that speaks directly to the challenges and responsibilities inherent in each role.

A remote team can feel … well, remote. So, taking the time to understand new hires’ needs and psychology will go a long way toward helping you craft content that bridges that gap, feels personal, and fosters a cohesive sense that every new hire is genuinely seen and valued by their new work family.

Check out this great example of a welcome video done right!

3. Create Opportunities to Merge Videos into Your Onboarding Strategy Seamlessly

A well-executed onboarding is akin to a multifaceted conversation between the newcomer and your organization—and this is equally true for both an employee and a client onboarding process.

Yes, your core goal is to deliver practical, relevant information, but how you do so can make all the difference in the world.

Video content presents an incredibly flexible canvas in terms of customization on an individual level, but it truly shines when it is part of a comprehensive onboarding plan.

A great way to help you figure out that type of plan is to start with an onboarding timeline that ties each relevant stage of the process to a suitable onboarding video.

On Day One, a welcome video will set the tone, providing a warm introduction to the company culture, the team, and the basics of a position. As the days progress, targeted videos can delve into deeper content such as role-specific training, company policies, and compliance requirement videos.

Spacing these videos out over the initial days or weeks of employment ensures new hires can handle the information and apply what they learn incrementally. Take a page from a skilled training video company’s playbook and ensure all the videos you create account for the broader content ecosystem you are working on.

4. Evolve Your Video Onboarding Library Alongside Your Business

As your business grows and evolves, so too should your video onboarding library. Think of it as a living resource that must adapt to stay relevant and effective.

Try to conduct regular video audits. Set a schedule to review your video content periodically to ensure it reflects current practices, policies, and corporate culture. An audit could involve checking for updates in company policy, shifts in branding, internal procedures, or even staff changes featured in the videos and planning how to update outdated or irrelevant content progressively.

Consider the metrics and feedback loop around your onboarding videos as well. Use analytics to track how often your videos are watched and at what point new hires disengage.

Expand your library to cover new ground as your company enters new markets or develops new products. Each significant shift in your company’s trajectory is also an opportunity to create video content that brings your team up to speed and maintains a unified understanding of the company’s direction.

Wrapping Up

Incorporating videos into your remote work onboarding is a must for cultivating an engaging, insightful, and cohesive start for your new hires. From personalized content that speaks directly to individual roles to the authentic touch of user-generated insights, these strategies are designed not just to inform but to welcome and integrate your team members into the company fabric, no matter where they’re logging in from.

With these tips, your onboarding is poised to be as dynamic and forward-thinking as your business aims to be.

Contributed to EO by Victor Blasco, an audiovisual designer, video marketing expert, and founder/CEO of the explainer video production company Yum Yum Videos. Besides running the business, he’s a lifelong student of Chinese philosophy and a passionate geek for all things sci-fi. He has also shared his expertise with EO on How To Leverage Video Content To Enhance Internal Communications and 5 key elements of effective whiteboard videos and How to use creative videos to transform email marketing from basic to bustling and Audience Research 101: The key to creating marketing videos that convert and 5 Effective Inbound Marketing Strategies to Nurture in 2024.

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