Internal communications ensure the development and maintenance of an effective business environment. It is essentially the beating heart of any organisation. The role of internal communication professionals includes facilitating management announcements, supporting culture change campaigns, arranging cross-department collaborations, and ensuring a consistent and confident flow of information to all employees. Sometimes overlooked, however, is their bottom-up ability to empower employees and encourage them to uphold core brand values.
In this article, we will explore how internal communications can be supplemented, with great success, through the medium of video.
Internal Communications in a post-COVID world
The global COVID-19 pandemic has irreversibly changed the way that businesses operate. Perhaps more than anything else, the shift to remote working has had the largest impact on employees.
Internal communication can be critical in engaging employees in an increasingly agile and hybrid corporate world. Ineffective internal communications can result in unsatisfactory employee behaviours, reduced productivity, staff attrition, and the loss of key talent. This damages professional integrity, increases recruitment costs, and ultimately reduces sales.
Examples of ineffective internal communication include:
- Overloading of information
- Insufficient and infrequent communication
- Expectation of employees to spend a significant amount of their time reading internal communications
- Lack of consistency in communication
- Failing to reflect brand guidelines
- Widening gaps between employees and management
- Out-of-touch CEO messages that do not resonate with employees
- Receiving key messages through the market, external and secondary sources
A tried and tested way to avoid these mistakes is to supplement your internal communications strategy with video. As many as 93% of internal communications professionals now believe that video is an essential resource for internal communications.
Why use video?
Great explainer
The action of watching videos stimulates the cognitive processes of thinking, reasoning, decision-making, and problem-solving. Don’t worry, we aren’t going to get too sciency! This simply means that video is engaging and exciting, making learning easier, even for the most complex of ideas.
The average explainer video, despite being just 90 seconds long, possesses the ability to convey a mind-blowing amount of information. After all, it is thought that if a picture is worth a thousand words, then video surely must be worth a million.
Master engager and retainer
Video, being easier to comprehend than blocks of complex text, captures the attention of its audience and retains it. Visual information can be processed up to 60,000x faster than text. Unsurprisingly, videos, whether they be live-action or animated are undeniably great tools for learning.
When it comes to internal communications, information engagement and retention are critical. It ensures that your employees are completely aware of their responsibilities and how they contribute to the company’s overall goals. 95% of employees are more likely to retain the internal communications information they get through video than through emails and newsletters.
Accessibility champion
Animation can overcome language barriers and promote a more inclusive ‘visual language’.
The National Literacy Trust has determined that 1 in 6 adults in England have very poor reading skills.
For those that struggle to read, leaflets and videos overloaded with written information are overwhelming and inaccessible. Although full illiteracy is rare in the UK, many possess eye problems, brain trauma, mental illness, and developmental problems that contribute to a low comprehension ability.
It is essential that these groups have the opportunity to engage in your internal communications.
Authenticity Promoter
Being authentic means staying true to your core aims as a business. 88% of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support. To ensure that your business is genuine and dependable, its employees have to share a vision of authenticity.
Video can promote your brand’s authenticity by showcasing the real people behind your organisation. Recorded management video calls and CEO interviews are examples of videos that demonstrate authenticity.
How to integrate video into your internal communications
Video is a powerful tool that businesses can take advantage of. In fact, as many as 86% of them use the medium to create marketing content. Not as many, however, utilise video for their internal communications. We think they’re missing a trick. Let’s take a look at how video can supplement your different internal communication strategies.
Employee Onboarding
Introductions to strategy and values are an integral part of the employee onboarding process. Onboarding is traditionally delivered through in-person meetings, tutorials, and online learning modules. Whilst this has been successful in the past and does promote a sense of belonging, again, like other areas in internal communications, it must adapt to a changing work environment and evolving employee expectations. Wordy employee handbooks may put off new staff, video can bring this information to life, increasing employee understanding and engagement.
Employee onboarding videos should include a company/ department overview, employee expectations, key policies, values, benefits, and practical tips. To get the highest return on investment, consider creating evergreen videos. This is content that is correct, relevant, and fresh long after its initial release. Easily malleable animation is a great way to ensure that your employee onboarding videos connect with new talent for years to come.
IT systems and software changes
How-to videos can be used to introduce and explain new software and have the ability to deliver a huge return on investment. Explainers are short and simple videos designed to demonstrate how something works so that people are able to get to grips with new technology as quickly as possible.
Queries normally directed at your IT team will be answered by the video, freeing up their time and resources. On top of this, how-to videos can be used time and time again, as refreshers or for new employees, and will stay beneficial until the software is phased out.
How-to videos can be shot in live-action or animation, whichever style suits your project best.
Meetings
Not all meetings need to be held in person, or even on a video call! Informational meetings, those where most of the content is factual and pulled from a PowerPoint, in particular, needn’t have a live audience. Unnecessary meetings drain employees, drawing them away from important work, wasting precious company time. Next time you are in a meeting look at the employees around you and estimate their combined hourly salary – it’s highly likely that it will be costing the company a small fortune.
Videos to replace meetings don’t necessarily need to have a high production value, they can be as simple and unrehearsed as a webcam recording. This being said, for more complex informational meetings, a video with a slightly higher production value may be more suitable. For instance, animation can bring a new depth and understanding to statistical data, making it more digestible to all employees. Remember to factor in information that employees may seek through questions if they were attending in person.
Of course, for some areas, ‘in-person’ meetings are essential, but for others, it is likely that a video will suffice, and I am sure your employees will be very grateful. Not only is less of their time wasted, but it also gives them the opportunity to ‘attend’ the meeting on their own terms, slowing down, speeding up, rewinding, and rewatching as they please. This will no doubt improve employee understanding and productivity, especially for more complex topics.
Announcements
Announcements are an important and integral part of internal communications as they maintain firm transparency. Examples of internal announcements include business acquisitions, successes, restructurings, policy changes, strategic developments, and financial reports.
Video announcements promote employee engagement and boost feelings of authenticity and loyalty within the workforce. Their ability to be released at a single, universal point in time allows for more effective global communication, which is especially crucial when releasing highly important or market-sensitive information.
Interviews and talks
Whether it be an internal talk or an interview with a person of interest, it’s always disappointing when a large number of employees fail to show up for an event that you’ve spent a long time planning. Now, even more so, with some people being uncomfortable in crowds and others firmly rooted in remote working, participation in internal events is lower than ever.
Video can ensure that corporate talks and interviews are easily accessible to everyone in the firm. Whether it be a parent looking after a sick child, a remote employee working in a different hemisphere, or even someone with a hearing impairment – internal video communications make working life easier for everyone.
Video interviews are one of the best ways for your wide network of employees to grasp the aims of the business or the role of an internal team. Often, employees are unaware of the work their colleagues complete on a day-to-day basis, to sustain a positively homogenised workplace, employees should realise that all teams are working together towards a larger goal within the company. Interviewing employees through the medium of video provides a platform for overlooked individuals in your company to have a voice and be proud to demonstrate their efforts. Why not consider asking your CEO to be the interviewer, this shows employees that they care and are involved in the lower level running of the business.
Hosting or speaking at an event is a daunting task, this pressure often affects performance. Talking in front of a camera is much less scary. The ability to read from an auto queue and edit out awkward pauses will ensure your best performance.
In summary…
Internal communication professionals strive to achieve effective communication between employees in an organisation. Clear and concise communication, in any workplace, holds the key to success. Whilst emails and meetings are effective internal communication tools, we believe that in our post-COVID world, it’s videos’ time to shine.
48% of employees consider video to be the most effective form of communication. There is little doubt that this figure will continue to grow as more workplaces adapt to agile environments. So, not only does utilising video save you time and money, it keeps your staff happy. What more could you want?
If you would like to create amazing internal communications videos, why not consider using a video production company? Being creative, focused, and fast is what we do best here at Kartoffel Films. Contact us to get our creative partnership started.
