How to Create Engaging Corporate Training Videos

Why do people prefer watching videos more than reading about something? You would find millions of videos on YouTube on various topics. Right from crafts and healthcare to educational tutorials. Have you ever used YouTube to help you fix a certain issue on your computer? Or to apply a formula in Excel? Why watch a video and not read a detailed article about it? It is because videos have movement. There’s action. There’s something happening on the screen. Music, text, speech, all these elements stimulate the brain, helping us to stay focused on the content we are watching. And all these factors make it an excellent medium to deliver corporate training.

Employee training can be delivered in many ways. A video is one of the most effective mediums to deliver corporate training. Viewers are said to retain 95% of a message when they watch it in video format. Earlier, developing a corporate training video required a lot of work- high-end cameras, a design team, post-production work etc. But now there are cheaper alternatives available as well as video editing software to create a well-designed training video.

Most of the workforce is millennials, who are used to watching video content every day. Therefore, L&D teams have decided to leverage this medium to deliver corporate training in their organizations. But, you must remember that there are millions of good quality and engaging corporate training videos available out there. In order for you to keep your employees focused on the training program, you must ensure that your content is delivered in an engaging and effective manner. Video training is an excellent way to share information, but it is effective only when the recipient gains and retains knowledge.

Rewards and recognition inspire everyone to perform better at their work. The gaming industry works on this principle. It’s competitive, challenging, teaches teamwork and is fun. Why should employee training be any different? Especially when you want your staff to be more productive and efficient at their work? Gamification is when you take certain attributes of gaming and use them in your workplace for motivational triggers.

Incorporating some elements of gaming in your training video will ensure that your employees are completely engaged in it. Games are based on the concept of winning. And the winner always has a reward waiting in the end. You can include a point system, where employees can collect points after completing each training module and reward them with small badges as a token of recognition. You can have a scoreboard to keep track of all trainees’ performances. Nobody likes to be on the bottom of a scoreboard, so they’ll put in extra efforts to stay on top of the leaderboard. It encourages healthy competition at the workplace. A gamified video training challenges your employees to achieve a better score in their training.

This is an interactive technique where you give the employees certain scenarios with multiple options, and they have to choose the right option in order to move to the next module. The scenario-based training helps employees to understand the kind of situations they may encounter on the job and prepares them to face these issues confidently. Also, if they chose the wrong answers, they will remember them in future, avoiding those mistakes while on the job. Moreover, it’s perfectly alright to commit mistakes during training. Working on real-life scenarios improves problem-solving and critical thinking skills.

When you use scenario-based training, you should make it more visually appealing with the help of rich graphics and illustrations. Including such interactive elements within the training video keeps the employees focused on the training program.

Do you fear that the learner might not be paying complete attention to the training video? Well, you can add in some quizzes in between chapters or after each chapter to check if they have understood the concepts. These quizzes must offer real-time results, allowing them to see the correct and incorrect answers immediately. This will also let you view your employee performance in the training. Letting your employees know beforehand that there will be a test after the training will make them watch the video attentively.

You can have some click and reveal, drag and drop elements to make the content more interactive. Adding such activities ensures that employees are engaging with the content. Allow them to click and drag and move slides to maintain the interactivity. This way, you can be assured that your employees are attentively going through the training video.

Animation makes a video more captivating than a regular video. Because they are fun and colorful. Sometimes, you might come across certain topics or ideas that are difficult to represent in a video. Animation simplifies your purpose. With animation, you can explain almost any concept in an interesting and engaging way. Delivering your training content in the form of an animated video will keep your employees engaged and entertained, while helping them learn and retain the information.

 Develop a compelling storyboard and ask your graphics team to create fun characters to convey the message effectively. Certain characters and quirks make people remember things better. You could also use a whiteboard animation software to create engaging and captivating content. It could be accompanied by a narration or music. Such videos are easy to remember and recall and will ensure that your workforce understands your work process in a far better manner.

Watching a PowerPoint presentation is boring. Your employees may or may not retain all the information they read on it. So how do you make a PowerPoint slide-based video interesting? When you have too many slides to showcase in an ongoing video format, make them interesting with a narration and some soft music or sound effects in the background. Make sure that the music doesn’t overpower the content. Audio and music, along with suitable background colors and slide transitions will result in an engaging corporate training video. Ensure that the narrator has a nice jovial tone to keep the listeners interested in the video. You could add a bit of humor to keep it light and interesting.

Creating a corporate training video is no longer a tedious task. There are simpler alternatives to create a cost-effective training video. And while you are at it, instead of hiring someone from outside to speak or explain concepts to your employees, have someone from your organization do it. You know your employees and your organizational goals and values better than an outsider. Familiar faces always generate interest, and it also makes the video seem more credible. You could involve your senior management in the video to speak about the organizational goals and objectives, before proceeding to the training content. Allow your SMEs to explain concepts with the help of slides or animations. Looking at people from their own organization being featured in their training video captures the attention of your learners.

If you have to explain something which includes a lot of steps, you could include a screencast in your training video. The benefit of a screencast is that it is cheaper to produce, as you only need a software to record your computer screen. And your employees will have a detailed and in-depth view of the work procedure. This is especially used to explain software or computer related training. Add an audio to the video, where the narrator explains every step while performing it on their computer screen. Your employees can pause and rewind the videos to go through the steps again and take notes if necessary. Instead of using images to depict the processes, you can demonstrate each step, in detail to your learners.

Engagement is the key to keep your audience focused. Sometimes, corporate training videos seem to drag on forever. Lack of creativity, lengthy videos, poor quality graphics, and monotonous narrations tend to decrease the value of all the effort you put into making the video. You need to have something to keep the employees engaged, making sure that they are interacting with your video. When you create a corporate training video, ensure that the images, video recordings, and the voice-overs are of high quality. These corporate training videos are going to be viewed over and over again by your current and future employees. So, keep it interesting and interactive to ensure that they understand and grasp the concepts efficiently. An effective and engaging corporate training video will help your staff in retaining information and recalling it easily when needed. The training you provide to your employees play a big role in their enhancing their productivity and increasing your organization’s profitability.

Related: Guide on How To Create Great Video Training Content