What’s our first instinct when we want to know how something works?
It used to be calling our moms but nowadays it’s reaching for our phones and asking Google.
Relying on digital media to learn new things or to fix our problems has become our second nature. It’s quick, it’s easy, and doesn’t need answering any burning questions about what we’re doing with our lives.
Just take a look at these facts!
Way to make our moms feel obsolete, guys.
The millennial urgency to consume information has paved the way for a new arena of video content i.e. training videos.
According to a survey we conducted recently, 72% of audiences prefer watching a video over reading educational material or instruction manuals.
So, this begs a question. Are you leveraging video to train your employees, upskill your workforce, and to enhance learning at your organization?
If not, it’s time to jump on the bandwagon.
This blog post covers the basis on why training videos are important. It discusses formats, and the best examples of the types of training videos you can use to your benefit.
7 reasons why training videos are so effective
1. Making visualization easy
Training documents can seem very matter-of-fact as the creators are either crunched for time or space. This makes them pretty difficult to consume.
Training videos, however, give you loads of options to get creative and make learning fun.
There are numerous training video formats to choose from. Depending on the need of your business you can:
- simplify complex concepts using animation;
- offer live-action tutorials; or
- present stats in an engaging way.
2. Boosting engagement and retention
Employee disengagement is a prevailing issue in the corporate world. HBR claims that most employees treat company trainings as just something they can put on their resume to build a case for promotion.
This approach significantly hurts the learning process and an organization’s authentic upskilling.
Human resource experts swear by the power of video to boost engagement. Video trainings are easier to grasp as they’re more visually stimulating.
Also, the dynamic nature of video gives audiences agency over their learning experience. It gives them the power to pause, play, and repeat at their convenience. Thus, boosting engagement and interactivity.
This is why 75% of employees prefer learning via video than through written documents, web articles, or emails.
Moreover, information during conventional employee trainings is delivered in one fell swoop.
An overabundance of information often leaves the audience overwhelmed or worse – uninterested.
Experts state that spreading learning overtime increases retention. By adopting the “Spacing Effect” audience can retain about 80% of the information for around 60 days.
Short training videos for employees let them consume information at their own pace. This increases retention. The same holds true for e-learning models for students.
3. Allowing lean learning
The traditional training model is flawed due to little personalization and need-based learning.
Mandatory or across-the-board trainings offer little benefit to the employees or the company. A lean learning model emphasizes on learning only what’s needed and when it’s needed.
With video trainings, you can customize your employees’ learning experience. It can be molded to their specific positions, job roles, and future goals.
Training videos that are tailored to solve the audiences immediate challenges are bound to boost engagement and real-life application.
Lean employee video trainings make them want to learn rather than having to.
4. Increasing your reach
More and more companies are adopting the remote working model. This means that not all your employees can make it to the brick-and-mortar trainings.
Similarly, employees who’re on the field may find it hard to make time for in-house trainings. Even for in-house employees, schedule conflicts and meetings can leave trainers in a bind.
With video trainings, you can maximize the reach of your educational and instructional content.
By hosting all training videos at a centralized place you can implement a training-on-demand model. This ensures that all your employees have access to the learning materials whenever they need.
Access to video tutorials may especially be important to field workers. They often need guidance while tackling difficult equipment or other challenging situations.
Moreover, while traditional trainings are often a one-off deal. Video trainings let you update the content. They also allow your employees to revisit and brush-up their knowledge in the future.
You can use platforms like Wistia and Brightcove to host your online training videos or you can create an internal video portal.
Read more: Vimeo vs Wistia for Professionals
5. Skyrocket productivity and satisfaction
70% of employees say that they’re not fully equipped for their job. This indicates some shortcomings in the traditional employee learning and development model and can hurt your company’s efficiency.
With video, your employees engage in learning by choice, only invest time in building the skills that they need, have fun while doing it, and retain more afterward.
This is bound to enhance the learning curve, help them feel productive, and ultimately increase employee satisfaction.
6. Tracking learning progress
In a traditional training model, you deliver a presentation and distribute the learning materials. After that, you hope that your audience will find it interesting and useful enough to study.
Contrastingly, video hosting services provide you data and analytics that gauge trainee performance.
You can easily track how many views a video garners and how far along do trainees make it in a video.
7. Saving money
Conducting live training sessions requires a lot of logistical and budget considerations. Booking a space, setting it up for the audience, and paying the trainers are just some of the costs you can easily cut down with video trainings.
IBM found out that over 40% of its cost for conducting classroom-based trainings was coming from travel and lodging alone.
Larger organizations especially have recorded huge budget savings by shifting to an e-learning model for employee trainings.
Microsoft observed a dramatic cost decrease from $320 per hour to $17 by shifting to e-learning through its internal video portal.
By using video, you can invest more into training materials rather than trainers and travel costs.
Related: How to Produce an Explainer Video for a $1,000
7 training video formats to choose from
1. Screencast videos
These are the most basic types of video you can create. Screencast videos are a recording of your screen to show your audience how software or an application works.
Most screencasts are quick and informal live screen shares with an impromptu script.
Alternatively, companies invest in professionally made animated screencast videos.
These videos may also have sound effects, a soundtrack, and a professionally written script.
Large organizations prefer these videos for an enhanced visual experience.
Adobe frequently uses this format for it’s assortment of how-to videos:
Read in-depth: 3 Ways to Record Killer Screencast Videos
2. Micro videos
These videos cut to the chase and immediately solve a problem. They may or may not have a script and are about 15 to 30 seconds in length.
3. Tutorial videos
Live-action or animated, tutorials are essentially video instruction manuals.
They follow a guided process on how to do something or use something properly. These may or may not have a corresponding voiceover.
Here’s one we made for one of our clients:
4. Animated explainer videos
Animated explainer videos are a widely adopted method to simplify complex concepts and to demonstrate processes that are too costly to film in real life.
This video from one of our favorite YouTube Channels, Kurzgesagt, is a great example:
Related: Top 21 Explainer Videos and What You Can Learn from Them
5. Presenter videos
A host or a lecturer directly delivers information about a process or teaches how something works. These are usually used in certifications and e-learning courses.
6. Roleplay videos
Roleplay videos are a great way to familiarize people with uncertain situations.
These can be handling customers, interviews, and other professional interactions.
Two or more people take on circumstantial roles and act out a scenario so viewers can understand what’s going on and pick up crucial clues.
7. Interactive videos
Interactive videos take engagement to the next level by prompting the audience to take action.
Viewers either answer survey questions, MCQs, or respond to different scenarios.
This leads to a more personalized experience depending on the answers.
Live training videos tend to be very interactive. Here’s one scheduled for 3 June 2020. Tune in if you’re interested:
7 types of training videos with best examples
1. Corporate training
Corporate training videos come in a variety of packages.
They’re meant to educate employees at different levels about the company culture, policies, and discuss best practices.
Like all HR ventures, corporate training videos need to be engaging to make people want to learn and apply that knowledge in real life.
At MotionCue, we’ve had plenty of fun creating this training video for our client.
A simple, clean yet creatively executed explainer video was our goal for this one as it helps retain information.
Read in-depth: Corporate Video Production – A Complete Guide
2. Employee training
Perhaps the most widely used educational content used within organizations is employee trainings.
They’re like software updates for humans. They help people perform their tasks more efficiently and add new features to their skillset.
Tesco takes roleplay videos to a whole new level in this employee training video.
Working in a grocery store often feels very ‘basic’. However, this video makes Tesco employees feel cool with its comic-book style illustrations.
Motivation, education, and creativity neatly packed together work wonders to boost employee productivity!
Read in-depth: How to Use Video Content for Employee Onboarding and Training
3. Software/website/app training
Training videos that guide on how to use a website, software, or an app usually come in the screencast format.
Comet helps businesses bring agility to their workforce by embracing the power of freelancers. Here’s a training video we did for them:
Comet aims at developing digitally forward enterprises. So, it has adopted a very futuristic yet fun brand identity. It was our job to keep the screencast design in-line with their cool website!
Using the Comet platform feels less like work and more like a fun space mission.
So, we made sure that the script and the demo stay in character throughout the training.
Going for an animated screencast video let us use typography to our advantage. It helped us explain the bits that couldn’t be demonstrated in a video all while keeping the transitions seamless.
We got a big thumbs up from the client for making this training way more stimulating than a screen-share. Also, for turning learning into an enjoyable experience.
4. Product training
Product trainings are exactly what they sound like. They familiarize new users on how to use a product or a service. These videos can be used to train employees and customers alike.
Check out this interesting product demo for Galaxy S6’s camera:
The Galaxy S6’s camera was claimed to give the iPhone 6 a run for its money. That was some reputation to keep up with.
So, Samsung went the interactive product training route. It gave the users a taste of all the amazing things this camera could do.
5. Certifications and e-learning
These types of training videos come in module format and follow a series of short videos on different topics.
They can be delivered by in-house or external industry experts.
Tetley created an e-learning resource for the newbies in the business. It teaches them about the numerous stages of creating and selling the perfect cup of tea.
This is a perfect example of presenter style training videos. It takes on a host with a vibrant personality who is also an industry expert. Relatability and credibility form the perfect recipe for viewer engagement.
Moreover, the host ensures that the course is broken down into micro-videos. It gives the audience small achievable targets from the get-go.
6. Safety training
Employee safety is one of the primary concerns for businesses. Investing in safety video trainings helps minimize risk and maximize workplace security.
The issues addressed in such videos are diverse. They range from compliance, safety drills, health checks, cybersecurity to workplace harassment.
We helped one of our clients create an animated video training its employees to stay cyber-safe.
The topic of cybercrimes and hacking often leaves people feeling vulnerable and disconcerted.
So, the idea was to make them feel in control with simple and actionable tips to protect themselves.
Animation helped us visualize the cyber threats that are often hard to understand. Moreover, a friendly and reassuring voiceover helped us tackle this serious issue easily.
7. How-to tutorials
How-to tutorial videos reign the training videos arena. The breadth of knowledge that these videos encompass is huge.
Using modern software, any type of educational content can be molded into a how-to video.=
By now you should be convinced of the effectiveness of training videos for organizational learning.
If you’re wondering how to get started on your training video project, here’s a video by Techsmith on how to make a training video.
See what we did there?
If you don’t have the time or the skills to create employee training videos, you can always get in touch with us. We love creating training videos that help organizations embrace the power of e-learning!
Schedule a free consultation call with our video strategist