We discuss why you should use video for internal communications to boost employee satisfaction. We also talk about 13 effective types of internal communications videos you can deploy to up your comms game.
Having a solid internal communications strategy with featuring quality video content will go a long way in helping you boost employee satisfaction and engagement.
In this blog, we’ll cover why you should use video in your internal communications and how you can create an effective internal comms video strategy. We’ll also list our top internal communications video ideas to provide inspiration and design tips.
Why You Need An Internal Communications Video Strategy
Including video in your internal communications is a great way to boost engagement. It can break up blocks of text and appeal to different people who may enjoy a more visual way of communicating.
They are great for breaking down complex pieces of information, and they give people a chance to break the monotony with some creativity. But beyond that, there are tons of benefits to using video for internal communications:
- Enhanced Engagement: Video content captures and retains audience attention more effectively than text, resulting in higher engagement levels among internal teams.
- Clear Communication: Visual and auditory elements in videos help convey complex information more clearly, reducing the likelihood of misunderstandings or misinterpretations.
- Personalization: Video allows for a more personal touch in communication, fostering a sense of connection among team members, especially in remote or distributed work environments.
- Time Efficiency: Video enables the delivery of information in a concise and efficient manner, saving time for both the sender and the recipient compared to lengthy written communications.
- Visual Demonstration: Complex concepts, processes, or demonstrations can be effectively communicated through visual aids, enhancing comprehension and knowledge retention.
- Remote Collaboration: In geographically dispersed teams, video facilitates face-to-face interactions, strengthening team relationships and overcoming the limitations of written communication.
- Multimodal Communication: Combining audio and visual elements allows for a richer communication experience, accommodating various learning styles and preferences within the team.
- Documented Communication: Video messages can be recorded and stored, providing a valuable resource for future reference and onboarding new team members.
- Feedback Facilitation: Video allows for more nuanced communication of feedback, enabling tone and non-verbal cues to be conveyed effectively, contributing to a constructive feedback culture.
- Cultural Inclusivity: For diverse teams, video can help bridge language and cultural gaps, ensuring a more inclusive communication approach that resonates with a broader audience.
Using video is an easy email hack for Outlook that can help you effectively increase employee engagement, enhance employee satisfaction and improve your internal communications. But how can you effectively incorporate video for internal communications?
How to Use Video for Internal Communications: 13 Video Examples
Now that we know why to use video for internal communications, let’s explore how. We’ll list the best internal communications video ideas to help guide your content strategy.
Use the following internal communication video examples for your inspiration. They’ll help you start thinking about how you can effectively leverage video to increase employee satisfaction and improve your workplace culture. Combined with your internal communications best practices, video can be a powerful resource in your internal email arsenal.
So without further ado, let’s dive in.
1. Recruitment video
Recruitment videos are a great way to show your company values and company culture to prospective workers. If you’re serious about enhancing your company’s workplace culture, consider working with HR to create a fun recruitment video.
Not only is this internal communication video idea a great way to show prospective employees what your company’s really about, but it also lets you define your company’s culture among current staff and increase employee engagement.
You can feature your current employees in these videos. That way, they’ll have more incentive to promote the videos internally. This in turn will lead to higher levels of engagement.
If your employees are asked to get involved, they’ll feel appreciated and valued within your company. And that’s a simple but powerful way to boost employee engagement.
Check out this fantastic video by Apple for recruitment purposes.
2. Employee experience video: highlight your company’s story
Storytelling for internal communications is a powerful tool. When it comes to inspiring and motivating your employees, telling stories is a potent internal communications video strategy.
You don’t necessarily need to focus on recruitment when creating a video for internal communications purposes. You could plan a video showcasing diverse employees sharing their unique employee experiences. Employees can talk about what makes their employee experience so unique at your company.
Once you make employees feel like they’re part of your company’s story, they will begin to truly understand your company’s mission. They’ll also start to see how they fit into the larger picture.
Videos like these are also great company newsletter ideas. By circulating this type of video in your employee newsletters, you’ll ensure dispersed and remote workers also stay connected.
Dunkin Brands was able to showcase employee experience in a video quite effectively, which you can witness below. They’ve clearly done a good job of their employer branding.
3. Video for internal communications showcasing core company values
Defining and communicating core company values helps employees understand why the work they do matters. This internal communications video strategy motivates employees to play a part in building your company’s overall employee brand.
To build a specific workplace culture and employer brand for your company, you need to understand your company’s ‘why’ factor.
Defining and communicating core company values helps employees understand why the work they do matters. For example, say your company cares deeply about sustainability issues. Showcasing your organization’s leading role within the realm of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), through a video, would be ideal.
For inspiration, take a look at this fantastic video by Foresters Financial.
4. Video for training and onboarding
Internal corporate videos are a great way of reducing training time and an awesome learning tool for new hires. The benefits of these internal corporate video ideas also extend to existing employees.
Training and onboarding new employees can be an extremely time-consuming process. It can be even more complicated if your company is dealing with dispersed employees across the globe.
Employee communications training videos and onboarding content can help reduce training time. Not to mention, it’s a much more engaging learning tool for new hires as well as existing employees. Research has shown that people learn better through audio-visual means. This will improve employee satisfaction and enable effective internal communication.
Check out this super-creative internal communications training video on health and safety for The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
5. Using video to connect internal communications & external communications
Using video for corporate communications to tie both internal and external communications is an excellent idea. You’ll be able to promote cross-departmental collaboration, which in turn will boost employee engagement internally among colleagues.
An important aspect of effective communications that many professionals often overlook is how significant it is for internal and external communications to work together.
How can you effectively deploy internal stories to further help build your company’s external marketing efforts? Have your internal communications video strategy tie internal and external communications together. This will help you promote cross-departmental collaboration, which will improve employee engagement internally among colleagues.
This video from the University of Leicester was able to deploy this tactic effectively. Leicester’s internal communications department was tasked with creating a fast-paced news program highlighting specific stories. The result was a series of video episodes showcasing various stories from staff, students and the public.
Check out this video highlighting the work of different university staff members internally.
6. Explainer videos for internal communications
Having relevant explainer videos, that can coherently communicate the key aspects of your product for new hires, is integral.
If your own employees have no clue on how your products or services operate, how can you expect them to communicate your brand effectively to clients? Explainer videos are great for showcasing a new product launch internally and communicating how the product works.
Employee communications videos can be an effective solution in this scenario. If you have a new product launch, you can also create an internal video to show existing employees how the new product works.
Check out this internal communications video example in the form of an animated video presentation by Matrix, a leading manufacturer of telecom and security solutions. The company used this animated video format to explain the benefits of Matrix Cosmec to its system integrators.
7. Internal troubleshooting video
Software is the cornerstone of many business operations. It determines how quickly and smoothly your employees are able to complete a task and move on to the next. So when office software crashes or isn’t working like it’s meant to, it can be an overwhelming experience.
Your IT team may not be able to help everyone at once, so having troubleshooting resources that your employees can instantly turn to is vital.
Your employees are likely already looking to troubleshoot resources on YouTube or Vimeo. Instead of sending them on a quest scouring the internet for troubleshooting videos suited to their problem, have a dedicated video readily available.
Employees will spend less time stuck on a boring problem and more time getting engaged in tackling a new project.
The best internal troubleshooting videos are short and simple. Focus on a step-by-step guide with clearly numbered stages for solving the problem. Use letters such as a), b), and c) as well alongside numbers and symbols to represent the different parts of a piece of software or operating system.
We love this clear and concise internal communications video example from Apple.
8. Leadership communication videos
Whether your company is large of small, it’s important for your employees to feel aligned with the values of leadership. Internal communicators can help build this relationship by featuring videos in leadership communications.
Leadership communications are messages directly from the CEO, founder, president, or whoever is at the top of the hierarchy at a business. While written messages from leadership are important, your employees will feel a greater connection with leadership if they appear relatable in internal communications videos.
Your leadership videos need not have top of the line internal communications video production values. A simple, personable video from your president or CEO describing an upcoming initiative, holiday announcement, or new acquisition helps employees put a face to the decisions that affect their work.
This year-end video from Fresenius CEO Stephan Sturm is a terrific internal communication video idea for leadership communications.
9. Change management videos
Your company is always changing, but the bigger changes require everyone to be on the same page. Augment your change management processes with internal communication videos to keep your employees in the know.
Change management is a systematized process of planning, performing, and reviewing changes at your business. Adopting a new intranet or shift scheduling software? Change management strategies help you ensure your employees are prepared for the change and benefit once its complete.
When creating your change management procedure, consider sending video instructions to your employees with the change announcement. A change management video can include how to use a new software, describe a new business process, or outline stakeholders for the upcoming change.
Adding a visual aid to your change management communications can make the process much smoother and reduce confusion. These may be similar to training videos, but can compare the differences from the previous software or process to the current one.
10. Emergency and crisis communications
In the event of an emergency, you need to get information to your employees as fast as possible. Internal communication videos can explain and demonstrate emergency processes to your employees faster than text alone.
When creating your crisis communications plan, it’s important to consider whether your employees would benefit from video instructions in addition to written instructions. Depending on the type of crisis communications your business requires, videos may help you save time and explain protocols in more detail than text alone.
Assess what kind of crisis communications you should include in your internal communications video strategy. These videos can describe numerous processes like how to react in response to an IT security breach, or describe the proper way to exit a building in the event of an emergency.
Check out this simple and clear animated video showing proper evacuation procedures in the event of a business emergency.
11. Employee videos for recognition
Show your employees that their accomplishments matter by featuring a video of them in your next internal newsletter.
Employee recognition is a crucial aspect of employee engagement. Showing gratitude by internally advertising employees’ accomplishments helps them feel pride in their work and in their coworkers.
An employee recognition video can be a quick summary of what an employee accomplished. It can also include a quick thank you message from leadership, or even feature the employee themself speaking about how they succeeded.
Actimo got a group of managers and leaders together to express their gratitude for employees on employee appreciation day in this great video.
12. Digital signage in the workplace
For employees that don’t have easy access to computers or email, digital workplace signage can be a great resource for staying informed. Add videos to your digital signage to engage your deskless employees.
Among the many internal communication channels business use to reach their employees, digital signage is probably the most overlooked. This may be in part because digital signage is useful for specific employer-employee situations. Namely, digital signage works when employees are more likely to see internal communications in a communal setting like a hallway or factory floor than at a desktop computer or mobile device.
The type of content you can include on digital signage can range from announcements to safety instructions to weather and news updates. Depending on how your business uses its digital signage, including videos can be a great step to engage your employees while they work.
13. Internal comms video for employee wellness
With a large focus on health in the workplace, it might be a good idea to send your team videos on how to better take care of themselves. There are many ways to do this, from virtual yoga and meditation sessions to mental health resources and healthy cooking tutorials.
Employee wellness is a vital part of any successful business. When employees are physically and mentally well, they are happier, more productive, and less likely to miss work due to illness or stress. By incorporating videos into your internal communication strategies, you can promote employee wellness and encourage healthy habits among your team members.
Some examples of internal comms videos for employee wellness could include virtual workout sessions, stress management techniques, nutrition tips, and mental health resources. By providing these videos to your employees, you can show that you care about their well-being and support them in maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
Additionally, using video as a medium for employee wellness communication can be more engaging and impactful than traditional methods. Videos allow employees to visually see and follow along, making it easier for them to incorporate healthy practices into their daily routines.
How ContactMonkey Can Help You Revamp Your Newsletter With Video
Weekly newsletters are your go-to resource for informing and engaging your employees. But if you want to take your newsletter to the next level, you’ll need to use dynamic visuals and video. With ContactMonkey, you can embed videos directly into your employee newsletters and boost newsletter engagement in 3 easy steps:
- Copy your video URL from YouTube or Vimeo.
- Go into your ContactMonkey email template-builder and choose the video element in your sidebar menu.
- You’ll be prompted to add your link and a video cover image will be copied automatically with a Play icon overlay—instantly linking to the video content.
Once you embed videos using your ContactMonkey email template-builder, you can measure video clicks, compare engagement levels between videos, and gather feedback on your content. It’s that simple!
Looking for more resources to improve your internal communications? Check out our list of the best internal communications blogs and stay up to speed with the latest employee engagement trends and best practices.
Takeaways: Benefits of Using Video for Internal Communications
- Using video for internal communications will help you stay connected to remote workers.
- Utilizing video for internal communications will allow you to communicate your company’s values and mission statement to both internal and external audiences.
- You can also measure how successful a certain video was internally by looking at the total number of internal video views.
You could take this a step further by circulating employee satisfaction surveys asking your employees to rate their level of engagement on each video. Remember to schedule all your internal emails using an internal communications calendar; schedule the survey follow-up email a few days after the video email is sent.
According to Harvard Business Review, an engagement survey is the most effective way of gauging engagement levels. After you’ve gauged the performance of your various internal videos, you can pin down how effective a certain video was in changing your organization’s employee satisfaction and job satisfaction levels. An internal communications tool like ContactMonkey makes conducting employee surveys fast and easy.
If you’ve successfully launched an corporate communications video campaign within your company, tell us about it in the comments below!
If you want to track the engagement on the videos you send via email, you may be interested in learning about our tool for internal comms.
