How to boost your internal communication with videos

Table of contents

Summary

For a successful company, employee satisfaction, advocacy, and making employees feel part of the team is so important. The starting point for triggering is always communication, which can no longer be stuck in the ways of the past. In this sense, internal communication videos are a formidable tool. They can be leveraged for on-boarding phases, for continuing education, as explainer videos, and for data visualization. The real breakthrough? Personalization.

How to value your employees?

A successful company in the modern world is never just a set of processes, roles, hierarchies. 

On the contrary, a successful company is an orchestra, a well-coordinated ensemble of knowledgeable people who retain their creativity and individuality, who know how to cooperate as best they can, who know their role but also the goals of the company in which they are embedded, who are up to date on achievements and those to be achieved; people who are up to date on what is happening in the world around them, who are offered opportunities for continuing education, and who feel that employers care about their well-being. For example, we have talked about how to use video in onboarding process.

Why is this important? 

Let’s put it in the words of Richard Branson, one of the best-known entrepreneurs and visionaries of our time: 

“If the person who works at your company is 100% proud of the job they’re doing, if you give them the tools to do a good job, they’re proud of the brand, if they were looked after, if they’re treated well, then they’re gonna be smiling, they’re gonna be happy and therefore the customer will have a nice experience. If the person who’s working for your company is not given the right tools, is not looked after, is not appreciated, they’re not gonna do things with a smile and therefore the customer will be treated in a way where often they won’t want to come back for more” (inc.com). 

What begins to emerge, in short, is a virtuous circle: a company that values and puts its employees at ease is a company that will have a better relationship with its customers. This, in turn, translates into an enhanced reputation, and thus, increased attractiveness to young talent. So, ultimately, in increased revenue. And so on. 

At this point one has to ask: how does this virtuous circle get triggered? 

The answer is: in many ways and with a well-designed overall strategy, which always starts with improving internal communication. 

This is what the so-called B2E (Business to Employee) is all about. We’ll talk about this in the next section, before tightening the circle around the specific topic of this post: internal communication videos. We have already talked about the corporate video and what it takes to create it.

B2E: what are we talking about? And why is it increasingly decisive?  

B2E (Business to Employee) is a strategic approach that focuses on employee satisfaction in a company. 

All operations that aim to achieve the best possible corporate retention and the so-called Employee Advocacy, which, to put it briefly, is the promotion of a company by its employees, are part of this scope. 

All of this, as we have already anticipated, has fundamental effects on companies’ productivity, turnover, reputation, and attractiveness. B2E encompasses a very broad scope.  

First, it covers the sensitive recruiting and on-boarding stages. Then there are team-building strategies, training courses and workshops, the possibility of bonuses and special offers for employees, attention to work-life balance (an issue that has become especially sensitive during the pandemic emergency), and the possibilities for flexible work schedules. 

And then there is everything on the digital side: the most dynamic companies with the best retention are those with, for example, home page or desktop systems customized for everyone in the organization, at various levels. They are companies that have designed applications and platforms tailored to their employees, and that have adopted an omnichannel perspective.  

To summarize: they are companies with the most up-to-date and smartest digital communication and sharing systems. 

Indeed, the goal of a well-designed B2E digital environment is to improve not only efficiency, but also employee satisfaction, which in turn naturally increases the sense of community and sharing of company values. So, let us ask: why is this so central, for a company? The answers are intuitive. 

You improve productivity. You increase individual employee engagement, making employees feel part of your company’s vision and mission. You strengthen team spirit. 

And all of this has an enormously positive impact on the company’s attractiveness to the outside world as well. Let’s close this section with a very telling statistic: 

• According to a study by Korn Ferry, companies with high employee engagement rates produce, on average, revenues that are 4.5 times higher than those of their competitors (kornferry.com). 

Internal communication videos – What are they? What types exist? Why are they so useful? 

Let’s quickly connect to the section above with another very interesting statistic: 

• 88% of people say that video helps facilitate collaboration and improve efficiency in the workplace (limelight.com). 

Internal communication videos are videos used within a company for a wide variety of purposes (we will look at some of them very shortly): and they have become an increasingly important part of corporate communication, with a decisive increase in the emergency phases triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

We are all used to communicating at work by email, by internal chats, by meetings. 

But we have also realized that an explainer video of just a few minutes in length can be much more effective than an hour-long call. 

In fact, a video often gets straight to the point with no wasted time. It is more engaging. It is built to be clear and comprehensive. It helps explain even complex issues in a simple and immediate way. It can be viewed anytime. And, importantly, it can be played again and again. 

But what types of internal communication videos can you use? 

1. Onboarding Video. 

To give concrete instructions to new hires. For example, on the ways and customs of working, from the use of software, to rules regarding schedules, to the structure of different teams. Of course (and at the same time) it’s not just about concrete instructions but about conveying the values of a company to those who have just joined it. 

2. Training videos. 

We all know how continuing education is now indispensable for a healthy company that wants to look toward the future. Video is a perfect medium in this regard. 

3. Explainer Video. 

For use on a wide variety of occasions, from internal storytelling related to new products or services that the company is about to bring to market, to CEO announcements (which, if done in person, would require a huge investment of time). 

4. FAQ Videos. 

In some ways, these are a subset of explainer videos. But they are built from the employees’ own questions.

5. Data Visualization Video. 

Here we come to a really decisive type of video. Data Visualization videos present raw data in a graphical form, which helps others read the information and understand it without requiring excessive time or energy to do so.  

What types of data? 

The most diverse: from those on market trends to public opinion sentiment; from sales trends of a product to customer retention or churn rates; internal company analyses approached from any angle (results achieved, targets, increase or decrease in turnover, market share, and much more).

In short, with data visualization videos, you can read and map this huge amount of data…thus, ultimately, making this data meaningful. 

And here we are nearing the conclusion. We decided to devote the final section to a key aspect, the ultimate boost for internal communication videos. We’re talking about personalization. 

The ultimate breakthrough for internal communication videos? Personalization. 

First of all, what do we mean by personalization? It’s about the shift from one-to-many to one-to-one communication. 

In other words, it’s the ability to tailor your messages (and videos) based on the characteristics of individual recipients, automatically and immediately, even when talking about a very large audience.  And how is this possible? Again, through data analysis. 

Data, in fact, not only tells us a great deal about a company’s internal processes and how to improve them, it also gives us a detailed snapshot of the characteristics, habits, preferences, and needs of employees and collaborators thus the recipients of internal communication videos. 

At this point, the next step is the decisive one: get to know your target audience, divide it into increasingly specific clusters, until the target audience matches the individual person. 

And distribute a custom-built video to each one, starting from the basic template. 

For example, a marketing team employee will be interested in different insights than a person working in HR at the same company and so on. Then pay attention to another interesting element made possible by personalized videos: interactivity. 

This means that each video also ends up adapting to the browsing choices of each individual viewer, in real time, transforming one-way communication into a bi-directional, fluid, and tailored dialog. 

A real revolution for a company’s internal communication! 

By leaning on specialized video platforms such as Babelee, you can put all of these activities on track, and easily.