5 reasons why internal communications videos just make sense

Employees want to work from anywhere. In fact, 39% of staff members would immediately quit their job if their WFH/WFA options were revoked. According to a Gallup report, only 20% of remote-eligible staff members are currently working in-office and fully on-site. 

With more people working remotely than ever before, businesses need to adapt their internal communications strategy and how they communicate with their teams, regardless of their location. We’re seeing that when companies leverage internal communications tools like video, communication as a whole becomes more effective.

In fact, video-savvy teams were twice as likely to say their organization’s collaborative environment and staff training is “excellent” and 75% more likely to say that they experience “excellent” employee engagement at work.

If you want to energize your workforce, boost team performance, and drive efficiency at your business, consider these five important reasons you should use internal communications videos at your organization.

1. Effectively train and onboard teams

A distributed workforce comes with challenges. A recent report compiled by Vimeo and GlobalWebIndex found that 35% of HR professionals face significant hurdles with training employees virtually.

Insufficient training, onboarding, or sales enablement for current or new employees can have a serious impact on employee productivity, satisfaction, and retention. When team members don’t have a positive experience as a new hire, they’re twice as likely to look for a new job. 

To make sure your team doesn’t miss out on crucial education, mentoring, learning company values, and other insights about company culture, consider virtual training and onboarding videos to amp up your new-hire training.

Building an on demand training hub using high quality video tools can help boost employee training and comprehension. For example, Global coatings company Axalta provides customers with sustainable and innovative solutions — and this passion shines through in their products, practices, and training. For the past few years, Axalta relied on virtual training videos to reach their technical workforce of 13,000 professionals and provide effective internal communications. 

“Technicians don’t always want to travel to our training centers, it’s not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ for our diverse group of learners.”

Steve Hamaday, Virtual Training Manager at Axalta

Important technical training techniques – like the finesse of wielding a spray gun – are best communicated through high-quality visuals. “We found that missing those fractions of a frame was a huge deal for our painters, as they could be missing important learning points.” Steve Hamaday said. Investing in a high quality video hosting platform allowed Axalta’s team to provide the experience and training their teams needed to be successful.

When organizations turn training content into interactive video, they can improve team engagement. And repurposing events as on-demand enablement content allows employees to continue learning, refining skills, and work more productively.

2. Engage a global workforce

An engaged workforce can have a powerful impact on your business. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report states that businesses with engaged workers have 23% higher profits compared to other businesses. To facilitate more connective moments with your teams, you can use video to produce a town hall to highlight your executive team, host an internal virtual live streaming event with speakers and activities, or share important information asynchronously with recorded video.

Scaling corporate communications can feel like a challenge for even the biggest brands. Thankfully, a hunger for innovation coupled with the right tool for corporate communication videos can turn a workforce with thousands of employees into a strong, centralized community.

For example, Rite Aid rewrote its corporate playbook by pivoting from in-person meetings to virtual town halls. The result? The ability to reach more associates and a desire to run more live events. 

“Our first town hall on Vimeo was a pivotal moment that allowed us to reach more associates than we ever could through live, in-person events.”

Peter Strella, Director of Communications & Creative Media Services at Rite Aid

You can create stunning corporate videos, internal communication tools, and other video communications resources with easy-to-use production, editing, and live streaming tools. 

3. Close the communication gap

The data shows a sharp disconnect between senior leadership and employees in how they perceive the effectiveness — and frequency — of their communications. Specifically, 54% of execs say that they stream major company updates at least weekly, while only 20% of employees agree.

To bridge the gap, executives should consider increasing communications across all channels. Just keep in mind that your communications method — creating or doubling down on an internal comms or video marketing strategy — is only as effective as the content of the communication itself. Leadership teams should lean into authenticity and transparency to help get their message across.

“What we hear from employees is that what they want is more frequent communications, but my sense is that what they really want is more transparency.”

Anjali Sud, CEO at Vimeo

Authenticity combined with video creation can have a real impact on the future. Employees at video-forward companies were over 70% more likely to say their company was ready to face the future of work.

Executives have the opportunity to use video to close the communication gap not only through explainer videos but also through:

• Personable screen recordings and message videos that include company updates
• Q&As for global town halls
• Quick, asynchronous communications
• A video library of searchable content

For more executive comms strategies and tips, check out our Workplace Communications Workshop with leaders at Outreach, Meetup, Care.com, and Vimeo.

4. Drive efficiency with internal comms video

Work and collaboration have fundamentally changed over the years. And with that, teams are on the hunt for tools to increase efficiency, streamline communications, and adapt to any workplace environment.

From our experience, we’ve discovered two impactful ways to use video as an employee communication tool and help drive workplace efficiency: live streaming and screen recording.

🔛 Live streaming

Both Rite Aid and Paychex found success creating and live streaming company events (like town halls). 

Rite Aid used Vimeo to successfully facilitate its first virtual town hall. Its event was attended virtually by nearly 3,000 corporate and field leadership staff members.

Paychex traded in its travel expenses for live streamed events and reached 10 times more employees than it ever did in person.

🖥️ Screen recording

The second efficiency driver is screen recording. When you add tools like Vimeo Record into team workflows, it can minimize the number of meetings and provide training opportunities, all while keeping projects moving.

“My team is using Vimeo Record to share product demos internally and to give our customers a preview of what’s launching soon. We love it! It adds a personal touch that you just can’t replicate with email or a chatroom message.”

Trevor Wolfe, Director of Product at Mailchimp

5. Scale knowledge-sharing opportunities

Knowledge sharing is important for nurturing employee growth and happiness. Whether for training, mentoring, or onboarding, employee knowledge that comes from within facilitates employees’ workplace success.

Hosting video recordings in a video library can make information more accessible and provide both new hires and legacy employees with the needed tools to succeed at work.

Our comprehensive guide, The Essential Corporate Comms Toolkit, can help you make sense of how companies of all sizes leverage live video to create engaging meetings for every employee, no matter where they are.

Organizations that are able to centralize their company knowledge effectively maintain consistency between current, new, and future employees. When you add video to your knowledge-sharing culture, those comms become even more efficient.

Wrap-up: Redefine how you work with video

The distributed mindset calls for a change in how you work, communicate, and collaborate with teams. All-in-one video communication solutions and corporate communication tools can help provide secure and flexible communications (and quality video) to keep business moving.

As the definition of where we work changes, don’t get caught up in outdated forms of communication. Reimagine how to make teams successful and bring the tools and transparency that help them achieve their best work. 

Discover more employee communications solutions

Originally published on June 12, 2019 and updated on June 1, 2023.