Video = Better employee onboarding, training, & development

In our highly competitive hiring climate, a strong employee training and development program will set your industrial company apart from your competition. Training and development resources are not simply useful for hiring the right people, they are useful for retaining them too…. and helping your business grow. How? By not only removing bottlenecks in onboarding, training, and skills development but also documenting your company’s specific procedures, development of new processes, evolution of products or processes, and more. Creating and utilizing training videos is one of the most effective ways to develop your team and your manufacturing company.

According to a recent LinkedIN Workplace Learning Report “80% of learning and development professionals agree that developing employees is top-of-mind for the executive team. Yet these programs are challenged with limited budgets, small teams, and a gap in demonstrating return on investment (ROI). To tackle these challenges, learning and development must demonstrate business impact.”

How do you “demonstrate business impact?” Through video. Creating and utilizing training videos is one of the most effective ways to develop your team, both in terms of cost, engagement, and return.

How can video be used?

  • Processes and procedures
  • Shorten onboarding
  • Hiring and skills training
  • Introduce new products and/or services
  • Quality certification documentation
  • Document in-house processes
  • Engineering knowledge archive
  • Introduce & demonstrate new systems or software
  • Improve customer service skills
  • Professional development
  • And more

Why use video?

  • Video is flexible & customizable
  • Easy to change or update
  • Video is more engaging & people retain the information better
  • Saves resources, money, & time
  • Video is easily shared
  • It can help boost productivity
  • Video does a better job of explaining concepts

Video is flexible & customizable & easy to change or update

Video is incredible flexible and versatile. You can use live action, animation, stop-motion, a combination of those, or a variety of other ways to get your message across through video. A completed video can always be changed as future needs dictate.

Video is more engaging

People are visual learners and honestly we all enjoy watching videos. What would be more interesting for you? Would you prefer to read a 100-page employee manual or watch a 10 minute video that goes over the same information in an entertaining way? There are not many of us that would choose to sit and read through the manual. People are 75% more likely to watch a video than they are to read a document, flyer, email, book, or article. Video is simply more interesting than text and are much more likely to engage and keep your employees attention.

People retain the information better

Since training sessions cost you money you really want to be sure that the employee is remember what they just learned. A recent study on training sessions stated that the average employee will have forgotten 65% of the material covered a mere 7 days after the session, and after 6 months the number increases to 90%. However, when video was used, after 6 months an impressive 80% was retained. Video is proven to be more memorable than other training materials.

Your employees each consume information differently as well – some prefer written, some visual, and others audio – one of the best things about utilizing video is that between the videos themselves and the written processes you give your employees all three methods of consuming information is covered which increases retention no matter who is consuming it.

Saves resources, money, & time

85% of every dollar spent on classroom training is spent delivering it. Meaning that the majority of your training money is going to the instructor for their time, travel costs, and materials costs. With video you skip ALL of that. You pay once to have the video created then you can use it over and over again. You can simply shoot a link over to the employee for them to watch at their desk (or home) or sit them down in the conference room and push the play button. No instructors, no travel or food expenses, no extra fees at all.

Video also allows your employees to re-reference specific videos as needed, to see exactly how something is done in exactly the way you want it done, in the event that things aren’t going well for whatever reason. This helps keep all of your employees on track and keeps your production moving since no one else has to stop to solve a problem or re-train a new employee.

Video is easily shared & accessed

Whether you have 10 employees or 100 it can be difficult to get everyone together in the same place at the same time; so scheduling training sessions can be very challenging. Video is essentially “on-demand” training. When using video you can make sure that everyone gets the same training experience and information when it is most convenient for their schedule. Video also eliminates any potential issues with employees who are too timid to ask questions in a traditional classroom setting or ones that learn at a slower pace than others. They can pause or back the video up to re-watch portions for better understanding and retention.

It can help boost productivity

Traditional classroom training requires your employees to be away from their usual workplace – typically for a full workday or longer. Any tasks they needed to accomplish that day have gone unattended. Utilizing video training means your employee can watch the video when it is convenient for them during a free moment at work instead of wasting valuable work time.

Video does a better job of explaining concepts

Video is a wonderful tool for breaking down incredibly complex information, ideas, or concepts and explaining them in a way that is easy for everyone to understand. The combination of the voice over, visuals, and on-screen text are interesting and memorable and clearly spell out the concepts you are trying to get across.

You can measure it!

When it comes to classroom training with written materials how can you be sure that everyone actually read, digested, and fully understood everything? You simply can’t. Video allows you to not only be sure they watched/heard everything you wanted them to, you can also track and measure the effectiveness of the training. How? By using services such as YouTUBE which will give you metrics on the video (such as the number of views) as well as tell if the video was completely watched. Employees can also post questions or comments directly on the video for the entire team to see and respond to.

Build your in-house company knowledge base!

Traditional methods for training are still useful for some processes or industries but, as you have read, there are a lot of drawbacks. Effectiveness is incredibly difficult to measure, time and money are wasted, and your employees may or may not even retain any of the training. Utilizing video is a great way to get everyone engaged, you know and control exactly what they are learning, they are all learning the exact same information, allows them to learn at their own pace, they can re-watch if necessary to refresh the information in their minds, and there is a lot less downtime at work.

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All industrial – all the time!

Video is one of the most shared and talked about online materials today and its influence transcends physical and social boundaries. In fact, marketing experts agree that this trend will continue to grow well into the future because video provides more value, relevance, and flexibility.

With over 30 years of experience, The Rico Group specializes in helping industrial manufacturers and job shops grow their business and diversify their customer base. We know how engineers think and what they are looking for. We know your processes, equipment, and materials. We also know that you have very little time to take away from your production and getting your customer’s orders delivered.

Grow your business with better marketing with The Rico Group.

www.thericogroup.com

 (805) 497-7401