Human Resource departments constantly strive to find new ways to improve internal communications. As a company grows, offices expand to new cities and new countries, making internal communication more and more of a challenge. And now that more employees work remotely, traditional internal communication strategies are no longer relevant. One way to keep internal communication strong is through video — and big companies are taking note of this.
Current Video for Internal Communications
Ignite Technologies and Ragan found that 71% of companies are already using video to communicate with employees. A whopping 90% of the respondents answered that video for internal communications is “important” or “somewhat important”. The same amount agreed that they expect video to be part of the internal communication strategy.
What does this mean? Employees are now coming to view internal company videos as not only a positive aspect of a workplace but also as something that should be in every workplace. As the hunt for strong talent becomes more difficult, this can be a pulling point for companies who are trying to recruit.
Especially for younger generations, video is incredibly important. They don’t want to learn corporate policies in long texts — and they can most likely get hired at a place where long texts and memos are out of practice. In this technology-saturated workforce, video as a form of internal communications is becoming vital.
The Future of Video for Internal Communications
What is most interesting is where this is going on two fronts: mobile and analytics. These are the two changing elements for internal company videos.
First, companies have not made their videos mobile friendly. This can be for a few reasons, including the fear of leaking information, not having the mobile technology, etc. But as we all move towards only using our tablets and phones, having company videos be mobile and tablet friendly is increasingly important.
Second, the video analytics that HR and managers can get are going to be key to improving the overall structure of the company. There is no way to test if an employee read an entire email, but there are ways to test if an employee watched an entire video. HR will be able to see dropoff rates, engagement rates (in interactive videos), and more in order to modify their videos to get more views.
Employees will be held accountable as well if managers have the ability to see if a video was watched or not. Unlike the days of sending an email and hoping it gets read, higher ups will now know when and for how long the video was watched.
Mobile and analytics are a game changer for internal videos, and 2016 will be an interesting year for making these technological changes. What companies need to know is that now employees are expecting this type of internal communication, so if you want to recruit top talent, you need to get on this trend. For more information on what types of videos to make internally, check out ReelSEO’s piece, “How Web Video Can Improve Internal Communication.”
