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The onboarding process is a prime opportunity for the employer or HR team to win the hearts and minds of new hires. This is the moment where the new hire chooses to stay engaged or even disengaged. That’s why a good onboarding experience is crucial and you should not waste it.
A good onboarding experience acclimates new hires to their role, the company’s culture and values, and what the company can provide. That’s not a simple process, of course, and HR teams often overwhelm them with boatloads of materials and information at the orientation.
Handing the new hire with all those copies of the company handbook, agendas for the first day/week, and policies documents can create a chaotic, disorganized onboarding experience for them.
You should not be surprised if they resign way too early or don’t have a solid sense of belonging; which both result in an increased employee turnover rate.
In this case, you can simplify your onboarding process using employee onboarding videos.
Let’s break down some reasons why this type of video is a solution for the challenging onboarding process.
Reason #1— Quick and Time-Saving
You can create an onboarding video and quickly distribute it to new employees to bring them up to speed. In other words, you do not need to prepare a long list of manuals for your new hire; this engaging digital content can be handed over the explainer video and accessed anytime.
The more you want them to learn, the more videos you should make and give them all at once or in phases which will depend on their role/level within the company.
That said, you need to remember that it’s always better to create one single onboarding video for one topic so it doesn’t jumble together. This way, new hires should have no problems retaining and learning all the information better.
You might also need to create a dedicated portal or page on your website, or leverage a video-hosting platform where employees can access their onboarding video easily if they want to refresh their memory before starting working with you.
Reason #2— Reduce Onboarding Costs
Do you know that a study shows that onboarding costs can be up to $15,000 per employee?
That is an expensive proposition considering the fact that employees quit their jobs for numerous reasons and sometimes without a reasonable explanation. In this case, employee onboarding videos can also help you reduce the onboarding cost.
First of all, it’s cheaper to create one video than hiring a dedicated HR person who will make new hires go through the same process as everyone else and answer their questions individually.
Digital content like onboarding videos is also much easier and quicker to duplicate and can be easily shared via mobile devices, unlike mountains of paperwork.
On top of that, these videos can be recorded by anyone in the house or even outsourced at a much lower production cost. There are tons of video editing tools you can leverage and make your onboarding videos even more customized without breaking the bank.
Reason #3— Retain Employees Better
According to science, human brains process visual data better. That’s why most of us are visual learners. When you visualize your onboarding process, employees will remember and retain the information better than if it was just bulky paragraphs on handouts.
Also, people effortlessly relate emotions with visuals, which makes your onboarding process more impactful and memorable than only handing the new hire piles of guidelines.
By combining both audio and visual elements, employee onboarding videos summarize all the materials into smaller, easier-to-process chunks. The new hire can easily absorb and retain all the crucial information they need. The more retained your new hires are, the more likely they will be happy and effective in their jobs.
You can add animation to make the content even more engaging and enjoyable. Onboarding videos allow you to create customized animated characters and story-doven narratives to explain the complicated onboarding process.
Reason #4— Show Your Professionalism and Build Reputation
Not only will employee onboarding videos be effective for showing how things work but they will also help you showcase your professionalism and positive reputation. Creating customized onboarding videos means that you take onboarding seriously and give an extra effort to create the best onboarding experience possible.
It shows your new hires that you actually care about them and are dedicated to helping them adapt and acclimatize to their new environment successfully. It also shows that you are considerate of your employees and want them to be happy on the job.
After all, giving piles of handouts is way too mainstream in today’s age — almost every company does that. It can even seem lazy. When you use the right information and messaging through engaging onboarding videos, it means that you set yourself apart from competitors.
Reason #5— Create a Solid Sense of Belonging
We’ve talked briefly about how people are mostly engaged and relate emotionally to visual content. Now we’ll get a bit more in-depth about it.
New hires can become insecure and lonely when they feel like a complete “new” person to the company. With onboarding videos, you can show the new hires your teams — and their personalities, give them office tours, the daily activities or life in the office, and more. That way, they will get an insight into how your company works, and that they’re a valued member of the team.
You can say that onboarding videos can give the new hire a warm, big welcome. That’s how an engaging employee onboarding video gives new hires a sense of community belonging. It helps them to feel more at home in their new working environment from day one which is key for employee engagement.
Final Thoughts
In today’s digital era, onboarding videos are essential for employers or HR teams. With all those reasons mentioned above, you understand that this engaging type of content is effective to create more personal and professional onboarding experiences. Done right, onboarding videos can be a powerful addition to your recruitment strategies.
Remember that new hires who experience such a badly planned and executed onboarding process may conclude that the company is poorly managed and decide that it was a mistake to take the job.
Author
Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).
Twitter: @breadnbeyond
Email: andre@breadnbeyond.com
LinkedIn: Andre Oentoro
