Building a training and development program is one thing, but video communications can help training improve employee engagement in the long term.
Training and development has both long- and short-term goals. For employees joining your organization, training is essential. Failing to get clear responsibilities and goals from management right after starting a new job is one major factor cited by employees who quit soon after joining a new company. In fact, employees who experience a negative onboarding process are about twice as likely to look for new opportunities immediately.
Truly holistic training and development initiatives start from day one. When new hires join your organization, they need to be woven into the fabric of your workforce from the beginning. Many organizations end their onboarding processes after a week or two. By tying your engagement efforts in with your onboarding efforts, you’re bringing all new employees along on the same journey. Video communications technology and systems make this easier.
What Training and Development Can Learn from Onboarding
I wanted to compare employee onboarding to training and development because many of the principles are the same. When you’re onboarding new employees, the goal is to train them in how to do their work and collaborate with everyone else on the team. You’re establishing modes of communication and setting your new hire up with easy-to-digest information about how work gets done and what their specific role within your workplace will be.
There are many ways, of course, to achieve beneficial onboarding outcomes, but video communications are becoming much more popular in human resources circles for a reason. By using a fully interactive video system, new hires can watch the information they need and start using it quickly as a part of their new-hire training program.
By utilizing video technology, you have an opportunity to start your new employee on your company’s employee engagement system. Folding in a progression of video content that builds on their training is a great way to ensure your employees are all on the same page, using the same video technology to communicate and process information. Video can be a natural link between onboarding efforts and employee engagement initiatives from the beginning of each employee’s experience with your company.
Forming a Narrative
Using your video content and resources in concert with each other is a great way to utilize your onboarding and engagement initiatives to build trust and collaboration in your organization. It’s no secret, video content that fits in with other company materials and the overarching goals of the organization is the most effective.
Building a natural link between events when building a story makes for good plots. The Red Wedding in Game of Thrones wouldn’t have had the emotional impact it did if the audience didn’t know Robb Stark and his family at all. (Game of Thrones can actually teach us much about human resources: Robb’s mismanagement of his army and ignoring his advisors caused his failure. If only he’d engaged his soldiers better…).
If you build your training and development initiatives into your onboarding and employee communication technology, you’re building a narrative in which your employees are the main characters progressing from green new hires to skilled leaders in your company.
Video Communications Technology Improves Training
Video communications technology improves training in many ways. Video conferencing software lengthens the reach of your training programs and makes that information available to more employees in real time. Using video technology, you can also build in gamification software to make not only training, but employee communications initiatives and benefits information easier to access for all employees.