“Clients do not come first, employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients” – Richard Branson
It should come as no surprise that the world’s most successful companies spend a large amount of their resources in employee training. In fact, major corporations around the world spent a whopping $359 billion on corporate training alone.
While this might seem like an inordinate amount, it’s always best to remember the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the benefits that a company enjoys will stem from the 20% of action that they do. In the corporate training world, this number is an even sharper ratio – it is estimated that the 4% spent on employee training technologies and services can lead companies to major growth on the other 96% of your training investment.
With all these resources going into employee training, companies should look for ways to maximize their training efficiency in order to get the best bang for their buck. One of the best ways to do this is to invest in video training. Here are a few reasons why:
It’s an Easy-to-Understand and Easy-to-Use Engagement Tool
Video content is, by far, the most popular, most integrated, and most accessed type of digital content out there. In the US alone, there are over 200 million online video viewers who watch an estimated 5 billion videos a day. This underscores video content’s complete amalgamation in everyday life in the digital world and its supreme usefulness to corporate training.
Training videos allow both trainers and trainees more control over their material, creating a learning experience that is unique and easy-to-use. Unlike live demos or training modules, video content can be paused during hard-to-understand concepts and kept there until the trainer is able to fully explain the subject to a struggling trainee. This means that training can go at a pace that is comfortable for participants, engaging them in an effective way.
Video training materials can also be used to augment a company’s current training strategies. Video introductions can be played before training sessions in order to set the goals and expectations of participants as well as create a learning environment that is both welcoming and modern.
Videos can also be used for continuing training. Employees can record themselves doing presentations or lectures and then review the footage after to determine any points of improvement in their performance. These videos can then be used in future training sessions as points of reference.
Live presentations can also be recorded on video. This helps trainees access, replay, and review materials in the presentation that they may have had trouble understanding earlier. Follow-up videos, presented after the live presentation, can be used to ensure that the trainees understood the concepts presented to them.
Video content in training sessions is not meant to replace training altogether; rather, it’s supposed to supplement and reinforce traditional training procedures and methods and bring those processes into the 21st century.
This means that adding video content to training sessions maximizes the benefits to trainees, meaning the company can expect a high return on investment.
It Provides Precise Data to Interpret
Creativity and imagination play a vital role in the learning process. In fact, without it, many learning experiences will be left lacking, uninspired, and ineffective. However, too much creativity and imagination in corporate training can often lead to the same problem of ineffectiveness.
This is because the corporate world and most industries often require trainees and employees to retain and fully understand exact and measurable information. By leaving too many blank spaces to fill, companies run the risk of trainees making their own conclusions that might not be aligned with the original intention. Video content, however, leaves very little to the imagination, particularly when it comes to specific and complex tasks.
Video content provides trainees with factual and objective information that is delivered to them in an easy-to-understand manner, maximizing the chances of them retaining that knowledge.
It Uses the “Picture Superiority” Effect
The ‘picture superiority’ effect refers to the concept that visual stimuli are much more efficient at conveying ideas as opposed to words. This is because a visual stimulus often generates both a verbal and image representation in the minds of viewers. Combine both visual and auditory stimuli, and it’s been proven to improve knowledge retention by an impressive 650% (as compared to pure words or audio).
This makes video content one of the most effective ways to deliver data. It combines visual and auditory experiences that stimulate all parts of a viewer’s brain. This isn’t a new concept; scientists believe that cave paintings were, in fact, created by cavemen to study and analyze hunting strategies. Even Egyptian hieroglyphics were used to document both religious practices and business processes.
All in all, companies that use video content in their training materials increase their chances of producing employees that are completely knowledgeable about their internal business system, leading to more productive and efficient workers, and ultimately, streamlining their entire operations and creating more opportunities for profit.
It is Flexible and Accessible
One of the most commonly cited problems with video training materials is its cost, both in the effort required to produce them and the money required to fund it. While this may have been true a few decades ago, it isn’t the case anymore. With the advent of various types of technology over the past few years, producing videos –from pre-production, shooting, and editing –has become easier and accessible, so much so that some tech companies have condense the entire production process into a simple app on a smartphone.
With most, if not all, smartphones carrying highly advanced cameras and websites completely dedicated to hosting videos, as well as programs that even novice video editors can use, the investment that companies need to make in producing high-quality video content for training purposes has reduced drastically, especially considering the return on investment they can receive from it.
Video content also helps corporate trainers consolidate training and coaching. During traditional training sessions, trainees who fail to grasp a particular concept must be coached one-on-one. This often means that the rest of the class must wait until those individuals are at their level. With video content augmenting traditional training, trainers can use videos to explain hard-to-grasp concepts in an easier manner, thus being able to continue training the majority of the class while ensuring that those who lag behind have an opportunity to catch up.
The Future
Over the past few years, many companies are adding video content as an integral part of their corporate training strategy. Again, video is not out to replace traditional methods; instead, it’s to be used in collaboration with current strategies in an effort to maximize the return on investment by the company. In a digital world, content is still King, but video is now its new herald.
