Why Video is More Essential Now than Ever in the Digital Workplace

As more and more teams are working remotely in digital workplaces, making news and content immediately accessible is more important than ever to both companies and their employees. The way we consume and communicate information has changed dramatically and the value of video has become even more apparent as a vehicle for dissemination. In fact, studies show that  67% of people understand information better when it’s communicated visually, and younger workers are twice as likely to prefer visual communications than their counterparts. 

Not only do employees prefer video for content delivery, visual content can be more easily absorbed and understood. So, when you need to convey important messages and information, video is not only preferred, it is more efficient. It should be no surprise that video has completely transformed our content consumption habits both at work and at home.  

Rise of the remote worker 

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of remote workers increased 159% over the past decade, due in part to the ongoing digital workplace transition. The pandemic has accelerated this trend and poses significant communication challenges for companies. With a highly dispersed workforce on-demand video communication delivers an incredible advantage.  

Keeping employees engaged and productive with minimal face-to-face interaction has become more challenging. “ As many as a third (36%) of employees say their motivation levels have been affected by poor company-wide communications.” Long corporate emails turn off many employees and go unread. Video provides multi-sensory engagement and also more closely replicates being in the same room with your colleague. Videos can help close the communications gap for your remote workforce. 

Get and keep your employee’s attention 

“Only 40% of employees report that they are well informed about their company’s goals, strategies, and tactics,” according to the Harvard Business review. How can we expect employees to be motivated and productive if they don’t know what’s going on? How much information is actually being consumed and understood? Forrester Research study indicates that employees are 75% more likely to watch a video than read text. Video is preferred because it provides a more human, personal touch. 

Building or shifting the company culture is another major challenge, especially when transitioning to a digital workplace. The employee intranet is a crucial component and when it comes to promoting your company culture, on-demand video should be an integral part of your strategy.  Whether delivering employee on-boarding and training, organizational announcements, tutorials, product announcements and recording live-streaming events, video ensures a consistent experience — both in terms of delivery and information. It also affords the opportunity to capture insights regarding your audience. Viewership and engagement metrics can also help guide the process and direct the company to the type of content and information employees pay attention to and value most.  

An intranet experience that employees love 

Originally an intranet portal was simply an internal homepage to share news and information, principally a corporate bulletin board. Now it’s considered an essential element of a modern digital workplace to promote genuine dialog, facilitate employee self-service, deliver eLearning, and act as a gateway to business applications. Additionally, in-video quizzes and polls can help capture employees’ attention. 

If you need to learn how to do something quickly, where do you turn? YouTube of course. Because YouTube has an unbelievable library of how-to videos to easily guide you through any problem. Employee intranet portals should adopt the same approach – utilizing video-based guides to portal services and applications. This approach will shorten the learning curve for new hires and also promote a self-service culture. 

Empowering employees and saving money 

Saving time and money is also part of the equation. eLearning videos, rather than classroom training, can help reduce trainer costs, travel dollars and travel time while also providing employees scheduling flexibility.  

Employee self-service (ESS) portals can help reduce administrative overhead, while at the same time, keeping personal information more up to date. From speeding up on-boarding of new hires, requesting time off or rolling out new employee benefits, ESS can be an effective tool to increase employee empowerment and satisfaction. Incorporating on-demand videos to explain benefit packages or provide a how-to reference guide are crucial to successful self-service portals. There is also value in enabling employees to create, upload, and edit videos to enhance employee engagement and create a stronger sense of ownership. 

Meeting the digital workplace challenge 

Your digital workplace plans should align with your business goals and provide your employees with an environment and work tools focused on productivity and collaboration. Creating a high-performing workforce should be at the core of your strategy. To support a high-performing workforce you need an employee intranet portal to streamline communication, deliver business applications and drive cultural change.  

Since nothing communicates quite like video, build a video library, accessible from your intranet portal, to help support and speed up your digital transformation. Use your internal experts to share their insight or give your executive team a forum for sharing company announcements, goals and successes. Video has gone from nice-to-have to absolutely essential for supporting your digital transformation.  

Learn more about on-demand video by joining our webinar with Kaltura on October 27th titled: “On-Demand Video and How It Can Be the Key to Improving Digital Experiences”