How to Create a Training Video to Engage Your Employees 

Learning how to create a training video that will engage your employees and keep them actively learning about the most important tasks involved in operating your business is essential. But producing a training video is a technical process that requires extensive planning and very specific filming techniques which typically are best reserved for a professional crew. If you really want your employees to focus on training and to engage in the training activities that you provide, you’re going to need interactive video content.

A great training video that includes interactive opportunities that will keep your audience fully engaged requires several working parts. Not only should the video be professionally produced so that it has an appearance that makes a great impression on your audience, but it must also include working interactive elements that will keep your audience interested in the training and fully focused on learning.

Bite Sized Content that’s Easy to Digest

The first step in learning how to create a training video to engage your employees is to break down the topics that you wish to cover into bite sized content segments that are easier to digest. While video is statistically better for teaching than written formats, and viewers tend to retain significantly more from a video than they will from reading a manual or a textbook, it’s still important to break concepts down so as not to overwhelm the learner.

When you’re planning the content goals for your training video, consider the following:

• Each video should have an overall learning objective or goal.
• Complex topics might be best broken down into several videos or a series.
• The goal or overall learning objective can become the title of your video.
• A learning goal will generally have 3-5 key points that should be covered in the video.
• Learning goals should be based on your audience’s needs. 

When creating the plan for your training video, it is very important to focus on the individual needs of your employees. You should be planning the training around your team, considering their interests and skills, so that you can build content that will resonate with them.

Maximize Engagement by Minimizing Run Time

Bite sized training videos are incredibly important to engagement. If you really want your employees to fully engage in the videos that you use to train them, you should be focusing on minimizing run time. Statistics show that videos under 2 minutes maximize engagement. In fact, short training videos are perfect because employees may struggle to find time to sit down and watch a long, 20 minute video, but they’ll almost certainly be able to find the time to watch a 2 minute video. Keeping topics short and focused like this will improve the consistency of your employees engaging in training while equally improving engagement and their ability to recall what they learn. 

Plan Interactive Elements Ahead of Time

While many of the interactive elements are incorporated into the video at the final stages of post-production, it’s important to plan for these elements in the early stages of figuring out how to create a training video. By planning interactive elements early on, your video’s structure can be formatted for those interactive opportunities. Think about how your employees will be most likely to engage, and learn, and consider the following interactive elements to incorporate into your training video:

• Paths or branching which allows the viewer to choose scenarios or paths that their learning will take as they navigate the training video.
• Links and hotspots which allow the viewer to click and connect with reinforcing topics or content that is relative to the training.
• Quizzes or polls in the video which allow the viewer to answer questions and reinforce their learning as they progress through the video.
• 360° video views which allow the user to immerse themselves in the environment seen in the video by looking up, down, left and right to see the full view of the area. 

These, and other interactive features, can be incorporated into the production of your training video to create a personalized experience for your employees that will maximize their engagement. 

Use Stats, Facts, Emotion & Storytelling to Drive Concepts Home

If you don’t want your employees to get bored or otherwise lose interest in the concepts that you’re teaching with your training video, you’re going to need to use storytelling and connect with their emotions. The use of stats, facts and figures that reinforce your teaching can further increase the engagement of your employees. 

Think about your audience, and consider working in facts that tie into the emotions of your audience in order to make them most memorable. Learning how to create a training video that your employees are going to remember requires that you take steps to incorporate facts and stats that will become part of the overall narrative you’re aiming for with your storytelling. If the facts don’t tug at the emotions of your audience, the likelihood of your employees recalling the information you present to them is reduced.

Hire a Professional Film Crew

The final step in learning how to create a training video that’s going to engage your employees is to hire a professional film crew. You need a film crew not only to ensure your video content is top quality and presents your training in a way that represents your business in the best way, but also because integrating things like interactive elements into a training video requires a professional. 

Beverly Boy Productions specializes in the production of professional training videos that maximize employee engagement. To learn more about how to create a training video that’s going to engage your employees, give us a call!