What Makes a Good Training Video?
Are your onboarding sessions proving tedious and not-so-effective in terms of getting new hires up to speed?
Have the training sessions amassed a reputation for being snooze fests?
If you’re training tactics need repetition and aren’t as efficient as you’d like, the business loses time and money. It’s time to try something new and exciting with training videos!
If you follow the simple steps to making a good training video, then you’ll have video assets that will educate your personnel and save money for your company.
But why video you may ask?
These make things a lot more memorable and allow for deeper connection and personalized attention. Video is the perfect medium for learning.
Video increases retention considerably compared to its alternatives. Research dictates the desired knowledge retention for corporate training sessions to be somewhere in the region of 30 to 60%. Video guarantees 95% information retention when done right.
This type of content is easy to gamify, which is always an effective strategy that boosts recall and hence productivity at work. The other great thing about video is its 24/7 availability.
Once you make great training videos, you can use these over and over again for every hire. Those who don’t quite have a grasp of the concepts can go over the content at their convenience. What’s more, you don’t need to divert human resources to personnel training each time. You minimize operational costs, which can be put to good use elsewhere.
Video makes for excellent training because of its interactivity, versatility, cost-effectiveness, and memorability.
Here’s how you can make good training videos that bring all these benefits to your business.
3 ways to leverage video for training purposes
Show rather than tell
Have you ever read a sentence and instantly forgot what it was all about and had to go over it a second time to jog your memory?
That is called regression and it’s a common occurrence with text. When information is in spoken or written formats, viewers are likely to only remember up to 20% of the content.
That figure improves by more than three times when the same information is portrayed through visuals. Video should not just be a fancy way of repeating verbal or written training sessions on camera. Make use of visual storytelling tools to paint a picture.
The human eye is naturally attracted to movement. So try to actualize concepts and tasks into moving pictures whenever possible. For example, simulate office scenarios you’d want to ask about in the video to make things more memorable.
You can source actors for the scenes, or opt for the services of an experienced video production company to bring your script to life and take care of all the hard work for you. Alternatively, you can go for animations, making interactive texts and shapes that’ll inject some adrenaline into your training video. Emphasize key points with text overlays and also mix it up with annotations and other graphic aids for more visual versatility.
Be sure to also show the speaker to spice up mundane voiceovers. At the very least, the speaker should appear at the end of the video and the start as he introduces the course. That builds familiarity and trust. It also adds that important human element that feels relatable.
Keep it short and to the point
Viewers are most focused on a video during the first two minutes. After that, attention spans gradually deteriorate. Pack the most important bits of information toward the beginning of the video.
Stuff like company culture, values, and other auxiliary information should come after the important parts have been delivered. The average person can concentrate on a video for between 5-10 minutes, after which, the rest of the information transitions into noise. So don’t try to do too much in a single video.
Keep the content short, precise, and relevant to the knowledge you want to put across. Avoid beating around the bush and speak concisely.
Of course, the duration of the video may also be dependent on the nature of the work. Maybe there’s a lot that needs showing that you can’t adequately capture in ten minutes.
In that case, structure your overall content and break down mountains of information into small, effective videos. You can arrange these in some order and offer the training in a timetable format over a span of days. That way, the viewer is refreshed each time and the content is always effective. New hires can always go back to concepts they’re struggling with later on.
Your training videos may be too long because you keep repeating the information. While repetition is an effective learning strategy, remember attention spans don’t last very long.
You can review and iterate ideas at the end of the video to emphasize key points.
Implement video tracking and review your video
To keep your learners accountable and the training session effective, you may need to think about video tracking. You put in a lot of work to craft the training video and want to know you’re getting your efforts’ worth. Video tracking ensures learners can’t skip through a video.
It even pauses when the viewer switches to a new browser, ensuring it only plays when someone is actually watching. It also bookmarks their completed videos, or points at which they left off a video, for easy learning management on their part.
Alternatively, you can also tailor course progression according to video completion. If you set that at 100%, for instance, then learners would need to watch the entire video before the next one becomes available.
Alternatively, a Q&A test after the training video is also a great way to encourage commitment and seriousness. If learners think of the video like reading for a test, they’re likely to be more focused on the content. So you should consider having a preliminary examination after watching the videos.
You’re through with the training video. You couldn’t be happier with the script and its outcome. Now it’s time to get an extra pair of eyes to chip in.
Third-party opinions from colleagues can help point out the shortcomings of the video and errors in typos and visual design to make your video more appealing. Preferably, don’t wait until you’ve completed the entire video to have it reviewed. Do so early on so you can know if you’re headed in the right direction or need to take an entirely different approach.
