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Video for Employee Communications5 Best Practices From Companies Who Have it Mastered

1Video is the New Document

Video is everywhere. Virtually everyone carries a device with them that can capture, edit, and publish video content, making it instantly accessible to anyone around the world.

For enterprises, the promise of video as a platform for internal communications is strong, and only growing everyday. People connect with videos - According to the people we surveyed, employees remember videos better than they do other channels like newsletters and documents.

Enterprises have seen a dramatic increase in the use of video as a communication tool for everything from online training to employee research and corporate announcements. But not every company gets video. We wanted to find out why some companies have been so successful in adopting video for internal communications, while others continue to struggle. To do this, we initiated a research effort to extract best practices from those companies who have proven themselves to be masters.

This report will discuss the power of video, best practices that can help communicators successfully use video to reach employees, and how to overcome some of the obstacles that companies commonly experience as they ramp up the medium.

To see who we surveyed and understand the maturity model that was developed, check out the Appendix of this

report.

2Why Video MattersPeople are choosing to consume information via video more and more. In fact, according to Cisco, the sum of all

forms of video will exceed 84% of global consumer traffic by 2018.

Why the trend? Messages can be presented in a way that is not possible with text or static imagery alone. According to research by h.engage, a company that runs employee programs, videos had an engagement range of 40% to 69% the highest out of all the channels they studied, including newsletters and posters.

Our research participants had their own compelling thoughts about why video matters.

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Video gets the point across quickly.Critical and time sensitive information is the primary driver of our companys support for the use of video. VP Business Strategy, Citigroup

Images are the best form of communication. They greatly reduce the time to get a point across, Vice Presidennt, HSBC

Video makes messages more consistent.It is easier to get the same communication out to everyone at the same time. Training Specialist, Amerigas

We embrace it because it provides a uniformed and consistent message. HR, Amazon

Video helps people remember a message.They understand that people are used to watching TV and might retain the information better. Executive HR Manager, Coca Cola

[Video is] more interactive and real. Recruiter, Staples

Video engages younger employees more effectively. Videos allow organizations to target and communicate effectively with generation Y employees.

Sales Manager, Liberty Mutual

Video captures viewers attention better. Who doesnt enjoy watching a video?Gap, Inc, HR Manager

More people take the time to watch a video than take time to read something. Social Business Subject Matter Expert, PepsiCo

Compliance Training

CEO / Executive Talks / Town Hall Meetings

HR Policy Training

Product Training/Overview

Sales Enablement / Field Staff Training

Marketing Training / Overview

IT Training / overview

Financial overview

Top Uses of Video for Internal Communications

Encourage employees to create their own videos.60% of leading companies encourage their employees and departments to create and publish their own video content. These companies have worked through concerns around consistency and production quality to discover that the end of the day, video is such an effective format for communicating ideas that the benefits of democratizing video within their organizations outweigh the risks.

Create a culture that values video content.80% of the companies who are most advanced with their use of video have a culture that embraces video. At these companies, employees regard video as a natural and accepted way to communicate, supported by management as well as cultural norms.

Create fun, short videos even if it lacks polish.In todays society, people only pay attention in short bursts. But they still want to be engaged. One way to engage them is with fun videos. Our survey found that mature companies would rather make fun videos than serious ones.

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As part of our survey, we developed a maturity curve for the use and consumption of video within an enterprise. The most mature organizations were most likely to employ the following 5 best practices around video:

Use videos for many different types of internal communication. The most mature companies use video for an average of 7.9 different types of internal communication, compared with the least mature who use video for less than three purposes. That means the most advanced companies have found almost three times as many ways to use video to communicate with their employees!

Make it easy to organize and find The most advanced companies have great processes and technologies in place for tagging video and for searching through those tags. Between 65% to 80% of companies with the most mature video ecosystems make it easy for their employees to find the video content they need.

5 Best Practices for Using Video in Internal Communication

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Most Mature

Moderate Maturity

Below AverageMaturity

Little to no maturity

Above AverageMaturity

100%90%80%70%60%50%40%30%20%10%

Most Mature

Above Average

Maturity

Moderate Maturity

Below AverageMaturity

Little to no maturity

0%

Unique types of video used in Internal Communications

Percentage who encourage video creation

Overcoming Obstacles to Better Video

Many companies still struggle with the adoption of video for internal communication. As part of our research, we asked them why. The five most common barriers are:

Barrier

Cost and Time

Video creation costs can be slashed by empowering individuals to create videos with the equipment they carry with them. Look for video management & distri-bution solutions that eliminate time consuming and costly manual tagging and transcription to ensure videos can be searched for and discovered not just by their title but also by the rich audio text within the video.

Look for video management and distribution solutions that integrate into your existing content management systems and assume their methodology for access and authentication. Preventing your video from escaping the corporate walls is critical to preserving sensitive information. Some solutions provide short-lived URLs that prevent unauthorized video sharing.

Cultivate a video-based culture by starting small pick one department or region to be the test unit for rolling out more aggressive use of video, and promote their success to other groups to gain alignment and traction. Having a video management and distribution platform that delivers deep analytics on video discovery, usage, and consumption gives you data to convince the skeptics.

A SaaS model for video management and delivery solutions provides a highly attractive Total Cost of Ownership while providing the reliability and flexibility traditional software models offer. With SaaS, you always run the most current version of the application, and there is never a need to worry about hardware, bandwidth, operating systems, etc. These solutions can often integrate with your existing infrastructure.

The learning curve for creating and distributing video has dropped dramatically with decent video recording capabilities on smartphones and distribution via YouTube. As for managing video-related infrastructure, as mentioned above, SaaS greatly eliminates the requirements & skills needed to manage and distribute video broadly across the organization.

Security

Conservative Culture

Cost for System Upgrades

Requires Technical Knowhow

Tips for Achieving Better Video

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How This Survey Was ConductedTo understand what those companies who have mastered video as a medium for employee communications are doing really well, we reached out hundreds of people at brand name companies and asked them to complete a simple survey.

The survey focused on two key areas:

Then, by correlating the behaviors of companies with their assessed level of maturity, we identified a set of best practices that set the video power-users apart from their peers.

Who We Surveyed: By the numbers

90 Participants 67 Companies 8 Industries6 Key Job Functions 29 Questions

Key Roles

Corporate Training

Human Resources

Marketing

Sales

Operations

Information Technology

Key Industries

Financial Services

Retail

Consumer Products

Healthcare

Manufacturing

Business Services

Pharmaceutical / Biotech

Energy and Mining

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Appendix

How mature is the use of video at their company?To assess this we asked questions about the types of videos being created, the process for creating videos, and the ease of access to content that was produced. We used this information to generate a maturity score for each respondent.

What are the practices, attitudes and resources in place to support video?The second portion of the survey asked about every-thing from the cultural support for creating video, to the methods available for people to create videos, to the training and infrastructure available.

ConclusionUsing video helps employees absorb and remember key messages. A strong video culture is one that both encourages video creation but also to reduces the actual and perceived costs of video production. Video allows organization to share a very consistent message across a very large and geographically diverse organization.

Once a culture is established for creating video, the ability to quickly find relevant information is vital to creating widespread adoption of video within an organization. Having a centralized, searchable video database allows employees to access the information companies have spent valuable resources to create.

6About Ramp - We Make Video Valuable

Ramp has developed the next generation of search & video experiences to make video more valuable. Using Ramp, clients are able to fully leverage the value of all of their video content by driving increased discovery across search and social sites, enhancing user engagement througdynamic search and publishing solutions across web, mobile, and connected devices, and maximizing revenue through sophisticated advertising capabilities.

For more information about how Ramp can help your company use video in internal communications, with metadata and tags to enable proper discovery, please visit our website at http://www.ramp.com or call us at +1 857 202 3500. Our team would be happy to answer your questions and help your company achieve better internal communications.

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