Employee training videos are among the most prominent training tools around. A single well-developed video can play a more prominent role in an employee development plan template than a dozen training articles or brochures. Good examples of this are orientation videos, which are not only useful in educating new employees, but are also very good tools for introducing a company’s core values to new personnel.
However, it’s also important to remember that the usefulness of training videos go beyond training. In addition to their educational value, they can also be used to improve employee performance by demonstrating to them how they are supposed to do their work. Demo videos are a good example of this, and the same may be said about most tutorial videos which are designed to guide trainees step by step on their assigned tasks. So if your company is planning to integrate employee training videos into its training program then here’s what everyone needs to know.What Are the Pros and Cons of Employee Training Videos?
If you’re going to use employee training videos to train your personnel then you should remember that they are training tools, and not training techniques. Although a training program can feature large amounts of training videos, they must not be entirely reliant upon it.
Like most training tools, training videos have certain limitations, and such limitations are inherent in their particular medium. So before a set of training videos can be used for training, their usefulness must first be put in the correct context. Pros: The value behind training videos is that they deliver information more efficiently than most other training mediums. Compared to, say articles or even lectures, videos can be designed to feature whatever information is required for training. Whether it’s live demonstrations or thorough explanations of how things work, a video can be created to show the optimum amount of information needed for training employees. This results in less time and resources spent training personnel, thus leading to higher returns over the course of the training period. Cons: Training videos can only be used for two kinds of training techniques: Classroom Lectures and Remote/Virtual Learning. Their value to other training styles and training techniques are rather dubious since they can only be used to provide direct information, and little interaction is involved. This means that you can only use videos if your training program is based around classroom or online learning strategies. If not then integrating such videos may only yield marginal results to your company in the long run.Developing and Creating Training Videos
If your employee training plan calls for the development of employee videos, but your organization does not yet have the necessary resources or experience to create, then you should look at other company’s videos to see what works and what doesn’t work. Such samples will allow your company to create templates for its videos, thus increasing their impact on employee training.
Even sites, like YouTube, offer a large selection of training videos that you can use for your training program while your company is in the process of developing its own training videos. For more sophisticated training courses, try browsing education sites, like Coursera for example, which offer free online courses. You can use the structure, style and training techniques used in such online videos to create quality employee training videos for your company.