6 Ways to Grab Your Employees’ Attention with Training Videos!

How do we bridge the gap between entertaining content and content that employees are most likely to learn from and take seriously? The answer is a combination of factors that increase the likelihood that your videos will grab the attention of your viewers.

‌ Straight to the 6 Ways 

How to make excellent workplace training videos?

Video is constantly in people’s lives. Whether from a streaming service, a website, or social media platform, video has quickly become a must-have media format for companies who want to stay relevant in their industries.

However, the problem with the popularity and accessibility of video is that the volume of available content, paired with the fast-paced nature of shifting trends, results in broader audiences that have grown accustomed to feeling engaged. Engagement is a great thing, but you need to take extra care to stand out if you want your content to be memorable. If your videos can’t capture attention, you’ve wasted time creating them.

While not every industry translates easily into content likely to go viral on TikTok, the content your company produces for in-house training still needs to cater to an audience of employees who now prefer that content.

Companies that offer outdated workplace training videos are doing a disservice on several fronts. Outdated materials send a message to employees that proper training consists of going through the motions to check off a box. Employees are likelier to laugh at the video’s irrelevance to the current workplace environment—concerning tone, language, equipment, and even attire—than to retain any useful knowledge they can use on the job. In turn, employees are less likely to take the company, and the more procedural parts of their job, seriously. Employees who can’t trust their employers to provide them with the tools necessary to succeed in their positions end up falling short of their potential.

1. Stay Current.

Take time to browse industry-specific social media for viral content so that when planning your training video you have a basic idea of what is already working. This does not mean you have to copy the specifics of the latest trends (which are likely to change by the time you finish production). Rather, consider this as research you can use to your advantage concerning properly gauging the overall tone of the desirable social climate in your industry.

2. Use humor.

Everyone loves to laugh. Laughing lightens the mood, releases tension, and opens people into parasympathetic “receiving mode,” increasing their ability to retain information. Incorporating clever, intentional humor into your training videos does not mean your employees will take training as a joke. Quite the opposite, employees are likelier to find the content watchable and memorable.

3. Keep it brief.

Even the densest subjects can be broken down into smaller pieces. Cap your videos at thirty minutes as an absolute maximum—the shorter, the better. Frontload your videos so that the most important information is delivered within the first five minutes of the video.

4.  Be honest.

If your video includes dialogue of any kind, keep the script natural and as close to a casual conversation as possible. Adhering too strictly to the rules of perfect grammar will lend a wooden quality to your video, which is not good. Give your actors the script, and let them deliver it in a way that honors the character they are playing. Today’s workplace hot topics (eg. sexual harassment, racism) are often nuanced, and subtle, and require microexpressions that say much more than words ever could.

5. Hire a professional.

Hiring a professional to create your videos comes with all sorts of advantages. They will come ready with the equipment, the plan, the knowledge, the team, and the answers to your questions. However, if you invest in professional production, do everything you can to tell them what you want, and then get out of the way. Being the expert in your industry does not make you the expert in creating content for that industry. Trust the people you hire.

6.  …or don’t.

On the other hand, if you choose to do it yourself, lean into the DIY charm potential of what you are doing. Use employees as actors, let them help write the scripts and use your phone to record the footage. These budget-friendly options are exactly what makes TikTok so popular. Everyone with a phone can create well-received content because it has added layers of relatability and accessibility.

Whatever you choose to do, keep in mind that engagement is your primary goal with video creation. Throughout the process, continue to ask yourself:

“If I was scrolling the Internet and came across this, would I stop and watch or swipe to something else?”