The interviews are done, the offer letter is signed. Now the most critical phase of an employee’s tenure begins — onboarding. The strength of your onboarding can make all the difference between an employee who struggles and one who confidently integrates into the team. Your secret weapon? Onboarding video.
Research shows a solid onboarding process isn’t just good for new hires, it’s also good for the bottom line. Quality onboarding boosts employee retention) and helps avoid the high cost of hiring new employees. GlassDoor found a structured onboarding program improves retention by as much as 82%.
One great way to introduce new hires to your company and bring them up to speed is through employee onboarding videos. More and more companies are embracing video as a way to make the onboarding process smoother and to engage new hires from day one.
In this article, we show you the how and why of onboarding videos. Get inspired by employee onboarding video examples and learn best practices for making your own.
As a bonus, we included five ready-to-edit onboarding video templates from Biteable. Use Biteable to activate your entire team with on-brand videos made in minutes.
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How to use onboarding videos
Videos can be used throughout your entire the onboarding process. Here are three ways companies employ onboarding videos.
Company introduction
You might have one employee onboarding video covering a general introduction to the company and another to explain company mission and values.
Many companies opt to involve executives in these types of new-hire orientation videos. It’s a great way to provide background and introduce new hires to upper-level management.
Organizational culture
Onboarding videos can also highlight your company culture and showcase for new hires what it’s like to work at your organization.
While company culture videos are often used during the recruitment process, they can also help new hires learn what to expect.
New hire training
Finally, we can’t forget the value onboarding video adds to the training process. Studies show 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual.
Whether you need to train employees on a very specific aspect of their new role, introduce health and safety measures, or share important company news, video helps convey that vital information in a way that’s much more digestible and easy to retain than page after page of text.
Bonus resource: The complete onboarding checklist for your new hire
Employee onboarding video examples
Regardless of your onboarding goals, video is an efficient way to standardize knowledge and values across the team. You only need to create your onboarding videos once, and new hires can proceed through those videos at their own pace, without assistance from existing employees (major timesaver!)
To show you just what you can do with video, we gathered three employee onboarding video examples. We hope they inspire you when you create your own.
Intuit
This new employee welcome message from Intuit is a good example of how the company itself is changing the employee onboarding game.
BambooHR
It goes without saying that the folks at BambooHR know something about onboarding new hires. This video does a good job of speaking to the value the company places on work-life balance.
Dunkin’ Doughnuts
This onboarding video from Dunkin’ Donuts is straightforward, but it does a good job conveying the goals every new hire should keep in mind through the onboarding process and beyond.
Onboarding video templates
Biteable has a wide range of brandable templates and scenes made with the workplace in mind. Each template is customizable and easy to edit.
Use this hand-picked set of employee onboarding video templates to engage and activate new hires through the entire onboarding process.
Welcome to the company
What it’s like to work here
Your first day
Company history
Tools training
5 tips for success
Now that you’re ready to create your own employee onboarding videos, here are a few best practices to help guide you.
1. Keep your onboarding videos short
Don’t bore employees to tears from day one. Really long videos can be a bit daunting, and people are less likely to watch them all the way through. If you can, stick to just one topic for each video, and break up longer presentations into part 1, 2, 3 etc.
Try to keep each onboarding video under 2-3 minutes long.
2. Make them engaging and interesting
Sure, sometimes the content you need to cover is a bit dry. But if you can find ways to make it more engaging, employees are more likely to enjoy the process and retain the information.
Don’t be afraid to show some personality and inject some humor into your onboarding videos. Try incorporating existing staff when possible — people respond to real people and including other employees can help build connections.
Pro tip: Use Biteable’s Record tool to easily request and capture first-person footage of employees and incorporate it seamlessly into your onboarding videos.
3. Start from the top
Don’t just dive straight into the nitty gritty. Start with the high-level topics — who we are, what we do, who we serve. Then later you can dive into the specifics of the new hire’s team and job functions.
4. Inspire them
Video is a powerful tool for inspiring and building emotional connections. Instill pride in your new hires and highlight the opportunity they have to make a difference at your company. Showing new employees the impact they can make is not just heartwarming, it can be hugely motivating.
5. Offer opportunities for further learning
Learning doesn’t stop when the onboarding process is completed. Videos are a great way to provide additional opportunities for your employees to continue learning and improving.
If your organization offers additional resources or training programs, take a moment to highlight those and let employees know where they can access them.
Make your next onboarding video with Biteable
Your secret weapon for onboarding is video. And your secret weapon for videos is Biteable.
Use Biteable to make onboarding videos and so much more. Designed with workplace communications in mind, Biteable offers hundreds of brandable templates and video scenes, plus over 1.8 million stock clips, images, and one-of-a-kind animations to make your videos truly special.
Record new video clips, add a voice over, or record your screen without ever leaving the app. Use the brand builder feature to automatically fetch your company colors from your website and seamlessly apply them to your entire video.
When you’re done, share your video with a single, trackable link on all your platforms. It’s that easy, we promise. If you can make a PowerPoint, you can make a video with Biteable.