Modern business is at a crossroads. If we want employees to stay connected and engaged with their jobs, we need to find new ways of improving internal communications. And fast.
Here’s an alarming stat for you: half of Millennials and Gen Zers (AKA the largest cohort of working adults) are dissatisfied in their current roles and might quit.
What’s causing this dissatisfaction?
There are many reasons, but near the top of the list is the fact that employees no longer feel connected to the bigger picture and engaged with the work they’re being asked to do.
According to the Harvard Business Review, only 40% of employees understand their company’s strategic goals. Even more alarming: employee engagement is in the dumps. Only 36% of people say they feel actively engaged with their work.
The solution to this problem is complex. It will require a lot of hard work from all directions. But one of the simplest ways to start fixing it begins and ends with improved internal communication.
We need new ways to humanize internal comms.
Internal comms can be a powerful tool for connecting and engaging employees — if it’s done right. But first, we need to figure out how to breathe new life into the stale, lifeless messages we send.
Modern tools like video, including first-person footage of real leaders in the company, humanize internal comms in a whole new way. And they aren’t as difficult to create as you might think.
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Why first-person video footage for your internal comms?
To clarify, when we say “footage,” we’re talking about video recordings of you, a colleague, or a member of your leadership team — something real you’ve captured with a camera.
Many internal communication videos are animated. There’s nothing wrong with this. In fact, animation is fun, engaging, and easy to use. But there are two main reasons why first-person footage should also be a part of your internal comms videos.
Representation and diversity
Representation matters. A lot. It’s really hard to engage with your company when you feel like an outsider. When your employees see themselves in the messages your company sends, they’ll feel more seen, heard, and appreciated.
What better way to do this than to actually include footage of them in your videos?
You could interview team members and include their responses in your videos. If an employee was involved in a major project or leadership initiative, you could ask that person to record an introductory message to go along with the announcement video.
You could even ask new hires to make short introductory videos introducing themselves to the rest of the company. There are many ways to use video footage to subtly show representation.
Connection and relationships
There’s a good chance your team works remotely some or all of the time. You might even work for a distributed company and only ever see your colleagues via Zoom.
Even if this isn’t the case, chances are your employees don’t see enough of leadership or of colleagues outside their immediate team.
First-person video footage helps build connections in an increasingly disconnected workplace. It puts faces to names and helps team members see one another as actual people, not just as addresses in their email accounts.
You can use first-person video footage to foster connections in a number of ways. For example, you could ask leadership to record an opening message to go along with your next policy rollout video.
Or, host an asynchronous ask-me-anything session where employees submit questions and the AMA host records short video responses. Stitch it all together to create an engaging AMA that reaches employees whenever and wherever they work.
How to capture footage
When most people think about capturing video footage, they think about the traditional (and time-consuming) way.
First you have to find people who want to be on camera. Then you have to coordinate your schedule with theirs and meet up for the shoot. Once you’ve captured the footage, you have to import it into your computer and edit it until it looks like a million bucks.
All of this takes time — lots of it. And since time is your most valuable resource, adding footage to your videos can become an expensive endeavor.
The good news here is twofold: first, your footage doesn’t have to be fancy. And second, there are tools available that make capturing that footage simple — even if you have no video-making experience.
Down-to-earth footage is best
Employees don’t expect first-person video footage to be fancy and overly-produced. In fact, when it comes to internal comms messages, simple is best. After all, you’re trying to create the feel of human connection. This is best achieved with simple footage and a conversational tone.
Ditch the script and ditch the fancy camera shots.
Instead, have the person film themselves using their cell phone or webcam. Tell them to speak as though they were in the room with people. And resist the urge to heavily edit the footage once it gets to you. If necessary, you can trim the footage to make it shorter, but that’s about all you need to do in terms of editing.
Use Biteable Teams tools to collect recordings
The request recording and record yourself features in Biteable Teams make capturing first-person footage simple and accessible.
Click on the record yourself feature to capture footage of yourself using your webcam or smartphone. The footage is automatically uploaded into your Biteable Teams account.
With the request recording feature, you can email a footage request to another person, even if they aren’t a Biteable Teams user. The person simply clicks on a link and their webcam or smartphone records the footage.
Your emailed request can include one or more prompts. Each prompt is recorded in a separate clip and uploaded to your Biteable Teams account.
Access all of your clips in your my recordings folder and add any of them to a video with the click of a button. Drag and drop the video clip in a frames scene for a professional, polished look. Use the suite of editing tools to easily trim footage or add on-screen text.
It’s that simple (truly). Adding this type of footage takes a big step toward improving your internal comms videos.
Internal communication is more engaging with Biteable Teams
Internal communication is better with video. And videos are easy to create with Biteable Teams.
With Biteable Teams, you can create professional-quality internal comms videos in no time, without any video-making experience. Leverage hundreds of brandable templates and ready-made video scenes in an easy-to-use platform.
Add animations, on-screen text, and a soundtrack from Biteable’s extensive libraries. And share it all with your team on your existing comms platforms using a single, trackable link.
With Biteable Teams, you’ll make your first internal communication video before they can say, “What’s our mission statement again?”