Company culture and employee engagement are now considered one of the most important building blocks of company success. A positive and productive culture can reflect in all aspects of your organisation, from the talent you attract to the suppliers you work with.
With the recent and rapid shift to remote work, companies must revisit how they keep their staff motivated while maintaining a positive workplace culture.
Digital tools, such as video (especially animated video), are predominately becoming the tools of choice for companies trying to up their workplace culture game.
There are two simple reasons why; video is both entertaining and easy to understand (if done correctly). Plus, it’s said that around 65% of people are considered to be visual learners. Videos accommodate this learning style better than text and help people retain more information.
Although it’s common knowledge that video works well for many different facets of professional communication, knowing what kind of message to focus on holds many companies back from investing in it.
Here are some of the top ways to use video to improve employee engagement and establish a strong culture, no matter where in the world your team may be.
Establish and maintain company values
Any company can list a set of values that they believe in, but sometimes, it can get buried under the day to day activities and ultimately, forgotten about. To create brand values is one thing, but to incorporate them as part of your company’s DNA is what will make the biggest impact.
Creating a video that details these values and why they’re important will help your staff better remember the message. For example, if you promote accountability as one of your values, explain that being accountable helps you be more confident, value your work and learn from mistakes.
Between this comprehensive explanation and presenting it in a video format, staff will not only remember what your values are but also understand why it’s important to start building them into their daily activities.
Make your recruitment more personable
Every company looks to hire the right people, but doing this will be easier if you have a wider pool of candidates to choose from.
A study from Harvard Review showed that across all income levels, the top predictor of workplace satisfaction isn’t salary, but rather the culture and values of the organisation. Therefore, it is important to invest in ways that communicate this with potential candidates to show it’s a priority for your company.
Plus, the traditional recruitment process can be lengthy and sometimes intimidating for candidates. It can also be difficult to give them a good overall picture of what to expect and the type of culture that they will be working for.
Video can help deliver this clearly by covering topics in a friendly and entertaining way. This could include what the company values are, what the culture is like and what they can expect from their first few weeks at work if they are offered the role.
If you want to go into even more detail, you can talk about potential learning and development opportunities, introduce the founder or other key members of the team, and give examples of perks and how you invest in employee well-being.
Having this personable approach will get potential employees excited about the role and give you a clearer idea of who is better aligned with your values.
Create connections between teams
In larger companies, it’s common that colleagues don’t have the opportunity to collaborate on projects together. As a result, you can go a long time without ever knowing what a department does on a daily basis and the value they bring to the company.
Videos can introduce departments in a simple way, especially more technical teams like IT or developers. It may spark conversation and even inspire collaboration between team members who can offer a different perspective. It can also foster a more social environment, which can help people feel less disconnected from their team, especially while working remotely.
Now that we’ve seen some general examples of the type of videos you can use, let’s look at a project we did for PMG, the parent company for several ad-tech businesses within WPP’s GroupM stable.
PMG Career Pulse Portal – Animated learning & development video
We were approached to create an opening film for PMG’s learning and development portal. The online tool had been created with the facility to be re-skinned and used by several different brands across multiple territories. Our animation was to be used as the opener for all markets.
As typography and language can be brand and territory specific, this narrowed our creative opportunities. We were also mindful that any characters that featured, would need to cover a broad spectrum of diversity found within PMG.
With all this in mind, we proposed an animated learning and development video guided by the strategic thought, ‘Your Point of View’.
We suggested this route because Career Pulse is a portal that empowers staff across PMG to own their career. Each scene is designed from a different person’s point of view. Through changing the hand design, we were able to show diversity in a simple way.
The creative shows users (literally) taking the platform into their own hands; changing, interacting and taking control. The video is designed to be bright and vibrant, eye-catching and refreshingly short so that users engagement levels are high throughout.
Additional resources
Unveil the transformative power of video and creative content in HR, and how they can sculpt your company’s brand identity for the digital future here.