Four Ways You Can Use Video to Support Workplace Learning

Raise your hand if yourorganization is doing a great job using video to support learning andperformance. Oh, come on! It’s 2016! Why doesn’t everyone have their hands up?

Video isn’t new—far from it. Putaside the fact that YouTubehas been around for more than a decade and currently has over a billion usersuploading 300 hours of new video everyminute. Video has been part of learning for at least half a century.Remember that substitute teacher at school who always rolled out the video cartrather than teaching? In the workplace, a great example of the early use ofvideo to support learning is Hired!, a 1941 salestraining and motivation film by Chevrolet (Figure 1). This video not onlyoffers an interesting look at training practices from 70 years ago, but it’salso a reminder that video has been applied to supporting performance for almostas long as the medium itself has been available.

Figure 1: Video (or its predecessor, film) has been part oflearning and development for decades

Today, we live in a world ofdemocratized video. What once required hired professionals, specialized work,and thousands of dollars can now be accomplished by self-taught amateurs in afew hours with just the tools in their pockets. There’s a lot of conversationtaking place within L&D about producing better videos—everything from toolsto duration to interactivity. It’s all great dialogue—as long as the discussionisn’t limited to just the idea of the “training video,” potentially ignoringthe larger flexibility of the medium. Based on the visibility of workplacelearning and the fact that L&D is often a team that welcomes new ideas, anyineffective use of video may not just waste viewers’ time and fail to impactperformance, but it could also set a poor precedent for the use of video acrossthe enterprise.

Before introducing video as partof your learning strategy, it’s important to consider the multitude of ways youcan use it to communicate new ideas. Here are four ideas for how you can usevideo to support workplace learning and performance—along with a few examplesfrom my own past experience.

1. To instruct

Let’s start with the familiar“training video.” In this case, the objective is to help the viewer acquireknowledge by telling them how to dosomething—the right way. Instructional videos can be used in a variety of waysand are particularly effective with novices and/or employees who requireadditional structure as part of their learning experience. This could bethrough straightforward delivery of practical tips, screen-captured processsteps, or the use of scenarios.

For example, the screenshot inFigure 2 is from Safe Lifting—Slips,Trips and Falls, a training video produced by the professional servicesteam at Axonify.This two-minute-37-second video is used within several organizations as part ofdaily microlearning sessions to highlight potential safety hazards andreinforce related safety behaviors for employees in logistics and distributionroles.

Figure 2: Video is part of microlearning sessions in manyorganizations

2. To share knowledge

Video is an incredibly powerfultool for helping employees share their personal knowledge with the entireorganization in an informal way. Sure, you could ask people to write thingsdown and share stories via intranets or enterprise social networks, but manypeople have difficulty writing. Building an article you think is worth sharingcan take a lot of time. Plus, there are plenty of people in most organizations whojust can’t write very well. Video is an increasingly familiar way for people toshare their insights and ideas. It can be a lot simpler and quicker to puttogether, as well as being considerably more contextual than the written word.Wouldn’t you rather tell someone how you do what you do versus writing it alldown?

The L&D team at Kaplanapplied this idea with a concept called “Video Booth.” Every week, employeeswere invited to answer a series of short questions on a specific topic onvideo. Each question could be answered in less than two minutes and focused on how the employees performed a task. Forexample, admissions employees shared tactics they used to support new studentsduring their first few weeks of classes. Employees’ straight-to-camera answerswere uploaded unedited as a playlist in the organization’s wiki and providedtheir peers with 15 to 20 different ideas for solving a single problem. TheL&D team quickly amassed a catalog of content that could be shared in avariety of ways, including embedding within formal training sessions. Thisconcept also helped to validate the organization’s larger knowledge-sharingstrategy, including the desire to expand this approach and enable employees torecord and upload their own videos from their desks.

3. To immerse

Video is a powerful storytellingmedium. It adds emotional context and a feeling of immersion that the writtenword often cannot convey as effectively. This is a big reason that theworldwide global box office pulled in an all-time record $38 billion in 2015. You canleverage this real-world familiarity with video-based storytelling as a way toconnect with your employees and increase engagement during learningexperiences.

Cast members at the Walt DisneyWorld Resort are immersed in story at all times as part of their roles inretail, food and beverage, attraction operations, etc. Their roles oftenrequire long hours and are physically demanding. At the same time, expectationsfor safety, efficiency, and service quality are off the charts. This presenteda unique challenge when trying to design instructor-led learning experiencesthat cast members would find engaging and useful. That’s why their L&D teamturned to video.

To increase the sense ofimmersion and personalization for facilitated classes on guest-servicestandards, the team leveraged a narrative-based approach. The traditionalcourse structure was augmented with a story arc in which participants wereasked to help on-screen characters achieve certain goals. For example, a new villainwas set loose in Epcot, and he could only be defeated by the use of Disney’s guest-servicestandards. Characters that appeared through pre-produced videos embedded inPowerPoint broke the fourth wall to talk directly to participants—a popularDisney attraction trick. The team even went so far as to require facilitatorsto dress in subtle costuming to enhance the 4-D experience. Sound a bit cheesy?Sure. Did it work? Yes! Not only werecast members noticeably more engaged, they reported that the experience feltlike it was built specifically for them, despite the fact that classes withsimilar content were being delivered across the company. Video helped L&Dtransform what could have been your average customer-service training sessioninto a highly themed, interactive adventure, and it took only two weeks toproduce each two-hour program.

4. To start a conversation

Using video isn’t just aboutproduction. Today, anyone carrying a smartphone can easily live-stream videousing a variety of free apps, such as Google Hangouts or Periscope. We knowlearning is inherently social, so why don’t we use video more often to bringpeople together to share their ideas and opinions? Despite the lack of formaltraining structure, shared conversation is a great opportunity for learning.

The Kaplan L&D team waslooking for ways to overcome functional silos and help employees share not justknowledge but also context across departments. Once again, they turned tovideo—live video. They used AdobeConnect along with some nifty production tricks to broadcast a live talk showfeaturing panelists from across the organization discussing a topic of commoninterest. Each “webisode” lasted 15 minutes, and a recording of it wasavailable for later sharing on the organization’s wiki. This approach providedan opportunity for employees who typically didn’t interact to collaborate andshare their function-specific insights into common workplace challenges. Andthis was just the beginning, as conversation continued via social toolsattached to the recording.

What’s your next step?

Video isn’t a silver-bulletcatch-all solution by any means, but it can be an effective part of youroverall learning and performance ecosystem. Now that technology is no longer areal barrier to entry (even Office 365 and Google Drive can host video), everyone cantake advantage of the medium and get as creative as they allow themselves tobe. And thanks to changes in viewer expectations—fostered by user-generatedcontent sites like YouTube—you need only basic skills to make a useful,well-received video.

If you haven’t started usingvideo as part of your L&D role, I hope my examples have given you a fewideas to play with. Actually, feel free to steal all these concepts if you’dlike, as long as you let me know how they work for you. And, if you’ll beattending The eLearning Guild’s FocusOn Learning Conference & Expo in June, check out my session Just Because You Can Make a Video Doesn’t Mean You Should!,where we’ll further explore potential applications of video to supportworkplace learning.

References

Chevrolet Division of General Motors Co. Hired! (film). 1941.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAB_5z5lPDM

Child, Ben. “Global boxoffice hit all-time high of $38bn in 2015.” TheGuardian. 4 January 2016.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/04/global-box-office-hits-all-time-high-in-2015