The Impact of Interactivity and Video on Learning

If you’re hoping to find, secure, train,develop, and keep a top-tier workforce, you should be utilizing the bestavailable organizational learning tools and techniques. If you’re still relyingon old-fashioned learning practices, your prospective and current employeeswill not only lose interest—they may start jumping ship.

In today’s competitive businesslandscape, there’s an all-out war for the best available talent. And highperformers know that they have myriad opportunities at their fingertips. Infact, many desirable employees see no reason to join or stick with anorganization that isn’t going out of its way to engage them. To put it simply: Companyloyalty is becoming a thing of the past.

To fight this battle, some of the mostinnovative human resources and internal communications executives are turningto interactivity. Specifically, they’re inviting candidates and employees toactively participate in, and contribute to, their learning and communicationsmaterials (as opposed to solely relying on static, one-way mediums for sharinginformation). This can be accomplished through a variety of channels—fromgamified apps to crowdsourcing to interactive video.

An April 2016 McKinsey Quarterly article lauds the adoption of fresh thinking: “Digital advances can turbocharge efforts to fosterunderstanding and conviction, thereby helping employees to feel more involvedin change efforts and better able to play a role in shaping them.”

Interactive tools and materials drawemployees in, providing an alluring opportunity for them to feel included andtruly valued as an important part of your company’s story. Just think about it:The experience of sitting in front of a static, linear video (even aninteresting one) simply can’t match the appeal of a two-way dynamic. 

In addition to enhanced engagement,interactive video content is also more likely to sink in. In fact, we’ve foundthat users retain data more readily (and remember it for longer) when it’srelayed through interactive video versus traditional video. They’re paying moreattention to the content because it’s more engaging and relevant. It’s assimple as that.

Companies that choose interactive videoto share critical information—whether it’s the CEO’s vision for the future or anew set of compliance standards—are prioritizing absorption of content instead of focusing solely on distribution.And in the end, absorption is all that really matters. After all, don’t we allwant our candidates and employees to walk away from our learning tools feelinginformed, inspired, and energized?

A good example of interactivity inaction is this gamified recruitment video producedfor Deloitte, which was powered by Rapt Media technology. The video allows users to envision themselves inreal-life workplace scenarios, and it injects humor into the recruitmentprocess.

Interactivity has been proven to workand can be applied at every employee touchpoint—from recruitment to trainingnew hires to developing and informing current employees. It can even beleveraged to harness the knowledge of retirees. 

Beyond improved engagement and messageretention, interactivity offers another significant benefit: It provides yoursenior leadership and departmental leaders with measurable, qualitativefeedback and quantitative behavioral data from your employees. As they clickthrough the material, their choices are logged and tracked—and this data can beinvaluable to informing your future strategy.

In the coming years, I predict we’ll seemore and more of the highest-rated and most desirable workplaces finding novel waysto incorporate interactive guided experiences into their training andcommunications processes. Will you be among them?

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