6 Mistakes to Avoid in Your Corporate Training Videos
Corporate training videos can be a great way to instill knowledge to employees within an organization. At best, they can be engaging, fun, and highly effective.
However, there are some common mistakes that companies make that can negatively affect their training videos. When you want to avoid dull, dreary training videos, here are some of the things you’ll want to avoid!
1. Failing to Make Your Corporate Training Videos Engaging
One of the primary reasons why organizations choose to implement corporate training videos is that they want to provide a more engaging way to educate their employees. But without a clear plan for engaging the audience, training videos can quickly become tedious.
Video presents an opportunity for truly dynamic content, featuring high-quality images, powerful narration, and dynamic audio throughout. When these things are lacking, however, employees quickly tune out, which means that they may not take in important concepts.
For videos that feature explanations or interviews, change things up to make the video more engaging. Use multiple camera angles, a variety of presenters, and relevant examples.
2. Making Videos Too Long
Corporate training videos can be very effective tools for communicating procedures and other kinds of important information. However, there are some topics that just aren’t well suited to a video format. To be effective, the videos should stay relatively short.
Anything that’s going to require over 15 minutes to explain in a video is going to lose the interest of the audience before it reaches the end. More complex topics should be broken into subtopics, which can help to keep videos short and direct.
Training videos can — and should — vary in length to keep the audience’s attention.
3. Failing to Maintain a Tight Focus
If you’re preparing a corporate training video, you likely have something important that you want to tell employees within your organization. A video can represent a substantial investment of time and money, so it’s best to make sure that you’re actually focusing on the point you want to get across.
For corporate training videos, you don’t have to explain what your company does. Get to the point quickly, tell the audience what they’re going to learn and how it applies to them. Similarly, there’s no need for an extensive conclusion. Simply reiterate the key points.
Keeping corporate training videos tight gets the most important information across quickly and effectively, which will show employees that you respect and value their time.
4. Failing to Understand Your Audience
Corporate training videos should have a clear understanding of who the audience will be. After all, videos can cover a wide range of applications. They could be designed to assist in onboarding entry-level employees, teach new skills to production teams, cover important safety protocols, or roll out new management systems.
Instead of trying to target every group of employees in a single video, casting a wide net, make sure that your videos cater to a specific, defined audience.
5. Lacking a Distinct Narrative
Videos are best used to present a narrative or a story. Unless you specifically want to present a list of disconnected tips, you’ll need to carefully consider your flow of information. When you’re preparing your video, there should be a clear structure.
6. Letting Production Quality Fall By the Wayside
There are many technical aspects that go into making a quality video. While it can be tempting to create your own training videos in-house, you may not realize just how jarring and ineffective amateur videos can be. Flaws that might have seemed minor during production can quickly become distracting for employees that are trying to learn.
A truly effective video needs to have competent video and audio work. Sound shouldn’t be too quiet, too loud, or inconsistent. Videos shouldn’t be too dark, overexposed, or shaky. Finally, an effective video should be edited appropriately to create a well-planned, well-executed training experience for your staff members.
Crafting a well-made corporate training video can be tricky. That’s why these types of videos are often best left to professionals, who have the experience and the tools to get the job done right.
Corporate Training Videos that Deliver
At Foundation Digital Media, we offer top-quality video production services in Washington, D.C., and Maryland. Our team can ensure that your videos are engaging, effective, and on-brand for your company. Reach out to us today for a free consultation to see what we can do to bring your corporate training videos to life.
