Using Video for Critical Organizational Communication (Why HR Should Use Video)

Sending a mass email to your staff or business partners for critical communications can seem cold and distant, especially if the context of the message is less than desirable or operational in nature. It can also be highly ineffective, as your employees or channel partners will probably only scan the text if the message doesn’t directly impact their individual job or business relationship with your organization. The bigger and more distributed the company or channel ecosystem, and the longer the message, the more likely it is that people will miss key points or simply decide not to read it at all.

If you think your messages are ineffective because your new policies or marketing programs aren’t being adopted, or you’re tired of having your memos and announcements ignored or misinterpreted, it may be time to test a new messaging tactic, video. Using video as the medium to deliver critical announcements has proven to be a powerful communication tool for both internal and partner communications. Most people prefer video content when it comes to digesting business-related information digitally. With this type of content, you can be confident that your staff, employees, and channel partners will be more inclined to open your email and retain the message you’re trying to deliver.

Video Can Improve Comprehension, Retention, and Engagement

Emailed memos and company updates are easy for your employees and partners to forget or skim, and most of us are guilty of doing it ourselves in our careers. Video, on the other hand, can be engaging, interactive, and memorable. Unless you have an in-house marketing communications team with video production capabilities, working with a professional production company is the best way to ensure your message looks and sounds good, is absorbed, and achieves its desired response. Depending on whom you’re communicating with, poor-quality video can have negative effects on your brand’s perception.

On the other hand, an email with a video embedded in it provides a break from email monotony. If you or a member of your management team is in the video, say your CEO or the person responsible for the announcement, it will create a level of humanization that is simply unachievable using text email on its own. This holds especially true for delivering critical email communications to remote employees or channel partners who already feel like they’re in the dark because they don’t have the convenience of being exposed to headquarters chatter or experiencing the office atmosphere firsthand.

It’s important to appear genuine when using video to deliver critical messages. Doing so can go a long way when it comes to establishing trust with viewers, keeping them engaged and helping them retain the information you’re trying to communicate. In brief, well-written and professionally produced messages can be a very effective tool for quickly and accurately communicating critical information to members of your organization and channel ecosystem. With today’s video hosting providers, you can even measure who’s viewed your content and for how long they actually watched it, allowing you to truly understand the impact of your message.

Video Can Benefit Your Company Beyond Its Marketing Organization

When it comes to video, we like to tell our clients to think of video as a communication medium as opposed to just a tactical way of delivering a marketing message. To really think about the key communication challenges they’re experiencing from an enablement, operational, and support perspective. To think about how the organization communicates internally across all departments and externally with partners, vendors, and other stakeholders.  With video content, there’s a good chance that you can overcome many of the organizational communication challenges you’re currently experiencing, such as new employee, vendor and channel partner on-boarding, sales and technical training, and customer and partner technical support. To learn more we encourage you to visit the Video Strategy Services section of our website.

In Summary

You can just as easily extend all of the benefits that video provides external public-facing communication to your internal and operational communication efforts. Using well-prepared and visually appealing video content for critical organizational communication will help ensure that your messages aren’t being ignored and can help you accelerate the effectiveness of your digitally delivered organizational communication to employees, end-users, channel partners, vendors, and suppliers.

About the Authors

Located in Denver, Colorado, Telideo is a full-service video production and video marketing company that helps businesses create high-quality and engaging video content. To learn more about our company and its video production services and to see examples of our work, please visit our website at www.telideo.com.