With so many employees working remotely, companies are faced with a challenge like never before. No longer can we solely rely on water cooler moments and the sense of the office community to lift up our process heavy onboarding programs. Some starters don’t even get to see the office on their first day! This sense of culture, community and belonging needs to translate into digital spaces and there is no better way to convey company life and values to your new starters than using video storytelling.
What are employee onboarding videos?
Before we dive into the examples it’s worth defining what we mean by employee onboarding videos. The goal of any onboarding process is to welcome new hires, demonstrate the company culture and help them feel a sense of belonging so they become happy, productive team members in as little time as possible. All in a way that will make a great first impression and make sure they stick around.
Many organizations create one onboarding video. This might include elements such as a general introduction to the company, company mission and values, organizational structure and much more. Others might mix it up and create a series of onboarding videos covering those topics. There is no one way fits all approach but one common practice is to involve executives in new-hire orientation videos. This is a great way to introduce new employees and hires to senior management, as well as provide useful background information in an approachable way.
Easy right? Well, not so much it seems. In fact, 88% of organizations don’t onboard well and 58% of organizations say their onboarding program is focused on processes and paperwork. And, yet a strong onboarding process improves new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%.
This inability to deliver an outstanding onboarding experience, despite the very obvious impact on productivity and retention, has only become more pronounced now that hybrid working is the norm in many organizations. With teams working apart, or flexibly, how are new employees getting access to leaders, different departments or mentors who can help them? And, how are you making sure new starters have a sense of purpose from Day 1? Trust, connection and belonging need to be at the forefront of the onboarding journey to achieve this.
This is where employee-generated video stories come in as the blueprint for effective onboarding experiences. Employee onboarding videos are the best way to show your new hire what their new company stands for and get them excited about their new job. Video allows you to lead with the culture of the organization in a format that is engaging and relatable. Optimizing rather than dismantling this initial excitement a new hire has in those first few weeks.
And, who better to tell the company story than your employees? Those organizations that want to reduce the time to competence for new hires understand the power of employee storytelling.
“Human beings are storytellers. Our minds are finely tuned to the emotional significance of events – so much so that making words into a story can improve retention seven-fold.”
Nick Shackleton-Jones – Why the best way to engage learners is with storytelling, TrainingZone, 2021
And, companies are taking notice. According to the latest Fosway Group research, over 50% of teams are planning to extend their digital learning resources by upskilling employees. This new creator economy has the power to provide an outstanding onboarding experience while saving time and costs for organizations.
The equation is simple: video + employee storytelling = more effective onboarding experiences. The trick is in how to deliver on this equation. The following best onboarding videos are a great start to understanding what this means in practice.
Best 5 Employee Onboarding Video Examples
1. Welcome to Together Co
Together Co is a Brighton-based loneliness charity and one of StoryTagger’s customers. During the pandemic, the surge in demand for their services meant they needed to onboard new volunteers at pace and at scale. By using StoryTagger to create a series of onboarding videos, they managed to halve training time whilst tripling the number of additional support-ready volunteers saving the charity both time and money.
As part of their induction programme, Together Co created 12 targeted onboarding video resources covering all essential aspects of induction and support in less than 48 hours. One of these resources was a welcome video from the senior leadership team – one of the most effective ways to welcome new hires. This is because it allows the new employee to get a feel of the company from those who develop the vision and ultimately the driver of the company culture.
In this video, Jo Crease, the CEO of Together Co, tells the story of the charity in a genuine, inspiring and engaging way. She provides the company history, its purpose and how they help combat loneliness but in a way that connects to the new hire. By reflecting on why people volunteer, Jo builds trust and an instant relationship, reminding the hire why they themselves are joining Together Co. This is then connected to the purpose of the charity and drives the volunteer to feel part of the culture of the organization from the get go.
This video shows that companies do not need a big budget to create impactful storytelling. A self-recorded video is just as, if not more, effective as those filmed with a video crew. In fact, self-recorded videos are up to 2x more effective at capturing their viewer’s attention. The trick is making sure your video creator feels confident in recording the video and has the support needed to do a great job. Just like Jo. Using a storytelling narrative and in-app prompts, StoryTagger helped translate her ‘in-head’ knowledge and expertise into a short, insightful and confident video delivering value while keeping costs down.
For more employee onboarding video examples, Together Co have published their full suite of induction resources on YouTube.
2. Annie’s
Annie’s is a company that produces organic foods with a mission to cultivate a healthier, happier world. Their company culture can be felt in everything they do, from website copy to sourcing of produce.
Hearing personal stories from the CEO, why they’ve founded a company and their vision of the future, helps create real impact and brings new starts along their personal journeys. And, by enriching these stories further with how other employees are supporting the leadership vision and purpose, Annie’s has shown a sense of the company culture.
Watch Annie’s onboarding video
Something to consider here, Annie’s video was filmed by a professional crew and likely came with a hefty price tag. Before you jump into paying a video production company, explore other options.
The key here is to empower your employees and CEO to reflect on their experiences. To tell their story. This is where Storytagger comes in. Developing a narrative from scratch can be hard, particularly when done in front of a camera. Storytagger is designed to support reflective practice and build the skills needed to create powerful video content. Plus, it comes with fully customizable templates that seamlessly fit into your onboarding program. For this particular video, we would recommend the “What our values mean to me” template.
Free Guide
Storytelling at work
3. Bamboo HR.
It is not a surprise that Bamboo HR is on this list. As an HR platform, they have their onboarding videos nailed down.
Work-life balance in particular has come to the forefront recently with so many employees working remotely and the blurring of the boundaries between work and home environments. Burnout is still high on the agenda with discussion in Glassdoor reviews on the topic increasing 128% since April 2021.
Bamboo HR shows the story of how their employees balance high productivity with wellbeing. The video sends a powerful message for a new hire, this idea that your private self is an important part of nurturing your professional self. It creates this feeling that you do not need to lose who you are when working for Bamboo HR. In fact, this is considered an integral part of the company.
Many of our customers use Storytagger to guide and support their employees to create videos telling the story of how they are achieving work-life balance and looking after their wellbeing. And, they do so at scale. Storytagger enables you and your team to quickly develop repeatable and scalable workflows to curate wellbeing video content to share through your current platforms. No more time-consuming edits or re-records! It’s the perfect way to easily get everyone involved in building a culture where well-being is at the forefront of the agenda.
To make this process even easier, there are a few templates to choose from but as many employees are working remotely the one to check out first is the “Remote working” stories.
4. Intuit
Intuit is a global fintech company that specialises in financial software. Hearing from their CEO might not be something that happens often as the company has thousands of employees. This is why bringing in this personal message from the CEO works even better.
More importantly, rather than just being a simple welcome, the CEO here tells the story of his personal development in the company and outlines the career development plans open to the new hire. The idea here is to inspire employees from day one and give them a path to the future.
Supporting the growth of your employees is one of the most important elements new hires look for when onboarding. And, you don’t need long tiresome guides to explain this to them. The best way to tell new employees that their career will grow and prosper in your organization is by showing them stories of their peers who have done that already.
And developing a plan and workflow for capturing career stories regularly can help you attract new talent as well. There’s tough competition for new employees with many companies struggling to hire, particularly when it comes to early-career employees.
When employees tell their own stories on video they are authentic, powerful and connect with the next generation. Storytagger enables you to easily promote specific early careers programme support, as well as celebrate career opportunities, development and progression. And, there is a customizable template to kick things off even quicker. For this particular goal, we recommend the ‘My career story’ template in StoryTagger.
Free guide: Why you need an intentional strategy for curating employee-generated content.
5. Grubhub
Using video to show the new starter the ropes is a no brainer. And, the food delivery service Grubhub does it very well.
In this onboarding video example, their subject matter experts share their top tips and tricks. Who better to learn from than from the people who do the job themselves!
The new hire is taken on a delivery journey with one of the drivers and talked through the experience while hearing some of the DOs and DONTs. Instead of presenting the new starter with a long onboarding manual and turning the learning into a checklist exercise, Grubhub uses their drivers to drive (pun intended!) the message home in a much more effective and engaging way.
Engaging your subject matter experts and empowering them to share their stories is one of the best ways to train new hires. At least 70% of all training in your company comes from your own people. And, it is the job of learning and development teams to ‘unlock’ this valuable tacit knowledge. Easy when you have the right tools. Storytagger enables your team to automate video interviews with subject experts. No need for real-time interviews. Use a ready-made template to create story frameworks, customise the questions to align with your goals and brand language and simply invite all your experts to share their stories asynchronously. For this particular campaign, our “Share your subject matter expertise” template would work well.
And for more advice on how to engage your subject matter experts, check out our free guide: transform experts into inspiring content creators.
Final thoughts
Retention and productivity have never been higher on the agenda than today. Competition for new talent is fierce and if you manage to hire the best of the best you need to work hard to retain them.
Many companies are dealing with the great resignation, partly brought on by a new less known anomaly: Shift Shock. Shift Shock, in a nutshell, is starting a new job and realizing that things are not as they were advertised. And, this new generation is not shy to leave a job they hate. According to Muse 2022 research, 80% think it’s acceptable to leave a new job before six months if it doesn’t live up to your expectations. And, 41% said they’d give a new job only 2-6 months before quitting.
This is why having an outstanding onboarding experience is critical. Those first few weeks can convince the new employee you are a company worth working for. Or, they can motivate them to revisit the recruitment sites and look for other opportunities, costing you time and money. It’s also important to remember new starters may not have existing industry experience and have a limited understanding of roles, career pathways, culture or what an organisation does. These onboarding video examples show how your team can start rethinking the way they deliver genuinely relevant and helpful onboarding experiences while creating emotional connections.
And, you don’t need big budgets and a professional film crew. The equation is simple: video + employee storytelling = more effective onboarding experiences. StoryTagger helps everyone discover and share the highest quality video stories to guidance you set. Plus, you can easily curate onboarding videos at scale with customizable templates and workflows that fit your organizational goals.
Take Storytagger for a test drive and start making effective onboarding videos at a fraction of the cost.
FAQ
Why is onboarding important for new employees?
Onboarding is important for new employees because it helps them adjust and adapt to their role and company. The onboarding process should enable the new hire to understand the business goals, culture and philosophies. This engages employees, creating an atmosphere where employees feel committed to the company’s success. Making the new hire feel part of the team and invested in their role ensures higher retention rates and employee productivity.
What is the purpose of employee onboarding?
The purpose of employee onboarding is to integrate your new hire within the company culture. While providing them with the tools, training and information required to be successful in their new job.
What should be in an onboarding video?
Employee onboarding videos allow you to lead with the culture of the organisation in a format that is engaging and relatable. You often see the following in onboarding videos:
- Welcoming the new hire
- Company history & work culture
- Roles & responsibilities
- Policies and procedures
- Tools & training required
- Top tips & tricks shared by co-workers
Free guide
Storytelling at work
Why you need an intentional strategy for curating employee-generated content. Download it today.
