The Status Quo
Imagine you are head of HR at an enterprise sized company and you want to inspire your employees. In 2019, you have many ways to do this especially if you are lucky enough that your company has embraced video technology. Services like Yammer and Slack enable you to talk quickly to huge numbers of people across the globe. But, what type of content would you use to inspire your employees and how do you make the biggest impact, knowing that you have a short amount of time to do so.
Your Mass Communication Options
Traditionally, a quick email would have sufficed but stood a good chance of being ignored or remaining unread once opened. Alternatively a series of group meetings at the start of the day, the “Town Hall” if you like as used by Microsoft. How can you be sure everyone will attend and if they do pay attention. You can’t because big meetings are normally seen as a pain in the arse and highly inconvenient especially to management who want staff to get on with the day.
The other alternative is to train your middle managers to educate their underlings and the obvious failing here is the “Chinese Whispers” effect. If you try and get too many people to deliver the same message, you will get multiple messages.
Example
I remember a company I used to work at and the meeting took place every Monday morning. The problem being the sales team were already on their way out the door, often leaving from home to their sales meetings. As a result, they missed almost every meeting. Why was this a problem? Almost all of the news to be conveyed came from the other staff who remained in the office all the time and who knew most of the information anyway. The news was most relevant to the sales staff on the front line and yet they only turned up to 20% of meetings.Digital Storytelling
If you have read any of my other blog posts, you will know why storytelling works as a way of engaging with staff. Finding the right story and being able to tell it well remains an art and practise is the only real way to get better at it. If you want to inspire your employees, then find the stories that matter internally. It may be an amazing piece of customer service or it could be fundraising for a local community project. Give employees something to believe in and they will follow in those footsteps.How to use video
Video is a perfect medium for digital storytelling. A unique way to tell the stories that resonate throughout your organisation. The problem with video is one of cost and practicality. Most people consider video an expensive and technical project to undertake. Today, they couldn’t be more wrong, with the advent of smartphone camera technology and the fact everyone has one to hand means anyone can capture a story and publish it. You can then share the story around the globe in seconds. Your staff can then easily consume the video on their own devices.New ways of working
At Compass Video, we believe there are new ways of working that can help you start your journey to creating internal videos communications.
In-house teams can be a big help.
- Use your own smartphone – Capture stories either as they happen or by interviewing the staff or customer just after the event. These videos can be shared immediately on to social media channels of your choice.
- Use internal resources – Put aside a cupboard or office as an interview room and buy some decent camera equipment, green screen and editing software. This way when you hear of a story you can arrange for the member of staff to be interviewed properly and the final product be of a higher quality than smartphone videos. This does cost quite a bit of money up front but the rewards are endless, especially as the quality improves through practice. This way does require a skilled editor. The best example we have seen of this was RHTLaw Taylor Wessing in Singapore who have a studio set up. If a law changes they immediately get a lawyer into the in-house studio and produce a 2-minute video explaining the difference.
- Hire the professionals – This may seem to be overkill for internal communications, but what if we could persuade you otherwise? We have a flexible way of working that means we can actually come and work inside of your corporation. Meaning, we are available instantly for feedback and new ideas. No back and forth over email, a real live editor/videographer inside your company. Compass Video only charge a day rate for this work and sometimes multiple shoots can be completed within a single day. The speed of editing is increased meaning lower costs as well. We don’t need to render a video each time we send it back for edits. They can take place in real time in front of the screen.