It’s smart for companies to be worried about staff training videos and how to tackle them correctly.  There are so many choices.  Quite frequently, training videos are produced that just don’t get used.  Now, working out what components to include in your training video just got easier.

Melbourne, Australia (August 26, 2010) – Digicast Productions, a training video production house, today released the “Best Practice Guide: How to Produce Staff Training Videos that get Results”.   Developing the right training video for your company isn’t easy.   This guide is a useful resource for anyone involved in the challenging and complex task of producing a company training video that performs.
In this 4 page guide, discover:

• The key components required for the best induction training program
• The causes of a poor performing training video
• Issues to avoid during the production of a training video

This guide is suitable for anyone wishing to produce a company training video that will be used for many years.  It is a companion guide for the Training Video Buyer’s Kit.

For a complete copy of the kit, visit http://info.digicast.com.au/best-practice-guide-to-training-videos

About Digicast Productions

Established in 1991, Digicast is an Australian vendor of customised safety and induction training videos.  Thousands of people each year worldwide are trained with Digicast training videos. For more information, visit Digicast at www.digicast.com.au or The Workplace Improver blog for training tips.

Contact Marie-Claire Ross

Digicast Productions
+ 61 3 9696-4400
mc@digicast.com.au

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It’s smart for companies to be worried about staff and customer training videos and how to tackle them correctly.  There are so many choices.  Quite frequently, training videos are produced that just don’t get watched.  Now making the right decision has just got easier.

Melbourne, Australia (August 11, 2010) – Digicast Productions, a training video production house, today released the “Training Video Buyer’s Kit”.   Developing the right training video for your company isn’t easy.  Nor is choosing the right company to help you.  This kit is a useful resource for anyone involved in the challenging and complex task of deciding upon producing a staff or customer training video and then how to go about it.

Using a four step process the buyer kit includes:

• A list of questions to decide whether or not a training video is right for an organisation.

• The critical questions to determine what the training video needs to achieve, in order to write the brief and how to best manage the project internally.
• A valuable checklist to evaluate the suitability of a video production house.
• An additional checklist to measure the effectiveness of training videos already produced by production houses.

For a complete copy of the kit, visit http://info.digicast.com.au/things-you-need-to-know-before-buying-a-customised-training-video
About Digicast Productions

Established in 1991, Digicast is an Australian vendor of customised safety and induction training videos. Thousands of people each year worldwide are trained with Digicast training videos. For more information, visit Digicast at www.digicast.com.au or The Workplace Improver blog for training tips, www.digicast.com.au/blog.

Contact Marie-Claire Ross

Digicast Productions
+ 61 3 9696-4400
mc@digicast.com.au

###

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1. Announcing New White Paper: Optimising Induction Training: Reduce Costs, Improve Quality and Talent Retention Getting Training Messages to stick can be Tricky. This New...
2. 7 Tips to Improve Induction Training Materials 1. Use more Visuals - 83% of human learning occurs...
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1. Use more Visuals - 83% of human learning occurs visually.  Use lots of photos, videos, diagrams and colour to present training information.  Avoid relying heavily on text based training.  After all, we only recall 10% of what we read compared to 50% for what we both see and hear.

2. Tell Stories – During training, tell stories of exemplary staff behaviour that typify the type of action you want staff to do.  Stories help people make emotional connections.

3. Lead by Values – Let staff/contractors know what your values are.   Using values, empowers workers to make decisions based on company values.  Difficult for staff to make the right decisions if they only have rules to follow.

4. Positivise it – Remove negative language.  Tell people how you want them to behave, rather than telling them what you don’t want.  Remove words such as ‘no’, ‘can’t and ‘don’t’.

5. Involve senior management - Senior management play an integral leadership role in establishing culture.  Effective leadership whether it be concerning safety, a new sales method or business structure must be led from the top.  They must be involved in the induction process.

6. Reduce complication - Get rid of long sentences, jargon and big words in training materials.  Keep it short and tweet.

7. Ask more why questions - Teach people why they need to do something, so they can always figure out the how.  Otherwise, company processes keep getting perpetuated without people ever questioning why they do something.

Think you need help to improve your company induction training materials?  Then, go to the seminar to find out more information.

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Do new staff feel undervalued in your company?

When it comes to induction training, common complaints are that it is ‘boring’ and ‘overwhelming’.

Yet, inductions also represent the only first impression that you ever get with a new employee.  Inductions are a great opportunity to align new starters with your company values and processes.

In this interesting seminar, you will learn:

• Five induction trends that could send you out of business
• The benefits of getting your induction process right
• Seven tips to improve your induction process
• How your company can be the industry leader

The details are:

Monday 26 July 2.30 – 4.30pm at Protector Allsafe 41 Greens Rd Dandenong

The cost is free for members; $5 for non-members.

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Truck driver training

Recently, I was speaking to a client about what baseline figures we needed to measure before and after his company induction training video gets released.

What I found interesting was that even though there are some key figures we can measure (eg: trends in customer complaints and accidents), as far as he was concerned the video was mainly a holistic training device to help in a number of key areas that were immeasurable.

In this company, they have 450 truck drivers who do a vitally important job.  Yet, other staff members in different departments and even the truck drivers themselves, do not realise how important this role is to the company success.

The training video has been written to let truck drivers realise how important their responsibilities are and the broader impact on the company itself.  This is part of the all-important introduction which clearly lets drivers know what the company does, who they serve, how their job role impacts the company, the importance of safety and their job responsibilities.

The induction video is a way of connecting emotionally to these truck drivers so they realise the importance of their ambassador role for the organisation while also ensuring the fresh and timely delivery of their milk products.  It also includes procedural tasks.

Interestingly, my client made the remark that the training video was really a different communication medium to ‘put life’  into their induction document.  And while it is important to train on procedures, it was more important to align the truck drivers with the broader perspective of their job and the company vision and values.

What pleases me, is that this organisation understands that training is not just about teaching the right processes, it is also about getting staff aligned with what the company does and why, as well as the importance of jobs.  It’s not just about delivering a product on time, it’s also about the being an important visible representative of the company.  After all, a truck driver that is discourteous reflects badly on the company reputation.  By letting staff know the greater meaning and importance of the job, the more they will see purpose in what they do which will result in better performance, but also better job satisfaction.

After all, a happy team is a productive team.

What can you do to your training materials to provide information about the importance of the job role and its relevance to the broader perspective to your company?

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I love a good coffee.  And my world recently changed when we bought a coffee machine.  Well, two actually.  One for home, one for the office.

We bough a cheapie Sunbeam machine for home and an expensive automated Jura coffee machine for the office.

Both machines are great.  In fact, I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t need to go out to cafes all the time to get a good coffee.

Jura promotes itself as a premium brand using full page ads in glossy magazines featuring Roger Federer (and I thought print advertising never got me).  And that did it for me.  A quick chat to associates also confirmed that it will last a long time and that it’s easy to use.  It’s a beautiful looking machine and comes with attractive manuals and cleaning devices.

But then it let itself down by providing me with a training DVD that had black texta writing scrawled across it and even a crack.

Naturally, I wasn’t expecting the contents of the DVD to be very professional.  Surprisingly, the training video was put together professionally and featured a perky female voiceover and broadcast quality footage.

But this is where the accolades stop…

One day my barista left me all alone with the new Jura machine.  This just happened to be the day it let me know it wanted to be cleaned.  I’m not technically inclined, so I decided to practise what I preach and go straight to the training video rather than fumble through a manual.

So I was rather frustrated to discover that upon viewing the information about care and maintenance I was dutifully informed by the narrator to visit page three of the manual which was displayed to me with a “Sale of the Century” type hand flourish.

Shocked, I listened on only to find more hand gesture references to other pages in the manual.

At this point, I wanted to make my own hand gesture.

And then when I was actually shown how to use the machine, the language was so stilted and robotic that it was obviously lifted straight from the manual.

Now I don’t want to point out something incredibly obvious here, but there really is little value in producing a training video that refers customers back to the training manual.  I just can’t understand how anyone thought this was a good idea.

And then of course, everyone knows that we all dislike the cold, distant language of a technical manual.  But to do it in training video is pretty unforgivable in my book (or manual as the case maybe).

Producing stilted, un-engaging training videos for a workforce will always be a waste of time and money, but to do this with customer training is incredibly damaging to your brand.  I might still like the Jura for the coffee it produces, but my impression of the brand as premium has fallen quite considerably.

A customer training video is a great opportunity to let your customers know that you care about them and want to improve their experience with your product.  Talk to them like a human (not a robot), help them love your product, not want to make rude gestures at it.

Produced correctly it can also serve as a multi-purpose promotional tool.  And if you are producing a high quality product, your training video also needs to be premium quality.

And what about the Sunbeam coffee machine, you ask?  Well, it also came with a training DVD.  A beautifully produced, well-written script that makes me feel good about my bargain purchase.  I have been pleasantly surprised at how good my low priced coffee machine is.  And I would definitely recommend it.   Cappuccino, anyone?

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