For many companies, both large and small, new contractor or employee orientation is a perfunctory process.  It usually involves a manager who might prefer to be working on other jobs talking through a PowerPoint presentation or checklist. This is usually followed by introductions and a tour of the premises. Then, the new hire is thrown into the workplace with little consideration for the confusion that comes with commencing a new job or the site-specific hazards that may exist.

Improving the Induction Process

Successful companies understand that that a well-oriented employee will approach a new job with heightened confidence resulting in better performance and productivity. They are also more likely to be committed to the company reducing high employee turnover costs.

According to Randolph Cirilo & Brian H Kleiner from Management Research News 2003, they found that effective orientation programs provided more substantive content, face to face learning, utilized vivid presentation techniques, participative learning methods and involved management.

While XpertHR UK in April 2009, found that highly successful inductions were structured and formal.

So what is a Better Induction System?

The good news is that the best induction process will not only cost you less to train staff, but will actually improve your training outcomes.

And yet the answer is one that is often overlooked by companies – an induction training video.

A custom made training video for your workplace:

• Teaches the same amount of information taught by instructors in half or a third of the time.
• Increases comprehension and retention of the subject matter by approximately 50% over printed material alone.
• Commands the attention of the viewer and motivates them to learn more.
• Is more persuasive than written material which is perceived as less important and credible.
• Provides faster rollout and take up of training.
• Ensures consistent training messages are communicated.
• Relieves the trainer of repetitive tasks.

How does it work?

A well-planned induction video provides structured training that can even include introductions from senior management, freeing up their time.

While using visuals to communicate is also another major advantage as it makes difficult processes easier to understand.

Tom Kerr, the OHS Manager from Conundrum Holdings explains how a customized induction training video has simplified the induction process of contractors and staff across their work sites.

“We were finding that delivering individual inductions for all contractors and staff working on our sites was taking up a lot of management time. We also didn’t have any real evidence that each induction was consistent or that everything was getting covered, “explains Tom Kerr.

“Now that each person signs off they have watched the video and are tested directly on their knowledge learnt from the video, we can be sure that they have been made aware of all safety hazards and controls. The training is now more engaging and has the advantage of putting visual cues to the site rules and procedures. Given the inherent dangers with working in a quarry it is important that we train our staff and contractors to work safely. It also imparts our company culture really well. Another benefit is that we can refer staff back to specific areas of the video for more employee specific refresher training”.

For companies looking to improve their induction process, a custom made training video for their workplace can provide successful learning outcomes, reduce incidents and injuries, while decreasing training costs.

Related posts:

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2. We’ve won a Gold Award for Best Use of Video in a Training Program LearnX Asia Pacific 2010 recognizes Digicast Productions as producing induction...
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Research has found that expertly produced training videos provide faster training, high usage, flexibility and more consistently trained staff.

Selecting the correct training video producer is extremely important to the success of your training video.

Video production houses often do a full array of video production services from television ads, filming seminars and live events, producing corporate videos and training videos. They can be separated into three categories – advertising commercial, live corporates or instructional-design producers.

For most training situations, instructional-design producer-writers are best for producing video enhanced training sessions. These producers also possess greater expertise in working with detailed training materials.

The best way to assess whether the training video company is producing training videos from an instructional design perspective is to review their work and ask the following questions:

Script
1. Is the level of information easy to understand? Would a school age student be able to easily grasp the messages?

2. Is the script written in a way that engages? Or do you feel as if you are being told to do something by a bossy teacher rather than being shown in a friendly way?

3. What was the pace like for the video? Was it just right, too slow or quick?

4. Was the content presented in a logical, easy to follow sequence?

5. Was new material introduced before you could absorb the previous information fully?

Production

6. Were the work surroundings relevant? Was it trying to be all things for a range of industries or has it been customized for one company?

7. Were the characters and situations shown realistically?

8. Were the desired behaviours modeled in a way that can be copied by employees?

9. Were there things happening in the background that were distracting you from learning (eg: forklift hitting a pole)?

10. Were elements of a process clearly shown so that you could understand what they were referring to? (eg: when discussing say, a ‘stop’ button on a machine it was shown, so you knew what it looked liked)?

11. Were there too many special effects or graphics that took the attention away from the messages, thereby reducing the effectiveness of the program?

12. Were titles used to reinforce important points to enable staff to remember and absorb important information?

13. If you were an employee of this company how would you feel about them? Excited to be working for them, comfortable about the new process or feeling like they don’t really care about their staff?

14. Were employees tested on their knowledge after watching a video to increase mental effort, therefore improving motivation and comprehension?

By keeping these questions in mind when reviewing training videos, you will be able to quickly evaluate how effective the training video will be as an educational tool.

This will enable you to choose the right video production provider rather than developing an employee training video that will end up gathering dust on your shelf.

Related posts:

1. We’ve won a Gold Award for Best Use of Video in a Training Program LearnX Asia Pacific 2010 recognizes Digicast Productions as producing induction...
2. How to Improve On-Site Inductions For many companies, both large and small, new contractor or...
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