Training videos are a highly effective way to get trainees to remember and understand information.

This is because they:

1. Are visually based - The majority of our brain real estate is devoted to processing visual information.  Our brain loves visuals and learns much faster from pictures than words.  We’re really good at remembering pictures and they draw our attention.  Called the Picture Superiority Effect, we remember 65% of what we have learnt three days after, provided it is both a picture and a word shown together compared to 10% for just a word alone.

2. Use Audio and visuals together- Presenting information both audibly and visually reinforces information in multiple brain areas, this dual-encoding process  increases the chance that material will be stored in long-term memory.

3. Are more engaging – If you’ve ever sat in a classroom with a teacher droning on and on, you know what I mean.  Remember, when you were at school and  how excited you were when the teacher said you were going to watch a “film”?  This still holds true with adults and children alike.  Provided that the training video is made correctly, and more importantly that trainees are told they will be tested afterwards, you will get high levels of understanding and recall (If students are told they are watching a training video and that’s it, they will learn less, better to tell them they need to do a short quiz, even if there isn’t one).

4. Go where trainees can’t go – This is where 3D animations surpass even the most brilliant teacher in helping trainees understand how the body works.  It is so much easier to understand how poor lifting techniques affect the spine when you see an animated version.

5. Show demonstrations – Similar to an animation, well made training videos show how a particular process occurs.  Rather than the trainee having to read or hear about it, they get to see what happens.  This is really important for procedures that are difficult to show in a classroom environment (eg: doing a forklift safety check, operating the big machine that doesn’t fit in the classroom etc).  This is effectively making an abstract concept (words about a process) more concrete (visuals) which helps people to better understand information.  We learn by watching people doing things

6. Are quick – Properly produced a training video will explain information in about half the time as words alone.  Using visuals helps people instantly understand information and results in less confusion.

7. Provides consistent training – Keeping strict version control on your PowerPoint training presentations and ensuring that your trainers are all teaching the same thing is a legislative requirement.  If a death were to occur at your company site, the coronial inquest would request that the training materials used on the day the person was inducted and trained be submitted for review.  If there is evidence that the PowerPoint version was open and anyone could change it or that the trainer did their own version of training, then that company would be found to be non-compliant training wise.  Ensuring consistent company training is not only better for employees, it’s also good for business health.

All in all, produced correctly, training videos are a fantastic way to train staff.

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Training videos are a highly effective and quick way to instantly communicate your important training messages to your staff, customers and contractors.

But like everything in life – you get what you pay for.  Poorly produced training videos can be a waste of time and resources.  And if you’re using them for customers, be really careful you’re not damaging your brand and more importantly, your credibility.

Here are five common mistakes.  There are lots, lots more, but here are the main ones.

1. Not using a tripod – This would have to be one of the simplest things to do, but remarkably one of the sure signs of an amateur video is hand-held wobbly vision.  You’d swear that the camera operator was an old, recovering alcoholic.  The main problem with this is that as a viewer you get really distracted by the wobbles (and you do ask yourself, is that dude okay?, are they about to fall over?) rather than listening to the person talking to camera or the important procedure.  This also extends to lots of moving vision when a person is talking.  Your eyes follow the path of the camera and our brain believes that the new camera move is leading to important information.

One frustrating example is in this video about Hepatitis in which a Hepatitis C sufferer talks about his ordeal.  Rather, than give this person the respect he deserves, the camera moves about so much that you just know that the camera operator is bored with the information.  The camera focuses on his ear (and you think, did this disease give him ear problems?), then the top of his head.  Even more confusingly while  he’s talking, vision is shown with him giving a hopeful smile.  This video fails because the camera work is so erratic that you’re too busy following what’s going on to have any brain width left to listen to the poor interviewee.

2. Not using cut aways properly – One of the reasons why video is so amazing at quickly getting information across is because it uses both audio and visual information (which is like a dual-encoding process in the brain).  To make this work, you need to complement the audio information with relevant visuals.  If you don’t do this, people will give up on listening because it’s too hard to work out on what’s going on or even if they do stick with it, they will remember very little.

An example that frustrated me enormously was a testimonial style video made for Google Apps called “Flight Centre has gone Google”.  You’d think Google would have the best marketing and training videos around, because after all they own YouTube.  But sadly, this video was so bad I didn’t dare show it to my business partner as to why we needed the services.  He would have spat the dummy at this clumsy attempt at communication.

This video fails on quite a number of levels:

• They’ve tried to make it exciting.  Jarring music is used that is too loud and makes it hard to hear what they’re saying.
• Quick, wobbly cuts make it difficult to focus on what people are talking about.  Important points are quickly cut to the next point making it hard for the brain to absorb what has been said and the importance of it.
• Really poor choices of cut aways are used.  My favourite is the staff member having a peak at whether he’s being filmed.  He’s being matched to the content of a “global solution” (he should have been matched to “Staff always like to know what you’re doing”).  Also, the one where the Account Manager is talking about servers and the camera vision focuses on a hard hat in the office.  Priceless!  (By the way, we’re using this video internally to show our new recruits how to not create a video).

Zappos is another well know company that seems to have missed the point of cut aways.  This amazing company (see my book review Delivering Happiness), has some of the worst examples of training and marketing videos around.  Sadly, they think they’re really great because they have an in-house team who went to film school.  If only film school taught them how to communicate to a business audience.

Zappos are renowned for their core values.  In this video, staff members name the core values, but very few of them are explained.  It also features lots of nauseatingly wobbly vision, distracting music and audio.  However, they do use cut aways well towards the end.  It just needed to be consistent.  This is one of those videos you don’t really want your customers to see.  Even if you think it shows you as being quirky.  Zappos just appear disorganised, unable to focus and having a really lazy and careless attitude to their core values (which isn’t true, but that’s the message the video makes).

3. Distracting Backgrounds and Audio – A well made video gets people understanding and listening to what you’re talking about.  As mentioned before, what makes video so powerful is the use of both audio and visual together.  Get one wrong and you might as well not bother.  People’s eyes will go to what’s moving.  So if someone walks past the back of the set where someone is being interviewed.  Guess what everyone looks at?  And if that person manages to look at the camera in an interesting way?  Ditto.

It’s also the same with audio.  Make sure the person talking to camera is the only one talking.  Don’t have other people having a conversation in the back of the room (hello, Zappos!)

And always remove inappropriate items in the background.  Discard the empty bottle sitting on the mantlepiece (yep, Zappos again), the naked pictures on someone’s desk and anything that will distract from your message.  Remember the uproar when the Macquarie bank staff member looked at Miranda Kerr pictures during the live piece to camera?

4. Saying too much – This is a big issue and it’s also one in professionally made videos.  Work out your key messages beforehand and stick to them.  Avoid the CEO meandering and repeating information.  Make it short and insightful.  One of the worst company training videos that I was made to watch by a client was 30 minutes.  We would have been able to do it in 10 minutes.  And because they hadn’t filmed enough vision, they repeated vision from other sections to fill it up.  And the camera operator narrated it while he walked around.  Appalling!  I still have nightmares about that one.

5. Wasting time filming and editing – Creating a video takes time.  A lot of time.

First, there’s writing the script, filming, directing, organising the voiceover (please use a professional, not Sam in accounts because he acted in a school play when he was 15.  And don’t even consider narrating while you’re filming), editing and exporting to the final format.  Each of theses stage is time consuming and difficult to get right for the novice (even if they did make a photo slideshow of their kid’s dance concert in 2008).

What do you want staff doing?  Working on projects that will boost your bottom line or stuffing around trying to work out how to press record on a video camera?

So if you are making a training video for your company, write a script that is succinct, film using a tripod (or better yet, get a professional camera operator), ensure no distracting objects or people are in your shots, get a professional voice record and match your visual and audio content.

And if you’re using a professional, just make sure they don’t convince you to use hand-held wobbly vision.  It’s just a sign that the production house finds your content boring and they want to spice it up.

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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.

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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.

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