Four tips to train your team remotely via video
For small businesses, adapting to the new world of virtual working is vital. It's not with no challenges, rethinking how to onboard and train employees, too.
How do you welcome new employees by not walking through the company? Can you communicate a culture that is based on trust and independence without actually doing trust falls? What can employees learn how to do great work without getting to shadow great employees?
Learn how to use video to remove the barrier to remote education and let company comms stick the landing, all while saving both energy and time.
1. Personalize it and be honest
Can't meet in person? You're fine as the meeting is private. Do not go through another textbook or an all-inclusive instruction manual. They want honest and authentic stories of humble beginnings and a vision for what you'll be building together. In order to help the new employees experience the company culture by firsthand the video-first method is crucial. (Not to mention, it's a lot better than the hours spent reading on their own.)
But here's the catch Try not to write yourself out of script when you're doing it. If you had been training in person, then you wouldn't have scripted phrases, so why would you now? Video is most effective when it feels real. It's because it's real!
2. Step-by-step, explain it.
The best reason to use video for training is that it makes you (and the things you already know!) scalable. Instead of having to repeat yourself over and over again to every team member they can simply explain or demonstrate something just once. And once it's on video, it becomes infinitely reusable.
3. Organise and organize
Ultimately, you're trying to make sure that every member of your team knows what to accomplish and how to go about it regardless of whether you're available to assist or not. The idea may seem odd, but the goal here is to be able to replace yourself by the most efficient way: by sharing your knowledge.
But you can't just assume your staff is reviewing each article that comes through their inbox. That's why it's so important to organize and systemize your video training content. How do you ensure that the training content was reviewed and retained? And if someone needs to reference that process again then where do they go to find the information on demand?
4. Do not get involved in the production process.
Repeat after me: don't overthink your video. This is the essence of video! Just speak towards the camera in the same way as you would talking to a person, and tell them what you think they'll need to learn.