When you perfect your onboarding process, you set the stage for long-term engagement and success. Discover how video can elevate your approach, making onboarding smoother, more impactful, and engaging for new hires.

Key takeaways:

  • Successful onboarding can increase retention by 82% and productivity by 70%.
  • Video is effective for introducing company values, explaining roles, and breaking down compliance information.
  • Best practices for onboarding videos include maintaining clarity and conciseness and evaluating their effectiveness to optimize results.

First impressions are everything in employee onboarding. A well-designed onboarding program can positively set the tone for an employee’s entire journey with your company. Effective onboarding helps new hires feel confident and connected right from the start, which can boost retention, accelerate productivity, and build lasting connections.

Unfortunately, many organizations still rely on outdated, information-heavy onboarding that fails to engage today’s workforce. Others miss opportunities to leverage technology that could significantly enhance the onboarding experience. These practices can leave new employees confused and frustrated.

Video-based onboarding offers an engaging, accessible, and powerful way to support employees from day one. The results speak for themselves: companies with effective onboarding achieve up to 82% higher retention and 70% greater productivity.

In this post, we’ll explore best practices for enhancing your onboarding program with TruScribe’s whiteboard video.

The Power of Video in Onboarding

Video is a transformative tool for onboarding, offering an engaging alternative to the lengthy PowerPoints and dense employee manuals of the past.

Unlike traditional formats, video is engaging, easily digestible, and adaptable. It enhances understanding and retention by combining visual storytelling, motion, and sound, which turn complex information into clear, memorable sequences. When used effectively, video creates an emotional connection, helping new employees feel welcomed, aligned with company goals, and ready to contribute as part of the team.

Best onboarding topics for video

While onboarding covers many areas, certain topics are particularly well-suited to video:

  • Introducing Company Culture and Values: Company culture is challenging to convey with words alone. A video introduction can showcase your company’s unique personality, highlight core values, and instill a sense of purpose in new hires.
  • Explaining Roles, Responsibilities, and Workflows: When employees understand their role within the organization, they feel more engaged and motivated. Video helps break down each position’s responsibilities and team workflows through real-life examples and visuals, making it easier to grasp complex processes.
  • Providing Compliance and Benefits Information: HR compliance and benefits information are essential but are often dense and challenging to absorb. Video can transform these topics into structured, engaging segments that make policies easy to understand—and easy to revisit for clarity.

Start with these core areas, and consider expanding your video use as a powerful tool for educating new hires across all aspects of onboarding.

Best practices for creating onboarding videos

Effective onboarding videos are well-crafted, purposeful, and reflective of your organization. Here are some best practices:

1. Define clear goals
Begin by outlining the primary objectives of each onboarding video. Decide which information is most essential for new hires to understand their role, the company culture, and key policies.

2. Keep content short, sweet, and engaging
Nothing’s worse than a new hire starting on day one and getting bombarded with information. Avoid overwhelming new hires with lengthy content. Keep each video short and focused on one topic at a time to improve information retention. Use clear visuals, real-life scenarios, and friendly narration to keep the tone light but informative. 

3. Align tone with company culture
The video’s tone and style should reflect the organization’s culture. A fun, energetic tone works well for creative fields, while a more formal style may suit traditional industries.

4. Personalize to different audiences

Different employees and departments have unique needs at each stage of the onboarding process. Short, targeted videos allow you to customize content for specific roles, departments, and individual requirements. Tailor each video to address the relevant information for each audience, ensuring new hires receive messages that resonate with their unique responsibilities and goals.

5. Use captions and multiple languages
Adding captions improves accessibility and comprehension. If you have a diverse workforce, consider including multiple language options to ensure clarity for all employees.

6. End with a clear call to action

Close each HR video with a prompt for next steps, whether it’s a follow-up meeting, a quiz, or a checklist. This guidance reinforces the onboarding process and provides clarity on what new hires should do next.

Supporting long-term employee success

Onboarding is just the beginning of an employee’s journey. To support long-term growth, consider using video for continuous training and development throughout the employee lifecycle. Video’s versatility makes it ideal for reinforcing skills, introducing new tools, and keeping employees up-to-date on policies and best practices.

From onboarding and upskilling to preparing for leadership roles, video enables a seamless learning experience that evolves with each employee’s needs, fostering ongoing success and engagement.

Why Choose TruScribe Whiteboard Videos?

You’ve seen the impact video can have on your onboarding process—now, take it a step further with TruScribe whiteboard videos. Our whiteboard videos deliver information through storytelling and clear, engaging visuals that capture attention and improve retention.

With TruScribe, you can integrate your company’s culture and values into every onboarding video, personalizing content for each department or role. Our unique, hand-drawn illustrations add a human touch that fosters a deeper connection with new hires, setting them up for long-term success.

Transform your onboarding process with impactful whiteboard videos from TruScribe. Contact us to learn about our Scribology philosophy and how we create customized video content that aligns with your organization’s unique needs and goals.