Employee Generated Video for Internal Communications
Employee Generated Video (EGV) is on the rise and 81% of executives believe the demand for these videos will only increase. So, is it about time your company got involved? There are a lot of mixed thoughts about EGV in the business world, executives are often put off using it for fear their employees will upload “irresponsible content”. According to a study last year by Qumu, 51% of executives are concerned about this yet 100% of respondents have never actually experienced any inappropriate video being uploaded to the company network. So, are there any benefits to this strategy? We’ve decided to share some of our research to let you decide whether Employee Generated Video could be beneficial for your company.
What is Employee Generated Video?
Essentially, EGV is similar to public User-Generated Video, such as Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest and Gmail: Behind the Scenes campaign, in which companies invite customers and fans to submit home-made videos that the brand can use for video marketing content. This is not only a great way of marketing a company, but it really engages customers and makes them feel personally connected to the brand. Such campaigns have likely influenced businesses to engage their employees in similar ways, inviting them to upload video content to the company network for knowledge sharing, company announcements or as part of a company changeover strategy. For example, in 2006 Pfizer implemented EGV into their global “transformation” strategy. Pfizer selected 10 employees and gave them each a camera and tripod asking them to record video diaries of their experiences as the company changes took effect. This strategy was successful for the company in terms of helping employees adapt to organisation changes while feeling engaged with it.
Use internal video to enhance employee engagement
A key reason to implement EGV is to engage employees and improve internal communications. EGV can be used to relay information to employees, by using how-to videos, online presentations and webinars or even video diaries, but how do you measure if these videos are enhancing employee engagement? The Edge Picture Company’s whitepaper (available for download here) suggested that measuring success is not the number of videos entered, but “how the wider workforce engages with them.” When IBM implemented EGV into the company, less than 0.1% of the workforce produced their own videos. But within a month of the content launching, employees shared the videos internally nearly 4,800 times and left 3,212 comments. Although only a hand full of employees may engage with the video making process, it’s important to apply social media, commenting and sharing tools to encourage employee interaction.
Interaction and engagement are where you will find the true benefit of internal video and this is becoming even easier since most of the major internal comms social platforms (Yammer, Workplace, etc) now include live video tools. We’ve written a longer article on live video for Facebook Workplace if you need some more info.
Sharing knowledge with video in the workplace
What if employees upload inappropriate content?
The fear that employees might upload inappropriate content makes it tempting to limit the type of employees creating content to company executives and CEO’s only.
Make sure Employee Generated Video is right for your company
Employee Generated Video sounds easy to execute into company practice, after