What comes to mind when you think of video? A 3-second TikTok clip? A multi-episode binge-worthy show? It’s both – and a lot more in-between. Video is everywhere: on our phones, laptops, desktop computers, in public spaces and in our homes. Today, anyone with a smartphone can create video content, quickly and easily. 

Most of us take video for granted. But what about when we’re at work?

What The Data Says About Video At Work 

The potential for video is vast when it comes to communication, knowledge-sharing, training, and culture creation in the workplace. There are dozens of reasons to start integrating it into our day-to-day. In fact, video is no longer just a nice-to-have—it's a must-have for effective internal communication. 

The data shows that video is a highly effective messenger.  

Employees prefer video: Over 80% say they favor video over written updates. (Source: AIScreen)

Video drives retention: Viewers remember 95% of a message in video vs. 10% in text. (Source: HRCloud)

Video boosts engagement: 49% of employees say good video increases their motivation. (Source: Vizrt)

Video builds connection: 76% feel more connected to leadership through video. (Source: Brightcove) 

“Video is the channel that achieves the greatest engagement with our workforce, and we use Pennymacʼs Video Gallery video when a message needs to resonate with our employees.” – Mark Harvey, Assistant Vice President, Communications, Pennymac

Video is Your Secret Weapon for Employee Engagement and Retention

At the core of all workplaces is the employee experience, which drives productivity and retention that promotes revenue. The employee experience is everything that a worker feels about their role, their colleagues, their environment, their bosses, and the company they work for. 

An employee’s experience starts from the moment they set their sights on a job, through their time at the company, and until they leave. It’s affected by what type of technology is available, messaging and comms, and the processes they use every day. As one article puts it: “The customer experience is downstream from the employee experience.” In other words, how your employees feel about where they work affects outcomes. 

A recent Zendesk EX Trends Report found that among surveyed employees:

• 83% agree employee experience is a top priority
• 90% believe it’s key to retaining top talent
• 87% believe it impacts the customer experience
• 91% believe 
• 49% agree that watching a video helps with information retention versus reading 

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Video enhances employee experience with crystal-clear communication.

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Designing a communication strategy that speaks directly to your workforce will improve the employee experience. To do this, companies must consider communication preferences – or risk low engagement. Video can help.

Video is about messaging with impact. It’s a way to broadcast the latest news and announcements to all employees (campfire moments). It’s a way to build a solid company culture (human-centric messaging) and can also be used for sharing best practice and training (knowledge and skill-sharing). 

All of this fosters a positive employee experience for office, hybrid, remote, and field workers. One study found that nearly 70% of internal comms have already adopted video. 

But there’s an elephant in the room: What if you haven’t made videos before? Well, it’s time to learn – and it’s not as difficult as you might think. So don’t panic! If you’re responsible for video content at work, it’s time to take control of this powerful skill. 

With LumApps Play, you can securely and easily leverage video content with ease to reach engagement goals. 

To get you started with video at work:

• We’ve put together a helpful guide for creating videos with impact. Download it here
• Ask someone at work (probably a younger person) who’s already making videos for social channels. Many Millennials and Gen Z are digital natives – and they’re naturals at video. 
• Request training for you and/or your team. The skills you learn can be shared – it's a great investment in the company’s health and culture. Alternatively, there are plenty of training and tips videos online to learn from, like this one from HubSpot Marketing.
• For more detailed guidance, see the LumApps How-To Guide for short-form video 

Top tips when making video for work:

1. Sound quality is more important than highly produced visuals. Sort out your mics first and don’t worry if your camera is just a phone on a mini tripod. Intimacy and authenticity cut through. 
2. Designating one or a couple of people to be in charge of video on your team or department and giving them time to develop their skills will empower them and lead to better content. 
3. Make video messaging an integral aspect of every day. Advocate for it as part of onboarding, internal comms, training, and morale boosting. 

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5 Times When You Should Use Video at Work

There are many work scenarios for using video – here are a few of them. 

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1. Giving C-suite messages a human voice 

Written communication can sometimes seem cold or over-designed. Not everyone has the ability to draw people in with their writing! Video offers a way to share not only the message, but also the messenger. This helps humanize executives, making them seem more accountable for literally standing by what they’re saying. 

Especially in times of crisis or transition, it’s essential for employees to have quick access to any information they might need. Getting a CEO to show their commitment on camera by presenting the company’s results, eye-to-eye, or by explaining the strategic plan in their own words can make a huge difference. 

Top Tip: Executive messaging is most effective when it varies. You don’t want to always be the bringer of bad news. Plus, the setting should match the occasion.

If it’s serious, make sure the filming location isn’t distracting – use a neutral background. If it’s something lighter, feel free to be more spontaneous – a happy holidays message given from an elevator, for instance. 

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2. HR & onboarding 

The best way to ensure every new employee is offered the same welcoming treatment is to create introduction videos that provide insight into the company culture and the department they’ll be joining. This ensures consistency across staff changes and variations in business activity. 

Videos are an excellent way to provide tutorials and training about company processes and tools, from health & safety, data protection, accessing HR and IT, and common procedures like making a leave request or using a specific tool.

Top Tip: Day-in-the-life videos can give new recruits a wider sense of what others are doing in the company. This helps new hires understand their ecosystem, develop empathy, and feel emboldened by being part of something bigger than their unit, team, or job.

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To encourage engagement, keep these types of videos light and amusing. Ask employees to describe the best qualities of their team in 30 seconds or get them to share some internal company lingo and explain what it means. 

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3. Establishing a common language

A Gallup study found that companies with the most engaged employees are on average 21% more productive and 22% more profitable. Video is the ideal medium to establish a common language, and to instantly and widely share ideas across the workforce. A robust internal comms strategy should consider how powerful video can be for developing company culture with intent. 

When planning these videos, consider including information about the company’s mission, strategy, values, and corporate culture, as well as recent highlights and news about company successes or achievements. And don’t forget to include inspiring or entertaining content so that all employees, regardless of their function and geographical location, feel involved, such as highlighting employee milestones or teasing a new project or product before an official announcement is made.

Top Tip: Set a content-sharing schedule that employees can look forward to. Monthly reports that cover departmental, individual, and wider company news are great for creating anticipation. Develop a couple of ‘stars’ who have a knack for delivering on camera.

Make the videos feel professional but not overdone. That’s the secret to intimacy on platforms like Instagram. 

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4. Give employees a voice

Active participation is one of the pillars of the employee experience, and collaboration is key to team cohesion. User-generated content can be produced with a smartphone and doesn’t require much preparation. 

Get team members to share updates with the department or wider company via video. This is especially effective for remote, hybrid, and field workers who may not regularly touch homebase. Video is the ultimate DIY medium, so get your frontline workers empowered to think of this as their tool. 

Video is also an excellent way to transfer skills and know-how between employees and to enhance knowledge and expertise. You can record employees performing certain tasks or sharing tips – like how to write an effective email, share difficult news with co-workers, and – of course – how to create engaging short-form content. 

Top Tip: If you have communities of interest or expertise at your workplace, video is a great way to build connections. For example, a book club where readers record their thoughts in a short clip that can be shared to colleagues around the world.

If there are people in the same role but different locations, they can post videos to a community space – tips or funny experiences that create a sense of belonging. [BOX]

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5. Continuous training

Educational videos offer various ways to learn. Some people retain visual information while others get more from listening. For people who have a disability, conventional learning methods may not be the best option. Personalized training solutions that cater to a diverse group of learners – including subtitles and voice-to-text features, for instance – promote inclusion.

Video also offers opportunities to gamify the learning process. Especially for employees who might not spend a lot of time in front of a screen, like field and frontline workers, bite-sized skill and tool training is an effective way to foster development. 

Top Tip: Ask employees what will work best for them. Find out whether using a video training strategy will address any accessibility concerns. Always check your company’s accessibility guidelines as well as those for language and disability.

7 “TikTok” Tips for Making Videos 

These tips come straight from the habits and practices of Gen Z video makers, and they can be repurposed for everyone.

1. Asynchronous Communication

This is a quick win. Instead of forcing employees to sit through 30-minute one-on-one meetings with their managers each week, consider having workers film 30-second weekly recaps as they walk out to their cars on Friday afternoons.

This kind of “TikTok-ification” doesn’t need to mean simply catering to employees’ preferences. Instead, organizations should seek out ways to improve existing processes using new technologies. In this case, the new workflow may be more convenient for both the boss and the employee, freeing up time during the workday for more productive tasks.

2. Collaborative Learning

Hiding in plain sight amid all of the dangerous TikTok trends that the news loves to report on (remember the Tide Pod challenge?), TikTok offers countless videos that teach bite-sized lessons on everything from personal fitness to personal finance.

Imagine putting that same power into the hands of employees. Instead of spending $500,000 building out a training program, companies might provide bonuses or other incentives to highly skilled employees who can communicate their methods via short-form video, resulting in more effective learning.

3. Sharing Institutional Knowledge

Similarly, quick videos might be helpful for employees who need to create a narrative record of what they do on a day-to-day basis, but who struggle to communicate effectively in writing. This sort of use case might come in handy, for instance, when people are promoted and need to leave instructions for their replacement.

4. Promotion of ESG Activities

At many organizations, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals and activities have become extremely important over the past decade or so.

There’s quite a bit of evidence that these programs are a big draw for Gen Z workers, and companies typically try to promote them both internally and externally. Historically, this has happened through newsletter write-ups or posts on company intranet pages, but that has sometimes resulted in an imperfect marriage of form and content.

A better approach might be to let the people who are participating in events like neighborhood clean-ups submit brief video clips of their work and camaraderie. The content is likely to be much more authentic and vulnerable than a press release – and, therefore, more likely to have an impact on its audience. 

5. Culture Creation

Historically, when a CEO talks to his or her workforce, it’s done under studio conditions: soft lighting, sharp suit, and pitch-perfect script. Is it any surprise that some rank-and-file employees think their leaders aren’t quite fully human? 

The more we learn about the importance of empathy and authenticity in the workplace, the more companies might want to consider letting executives communicate in a casual style that helps to create a more open corporate culture.

This doesn’t mean that CEOs should skip shareholder meetings in favor of filming TikTok reels. But it might mean that they spend their Monday morning elevator ride telling their troops what they’re excited for in the week ahead.

6. The Role of AI

With the emergence of tools like ChatGPT, we’re seeing through how exciting (and also how scary) artificial intelligence can be, as some people brainstorm how to use the technology to create new business value and others fear that it will replace them in the workplace.

In truth, most companies are still in the early stages of figuring out how AI will fit into their content programs, but at this point it’s probably safe to say that the technology will eventually make its way into most organizations. This might mean using AI to analyze the transcripts of keynote speeches or brainstorming sessions and then pick out potential snippets to turn into short-form videos.

7. Adaptability

It’s possible that the end result of TikTok-ification won’t actually look all that much like TikTok at all. Think about the emergence of social media platforms nearly two decades ago and how companies tried to create their own versions of Myspace and Facebook. 

For the most part, these internal social networks have given way to off-the-shelf unified communication and collaboration tools where people can constantly stay in touch about their work (but where they aren’t, say, posting vacation photos). Similarly, businesses may discover new and exciting ways to use short-form video over time.

As always, we’re unsure about exactly what the future is going to look like. But we know this much: Once consumer technology finds its way inside enterprises, it’s impossible to stop.

How LumApps Play Can Help 

LumApps Play is a powerful tool that works seamlessly within LumApps intranet. LumApps Play is your enterprise video hub – natively embedded, fully secured, and made for employee communication.

We make it possible for enterprises to host videos internally instead of on an external site like YouTube. YouTube isn't secure, and it automatically suggests the next video to watch, which might not be appropriate for your employees.

LumApps Play offers:

• No unwanted ads
• No irrelevant videos
• No unwanted data tracking
• More consistent accessibility features
• Improved security

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Keeping your video in-house allows you to reduce digital friction, protect content, and manage video with ease, just like other content types on the LumApps platform. 

Companies use LumApps Play for their News Center, CEO’s Corner, HR Hub, Employee Onboarding Portal, IT Support Pages, Project or Practice Communities, Sales Enablement, and more. What will your organization create?

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Why Your Team Will Love LumApps Play

Integrated

• No third-party, no shadow IT
• All videos in LumApps – broadcasts, campaigns, journeys – deliver native search results   
• Embedded within LumApps mobile app
• Videos (and video-rendered audio podcasts) are displayed in LumApps native search results
• Videos are natively playable on LumApps mobile Apps, with quick video upload from desktop or mobile devices
• All video assets (and video-rendered audio podcasts) are managed into the LumApps platform
• Extensive analytics: Views, devices, engagement, audience segmentation with user group metrics

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User Experience

• Easy-to-use video manager for admins and contributors
• Enriched video content 
• Branded editorial context: Video playlists
• Automated adaptive streaming
• Boost engagement through CTAs that link to videos
• Multi-language subtitling 
• AI-based automated transcription 
• Dedicated Video Gallery, both in the desktop and mobile versions of LumApps, creates a YouTube-like interface with dedicated playlists and allows users to find desired content easily

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Security

• AES128 encryption
• SOC 2/Type 2 compliance
• No downloads unless LumApps Play admin has defined download rights for a given video
• Local hosting: Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure
• All video (and video-rendered audio podcasts) assets are encrypted
• No anonymous access

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Are you looking to better engage employees while driving cooperation and knowledge sharing? LumApps Play extends the LumApps employee experience platform to manage and broadcast your video content simply, intelligently, and securely, without the need for advanced technical skills. Book a meeting with a LumApps Expert to learn more.