Why Companies Need Video Communication (More than Just Video Calls)

Read Time: 4 minutes

It feels like ages ago when I’d call out a colleague’s name from across our content team room. We’d push back in our swivel chairs for a quick fact check, question, brainstorm, or air high five. In lieu of swivel chair communication, in the current reality of global remote work, corporations need video communication to fill the void.

Enter: Google Hangouts, FaceTime, Zoom, and the like. These tools are lifesaving when it comes to corporate communication and helping us stay aligned throughout an organization. Even a decade ago, we couldn’t have been able to imagine the video communication capabilities we have today to connect with team members.

But as amazing as these platforms are, it’s easy to get sucked into back-to-back remote video meetings. While they’re meant to keep employees in the loop, these online meetings always seem to go overtime.

That’s not to mention the reality that employees are more engaged by their team member’s living room artwork than the topic at hand. Suddenly, what seemed like an unbeatable solution can sometimes seem both overwhelming and unproductive all at once.

Take a look at why your team needs more than video calls

While video communication is the closest thing corporations have to in-person swivel chair goodness, there’s got to be more to communicating with video than video conferences, right?

Right!

Let’s take a look…

Video Communication: More Than Just Meetings

Video can be used in a myriad of ways to keep employees across your organization engaged, inspired, and productive!

From top execs and middle-management, to your newest employees on the virtual block, talent at all levels can — and should — be creating videos to stay connected.

About 23% of remote employees say they work longer hours than they would in the office. In addition, 77% of remote workers say they’re more productive at home. These numbers can be reassuring to employers. However, many employees would say that remote work makes them feel drained, lonely, and disconnected. Even with all the FaceTime!

Boosting creativity, connection, productivity, and engagement with video communication

Using video creation tools, any corporate employee can strap on their creative caps and collaborate with teammates to create informative, fun videos. This both offers employees an outlet to exercise creativity (which can spill over to their work innovation) and a way to stay connected and productive that goes beyond giving another thumbs-up emoji on Slack.

Running a marathon…

At Powtoon, we’ve been saying that this time of remote work shouldn’t be seen as a sprint, but as a marathon. To make it to the finish line of this crisis, we’ll need to pace ourselves and continuously work hard remotely to stay productive, while not burning out in a couple of weeks.

I’d make a slight addendum to that, and say it’s a marathon-scale Apache Relay Race (remember those?). In order to make it until the end, we’ll need not only to pace ourselves but will need creativity and collaboration to get there.

By using creative and collaborative video creation tools to make engaging, informative videos, you can bring back a sense of fun at work that your team desperately needs right now to stay motivated and productive.

Types of Video Communication You Can Create Today

While video calling allows face-to-face conversations in real-time, videos you create can also communicate important announcements; be them top-down or bottom-up. Remote working videos are the necessary solution to grab attention over messages currently falling flat over email, Slack, WhatsApp, or your company’s internal wiki. Using video, you can give these crucial messages the screen lift you know they deserve. It will also make them engaging for your internal audience to watch, replay, discuss, remember, and apply.

Here are 15 video communications ideas you can get started creating today:

Messages from the CEO on how your company is pivoting to stay ahead
Company-wide health and safety videos
Weekly updates showcasing your team’s accomplished and your upcoming goals
Remote onboarding for new hires
Virtual Lunch & Learn videos
Organizational change videos from your HR team
How-to IT videos to ensure company-wide security while working at home
Mindfulness and wellness videos
Training videos to upskill employees and foster professional development
Video recaps of key takeaways of those endless virtual meetings
Video event invitations to virtual Happy Hour
Offer employee recognition videos that applaud those making the most of WFH
Competitive analysis video on similar companies are responding right now
Consolidate repeated questions asked to managers in a fun FAQ video
Transparent thought leadership videos on social media

Quick Tips for Making Awesome Remote Work Videos

Use templates — Don’t go reinventing the video reel. There’s a good chance the kind of video you want to make already exists in some shape or form. Use premade, professional-looking video templates to help you make jaw-dropping videos, FAST!
Tweak for different audiences — Make your videos more personal by segmenting them for different departments, teams, or even individuals. This way your message will feel more tailored and resonate better with each audience. Remember, we’re looking to recreate those swivel chair moments, adding inside jokes or personal references can go a long way.
Keep it on brand — One of the creature comforts your employees are missing during this time is the space of your office and the branding on the walls. Believe it or not, it makes them feel that they’re part of something bigger. Be sure to add your branding in your videos with your colors and logo. It will give them a virtual sense of being in your workspace.
Mix-and-match media — What makes video calls, well “blah”, is that it’s just people’s poorly-lit faces at weird angles. Mix and match face-to-camera shots with animation, graphics, and more to create a Wow Effect that ropes viewers in.
Add music — Set the tone for your videos with music that might excite, calm, or entice your audience to keep watching. Think of your favorite movie, it’s most likely the music that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Do that for your employees!

The Lists Go On!

This has just been a taste of the ways you can be leveraging video communication during this time of remote work! Looking for more ways to channel video communication for your enterprise? Check out these 55 ways to use video in your corporation.

If you are new to video creation and visual communication, we’re currently giving corporations 3 months free extension of our Business plan. During these trying times, we want to do our part to get the ball and camera rolling on your next internal comms blockbuster.

Get started creating videos for your team, department, or company with our collaboration tools, enterprise-grade security, limitless templates, and animated content.

Bio
Latest Posts

Shoshi Davis

Shoshi joined Powtoon as a Marketing Assistant. To read more of her stuff, you can find her content on Upwork and Business 2 Community talking all things inbound marketing for SaaS. After only 2 weeks at Powtoon, Shoshi was dubbed by the marketing team as having the superpower of "Unbridled Enthusiasm." So that was pretty cool.