Onboarding, training, and development are key to retaining your employees. But these can also be expensive endeavors with mixed results that may leave you wondering if it was really worth it. Most of the costs of in-person training go towards the trainer fees, travel, and lodging and not the training materials themselves – you know, the stuff that actually matters! This is obviously not a great use of your training dollars.
Additionally, in-person training can deliver mixed results, and not all employees will get the same training experience either. Even with the same trainer and the same materials, employees will have different training experiences based on so many different factors at play. Some employees may be sitting near people that are distracting. Some employees may be tired or sick but come to training because they don’t want to miss it.
All of these factors equal a training experience that is expensive and not nearly as effective as it could be. There’s a better way: video training!
Why Video Training
Investing your learning and development budget in creating a series of training videos is a much better long-term investment than in investing in in-person training for a number of reasons.
Reduce costs, increase learning.
When you invest in the video training, you only pay once for a training source that you can use endlessly. Only 15% of in-person training dollars go towards actual training. The rest goes towards trainer fees, travel, and lodging. When Microsoft switched to video training, their training cost per person dropped from $320 to $17.
And knowledge retention? Just 7 days after a training session, the average employee will have forgotten 65% of the material covered, and after 6 months the number increases to 90%. With video training, employees can replay parts that they need to see again and can revisit the video over and over whenever they need it.
More engaging format.
Employees are 75% more likely to watch videos than they are to engage with other training materials like documents, emails, or web-based articles. Videos are just more engaging. If you want your employees to interact with and retain the information in your training program, videos are more likely to catch and keep their attention.
Measurable results.
Unless your in-person training is paired with quizzes or other measures of learning, the only data point you have to measure the “results” of the training is attendance, which is not a great data point to measure training engagement. Video platforms, however, allow you to see how many people have watched the video and how many people fail to finish the video.
If you make an interactive video, you’re able to measure specific learning outcomes throughout the video. By asking questions throughout the video, you can see which employees are grasping the information and which may need a little more help.
Easy to update.
Things change fast these days. Nothing ruins a training or onboarding experience faster than outdated information that attendees or readers are asked to learn. Modern videos are super simple to update without having to start over completely. It can be as simple as splicing in updated presentations, PDFs, or webpages to your existing videos to ensure they are as up-to-date as possible.
Easy to access.
Video training doesn’t require employees to travel. It doesn’t require your employees to try and fit in a presentation into their already busy schedules. Video training can be easily accessed by employees from their desks at their convenience. Video training also allows employees to move through the content at their own pace and replay pieces they need to hear a second or third time without having to feel embarrassed about raising their hand in class. This ability to review information is crucial because it ensures that employees are able to take the time they need to truly learn the information.
When you empower your employees with training designed to maximize their success, they are better prepared, more competent, and more confident in their ability to do their job as best they can. This kind of empowerment is what turns your employees into true believers in your company making them want to stay with you for as long as possible.
Contact us today for help creating training videos that will be effective, engaging methods of learning for your employees. We’d love to show you what we can do!
