4 tips for training your team remotely using video

For small businesses, adapting to the new world of virtual work is crucial. It's not without challenges: thinking about how to integrate and train employees, too.

How can you greet anyone to your company without having to walk through the hallways? How do you promote a culture of trust and autonomy but without actually committing trust slips? And how will they learn the skills needed to perform great work without shadowing the best workers?

Here's how you can use video to break down the barrier to remote education and let corporate comms a stick, all while saving the time and energy.

1. Make it personal and remain honest

Can't meet in person? That's okay, as long as you make it your own. Don't dig out another old textbook or an all-inclusive instruction manual. They want honest and authentic stories of modest beginnings as well as a plan for what you'll be building together. For new hires to feel the company's culture by firsthand using video is essential. (Not to mention, it's much more effective than the hours spent reading on their own.)

Here's the rub Don't write yourself out of script during the course of training. If you were working in person, you likely wouldn't have scripted lines, so why should be doing it now? Video is most effective in a way that feels authentic. Since it's real!

2. Step-by-step, explain it.

The best reason to use video in training is that it makes you (and what you know!) scalable. Instead of repeating your message over and over with each team member they can simply explain or demonstrate something just once. And once it's on video, it becomes infinitely reusable.

3. Systematize and arrange

The goal is to ensure that everyone on your team knows what to do and how to do it regardless of whether you're available to aid or not. This may sound strange, but the goal here is to ensure that you can be replaced in the best way possible that is by educating others.

But you can't just assume the team will be reviewing every item that is thrown into their inbox. This is why it's crucial to arrange and manage your video training content. How can you be sure that your content has been consumed and absorbed? In the event that someone wants to be able to refer back again then where do they go to find the information on demand?

4. Don't get involved in the production process.

Repeat after me: don't overthink your video. This is the essence of it! Just speak to the camera like you're talking to a person, and tell them what they should know.