Video for Employee

Communications
5 Best Practices From Companies Who Have it Mastered

Brought to you by:

We make video valuable

Video is the New Document

Video is everywhere. Virtually everyone carries a device with them
that can capture, edit, and publish video content, making it
instantly accessible to anyone around the world.
For enterprises, the promise of video as a platform for internal
communications is strong, and only growing everyday. People
connect with videos - According to the people we surveyed,
employees remember videos better than they do other channels
like newsletters and documents.
Enterprises have seen a dramatic increase in the use of video as a communication tool for
everything from online training to employee research and corporate announcements. But
not every company gets video. We wanted to find out why some companies have been so
successful in adopting video for internal communications, while others continue to struggle.
To do this, we initiated a research effort to extract best practices from those companies who
have proven themselves to be masters.
This report will discuss the
power of video, best practices
that can help communicators
successfully use video to reach
employees, and how to
overcome some of the obstacles
that companies commonly
experience as they ramp up the
medium.
To see who we surveyed and
understand the maturity model
that was developed, check out the Appendix of this
report.

Why Video Matters

People are choosing to consume information via video more and more. In fact, according to Cisco, the sum of all
forms of video will exceed 84% of global consumer traffic by 2018.
Why the trend? Messages can be presented in a way that is not possible with text or static imagery alone.
According to research by h.engage, a company that runs employee programs, videos had an engagement range of
40% to 69% the highest out of all the channels they studied, including newsletters and posters.

Our research participants had their own compelling thoughts about why video matters.

1. Video gets the point across quickly.

Critical and time sensitive information is the primary

driver of our companys support for the use of video.

VP Business Strategy, Citigroup
Images are the best form of communication. They
greatly reduce the time to get a point across,
Vice Presidennt, HSBC

2. Video makes messages more consistent.

It is easier to get the same communication out to
everyone at the same time.
Training Specialist, Amerigas
We embrace it because it provides a uniformed
and consistent message.
HR, Amazon

3. Video helps people remember a message.

They understand that people are used to watching TV
and might retain the information better.
Executive HR Manager, Coca Cola

[Video is] more interactive and real.

Recruiter, Staples

4. Video engages younger employees more effectively.

Videos allow organizations to target and communicate effectively
with generation Y employees.
Sales Manager, Liberty Mutual

5. Video captures viewers attention better.

Who doesnt enjoy watching a video?
Gap, Inc, HR Manager

More people take the time to watch a video than take

time to read something.
Social Business Subject Matter Expert, PepsiCo

Top Uses of Video for

Internal Communications
Compliance Training
CEO / Executive Talks /
Town Hall Meetings
HR Policy Training
Product Training/
Overview
Sales Enablement /
Field Staff Training
Marketing
Training / Overview
IT Training / overview
Financial overview

5 Best Practices for Using Video in Internal Communication

As part of our survey, we developed a
maturity curve for the use and consumption
of video within an enterprise. The most
mature organizations were most likely
to employ the following 5 best practices
around video:

60% of leading companies encourage their

employees and departments to create and
publish their own video content. These
companies have worked through concerns
around consistency and production
quality to discover that the end of the day,
video is such an effective format for
communicating ideas that the benefits of
democratizing video within their
organizations outweigh the risks.

Use videos for many different

types of internal communication.
The most mature companies use video for
an average of 7.9 different types of internal
communication, compared with the least
mature who use video for less than three
purposes. That means the most advanced
companies have found almost three times
as many ways to use video to communicate
with their employees!

Percentage who encourage video creation

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Most Mature
Above Average
Maturity
Moderate Maturity

Below Average
Maturity

Unique types of video used in Internal Communications

0

Little to no
maturity

Most Mature
Above Average
Maturity

Moderate Maturity

Little to no maturity

Make it easy to organize and find

The most advanced companies have great
processes and technologies in place for
tagging video and for searching through
those tags. Between 65% to 80% of
companies with the most mature video
ecosystems make it easy for their
employees to find the video content
they need.

Create a culture that values

video content.
80% of the companies who are most
advanced with their use of video have a
culture that embraces video. At these
companies, employees regard video as a
natural and accepted way to communicate,
supported by management as well as
cultural norms.

Below Average
Maturity

Encourage employees to create

their own videos.

Create fun, short videos even if

it lacks polish.
In todays society, people only pay attention
in short bursts. But they still want to be
engaged. One way to engage them is with
fun videos. Our survey found that mature
companies would rather make fun videos
than serious ones.

Overcoming Obstacles to Better Video

Many companies still struggle with the adoption of video for internal communication. As part of
our research, we asked them why. The five most common barriers are:

Barrier

Cost and Time

Security

Conservative
Culture

Cost for System

Upgrades

Requires Technical
Knowhow

Tips for Achieving Better Video

Video creation costs can be slashed by empowering individuals to create
videos with the equipment they carry with them. Look for video management &
distri-bution solutions that eliminate time consuming and costly manual tagging
and transcription to ensure videos can be searched for and discovered not
just by their title but also by the rich audio text within the video.
Look for video management and distribution solutions that integrate into
your existing content management systems and assume their methodology for
access and authentication. Preventing your video from escaping the corporate
walls is critical to preserving sensitive information. Some solutions provide
short-lived URLs that prevent unauthorized video sharing.
Cultivate a video-based culture by starting small pick one department or
region to be the test unit for rolling out more aggressive use of video, and
promote their success to other groups to gain alignment and traction. Having a
video management and distribution platform that delivers deep analytics on
video discovery, usage, and consumption gives you data to convince the skeptics.
A SaaS model for video management and delivery solutions provides a
highly attractive Total Cost of Ownership while providing the reliability and
flexibility traditional software models offer. With SaaS, you always run the
most current version of the application, and there is never a need to worry
about hardware, bandwidth, operating systems, etc. These solutions can
often integrate with your existing infrastructure.
The learning curve for creating and distributing video has dropped dramatically
with decent video recording capabilities on smartphones and distribution via
YouTube. As for managing video-related infrastructure, as mentioned above,
SaaS greatly eliminates the requirements & skills needed to manage and
distribute video broadly across the organization.

Conclusion
Using video helps employees absorb and remember key messages. A strong video culture is one
that both encourages video creation but also to reduces the actual and perceived costs of video
production. Video allows organization to share a very consistent message across a very large and
geographically diverse organization.
Once a culture is established for creating video, the ability to quickly find relevant information is
vital to creating widespread adoption of video within an organization. Having a centralized, searchable
video database allows employees to access the information companies have spent valuable resources
to create.

Appendix
How This Survey Was Conducted
To understand what those companies who have mastered video as a medium for employee communications are
doing really well, we reached out hundreds of people at brand name companies and asked them to complete a
simple survey.

The survey focused on two key areas:

How mature is the use of video at their
company?

What are the practices, attitudes and

resources in place to support video?

To assess this we asked questions about the types

of videos being created, the process for creating
videos, and the ease of access to content that was
produced. We used this information to generate a
maturity score for each respondent.

The second portion of the survey asked about

every-thing from the cultural support for
creating video, to the methods available for
people to create videos, to the training and
infrastructure available.

Then, by correlating the behaviors of companies with their assessed level of maturity, we identified a set of
best practices that set the video power-users apart from their peers.

Who We Surveyed:
By the numbers

90 Participants
67 Companies
8 Industries
6 Key Job Functions
29 Questions

Key Roles

Key Industries
Financial Services

Corporate Training
Human Resources
Marketing
Sales
Operations
Information Technology

Retail
Consumer Products
Healthcare
Manufacturing
Business Services
Pharmaceutical / Biotech
Energy and Mining

About Ramp - We Make Video Valuable

Ramp has developed the next generation of search & video experiences to make video more
valuable. Using Ramp, clients are able to fully leverage the value of all of their video content
by driving increased discovery across search and social sites, enhancing user engagement
througdynamic search and publishing solutions across web, mobile, and connected devices,
and maximizing revenue through sophisticated advertising capabilities.
For more information about how Ramp can help your company use video in internal
communications, with metadata and tags to enable proper discovery, please visit our
website at http://www.ramp.com or call us at +1 857 202 3500. Our team would be happy to
answer your questions and help your company achieve better internal communications.