Video communications add a level of authenticity and transparency to employee communications, especially in a distributed workplace.
Trust, authenticity and transparency are usually the first ingredients of a healthy corporate culture. If employees can’t trust that their managers have their best interests in mind, they won’t bring their full effort to every task and obstacle that might get in their way. If you want your employees to be authentic and well intentioned in their work, you have to give it to them first. Your actions have to show you care not only about them but about the vision of the company—the goals of the organization.
How? It’s not any one thing, it’s a combination of many small actions and ways of doing business that show your true motivations as a leader. One way to show your commitment to the organization and to your employees is to make it easy for things to work well. Make it easy for your employees to succeed in their jobs. Give them the resources they need to succeed.
Authenticity and transparency also help build trust not only up the chain of command but horizontally, among everyone in the organization. If everyone knows each other’s intentions, work becomes easier for everyone. One thing that always builds authenticity and encourages transparency is face-to-face communication. In a traditional office, this isn’t difficult. But, in a distributed office, with workers in different time zones and possibly on different continents, it becomes trickier. Fortunately, video communications have improved greatly in recent years.
Authentic Virtual Meetings
It used to be that virtual meetings were headaches for all involved. If, after fiddling with the screen in the conference room long enough to see the team on the other side of the video chat, you managed to hold a video conference, many things still wound up lost in translation. Today, virtual meetings have improved alongside the technology. Now, users can share files over the same network. They see each other in high definition and internet speeds are faster than ever, especially over local intranets. Video communication is no longer the chore it once was.
Digital Postcards and Explainer Videos
The improvements to video communication haven’t only rested in new technologies for video conferencing. It’s now possible to use video in place of many pesky employee information packets. A lot of organizations still print employee handbooks for workers, of course, and for good reason, but more organizations are supplementing that information with evergreen video content, that is, videos that don’t require regular updates and live solely for employees to view and learn from on their own time.
Digital postcards featuring short videos can be sent by leaders and managers to employees via email to be viewed whenever the employee has time. They can convey important information like how to sign up for healthcare benefits, what to expect at the next company-wide meeting or new and updated training modules.
Explainer videos (unsurprisingly) explain concepts using graphics and usually animation. They can live forever on a local intranet server and be used at the managers’ and employees’ discretion when they need more information.
Conclusion
Video communication can help your organization or hinder it. It’s up to you to manage your video systems and content to ensure your employees are getting all the information they need to succeed and thrive at your company. Now, with new ways of building transparency and authenticity using video communications, keeping everyone on the same page is easier than ever.
