How explainer videos fit in your employee onboarding and training

Face it: Your onboarding and training content could be better — especially the videos.

Onboarding and training videos are tough. We get it. They’re a logistical challenge to produce. They get dated. They get monotonous, despite your best efforts. So what do you do? Wrangle your team into recording some refreshed videos? Do some quick screen-recorded demos? Try your hand at stop-motion claymation film?

You can engage your audience, take some of the internal load off your team, and create more effective training and onboarding with animated explainer videos.

Check out the video below for the full walkthrough — why you should treat your internal communications more like content marketing, a framework for thinking about your onboarding content, and where animated video fits in the mix.

Why you should treat your onboarding and training more like content marketing

Before we talk about animated videos specifically, let’s talk about goals for onboarding and training in general.

At Lemonly, we approach internal communications (including onboarding and training) with a content marketing mindset.

What does that mean? Allow me to steal and tweak a definition from the Content Marketing Institute:

Internal comms isn’t so different. You’re deciding what your audience needs to know, creating content around those needs, and helping your viewers draw the line from that content to the next actions they should take in their role. Video content is, of course, really useful in those endeavors.

The why, how, and who of your onboarding content

Back to goals for onboarding and training: You’re treating it like content marketing. So what kind of valuable, relevant, and consistent content are you distributing to this audience? What are you trying to accomplish? The main ideas of your various learning modules probably fall under the why, how, or who of your organization.

• The why includes things like your company philosophy and value props. Why does your organization exist? Why is it valuable? Why is it different from competitors or alternatives?
• The how gets more technical. It includes the processes, tools, and systems your audience needs to understand for their roles. This is where they learn to do their jobs. That’s pretty important.
• The who isn’t just about showcasing your team or putting your leadership front and center. It’s about helping build a sense of belonging. A shared identity.

Balancing the needs of onboarding videos

Under it all — the why, how, and who — the goal is to actually have people complete their onboarding and training. And absorb the information. And use it in their work. 

Easier said than done, especially considering everything you have to balance:

• Make the content polished, but not so polished it feels inauthentic. 
• It should be high-energy at times, but it can’t lose the human element. 
• You have to make it as evergreen as possible while also making it as specific and relevant as possible. 
• And don’t leave anything out, but also don’t overwhelm the viewer with too much information.

That’s a lot to balance, but it’s not impossible. When it comes to onboarding and training, animated videos can effectively say what you need to say about your why, how, and who and balance all those elements you need to balance. 

Why animated videos make a great fit for onboarding and training content

Animated explainer videos made great content for communicating the why, how, and who of your onboarding and training.

Why: Your organization’s purpose and story

Let’s talk about the why first. Things like your company philosophy, value props, and differentiators can be pretty abstract concepts. Representing these topics through design and animation helps them feel more real and makes them more memorable.

Visuals help you make your “why” a story — not just a series of talking points. And you can underline that story with a cohesive emotional tone or overall vibe.

Animated video can overcome some constraints of live-action video

Doing that isn’t impossible with live-action video, but it’s much, much easier with animated video. With animation, you’re in control of everything, and your options are almost endless. Not just background music and pacing, but motion styles. Color. Even environments.

Live-action video shoots are pretty intense. You probably know how complicated it can be to coordinate on-screen talent from your team for onboarding and training videos. People are busy.

And, depending on how you go about it, those videos tend to get outdated quickly. For instance:

• Maybe there’s turnover in your organization and some of the featured team members have moved on to different jobs. 
• Maybe you move offices and need new B-roll of the space. 
• Someone’s old Fitbit might make the video’s age glaringly obvious.

Overall, animated videos aren’t limited in the same way live-action videos are. You can set your video in any location you want. Represent concepts in creative and memorable ways. The core elements of your “why” impact everything your team does, so it’s worth it to make that content really dynamic and impactful.

If you want to see a fun example of this in action, check out Lemonly’s brand video.

How: The details of getting the job done

Next, the how. This is the meat of your onboarding and training, where your audience is learning to do their job. And visuals make a huge difference. 

Visuals do the heavy lifting to make information easier to understand and retain. It’s why textbooks have diagrams. And intentionally using visuals in your videos help take some of  the mental load off your audience.

Screen-recorded demos or in-person walkthroughs are great here, especially for detailed, tactical things like how to navigate a portal or submit an expense report. Tutorials and demos. That kind of stuff.

But animated videos can be an effective way to visualize high-level processes, models, workflows, and key concepts in an engaging way. And, again, animated videos aren’t limited to what’s available on a screenshare. You can prioritize making concepts as clear as possible with custom design and motion. There’s a lot to say about the “how” of working at your organization, and animation helps you say it.

Who: The team that makes it happen

Finally, the who — the people and brand your audience will come to know and love. Mixed-media video can be a great option here. When your goal is to help your audience build affinity and sense of belonging, it makes sense to mix footage of real people in your organization with engaging animated scenes that showcase your brand and keep the energy up. 

You’re basically introducing your viewer to the team and showing them the team colors. It’s fun and polished without taking the human element out of the story.

Where animated video fits in your onboarding and training mix

Animated explainer videos are great for communicating a range of information about your organization’s why, how, and who, but they’re just one tool in your toolbox.

You don’t have to replace every live-action or screen-recorded video asset you have with an animated explainer — in fact, you shouldn’t. There are times where you should showcase real people to make the story more personal or use screen recordings to show specific tutorials.

So how do you decide where specifically animation should fit into your onboarding and training mix? Here are some quick considerations to help you decide whether animation is a good fit for specific purposes:

• Do you need an intro for a module with lots of highly technical information? Set the scene with animation and use visuals to turn that complexity into clarity. 
• Are you trying to evoke a particular emotion? Build hype? Get people motivated? Animation is helpful there too — the script, visuals, motion, music, and voiceover all help strike just the right vibe. 
• Need to hit the human connection angle? Roll out the talking heads and live-action video. Give it a mixed-media approach if you want to add some extra polish. 
• Will this content be pretty evergreen? It’s worth investing in animation. Animation generally takes more time and resources than live-action video, so content that needs to be updated or refreshed all the time might not be a good use case for animation.

Yes, video content is an investment. It takes time to do it well, but when you make your onboarding and training videos effective and engaging, you get a return on that investment. Your people spend less time figuring out what’s going on and more time doing what they do best: contributing to the team. 

Use visuals to make your onboarding content engaging, effective, and memorable

Animated videos are great for onboarding. But your onboarding and training video content, animated or live action, doesn’t have to stand alone. If you’re really treating our internal comms like content marketing, you need a mix of content types to reinforce your messages.

Adding other visual content like infographics, checklists, flowcharts, and how-to guides can help reinforce the key messages of your onboarding and training content. You probably already have some of this content, but if you’re looking for a refresh, you know where to find us.

Get in touch or explore more animated video examples.