5 Examples of Excellent Onboarding Videos (and Some Tips)

by Julian Canlas

Having employee on-boarding videos is a great way to educate new hires about your company culture and your offerings. But what kind of onboarding videos can you already make today? And how do you make them darn effective?

Don't know where to start? Don't worry! If you already create company videos, you probably already have on-boarding videos. Read through to find out how.

In this blog post, you learn:

  • What onboarding videos are and why they are important
  • The 3 main types of onboarding videos
  • Ways to effectively use onboarding videos
  • 5 video ideas of onboarding videos that rock

Here we go!

What Is an Onboarding Video And Why Should You Use It?

Every new hire wants to have a clear grasp of your values, your product, and what's expected of them. Understandably, there's so much to learn! And an onboarding video can help facilitate this learning process.

Why do you need training videos in your onboarding process? Let's play a scenario. You already have all the marketing materials and documentation that explain the ins and outs of your company and what you sell. So naturally, your new hire should already have the right content to educate themselves on what's expected of them, right?

Well, not quite. You want your new hire to be efficient as soon as possible. An onboarding process allows them to consume relevant information in a curated way, rather than drown in it.

At the same time, an onboarding video can help facilitate knowledge acquisition. Trawling and reading through documentation can get tiring.

Many academic studies indicate that video enhances learning and retention. This is something you could easily incorporate into your internal newsletters and emails for a more personalized touch.

New hires can hear and see the content through training videos, as opposed to only reading about it. They can easily come back to these videos and play them in case they forget something.

5 Ways to Effectively Use Employee Onboarding Videos

Here are a few handy pointers on using onboarding videos.

1.  Learn about the three main types of onboarding videos

Most onboarding videos can be categorized into three categories. You should learn about them to accordingly structure your onboarding process. These are:

  • Culture-based onboarding videos talk about your company’s history and values.
  • Product-based onboarding videos teach your new hire about your product(s) or service(s). This can include onboarding videos on how your different features work, your product roadmap, and pricing.
  • Expertise-based onboarding videos show your new hire how their team works and their day-to-day tasks. Many companies tend to skimp on these. Don’t. In my experience, this type of onboarding videos can help the new hire understand what’s expected of them and the objectives they need to achieve. At VEED, we like to send quick videos to show new hires how the team works! Everyone appreciates them. They can be shared between team mates, and they’re fast and snappy to make!  Win-win!

2. Keep your onboarding videos short and to the point

Explaining what your company is about doesn’t have to be a snoozefest! As such, keep your videos, if possible, below 5 minutes. And make sure that they are well-structured and clear.

Essentially, make your onboarding videos rewatchable. This way, if your new hire forgot about something, they can simply watch the video back again. And let’s be honest, would you rewatch a 15-minute onboarding video?

3. Inspire your new hires

This especially applies to your culture-based onboarding and training videos. You need to inspire your new hires and to get them excited about being part of this awesome company.

Moreover, at the start of the process, prioritize onboarding videos on culture and product. Why? They help clarify how your company works and what it stands for. And the way the new hire reacts to your culture can indicate if they are a good fit for your company.

Of course, getting inspired and understanding company culture work in tandem. For them to be inspired by the culture, the new hire needs to be somehow aware of how it works.

4. Other types of company videos can be onboarding videos too

Content repurposing is something that many tend to forget but can be extremely useful when employed effectively. This is the practice of reusing old content for other channels and in new ways.

Say you have some marketing videos that you’ve posted on social media. Don’t have time to create a series of onboarding videos? No problem! Use these existing marketing videos as part of your onboarding process.

Simple yet effective.

5. Keep it simple, silly (KISS)

Building upon the previous point, if you don’t have enough resources and energy to invest in expensive onboarding videos, don’t.

Keep it simple, silly! For this, you can use VEED to create onboarding videos that are super quick and easy to make.

All you need for this is a webcam, a microphone, and yourself. Nothing more. Nothing less. This video idea is great for scrappy companies who have limited budget and production values but boundless creativity!

This way, you can use the same onboarding videos for future hires after creating them for the first one.

5 Examples of Excellent Onboarding Videos

1. VEED uses marketing videos that explain its latest features

King of webcam-recorded videos (and co-founder of VEED) Sabba Keynejad uses this type of videos to market VEED’s latest features and also explain them to employees.

The video was quite fast and simple to make. But, more importantly, it works. Very recently, VEED just launched their webcam and screen recorder on Producthunt and used the video for promotional purposes. And it served this purpose well. Sabba showcased the new feature quite well, and it contributed to a successful launch.

This also works as a great onboarding video for hires who need to learn about this tool and how it’s being marketed.

2. Zendesk’s company video also works as a great culture-based onboarding video

Zendesk’s company video is darn good. At one, it’s a great introduction to clients and prospects who want to learn more about the company behind the platform. By focusing on the employees, Zendesk is positioning itself as a company that cares deeply about human relations, including those who work for the company. As a platform for managing customer relationships, this positioning works well for Zendesk.

As a culture-based onboarding video, it is to-the-point, it inspires, and it contains just the right amount of high-level information for the new hire to understand the company functions.

3. Zoom creates a playlist on how to use its features for users and employees alike

Zoom has grown in unprecedented ways since the global lockdown struck. Understandably, they must be in the process of creating content and documentation in record time for new users.

Zoom is also speaking the gospel of webcam videos to explain their features. And they’ve even created YouTube playlists for easy navigation.

Suffice to say, this kind of playlist will also work well as a series of onboarding videos. SaaS companies seriously underestimate how useful it can be to onboard new hires about the product through FAQ videos like these.

New hires can be motivated and independent. But explicitly teaching them through videos like these will ensure that they fully understand how various features are supposed to work.

4. Netflix celebrates its Black employees

In addition to hiring Bozoma Saint John as Chief Marketing Officer, the first Black person in its c-suite, Netflix has been making company-wide structural changes to make sure that Black people and other people of color get a seat at the table.

It might not seem much, videos like this can make minority voices in your company feel welcome. A culture-based onboarding video like this can imply that Netflix has a support system for its Black employees to let them thrive. This support, of course, extends to new hires, who want to feel certain that they can be their authentic selves without getting judged.

After all, part of a great working culture involves making sure that employees can work on what they’re good at, instead of worrying about how they may be perceived for the color of their skin or other differences.

5. Spotify illustrates their agile engineering culture

Remember when I said that the best onboarding video is a short one? Well, there are exceptions. Spotify’s video on their agile engineering culture is one of them.

This onboarding video hits so many targets at once. It explains the culture of their agile engineering team quite sufficiently. It shows what is expected of all the employees in that department. And throughout the 25 minutes and 27 seconds of video time, it never gets dull. Somehow, it manages to deftly illustrate an otherwise complex work process.

Time to Create Your Beautiful Onboarding Videos

A great onboarding process makes new hires feel welcome.New hires also need all the relevant information to succeed. Onboarding videos that they can watch and replay are a great way to teach them about their new job.

While creating an onboarding video may feel frivolous, you can already create an onboarding process with some company videos you already have. Content repurposing is a powerful way to reuse old content, instead of spending hours on creating new ones.

Finally, a great on-boarding video doesn't need to be expensive. Sometimes, you just need a webcam, yourself and an easy-to-use video editing platform like VEED to create your videos at record speed. In addition, you can use VEED to add text to your video, merge, trim and split your videos, add an audiogram, and other video editing stuff to create awesome video projects.

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