The Future of Workplace Storytelling: How to Scale Employee-Generated Videos.

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[00:00:00] David Rice: Well welcome everyone to the latest in our community event series. Uh, we started these last year. There's something we're glad to.

Uh, glad to see it keep growing and we'll continue to offer to our audience at people managing people. We're happy you're able to join us today and take part, uh, this, this is your first time joining. My name is David Rice. I'm the Executive editor for People Managing People. Today's session's gonna focus on the future of workplace storytelling and scaling employee generated videos.

So while everyone's getting settled, uh, we want to kind of start this one by finding out more about where your org is with video. Are you doing it well? Could it be better? Are you directly behind the eight ball? Uh, and yet to adopt it? So we are curious. We're gonna put a poll up live, go ahead and vote in that.

We just wanna see where everybody's at. Um, and while you answer that, I'm gonna introduce some experts in scaling and [00:01:00] optimizing employee generated videos. So joining us today, uh, we have Francesca Re, she is the founder of Frank's Strategy and the host of the Your Work Friends podcast, which I'm looking forward to, uh, doing an episode with soon.

That's gonna be a cool collaboration. Uh, but Francesca, you know, you've got a lot going on professionally. You've recently discovered a new skill and have been speaking to some new neighborhood friends. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

[00:01:24] Francesca Ranieri: Yeah. Um, I think I officially hit my forties and decided I needed to start talking to birds.

So I, um, I have a whole murder of crows basically that I feed every single morning. So, uh, if you wanna get started doing that, I now have about 12 that sit in the trees and wait for me to come outside. Uh, whole shell. Peanuts, no salt. You can get them at Costco. They're the cheapest for $6 a bag. And you'll have a bunch of friends.

Big, big fan. Highly recommend. They know my face by now. Pretty exciting.

[00:01:53] David Rice: Yeah, whole shell peanuts. That's the secret. I like that. All right, well, next up, uh, we have David Marika. He is the founder and [00:02:00] CEO of Social Life. David, uh, you were telling us before about your first Bollywood performance. Can you give us a little background on that?

[00:02:08] David Moricca: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so I, first of all, great to be here. Um, yeah, I live in Los Angeles and I'm part of a, my family is part of a group called, called the South Bay Indian American Association. And as part of that, they do a cultural performance every year. And so some of my buddies in that group tapped me to join their dance this year.

And it was amazing. First ever Bollywood performance. Uh, the moves, you know, we got it down in eight to 10 weeks of practice, but, uh, I think we looked pretty good. It was awesome.

[00:02:36] David Rice: I gotta say I'm impressive if you've ever been to like an Indian wedding or anything, I mean, some of these dances can be pretty elaborate.

Oh yeah. So it's, it's, that's cool. That. Finally joining us, uh, we have Simon Garina. He is the senior global events manager at, uh, ac, sorry, Kamai. Akamai, how do I say this one? Ka Akamai technology. Akamai Technologies. I don't know why that was so hard to get out. [00:03:00] I apologize for that. But Simon has a great history in video production.

Uh, tell us about some cool stories. I, I mean, you've been around the world, you've done Buckingham Palace, so tell, give us what your favorite stories from your video production career.

[00:03:16] Simon Gerzina: Yeah. I feel like if you work in media production and events for long enough, you have nothing but stories. But, but some of them definitely do stand out.

Um, being invited to go to, um, Buckingham Palace and, and do a, a mayday climate change event for, uh. King Charles was certainly a standout. You know, walking, looking for a restroom and spotting the throne of England outta the corner of your eye is, uh, one of those things you don't forget. And, and you get to say, I knew him when he was just a prince.

[00:03:46] David Rice: Wow. Wow, that's pretty cool. Um, all right, so we'll get started in just a sec, but, uh, you know I gotta run. We're gonna run through a few housekeeping items real quick. And while I'm doing that, I'd love to hear where you're tuning in [00:04:00] from today. Please take a second, say hi. Let us know where you are, uh, in the chat.

And while you do that, I'll run through this. Um. This session is being recorded. It will be available shortly afterwards. Uh, we may use clips from it on our website or on social channels, but it won't be quite the whole thing. So be sure to look out for your, uh, the full recording in your emails. Your cameras and phones are turn, or my phones, your cameras and microphones are turned off by default, so you will not appear in the recording.

Uh, if you haven't been on one of our sessions before, I'll tell you how this works. I've got a few topics our, I'm gonna be running through with our speakers today, and they'll be discussing live. Our speakers will get into that. We'll go for about 40 minutes, and then we'll open it up to q and a. So if you have any questions, post them in the chat and we'll get to those, get to them towards the end of the call.

Uh, but please post them throughout. If there are any timely questions, we might pull those out right away and ask them while, uh, still relevant to the topic that we're speaking about. All right. [00:05:00] So with all that out of the way, uh oh, sorry. It looks like we got poll results. Not at all, was the number one answer.

All right, so this is gonna be a really good session then. Um, so the number one thing that people are craving around an employer right now is authenticity, right? We've been having a lot of conversations around trust here at people managing people and how to build it, how to maintain it through uncertainty, those kinds of things.

But you start building trust from the moment someone first interacts with your brand, with the intention of possibly working for you. And when they, when they search, what they search for is something that they can connect with, which is usually authenticity, right? Video is a key component in bringing that out, and that's what we're gonna be getting into today.

So, without further ado, I wanna kick us off, off by asking this. If there's anyone out there wondering if video is really as important as it's made out to be, what would you tell them about incorporating video into their [00:06:00] employer branding efforts? And Simon, we'll start with you. Um,

[00:06:06] Simon Gerzina: I think it is absolutely as important as it's made out to be.

Uh, I think it is not a silver bullet. I think anytime someone says there is one method of communication that suits all needs, then, then, um, they probably haven't tested that in their organization. But I do think it's a crucial part of the mix and I think it's only becoming more. So, um, you know, one of the things that's very much struck me is we're in an age where pretty much everyone we work with in, in any level of an organization is today a, a video native.

We've all grown up with, with video as a really core part of how we consume information and how we share information increasingly so when it's missing from the mix, it's very much mixing, missing from a key source of, of information that people are gonna be searching out. And I think, [00:07:00] um, I. We see it when we communicate with customers.

It wouldn't be any different when we communicate with colleagues, and I think it should be assessed as, as part of every communication strategy as a box that needs to be ticked.

[00:07:13] David Rice: Absolutely. All right. Uh, David, I don't know if you had anything to add on that one, but I'm, I mean, look, I,

[00:07:19] David Moricca: yeah, I think that the data's super compelling, right?

That like video works across the entire employee lifecycle from employer brand and how folks kind of connect with executives. Executive social is like a very hot area right now, and it's really about executives building kind of a human persona to connect to the brand and the data showing like that, you know, short form video from executives, it really works to kind of connect to the brand, but it's also employee storytelling.

Like if you look at recruitment marketing as an example, the quality of applicants and the, the volume of applicants increases when you use video. I think it's something about 81%. Increase in video [00:08:00] application in applications when you use video, um, to kind of tell about a job and through the stories of other employees.

So it's really interesting in terms of building the funnel of recruitment through onboarding and training, through ongoing learning, through employee retention. Like video can be used as a really, really important tool through the entire employee lifecycle. It's gotta be core to the strategy.

[00:08:21] Francesca Ranieri: I, I would also argue too, it's so effective because it's as close to the pin as you can get in terms of demonstrating that authenticity to real life.

It, it just is because we're seeing you we're see where we're seeing it in action. It's a show versus a tell and that's why it's so compelling in all these, in all of these aspects that David was just talking about.

[00:08:41] David Rice: Yeah, I think I saw a stat recently saying like 81% of job seekers say they prefer to see employee generated video over some sort of like encrypted or scripted, uh, corporate messaging.

Right. It's very much like when we get, when we get. Back into that sort of like thinking about authenticity, this is the [00:09:00] key play. Um, I think especially

[00:09:02] Simon Gerzina: as, as culture is, is a real unique selling point of organizations as they're looking to both hire and retain. I can't think of a better medium for storytelling culture.

You know, it really leans into that, that show instead of tell, and the next best thing to be able to experience it firsthand is being able to experience it secondhand from a trusted source, which would be in most cases, employees at an organization.

[00:09:29] David Rice: No, absolutely. You know, one aspect I really like about it is the sort of autonomy of storytelling, right?

Like the ability to hand the power over to people within your organization and let them, 'cause you get, create so much creativity from people in ways that you never expected, from sources that you never expected. I love that freedom of it, um, and

[00:09:52] Simon Gerzina: scaling potential. Yeah.

[00:09:55] David Rice: Yeah, absolutely. Um, but it's like, Francesca, [00:10:00] we were talking, you were saying, you know, video is important just because it's video.

Right, right. It's, it's that medium for demonstrating work basically outside of, in real life. Like what other medium can ate workplace authenticity.

[00:10:15] Francesca Ranieri: Yeah. I, I mean, it's all part of a ecosystem, right? And what we're trying to do is always make sure that we're showing not only candidates, but employees what they wanna see.

Right. And video is a huge component of that. It's in an ecosystem of things like storytelling via text. Images around things like photographs of your employees, photographs of your campus, that sort of stuff. We also start seeing a lot of block and tackle comms. Those things all still matter and matter very deeply.

The thing for me is that making sure that those things are consistent. So if we're talking in comms, if we're talking in video, if we're talking in stock images, they're all part of the same brand and the same ecosystem. Um, the other thing that I think is really important though is that people really think about.[00:11:00]

How these messages come across in the stability of that. Um, one of the things that I see a lot is, uh, we have employee advocacy programs, for example, that are huge right now. And a lot of times they started as we're just gonna repost the stock brand LinkedIn post that is text. And now what you're starting to see are employee advocacy programs being employee generated video sometimes, or even more polished video as well.

And I think those are things that, to me, as long as those things are consistent with the other things in your ecosystem, that is what really matters.

[00:11:40] David Rice: Um, you know, it, everybody comes up against video, like in different formats, different channels, right? You're on Instagram, it's one kind of thing. It's LinkedIn, it's another, right. But it's sort of like as we're all social media natives, it's always there. It's not always the best. Medium for [00:12:00] communication, but you know, it, it's often the first medium our colleagues reach for when seeking information.

Simon, I'm, I'm kind of curious, how have you seen that evolve over the years and people's behavior around that?

[00:12:13] Simon Gerzina: I think we have, and I think we've seen videos swing back towards the middle a little bit. I think, you know, um. When something's new, it has a tendency to be overutilized. It has a tendency to be spread over every potential use case.

And, and over time, people learn where it fits better. Um, we saw for a long time video as the first communication and in many cases the only communication for some messages. But I think the longer the message, the more detailed the information, sort of the less video may be the right fit. It's a great way to give a headline.

It's a great way to give a top line communication. It's also a great way to humanize a difficult communication, which I think when [00:13:00] we're communicating with employee groups quite often we're trying to message something that is delicate. It's sensitive, it is, um, incredibly meaningful to your audience. You can.

Cover the banner of something really well with video, and you can do it in a very quick way that adds layers to the communication that are important. It adds a, a cultural context. It adds an identity context to the person doing the communication. It also allows you to kind of read between the lines in a way that, that you may not want to do with written communication.

And then it becomes a beautiful companion piece to written communications. And quite often you need to allow people to get the breadth from video and then the depth from other pieces of, of messaging. And I think when you think holistically about the communication, you end up with something that is more diverse.

It may a little more challenging to create, but I think it's much [00:14:00] more comfortable to consume for your audience. So we do try to look at these things holistically and say, you know, how are we going to convey the totality of a message? And then where are we going to divide it up between the, the channels or the formats that we have available?

And I'd also say video is not a single word. It's not a, it's not one Crayola in the box. You know, it has a lot of flavors to it. And short form video is what we're often talking about. Long form video, live video. You know, there are a lot of ways that we can use the medium and still fit it to the moment.

That may require more than one tool available to you, but it will also make sure that you are serving the audience with the message and not simply using the one tool that you've decided to have at your disposal.

[00:14:51] David Rice: So, you know, David, I'm kind of curious from your perspective, 'cause I imagine you get a lot of different people coming to you, right?

And they've been doing a lot of different things. So [00:15:00] there's a lot of like alternative channels maybe to video that they've been trying and not quite hitting the mark. And where does video kind of then, 'cause I mean it can't all be video, right? Like you can amplify your efforts all over the place, but how do you help them tie that together, uh, essentially with their, in their messaging?

[00:15:21] David Moricca: Well, look, I think you need to think about video as a tool, as both Francesca and Simon said in the customer journey, in the employee journey. And it's not just always video all the time, it's where does it really fit. I think one of the most interesting data points and kind of shifts has been this kind of move, move to more snackable video.

So we're seeing is in a fragmented, you know, attention span economy, which is what we live in right now. Whether we like it or not, it's, it's where we are. We're scrolling, we're, you know, swiping, we're looking at things really quickly on Slack and short form video is becoming kind of the norm because look, people make a decision pretty quickly.

If they wanna engage [00:16:00] deeper in eight seconds, in eight seconds, they make a call. So video visually can kind of capture. Frankly, the short form video, which is generally two minutes or less, ends up having a much higher completion rate. It's I think 81% higher completion rate than anything above two minutes.

And so if you use video really to kind of drive that further interest into the funnel, whether that's to read a white paper, to attend a webinar, to kind of in meet in person at a physical event, because that video hooked you, I'll, I'll schedule that meeting. It can be very, very powerful. So I think it's about not using video for everything all the time, sort of, but how do I use it to drive the customer behaviors or the employee be behaviors I need?

How do I help, you know, employees learn faster through micro learning, get on onboarded faster through, you know, video training that gets them productive quicker, those types of things. So thinking about, like, it has to be tied to an ROI or a goal set of goals, um, to have a purpose. Otherwise, it's just video.

[00:17:00] It's just content in a noisy market.

[00:17:04] David Rice: Noisy content space. You've got people like me on my LinkedIn, you know, now I'm doing short form video. I saw somebody said that you have three seconds. Uh, and I was like, well, isn't that just a judgment about my face? Like, whether they like it or not, I don't know. You know, maybe that's, that really challenges you to get clever in three seconds.

Right. Um, Francesca, you know, I know you've seen quite a bit of employer branding efforts and different things people have tried, uh, kind of weigh in, weigh in a little bit here on like, kind of how you've seen video really pull people's, um, their, their efforts in like more of a cohesive direction.

[00:17:45] Francesca Ranieri: So one of the things I would.

Love for people to think about, especially if you're an internal team, right? Let's say you're an internal HR team. For example, one of the things that I always like to ask people to do is think of yourself as an internal organization, but think [00:18:00] have a, like an external company mindset. You are creating a product, you are creating a service, and always thinking about.

Your comms and your strategic positioning as if you were an external brand. Would your employees buy what you're selling? Would your leaders buy what you're selling? And part of that is to really think about how are you, like David was saying, how are you using video throughout the life cycle of, of the employee experience?

I think a lot of times we think about employer brand as just the recruitment end of it, right? How are we thinking about getting people in the door? But video should be something that is used to basically make good on that brand promise that you are putting out into the ether for candidates. I wanna see that brand promise be made really whole throughout the employee life cycle, right?

And the thing that I think about most organizations do this when they do this super duper well, they are very clear about what they want that employee experience to [00:19:00] be. And throughout all of the ecosystems of comms, that's reinforcing it, right? They're picking one, two, maybe three things that they're gonna go after in terms of brand pillars to think about messaging to their employees, to their leaders, could be external and they're going whole hog on it.

Where I see a lot of people think about this is they're thinking about major points like David pointed out, right? We're thinking about onboarding, we're thinking about l and d, we're thinking about, uh, like benefits and that sort of stuff. I also think it's in those micro moments too. I'll give you a prime example of this performance management.

Everybody has a, most people, unless you're doing a different type of performance management, most people have a midyear and a year end, right? And every year I see employee, I see it with this all the time in organizations, HR sends out a, Hey, it's time for your midyear and year end, get ready and here's the PDF guide, or here's the intra site link.

And half the people don't even read it. And it's a prime opportunity to pull into video and be like, Hey, [00:20:00] I'm from HR and let me tell you how to walk through this really easy. So you're getting these main points, right? So we're living these brand values in these micro moments for our employees, right? So I think thinking about this, again, if this is a, if this is a service, you're an internal organization, how are we thinking about it in these macro touchpoint?

How are we thinking about these micro touchpoints? Stick to the brand in those 1, 2, 3 pillars And a, again, video to me, on the front end of those message to get people, um, to get people into the message. As David said, and Simon said, to get them, um, to get them reading more if they need to go into a PDF or to go into more information because they will gotta do those performance management conversations.

Right. But that's how, that's how I would love for people to think about it. And you'll find that video from either leaders or from your employees is a really, really great way to get people interested and with you along the brand journey.

[00:20:56] David Rice: Well that, that's a perfect segue 'cause kind of my next question was [00:21:00] around leaders and their use of video.

Right. And where does it sort of have the biggest impact on your team? And Simon, I kinda wanna start with you because we would started off talking about an authenticity, right? And one of the things right now, there's a lot of stuff going on in different industries. There's layoffs, there's a lot of difficult, sensitive messages that have to be communicated.

And when leaders communicate these through video, it, it kind of helps, like you mentioned the humanization earlier, but humanize those communications in a way that's. Pretty much impossible in a written communication, right? I mean, you can't, you can't do it. How important is it to sort of maybe build it into those, into your thinking about those communications as well?

I.

[00:21:41] Simon Gerzina: Yeah, I, I think it's, I think it's vital and I, I think good news or bad news generally delivered with a human touch, it's gonna be received better. And most of our leaders, either just through their professional experience or through formal training, have gotten good at delivering [00:22:00] these kinds of messages.

They're always going to do it better when we can see them as people, when we can experience them as people. And video's gonna be an important tool for that. Um, I. Even pre-work from home as a, as a mode shift in a lot of companies, we saw companies becoming more distributed. You know, increasingly they were going where customers were, they were going where opportunities were, which meant that they were more, um, geographically diverse than they might have been a generation earlier.

Which also means that more of our colleagues have not had that, that direct in-person experience with more of our leaders, and that has to be replaced with something. I think the more we can get those leaders to shift some of that communication into video, it does give a little bit of an next best experience.

You know, you may not have sat in a room. With that HR leader, with that CEO. But if you've seen them deliver regular messages on camera in their natural [00:23:00] voice, you know, with their natural body language, then you do have a sense of who they are as a person. And, and it allows you to inform what you hear from those people, what you learn from them.

Um, it is almost the next best thing to bumping into them in the hallway of the office and, and getting to have, you know, an extemporaneous experience. Um, I. I think it's also important to think beyond our leaders when we think about the communication though. And one of the things that we're really keen on is using video as an opportunity to, to build a broader bench of communicators in an organization.

And, you know, we have that, that unfortunate irony where a lot of times one person is, is doing the work building policy, building business, executing plans, and another person delivers the information about that. And it, it can lead to, I think, uh, uh, sort of, um, creeping dissatisfaction in organization if it feels like, you know, one doesn't get to carry their own water [00:24:00] as often as they want.

Building communication to video gives you a kind of dual opportunity of letting those people stand up behind their work, communicate their work, and then become the face of it. Um, it also allows you to kind of create new creators in an organization so that as it comes time to communicate more, to publish more, to create more video content, you actually have a bench of people who are comfortable doing it.

They're used to the tools, they're used to the process, and they have an experience. It's gonna serve them really well professionally. Um, and there's a side benefit. Your content starts to look more like your organization. And I think representation in a company is a really important priority that we can all do better at.

But one of the ways you get better at it is you start looking throughout the organization for the people who live there every day and they can tell your company's stories every day. And, you know, it becomes a real virtuous cycle that, um, it only benefits [00:25:00] everyone at the end of the day.

[00:25:02] David Moricca: And I wanna just kind of share that I think, you know, the town hall is still very valuable, right?

You know, the quarterly town hall or the twice annual town hall. One moment virtually with maybe some in person to get everyone aligned on the strategy and the operational objectives. It's great, but that is not a complete video strategy because talking to folks in a, you know, asynchronous way, essentially three, four times a year, it doesn't really kind of connect in an ongoing way.

And I think people are so used to getting content that bringing in kind of short messaging, whether it's weekly or monthly from the executive level, can be really powerful to keep that alignment, to keep that excitement, and also to make. That executive feel connected to the organization, it makes them accessible even if it isn't real time.

And so I think thinking about a strategy that goes beyond just the town hall to ultimately, like how do you build messaging quick hit one minute, [00:26:00] 92nd messaging as part of an ongoing stream. And I think on the employee storytelling, I think it's the same thing. You don't just highlight, you know, outstanding employees or sales leaders and winners, you know, four times a year or two times a year.

How do you tell employee stories in an ongoing way, core part of your strategy? Super powerful for retention. Super powerful, powerful for employee engagement. 'cause people are consuming that video. Say, Hey, I can relate to that. That's accessible to me.

[00:26:28] Francesca Ranieri: There's, there's another thing that I'd love for folks to consider is this idea of democratizing.

Uh, learning, democratizing communication. And what I mean by that, um, I, I spent most of my career leading talent development organizations. And one of the things we always struggle with is learning and development. The rapid pace of skills, for example, right? Skills keep changing the half-life of a skill keeps getting shorter and shorter.

And what if we actually let our employees loose on figuring out how to teach other employees skill development, for example, [00:27:00] right? Some of your best SMEs in the organization that know Python is probably the, you know, John over there in like cubicle four, right? Why not put him front and center on it? And one of the things that I love, especially with video and some of these video platforms, is you can democratize learning and skillsets by giving people access to.

Platforms like social life for example, where they can teach a micro class or snip it into micro learnings. You can have a process. I know our, my HR friends on the phone are like, oh my God, I can't let people just go loose with video. But you can have a process where you can make sure it checks the balances or checks everything out.

No one's swearing or whatever. Right? You can have that process, don't freak out about that, but then you can put them front and center and give them the currency, right? Give them the brand and democratize it that way. And it's a really easy way to have that win-win, um, around democratizing honestly where your organization, where your organization is going to democratizing learning, democratizing comms.

Um, I love to use it for that. [00:28:00] I've used it many times in my organization and it's a great way to do it.

[00:28:04] David Rice: Yeah, I love that. And you know, you talked about some of the, the ways things can go wrong and I, I do want to touch on this briefly, like David, we'll start with you. How are some ways that you've maybe seen video used?

Correctly or poorly, or there's some pitfalls to avoid. I'm interested in your perspective on this.

[00:28:23] David Moricca: Well, I, I think, uh, I think it, the pitfalls is when you kind of just do it for doing it versus building a strategy, setting up KPIs and objectives and then measuring against those objectives. But importantly, like if you do it the right way, you can create a very controlled approach to video creation and distribution while still making folks feel, uh, enlisted in the experience, meaning you don't have, you can, I'll just share a little bit about our platform, and not, not as a plug, but just as a, a way of saying, this is how you can actually scale this type of thing, like, look.

We have a, a concept [00:29:00] of contributors in our platform. Those are folks who are recording subjects, subject matter experts like Francesca discussed. They could be, you know, retail employees at a, at a a a, a bank branch or at a McDonald's location who can share content of expertise, but they're only recording content at scale for your organization.

And you have other folks who can ultimately templatize, edit and publish that content in a very controlled way. But even the act of inviting folks to share their stories or their micro learning experiences or others, allows you to kind of enlist them in the journey. And it has this really big impact.

But you can still create controls, brand controls, appliance controls. So I think it's, when you g you kind of don't think through a, the objectives and how, what performance and what success looks like. B, you don't set that strategy to an operational workflow that that things might either not take off. In fact, that's what happens More often than not, it just doesn't go anywhere.

Or if it does, people are not excited about the outcome because it hasn't been tied to [00:30:00] strategy and objectives and a workflow. But if you build, Hey, this is my strategy and goals, here's what success looks like, and here's the workflow to execute against that, and I'm gonna measure that quarterly. This is a, this is just like any other thing you deploy.

It's no different.

[00:30:17] David Rice: I love that. Yeah. No, workflow is, so, process is everything, right? Like people have to have some kind of structure to follow, or it just turns into either chaos or, like you said, it never takes off.

[00:30:28] David Moricca: That's the, that's the real issue, I think.

[00:30:31] David Rice: Yeah. Simon, I, I'm interested kind of, you've got, I think, a, a good perspective on this as well as somebody who's done it, uh, you know, what are some things you've seen.

[00:30:42] Simon Gerzina: I want to flashback something David said a few minutes ago, and he, he talked about purpose. And I do think it's important to ensure you're making video purposefully. And, and I think programs where we've started where someone said right out of the gate we wanna make a video or we wanna make a [00:31:00] series of videos.

And that was the jumping off point for, for a campaign, for a concept, for a series of communications, rather than working back from what do we need to say, who do we need to engage, what do we need them to do with this information? And then answering the questions about medium. You know, quite often video is part of the answer, if not all of the answer.

But if you start presuming that, you often get kinda lead astray from the effect that you're trying to achieve. And I always think work back from the outcome and then answer the questions along the way and it'll get you to the right starting point. So I think that's really crucial. I'm also a huge believer in.

Video that drives measurable outcomes. Um, you know, it's, it's never its own solution. It never exists because it exists. It should achieve a thing and you should know if it did its job or not. And if it didn't, you know that by measuring it and you iterate and the next time you do differently and, and you may do differently in a number of [00:32:00] ways, but it's important to know, you know, if something was successful.

Um, I think when you're actually making, we also have to recognize that. In an internal organization, almost no one you're going to put in front of a camera is a professional at being in front of the camera. So you're always asking someone to kind of step outside of their comfort zone. You know, even a CEO or you know, a, a Chief Human Resources officer can be the best speaker in the world.

But if you take them away from an audience, you take them away from making eye contact, the row number two, and you have them speak to the little green light, then it's going to be a skill that they maybe haven't developed to the same degree, and they're going to want to over prepare. They're going to want to over script, they're going to want to drain the life out of their communication.

And I always coach people if the way you speak in video. Isn't a you, you recognized? [00:33:00] Then let's get back to the authentic you. When you communicate to a camera, when you communicate through a lens to an audience and just bring back the body language. If you speak with your hands, if you choose different words, then find that you for when you're communicating Nvidia, because that's the you that the audience is looking for and will be resonant for.

So, you know, huge proponent of under scripting, under rehearsing, preparing just enough to kind of take the anxiety out, take that compliance team anxiety out, but make sure that the message conveys as human, as natural, as authentic, even if you sometimes search for a word or pause a little longer than you might've thought was, uh, appealing on camera.

[00:33:45] David Moricca: I think one additional, let's say I totally agree with everything you said, Simon, and one additional point worth making is the way content is very ephemeral these days. So, you know, there is gonna, there are gonna be some evergreen pieces, but most content is short [00:34:00] term. And so let's not think of every video creation project as the Super Bowl or as like the biggest undertaking.

'cause you'll nev you'll be paralyzed. We need to kind of change that. There's, you know, 10%, maybe 15% or 20% of the evergreen content. There's 80% of the, you know, ephemeral short form kind of hits. And that kind of lowers the bar a little bit. 'cause look, you're not gonna get an A plus every time. You're not gonna score a hundred every time.

That's okay. Let's get the story out there. Let's get the authenticity showing, let's get the humanity back in this conversation.

[00:34:34] David Rice: A hundred percent. I would argue that not all of them need to be 10 out of 10. You know, they just need to be like what they are, you know? Yeah. I'm curious, Francesca, I wanna ask you a question.

'cause this is sort of an employer branding thing, and this is coming up in a bunch of conversations that I've had and I keep coming back to it. So we're in this sort of like unpredictable environment right now. Like, politics is crazy, the world is noisy. [00:35:00] How can we use video to sort of cut through that noise created by that environment to still get our message across And in a way that's, I guess in some ways sort of communicates to people in the way that they want to communicate like that, that they want to be communicated to that a message that will still resonate with him even through all of all of that.

[00:35:19] Francesca Ranieri: Yeah. Uh, yeah, it's all bonkers right now. I, I mean, I'm just right. It's, it's, uh, and I, I think more than anything, we talked about authenticity. If we, if we agree that that's a given, I. Right? Mm-hmm. In these messaging that, in these crazy times or these unprecedented times, I think what, uh, what I would love for everyone else to consider is folks want transparency and they want stability right now.

I mean, I, the more I've, we've talked to a guy named Ashley Goodall who wrote this book, the Problem With Change, and he was talking about one of the best things you can do for your organization right now is to talk about what isn't changing. Right. [00:36:00] Um, to be clear about what that is. Right. And I think especially when we think about storytelling, um, again, or in our videos, you can do these things authentically, transparently, and reinforce stability or what's not changing in things like, honestly, even like day in the life content, we see this quite a bit, um, where you're showing things like what does it actually look like to work here?

What actually happened on that great project? That sort of thing too. Like EY for example, has a whole campaign right now on like a day in the life type of thing. Like, walk with me in. Being a consultant at EY and it feels like I'm getting ready in the morning and I'm making my coffee and it's very much very TikTok feel to it.

Right? You also have a similar example of the same thing, but it's Nike, right? And it's very, but it's in the Nike brand, right? And it's very transparent because we're on campus and we're seeing someone really raw and they're running on the track, right? And it's a very, um, great, both are really great demonstrations of what it is actually like to work [00:37:00] here in really clear ways and on brand in terms of being really stable in the messaging.

Um, so I, I think those are things I would be considering those day in the life pieces. Again, back to Simon's point, that kind of unscripted or at least scripted just enough where we see leaders not only at the C-Suite, but also our middle management as well. Talking about perspectives on workplace, challenges on what's happening in a way that is on brand and motivating.

I will argue that getting more of your middle managers on. Video or on camera, and the storytelling is really important right now. If you're looking at things like the Edelman Trust Barometer that just came out, we are seeing like a dip in trust in things like CEOs right now. I would say get your middle managers going and CEO very still very much important.

I wanna see that. Mm-hmm. I wanna hear those, that stability around what's not changing. I want that transparency. I also want it in other layers in the organization, and I want employees referencing that [00:38:00] as well. So again, just a few examples of what can we do to make sure that we're reinforcing that transparency and that stability.

The, the last thing I, I would love to just say, sorry, I can go off on a tangent on this one and not run away from the hard messaging. Hmm. A lot of times what I see organizations doing, these are moments, especially at the hard times. I mean, if you've ever worked retail, first of all, I think everybody should work, food, service or retail sometime in their book.

Oh, I agree. A

[00:38:26] David Rice: hundred percent.

[00:38:27] Francesca Ranieri: Right? I mean. Okay, I'll just 10 out of 10, no notes on that one. But I would, one of the things we always talked about, retail and food service, right, is in these dips, right where things get hard or where you have a bad customer experience, it's an opportunity to make them a loyal customer, right?

When you have dips in your organization, this is an opportunity for you to really showcase, um, being that stable, being that transparent as well. Don't run away from the hard messaging. Um, and again, in remote environments and hybrid environments, video especially around, you [00:39:00] know, showing that authentic hand gestures, showing who that person is.

Simon, to back to your good point, and also getting down in different layers in the organization. Huge

[00:39:10] David Moricca: time permits. We should all tell our food service and retail, uh, uh, job, uh, experiences.

[00:39:16] David Rice: Oh God, I could go all day. Be careful with that one. Don't open that door. Well, I do. So we are getting up to that 40 minute mark that I mentioned earlier, but I wanted to fit in one more question before we get into the audience questions.

And I wanted to kind of talk about tools. 'cause that's one of the things we talk a lot about here. Uh, people managing people. We are kind of a tool focused company. We know we try to connect people with the right things. Um, but you can't. David, you know, I wanted to start with you on this one because you had talked a little bit about process before and I'm curious, you know, what features you'll wanna look for and which tools HR leaders kind of use.

Because you can't just necessarily give people free reign, just give 'em a tool and get a go. Uh, like we said, how do you kind of [00:40:00] do this right in terms of best practices, documentation, things like that.

[00:40:05] David Moricca: So again, I think when you're looking at platforms, I think we need to think about video creation and distribution as workflow.

I think it's really important 'cause I think too often folks think of video creation as editing or some point experience, but it's actually particularly like a lot of the content we're talking about, like Francesca mentioned, day in the Life. It's really a workflow based approach to how you source and record that content.

How you then kind of edit that content seamlessly and then how you ultimately publish and where you publish. And so I think, you know, when you're thinking about this, you need to, again, it starts with strategy and objectives. What are the stories we're trying to tell and why? And how do we measure success?

And then how do we kind of unlock kind of a system? To be able to execute this repeatedly because the only way you're gonna have the AB testing that you need to see which content works and which doesn't, [00:41:00] is by being able to move enough through the funnel, um, and out to audiences to get that, those metrics.

And so, you know, I think important themes are naturally table stakes, ease of use. It has to be easy for anyone who's a recording subject, and it has to be easy for anyone who is an editor, a content creator. And if you can democratize particularly both aspects of that, the recording and the editing, now you can unlock scale, which is another key theme.

So ease of use and scale ultimately kind of allow you to get more voices heard, more stories told, but then there's a, the underpinnings of, okay, it also needs to meet brand standards. Now that doesn't mean it needs to be overly polished, but it still needs to be high quality, high quality video, high quality audio.

I'm thinking about templates, like how can you template ize the branding and production. When you actually get videos flowing through the system. 'cause that'll make it faster, but it'll also ensure brand consistency and it makes compliance really happy. So these are the things you wanna think about, but it starts with, you know, strategic objectives [00:42:00] and thinking about video creation as a workflow, um, not just a point solution.

[00:42:08] David Rice: Uh, Simon, I just, real quick, I wanna kind of touch with you on that as well because, you know, I think you can kind of speak to some of the finer points of this and sort of like, how do we find the early adopters for this?

[00:42:22] Simon Gerzina: Yeah, it's a great question and, and I would start by, by seeking out passion in the organization.

You know, you, you want people who are motivated because the first things are the hardest to do. And you want those people who are driven to try something new to, to carry a message. You know, often they are your storytellers in the organization. They have something that is important to them. They have something that they wanna share, and they're just looking for an opportunity.

They're looking for a megaphone. And, and it, it behooves you to seek those people out and then empower them. I [00:43:00] completely agree with David. You wanna put Anne, Francesca, you want to? Put checks and balances in place without gatekeeping. You wanna make sure that these people are empowered, yet stay within guardrails.

That, that, depending on what's being communicated, may be narrower. But you, you wanna make sure that you lean into that, that goal of, I have something that is important to me and I want. Other people to hear this. And then you work with them and you, you allow them to iterate. You seek feedback at every opportunity.

So you give them tools, you open doors, you see how far they get, and then you see how that performs. And then you go back and you find more people who look like them and you empower them to do more. And I think it's just a constantly iterative process. That widens the circle a little bit. Every time you're going to get to a point of maturity where you say, this is no longer quiet beta testing.

This is now a program, and we're going to start to formalize it a little bit. And you're gonna start to provide [00:44:00] tools. You're gonna provide enablement, you're gonna provide support. You may resource formally behind video creation. You know, we often look for a tiering model where we say there's going to be fast and frequent down here.

And we want people who are able to just go run and, and we're gonna give them a point in the direction and then we're not gonna slow them down. And then you start to get to higher production value, much more careful messaging. And it narrows and it narrows. And as you go higher up, you're gonna probably put more resource behind it.

But as David said, these are also things you're gonna do a lot less frequently. You can afford for them to be a longer shelf life seen by more people. But at the bottom, just find the people who are passionate. And then get speed bumps out of their way and help them run. And I think those are going to be your ambassadors to finding the next group and the next group over time.

[00:44:55] David Rice: Excellent. Uh, we, uh, we've got about 15 minutes left, so we're gonna get into the q and a portion. So [00:45:00] please, if you do have questions for our panel, get 'em in there. Uh, let's, let's get into it. Uh, but before we do that, I do have a couple of exciting updates to share. First, uh, as a bonus from today's session, David is offering one-on-one strategy sessions to help you apply some of the things that we've been talking about today.

Some of the things, um, you know, that you're learning, uh, at your company. So to book your session, click the link that we're gonna put in the chat. You'll enter your details, and then just include people managing people in the open text field, uh, and that way they'll know that that's, that, that you've come from this session and, and kind of what the intention is.

Um. We'll be hosting another event next month. This one's gonna be about RTO man, return to office mandates. Uh, it's gonna be, I'm hoping, kind of a spicy discussion with some special guests. So, newsletter subscribers will get the invite in their in the box once registration is live. So keep your eyes peeled for that.

If you're not signed up for the newsletter, please call on a people managing people.com and get signed up. Um, and then last, we make these events better [00:46:00] every month with the feedback that we receive from our audience. So, please, uh, there's gonna be another link in the chat. Please do let us know what you thought of today's session.

Submit a topic if you'd like to see if there's something that you wanna see us cover in the future. Um, we're open to all of that. So let's get straight into the questions. Uh, first of all, so 55% of folks on today's call said that they have no employer video strategy at their company. Uh, I'm, well, I'm curious here, uh, is that surprising?

What's stopping people from adopting video and how can they kind of break through those barriers into you all's opinion?

Well, we'll just, I'm gonna open it up. Anybody just pop in? I'm sorry.

[00:46:44] Simon Gerzina: I would Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, go, go ahead. I was gonna say, I think even the idea of considering a strategy, maybe one of those impediments and, and the notion that you do nothing until you have a formal structured program. Um, I would be [00:47:00] curious to know of those 55%, how many actually have video being created in those organizations and, and shared around internally without it actually adhering to a strategy?

I think quite often we find, um. You have tools in your organization that people may struggle to learn. Someone has created a recorded screen share demo of, um, how to do a thing in a tool, and they've shared it with their colleagues. Um, you may not know it exists. It may not be part of a formal strategy, but you now have a strategy.

You just don't control it. I think starting to look at how people are communicating within an organization, you're gonna find more video exists than you realize, and it's just simply not supported, empowered, or in any way directed. And, and I think that is actually the first step to turning it into a strategy is providing support and direction.

[00:47:59] David Rice: [00:48:00] Um, all right. We had another one come in. It was about Francesca's example of a quick reminder and overview video. Uh, the question was, do you all have any other examples of videos that can be lower lift and high impact like that?

[00:48:15] David Moricca: I, uh, I could speak to one that I think is really interesting. So, um, it's, it's a, it's a retailer, uh, that we work with. Um, and, you know, hiring, uh, associates for their stores is, is a challenging process. You know, it's hard to get good talent through the door. The retention tends to be very short. And what they wanted to try was, how do I tell employee stories to, to attract more talent that ultimately will hopefully stay longer.

And it was pretty amazing. I mean, they created about 200 videos in, roughly, call it eight weeks. They're, they're employee source stories. So they literally let [00:49:00] went, you know, by roll, by roll, customer service associate, um, you know, floor manager, uh, you name it, and they got kind of sourced video from the field.

They ended up doing it more in a guided experience, um, versus, you know, just kind of sourcing it in a self-serve way. But then they quickly kind of ran it through template and were able to get 200 videos populating on their career site and then start dripping them on social as well. And they have gotten so much excitement from the talent community and from, you know, actual recruiting, but they've also gotten a lot of accolades internally.

And here's the really cool thing. By them going and doing this, frankly a little bit on their own, they've now connected more closely with the video, centralized video and creative teams within that company. So they're moving forward with a strategy now where that team, the creative and video teams are creating templates.

To help the, the, the talent team create more video at scale. These teams weren't spending a lot of time together outside of like really [00:50:00] hands-on super intensive projects. Now they're gonna be working together with the creative and video teams having visibility and a, and a role in it, but the employee talent team being able to kind of go execute this at scale, I found that really exciting and it, and the metrics work too.

That was a really great use case.

[00:50:18] Francesca Ranieri: Yeah. KPMG is actually doing a really, if you, uh, an example of that, that you can go out on LinkedIn and see and then go to KPMG's career site. They're doing that right now. And it, to your point, David, they're not, they don't have to be super highly polished at all. Um, and in fact, especially with some of those employer or employee videos, it bodes a little bit better if they're a little rougher or feel a little bit more, I'm just talking to you.

Um, I, I would argue basically anywhere in your HR process that you have. A need for people to execute the process. I just, I know this sounds really basic and very tactical. It's not, this isn't gonna be a strategic conversation, but I know everybody on this call [00:51:00] probably has places where they're trying to get their employees to do something.

Whether it's a coaching conversation, a one-on-one performance management, taking the compliance learning, right? We all have those things. Where are those places where you really want people to get into it and to be able to explain the value really quickly and what they need to do very succinctly and very simply.

So they'll cash in their time to do it and do it well find those 5, 5, 5 places, 10 places that you're like, man, if we could just get more of an adoption here or if we could get more people through this, start there. Start there. It's, it's probably one of the easiest ways to lock and load into that.

[00:51:45] David Rice: So we, uh, uh, we have a little bit of a technical question here.

So I, I'm not sure, uh, who wants to take this one, but it was, how do you ensure videos are accessible to the web content accessibility guidelines, WCAG standards? [00:52:00]

[00:52:00] Simon Gerzina: Um, I can, I can talk from our experience a little bit. We don't. Follow the strict guidelines and standards, but we do set as high an accessibility bar as possible for the majority of our video communications.

Um, you know, we're lucky in that we have a reasonable amount of resource in-house for accessibility. We have a localization accessibility team that help us, for instance, translate key assets as a global company. You know, the majority of our employees are conversant in English, but it may not be their first language.

So making important content available in the way that's comfortable for employees to receive it is a really important priority. But when we get to video, it's a little more complex. Um, the tools are better than they ever were. So things like, you know, AI speech to text, to make closed caption available on every single piece of video content.

If we'd asked this question four or five years ago, that would've seemed like [00:53:00] an achievably high bar. Today it's a question of how accurate do we need it to be? And we can make decisions like 95% accuracy is enough if it means a hundred percent availability, and you as an organization may choose where you wanna be in that continuum.

Um, but it's a choice you have available to you. Now, I think also when you think about accessibility, you're talking about. Um, kind of partial impediments and things like colorblindness is something that we talk a lot about with visual content. So it's, it's any kind of digital content, but video being a really large part of that.

And for us, it's important to establish good guidelines so that people understand you don't put this color on top of this color and digital materials, video being one of them. It may read fine to you, but someone who can't see the color red suddenly can't read the content you just shared with them. So creating visual templates, materials that are easier for someone [00:54:00] to just pick up and use, rather than starting from, you know, a blank page or a blank pixel goes a long way to making sure that you've got standards of storytelling and also standards of accessibility.

And you're never leaving someone off the train when you're creating communication. And I think that's really important to be all inclusive with that communication. If it was worth sharing, it's worth sharing with everyone to whom it's relevant.

[00:54:25] David Moricca: I was gonna, I was gonna say that Sherry, I think this is gonna be a great area for where AI and machine learning really helps, right?

Um, you know, the, the ability to get translations, um, uh, that are 80 to 85% accurate, and the human element to get it to 95% or a hundred is gonna be a lot less time. And the multi-language support that you can now do, you know, a video in French being translated into, you know, 10 languages with a click of a button, that's pretty powerful stuff from a scale perspective.

So, um, I mean, I, I think, you know, [00:55:00] that's an area where we're just gonna see tons and tons of rollout. And then frankly, there'll be interesting things with audio dubbing where, you know, there's a fine line between avatar based video and taking an existing kind of human captured video and doing audio dubbing of some languages that could feel really authentic, that I think potentially, you know, really allows us to, to hit that accessibility standard at scale without it becoming inauthentic.

That's pretty exciting.

[00:55:28] David Rice: Absolutely. Um, this next one, you know, I, I think this is an important one because, uh, anytime you kind of outsource or, or, you know, make it available to people to do some type of creative work, this question's gonna get asked about it being extra work, right? So how do you encourage employees to participate in creating videos without it feeling like extra work for them?

[00:55:55] Francesca Ranieri: I couldn't answer this, how we've done it before. And I will tell you, um, there's, there's two things. [00:56:00] One, and Simon, I believe you were the one that was saying, find the people that are passionate. Uh, I will, there's a, there's a, there is a trade off, there is a give to get here, which is social currency because I find that there are people that when you go out and you find, for example, that small group of people that are already subject matter experts, let's take the Democrat, uh, cannot talk today, the democratization of learning, for example.

Those people are already SMEs. They're already sharing with the people that are around them. If you go up to them and say, Hey, I'd love to capture you, right? Or Let me, let's record you while you're already doing this, or something of the sort. I rarely have pushback on that. In return, they are becoming the organizational SME on it.

That gives them professional currency, that gives them social currency. If you take that externally as well, that's even better for their brand building too. Has to be a gift to get, yes, they are cashing in their time, but it, they're [00:57:00] passionate about it typically, and you're giving them the social currency back and I find that people are willing to make that trade off also.

Just make it volunteer. Don't force them into doing it.

[00:57:10] Simon Gerzina: Yeah. And, and to plus one francesca's comments, um, make it a, a measurable part of employee performance. You know, if you can measure the engagement that they generate internally and externally, and this is something that they've raised their hands that they're interested in pursuing, then make it something that is recognized as you look at, you know, how that person is performing.

And, and it shouldn't be in, in addition to the day job. It should be able to be reflected as part of the day job because it represents that kind of value to the organization.

[00:57:41] David Moricca: And look, there's a reality to the psychological impact. Like there, there's a dopamine effect. Like no different than when people create content on social channels and get that feeling of validation.

I'm not saying this is completely good, but that exists when it comes to employee storytelling, or why do you think executive social is so hot right now? [00:58:00] It's because those executives are finding that when they put content out there, they get a lot of engagement. It also plays into the ego side of it. So look that there's an un undercurrent that we have to recognize, but we can leverage that for also good things like telling stories that would otherwise not be told.

So just, I don't think the, the dopamine effect on social tales is any different with how you'll find some percentage of folks within your organization wanting to be content creators and content contributors, uh, a a and, and telling their stories.

[00:58:31] David Rice: All right. Well, we've got, we can try to squeeze one more in real quick, so I'm gonna try it.

Uh, but I wanna ask, you know, what's changing in this space and what can we expect to see next? Uh, David, we'll start with you.

[00:58:42] David Moricca: Yeah, so I think the big tension over the next few years, not surprisingly, is gonna be, you know, the tension around synthetic and generative ai, um, and what that means for the employee experience.

And I think what's interesting is the power and potential of [00:59:00] avatar based video is compelling, right? That's, wow. I don't even need to actually film folks. I can literally, you know, put a prompt in and it creates a video. And that can be the storytelling with an organization. The challenge is, I think the data's already showing that learners, for example, know when it's an avatar based video, even if it looks really authentic these days.

And so I think there's gonna be a natural tension with that. Desire for efficiency and scale that has driven, you know, businesses and the reality of how people actually consume content, engage and learn. And I think we're gonna find that synthetic video, the promise of it might not reach the reality in full.

There may be places where it fits. IE like audio dubbing, but I'm not convinced that it's gonna be quite as important and sticky as people think.

[00:59:49] David Rice: All right, well, uh, we are at time, so I appreciate everybody's thoughts and I appreciate David Francesca, Simon, you all giving us some of your time today. This was super [01:00:00] valuable. I love this conversation. This was really good. So, um. Everybody else, you know, thank you for joining us today. Fantastic to have you, uh, looking forward to, uh, doing this again next month.

Uh, as always, if you haven't already, you know, sign up for the newsletter, look out for the podcast. We've got a bunch of cool guests coming on. We've got more of these events. So as always, keep an eye on people managing people.com. You can follow us on LinkedIn. Um, but until next time, get in front of that little green light and remember how to be yourself.