Employees who experience strong onboarding are more likely to stay long-term, reach productivity faster, and feel connected to the organization.
However, onboarding can overwhelm new hires with information, paperwork, and a lot of new faces.
Video can turn onboarding into an engaging experience where information sticks.
Why Video for Onboarding?
New employees are often excited and anxious. They’re trying to get a grip with company culture, remember names, understand processes; Video supports this transition in several ways:
Consistency: Every new hire gets the same high-quality introduction to your company, regardless of which manager hired them or which location they’re joining. This is especially valuable for companies with multiple offices or remote teams.
Easing the Load: Instead of cramming everything into day one, video allows new hires to pace their learning. They can watch at their own speed, pause to take notes, and revisit content if they need a refresher.
Connection: Seeing real faces, hearing authentic voices, and watching your new workplace in action creates connection before, during, and after someone’s first day. It transforms abstract concepts like “our values” into a relatable reality.
Accessibility: Video content can include captions, multiple language options, and be consumed on any device. This ensures your onboarding is inclusive and meets different learning preferences.
What can onboarding videos include?
Welcome Videos: Start strong with a warm, personal welcome from leadership. The CEO or department head directly addressing new hires. This helps create immediate belonging. Not a corporate speech, but a “we’re glad you’re here”.
Company History & Values Videos: Every company has a story, why it was founded, what problems it solves, how it’s evolved. Video brings this narrative to life far better than a slide deck. Show archival footage, interview founders or long-tenured employees, and illustrate how company values manifest in real decisions and actions. For video producers, this is an opportunity to craft compelling brand storytelling that serves multiple purposes (recruitment, onboarding, external marketing).
Process & Systems Walkthroughs: Screen recording videos that walk new hires through essential systems – how to submit expenses, use certain tools, request time off, access benefits information – are invaluable. These eliminate the need for new hires to frantically take notes while someone clicks through screens quickly. They can watch, pause, practice, and return to the video whenever they need a reminder. For HR teams, this dramatically reduces repetitive training sessions and support tickets.
Team Introductions: As well as, or instead of a conference room meet-and-greet where new hires forget names immediately, create short video introductions for team members. These can be simple: name, role, how long they’ve been with the company, one interesting fact, and what they’re excited to collaborate on. When someone joins, they can watch these videos beforehand and arrive on day one already recognising their colleagues and what they do.
Office/Workspace Tours: For workplace or hybrid roles, video tours showing where everything is: kitchen, bathrooms, meeting rooms, supplies, parking, best lunch spots nearby or dining hall – eliminate some of the first day awkwardness. New hires can reference these videos instead of wandering around looking. My daughter’s primary school does these each year. New teacher, new classroom, new clothes pegs and new part of the school buildings, all done on a mobile phone.
The Employee Engagement Connection
Strong onboarding impacts long-term engagement. When new hires feel welcomed, informed, and connected from day one, they’re more likely to:
Stay longer: 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experienced great onboarding. And strong onboarding processes improve employee retention by 82% according to Brandon Hall Group research.
Engage faster: Effective onboarding can boost new hire productivity by over 70%, meaning well-onboarded employees understand expectations, know where to find resources, and feel comfortable asking questions sooner
Build relationships: Video humanizes colleagues before formal introductions, accelerating relationship-building
Video also creates consistency in how company culture is communicated. Additionally, involving existing employees in creating onboarding videos – as subject matter experts, tour guides, or cultural ambassadors – increases their own engagement.
The Long-Term Value
One of video’s benefits in onboarding is its reference value. Employees don’t stop needing information after week one. They return to onboarding videos months later when they need to remember a process, understand a policy, or refresh their knowledge. This extended shelf life means your onboarding video investment continues delivering value long after someone’s start date.
Moreover, great onboarding videos often get repurposed for recruitment, or external comms. So the process of having videos made for this purpose feeds into a company archive for use over the coming years.
Find out more about my video production services HERE