How Asynchronous Video Can Combat New-Hire Turnover

Employee turnover can be a significant drain on a company’s resources, especially when the departing employees are new hires. Aside from lost productivity, there are the 2x costs of recruiting, onboarding, and training both the employees and their replacements. It’s a common problem, especially since new employees have a high risk of leaving.

Up to 20% of staff turnover occurs within the first 45 days of employment, according to a report cited by Harvard Business Review. Employee retention is among the most pressing issues on the minds of CEOs today. 

The most common reason that new recruits leave, according to Korn Ferry, is that they discover that their role is different from what they expected. The second most common reason? They don’t like the company’s culture. Yet organizations often invest very little in onboarding for new hires that would counteract these two common issues.

The Solution Starts with Onboarding

To address turnover, increase productivity, and build teamwork, many organizations have revamped their onboarding programs in recent years, transforming them from paper-pushing snooze fests into multimedia journeys that include personalized video introductions to the company, the job, executives, and colleagues.

By engaging new hires on Day Zero, organizations not only help them ramp up faster; they also build team spirit and cohesion. Making new employees feel welcome by their peers also helps them confirm that they made the right choice in accepting the job.

Connecting Through Video Content

In today’s newly remote environments, many organizations have transitioned a once in-person process into a virtual one, with face-to-face meetings making way for online gatherings. 

But many HR reps find themselves fighting the fatigue that new hires experience after having to “perform” for hours at a stretch. It’s well-documented that we find it challenging to stay focused and engaged on long video-conference calls.

Another obstacle to onboarding effectiveness is that videoconferencing is a synchronous format. Trainers and new hires must log in at the same time and view content when it’s shared during the call. 

The solution is not to eliminate videoconferencing, but to supplement virtual onboarding with interactive and asynchronous introductions and exercises. That way, new hires can get up to speed and absorb new information at convenient times, without fatigue, and without interrupting their new workflows.

Rather than having a new sales rep spend their first day (or two) filling out forms and watching a long orientation video, savvy companies share short, peer-generated videos that allow new employees to “virtually” orient themselves and meet their coworkers.

Here are six suggestions for creative and effective asynchronous videos to help engage and retain new hires and reduce turnover.

1. Interactive Job Descriptions – Instead of handing the new recruit a document, have some team members record their thoughts about the employee’s job, as well as their availability to answer questions. Team members can help new recruits visualize their jobs by making “day in the life” videos that take the recruits on a tour of the department.

2. Corporate Culture 101 – Veteran employees can share their thoughts about the company’s culture – e.g., dress codes, “unwritten rules” about socializing and competing for business, appropriate and inappropriate language, etc. – so the fledgling worker can quickly adapt to the culture instead of learning by trial and error.

3. Team Introductions – Help new employees get to know their bosses and coworkers with short (30-second) videos in which team members introduce themselves and say a little something about why they like their jobs and/or the company.

4. Process training – Create tutorial videos to show new recruits how to use the hardware, software and other equipment needed for their jobs. To increase engagement, make the tutorials entertaining by, for example, including humorous sketches of common mistakes or major Do’s and Don’ts.

5. Policies and Procedures – Instead of simply listing the organization’s policies and procedures, have one or two supervisors (or HR people) walk the new recruit through everything. Dramatize some hypothetical examples of these policies and procedures in action to make topics more interesting and concrete.

6. CEO Welcome – A short welcome message from the CEO – one that includes a brief discussion of the company’s goals, mission and competitive positioning – is another great way to help recruits feel more comfortable with the company and its culture.

Keep It Short and Simple

For several reasons, it’s important to keep onboarding videos short. For one thing, you need to retain the interest of viewers, and that gets increasingly difficult with longer videos. For another, it’s easier to keep the content updated by replacing a couple of three-minute videos than a couple of 30-minute videos.

Finally, short videos take less time to rehearse and shoot. As much fun as it can be for your sales reps and managers to make videos, their main focus should be selling, not video production.

Welcome to Pre-Boarding

Now that most companies can no longer fly new hires into corporate headquarters for onboarding, take advantage of mobile and asynchronous video for “pre-boarding” and you’ll help reduce new hire turnover. Have team members learn your company’s solutions and systems, get to know executives and their team, and connect with their new company—without having to step out their front door.

Learn More

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