Welcoming your new hires is one of the most important moments in their whole experience with your company.
No matter how long employees stay with you, they’ll always remember their first days. The way you set up your onboarding process can help create a certain atmosphere and kick things off right. If you do everything right, your new employees will feel like a part of the family in no time.
To improve their welcoming process, many companies use employee onboarding videos. These videos are perfect tools to convey your message in a concise and engaging way. Think about it: simply reading instructions and company history from a website or a piece of paper can be boring.
Moreover, text-only won’t tell you the whole story. Sometimes you need a video to show people what your company is really about – your key values, assets, and people.
Read on to learn how to make the best onboarding and orientation videos for new employees.
What are employee onboarding videos?
Employee onboarding videos are a way for you to introduce new employees to your company culture and help integrate them into the team faster.
You can use these videos to educate your new employees about company processes and procedures, as well as tell them what your company is all about. So you can take a more technical route and turn your onboarding video into practical instruction or make things less formal with an overall introduction video that focuses on culture.
Employee orientation videos are usually sent during the employee’s first week at the new position or posted on an internal server. You can also create multiple videos to address different things: a technical instruction video, onboarding training video, company culture videos, etc.
The importance of the onboarding period
Why should you even focus on onboarding so much?
One big reason why this period is so important is the effect it has on retention rates. Losing a good employee can be costly, so you need to pay close attention to your retention rate and overall employee satisfaction.
Research shows that a strong onboarding process can not only improve your new hire retention by over 80%, but it may also affect their productivity.
Investing in a good onboarding process will likely pay dividends and help your new employees become productive more quickly.
Types of onboarding videos
Based on the different approaches you can take, you can create different types of onboarding videos. Below are directions for you to think about.
Onboarding training videos
If the position your new employee is coming in requires technical skills, you might want to consider showing them a training video. This is especially the case if they’ll be using a new tool or machinery that’s specific to your industry.
Methods like screen recording combined with good voice over can be useful here, as they allow you to show the new employee exactly how the process looks like. It’s also a good idea to give them little breaks throughout the video so that they can pause and try to perform some actions on their own.
Here’s an example of a skill-focused video that teaches people how to perform a task and operate a device in an interesting way:
“Meet-the-team” videos
Some companies focus on integrating the new hire into the team as soon as possible rather than boring them with complicated procedures. That’s usually the case with startups and similar smaller companies, where there is a strong focus on collaboration culture.
These videos are also used when the company doesn’t have specific protocols that the new employee needs to know. “Meet-the-team” videos should include some of your employees and they should always feel more friendly and personal than other videos on this list.
This video from Canva shows us how you can use onboarding to tell a story and focus on your team:
As you can see, it’s not just about people – it’s about the whole company culture.
A personal message from the CEO
Getting a personal message from the CEO can be a big step towards making a new hire feel welcome. Receiving a warm welcome and a brief introduction to company history is a great start that will make the employee feel valued right from their first day.
There is only one potential pitfall here: the message needs to be truly personalized. Generic videos that don’t use the person’s name or position will feel forced and people will see right through them.
If you decide to for this format, you have to make effort and stand out from other companies that use generic CEO greetings.
Company policy videos
In more strict corporate environments, you might need to provide a new hire video going through company policies. Businesses that deal with touchy subjects like online gambling, health, and law services usually have specific policies that new employees need to follow.
However, just because the regulations are strict, that doesn’t mean the video needs to be boring. You can use methods like animation and real-life examples to bring your policies to life and create an attention-grabbing video.
We’ll get to a fun example of this later in the article.
Inspiring employee onboarding video examples
Now, let’s go through some interesting examples of different kinds of new employee orientation videos. All of these examples use some simple, yet effective, techniques to present the company and its policies in a fun way.
Google: Interns’ first week
Creativity and innovation are at the core of Google as a multinational brand. You can tell that from their “Interns’ first-week” video, where we follow their new interns, learn more about them, and learn more about Google’s company culture.
This video tells you almost all you need to know about what it looks like to work at Google. You get a pretty good look at their offices and surroundings and you hear from their interns how the company handles the work-life balance, inspires creativity in the workplace, and helps new hires integrate into the team.
Not only does this video serve as an excellent intro to what it’s like to be an employee at Google, but it also makes you feel proud to be a part of that culture.
The takeaway: It’s always a good idea to infuse your video with some specifics about your company culture that will give the employees a reason to feel good about themselves and their careers.
Dunkin Donuts’ New employee presentation
In this video from Dunkin Donuts, new employees can watch a short, 3-minute presentation that focuses on what the client service at Dunkin Donuts is all about. You first hear from their franchisee, Scott Fanning, as he delivers an honest introduction and welcomes you into the team.
After that, you go through some technical things: what is expected of you and what you should focus on during your time at the position.
Although this video is meant to be educational and provide a short training before you start on your new position, it’s not too specific or boring.
The takeaway: Training videos don’t have to be too technical. You can combine them with a nice, warm welcome and a few practical examples.
Zendesk: This is Zendesk
Through a combination of smart, quirky voiceover and an interesting concept, Zendesk tells their new and potential hires almost everything there is to know about working in their company.
The video doesn’t focus on the work or company policy. It also doesn’t directly talk about company culture.
This new hire video is about what it’s like to be a part of Zendesk – it tells you where they get their coffee, where they hang out after work, and even introduces the office fish. It’s friendly and personal and, although nothing is explicitly mentioned about their company culture, you get a good sense of what they’re like.
The takeaway: You can focus on the small things and bring your office to life. You don’t have to use long explications or go into great detail about your values: let the video speak for itself.
Innocom technologies
This short video from Innocom serves as a brief introduction for new employees. In under two minutes, their video gives the new employee the essential information about the company: their key mission, projects they’re working on, and some resources to help the employee get a head start.
It also uses animation as an efficient way to visually represent all of this instead of simply filming people throughout the office.
The takeaway: Your video doesn’t have to explain everything. You can use it just to welcome the employee and provide them with resources. You can also use animation if it makes more sense than filming a video.
TrueCar
TrueCar uses their CEO as a brand ambassador in their employee onboarding video. It starts with a funny personal story from the CEO about why he skates to work every day and then goes on to talk about their mission and company culture.
What we love about this video is the fact that the CEO doesn’t preach, he doesn’t try to explain anything to the new employees. He’s simply serving as someone who will share his impression of the company with you and show you the passion he has for what they’re building.
The takeaway: You can use your CEO to share their story as well as to share their passion for the company. They can be a perfect brand ambassador, all they need to do is speak from the heart.
Employee onboarding template scripts
Since we’re all about personalization here at Bonjoro, here are some templates you can use to welcome those new hires and make them feel like a part of the team. In all videos, we will use as many personalization tags as possible, such as employee’s name, their hiring manager’s name, their department, etc.
The more personal, the better!
Script #1: Welcome to the company
First, we have a general “welcome” video that focuses on greeting the new hire and pointing them towards some resources to get them started at the company.
Hi, [NAME] and welcome to day one at [COMPANY NAME]!
We’re so happy to have you join our [DEPARTMENT] team and we’ll do everything we can to make sure you have a great first week.
Take your time to settle in and get to meet your new colleagues. Fortunately, we won’t be expecting anything from you today, so just try to learn as much as you can about our processes and the way we like to do things.
To help you get started, I’d like to point out a few resources that you’ll find really useful.
First, we have the [RESOURCE]. You can find that at [PLACE i.e. company server, Google Drive] and it’ll be of great help with [PROCESS].
Second, you can find our [RESOURCE] at [PLACE]. That one helped a lot of new employees with [PROCESS] when they were getting started.
Apart from that, you can always turn to [HIRING MANAGER] if you have any questions. He/She might seem busy but don’t hesitate. It’s a big part of their job to help you integrate into the team.
Also, feel free to hit me up if you need anything from me. I always check my email and I’ll do my best to respond as soon as I can!
Thanks, [NAME], for hearing me out. Enjoy your first week!
Script #2: Meet the team
Next, we have a video that’s focused on introducing the new hire to their closest team members. This script is best used for small teams under five employees, where you can tell an interesting thing or two about each team member.
If you want to use this approach, try to really focus on the specifics about each team member – maybe even include an inside joke or two.
Hi, [NAME]!
Welcome to [COMPANY NAME], we’re happy to have you here and we hope you’ll have a fun first day!
Our [DEPARTMENT] team is constantly growing and we’re always looking to add new talent, so we’re delighted that you’ll help us grow even further.
I wanted to take a little time to give you an overview of your team and tell you what you can expect.
Your team leader is [NAME]. He/She joined our company [TIME PERIOD] ago and has since helped us achieve amazing results. He/She is a great leader and I’m sure you’ll learn a lot from him/her. Don’t hesitate to ask him/her any questions you might have during this period.
Next, you have [NAME], our [POSITION]. He/She is a real hard worker and [SPECIFICS ABOUT THE PERSON]. I think he/she is an awesome teammate and I believe you two will get along great.
[REPEAT FOR OTHER TEAM MEMBERS]
As for me, you can expect me to answer all the questions you might have about our company. Feel free to hit me up at any time and I’ll respond as fast as I can.
Welcome once again and I hope to meet you in person sometime soon. Bye!
Script #3: First-week expectations
In this approach, we focus on the main goals for the employee in their first week. We used some common goals but you can enter your own, as your company has its unique processes.
Hi, [NAME]!
My name is [NAME], I’m our [POSITION], and I’d like to welcome you to [COMPANY NAME].
We’re so happy to have you here and we’re excited to see you become an important part of the team in the future.
As this is just your first day, we don’t expect you to start working immediately. Focus on getting to know our culture, offices, and your teammates, of course.
We do, however, have some expectations of you for this week. Don’t worry, it’s nothing too demanding, just a few onboarding goals that we would like you to keep in mind.
First, we’d like you to get to know your closest teammates. Grab a coffee, learn their names, their pets’ names, and just talk to them so you get to know each other better. We value a good team culture and love to see our people become close over time.
Second, it would be great if you could become familiar with our communication process. Log in to your [COMMUNICATION TOOL] account, set up your email signature, and check out our [LOCAL SERVER OR STORAGE]. This will bring you up to speed and help you communicate faster going forward.
Finally, check out some of our latest projects. We’re doing some cool things here and we like for everyone to know about our progress. You can ask [HIRING MANAGER] to point you towards some of our project managers who will be happy to share their latest work with you.
That’s it – I hope you have a great first week and I look forward to meeting you.
If you need anything, don’t hesitate to send me an email. I do have a lot of work but I try to respond as soon as possible.
Talk to you soon. Bye!
Conclusion: Making the best employee onboarding video
Employee onboarding videos can be easy to make but they provide great value.
If done right, they can do wonders for your new employee’s confidence and make them feel welcome from day one.
One great trick that we always like to highlight is: try to make the video as personal as possible. When the employee feels like you're talking to them personally, they’ll get drawn into your company culture quicker and feel even better about joining your team.
If you’d like to try out this approach, you can register for a free trial of Bonjoro in a few moments!
