How to Make a Great Employee Onboarding Video

Effective onboarding processes can do wonders for improving hiring return on investment. But a great onboarding process can increase retention by as much as 82% while bringing new hires up to speed faster.

Most onboarding workflows, however, take a painfully long time. New employees must read through pages and pages of company policies, processes, and expectations. That’s not exactly an exciting or engaging way to start a new job.

However, replacing those endless policy documents with a handful of videos can speed up onboarding while improving new hires' engagement and compliance.

In this article, we’ll guide you through the steps to create effective onboarding videos, explore some powerful examples, and dive into how AI can support the video production process.

How great onboarding videos help build employee engagement

Most of us recognize that a solid onboarding process is important, but we don’t often realize just how important effective onboarding is. Recent research demonstrates that a quality onboarding process can improve retention by 82% and drive a 70% increase in productivity from new hires.

Utilizing video in your employee onboarding sequences is key to unlocking these improvements. 

Video is a much more effective learning medium. It's also a much faster method of conveying information. Consider how long it takes to read a Harry Potter book compared to watching the film version, for example. 

Onboarding video content also offers a unique benefit that traditional in-person training and onboarding conversations do not. These in-person conversations happen once, and we know that employees retain only some of what trainers convey in these sessions. 

In contrast, video offers the benefit of rewatchability. A new employee can view a video several times, rewatch a specific section, or save the video for future reference.

How to create a great employee onboarding video, with or without AI 

If you’ve never created an onboarding video before, you may be unsure where to start. Get started by following these simple steps:

1. Objective setting: Clarify what your goals are for your video. For instance, is the video going to be a company overview or a role-specific how-to?
2. Storyboarding: Get your whiteboard out and sketch out the high-level scenes that will be present in your video. Consider who will be featured in the video and where it will take place.
3. Scripting: Write and edit the script that your actors will follow.
4. First internal stakeholder review: Allow the internal stakeholders overseeing the onboarding video production to have a chance to provide advice, edits, and suggestions and sign off on the plan before moving forward.
5. Hiring and contracting: Find a local studio to shoot the video or rent the gear to do it yourself. If you don’t plan on featuring existing employees in the video, then you’ll need to find and contract actors as well. 
6. Filming: Use your storyboard and script to film each scene.
7. Editing and color correction: Decide which takes will be in the final video. Create transitions, correct and adjust colors, approve the final visuals, and add a B-roll if necessary.
8. Voice-over: Record a voice-over for any scenes that require one.
9. Sound design: Add background music and sound effects and adjust audio levels to polish the final product.
10. Second internal stakeholder review: Bring back the same stakeholders as above to review the final product and approve it for publishing.
11. Present the video to new employees: By this stage, your video should be ready to go. When you distribute the onboarding video to new employees, it’s a good idea to ensure they have the ability to come back and rewatch it later.

It’s a lot of steps, we know. 

If you’re looking to speed up this process, you may want to consider utilizing generative AI – such as an AI video generator like Colossyan – to push much of this work off your plate. 

With AI, there’s no need to storyboard or write a script. Simply provide a few AI prompts and generate a script from scratch. Or, if you have an onboarding welcome document, Colossyan’s document-to-video feature can transform your text to a video draft in less than 60 seconds. 

Check it out: 

You also don’t need to worry about renting a studio and equipment, finding actors, filming, or recording voice-overs. Just choose the AI avatar that best suits your needs, select your favorite accent and voice, and generate a video using the script you’ve already approved.

With Colossyan, it's that easy.

Building interactivity into your employee onboarding videos 

Want to go a step beyond standard video training content? Consider how you might be able to add interactivity into your video.

For example, Colossyan helps you implement various interactive elements such as knowledge checks with multiple choice questions.

A few interactivity features we have coming soon include:

• Hyperlinks to additional external resources
• Mix and match exercises
• Branching scenarios for scenario-based training 
• Movable objects 

Integrating this level of interactivity into your onboarding videos can support knowledge retention and ensure that your employees complete the modules by preventing them from moving on to the next video until they pass a knowledge check. 

10 examples of great employee onboarding videos 

Now you know the process of creating an onboarding video, but you still may want a bit of inspiration before you get to work on creating training videos of your own. 

Let's review a few well-known employee onboarding video examples and learn some lessons from the pros:

1. HubSpot: HubSpot Culture

The “HubSpot Culture” video is one of the first pieces of content that new hires at HubSpot dive into.

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This video gives employees insight into HubSpot's company culture through the lens of its history and its founder’s narrative.

What makes this one of the most engaging onboarding videos is its light-hearted and humorous approach – which is great for drawing new employees in and avoiding the same old stuffy, boring corporate onboarding shtick. 

2. Adobe: New Employee Welcome Video

Adobe has a great welcome video for new employees, which serves as the starting point for all employee onboarding sequences.

This video features an introduction from the company’s president and CEO, along with other Adobe employees, to create a genuine “from-the-team” feel.

3. Google: Google Interns' First Week

Google’s new hire video gives interns an idea of what to expect in their first week of work, as told by other Google employees who’ve already gone through the internship process.

This storytelling approach feels more realistic and down-to-earth. It’s the perfect way to set expectations without feeling like a lecture.

4. Amazon: Day 01: Amazon Orientation

Amazon’s orientation video is a perfect example of onboarding done well.

It’s one of the longer onboarding videos you’ll find (at over 30 minutes), but it’s full of helpful illustrations and on-brand imagery. It covers everything from Amazon’s broad company vision to the steps involved in the delivery process.

5. Bolt: We Are Bolt, the Fastest-Growing Tech Company in Europe

Estonian company Bolt’s introduction video is designed to inspire and energize.

The video features employees from departments like design and marketing who rattle off impressive growth figures and other key company stats.

6. Zendesk: This Is Zendesk 

Zendesk’s onboarding video is a simple and effective introduction to the company’s culture. It provides insight into what it’s like to work at Zendesk HQ, complete with recommendations on where to head for lunch.

7. Nando’s: What's It Like to Work at Nando's as a Student?

This onboarding video example from Nando’s is a little more specific. It helps new or potential part-time workers understand what the company can offer to students.

Like Google, Nando’s uses a real-life employee to tell the story and explain what he loves about working for the business.

8. Deloitte: Welcome to Deloitte

Deloitte’s onboarding video is as simple as it gets.

There are no paid actors or fancy voice-over artists – just some inspiring words about the company’s culture, real-life footage of Deloitte employees, and a bit of upbeat music to inspire new hires on their first day.

9. Duolingo: Life at Duolingo: An Office Tour!

Duolingo’s “Life at Duolingo” video is a less-than-five-minute tour of their Pittsburgh office space.

The video does more than just show employees where the bathrooms are, though. It also gives new hires a glimpse into Duolingo’s workplace culture and the activities the company does to promote and grow that culture, like regular Q&A sessions with the CEO.

10. Zynga: What It’s Like to Work at Zynga

Our final onboarding video example comes from Zynga, the mobile gaming production house that is responsible for Farmville.

Like many examples here, the company’s video features several real employees who tell the story of what the company stands for and what it's like to be an employee at Zynga. It incorporates humor and upbeat music and shows how employees go about a typical day.

Easy onboarding video templates 

Creating onboarding videos from scratch can be a time-consuming process and often leads to hours of staring at a blank page, unsure of where to begin.

That’s why Colossyan comes with dozens of pre-built templates. Our employee onboarding template is your perfect partner to get your project off the ground here.

This onboarding video template comes pre-loaded with the following:

• Intro and outro slides with placeholders to add your company logo
• Customizable layouts on each slide
• Professional graphics 
• Editable transitions, AI avatars, and voices (over 200 voices and 70 languages)

Best of all, you can try it out for free. 

Types of onboarding videos 

Before we sign off and let you start creating your own employee onboarding videos, let's cover a few different types of onboarding videos you might produce to engage, train, and prepare your new hires.

Founder or CEO introductions

An introduction to the company from the founder or CEO is always a good starting point.

These intros can give new employees a bit of background on the company's history, insight into the organization's vision and objectives, and context for how the business structure works. 

In other words, these videos can be a good way for new hires to understand what the CEO or founder is like – especially when there isn’t time on their calendar for a face-to-face meeting with every new employee. 

Meet the team videos

Meet the team videos are a great way to introduce new employees to their team, other employees that they’ll interact with regularly, and important leadership figures. The benefit here is that you don’t need to ask these employees to take time out of their busy day to introduce themselves or sit through a long introductory meeting.

That said, an in-person introduction is preferable – they’re going to be working with people, not videos, after all. Try to reserve this onboarding video type for those who can't be present for a physical meeting.

How-to videos

How-to videos are the most common way for companies to provide training for new employees. This style of onboarding video guides new hires through a step-by-step process that they’ll need to follow in their day-to-day job.

For example, you might provide a video to show a new employee how to:

• Fill in and submit a timesheet
• Collaborate with others in your project management platform
• Set up an email signature 

Not only will these videos be useful for new hires to come back to when they have questions later on, but having a library of onboarding how-to videos helps ensure that live onboarding meetings are reserved for more important or complex subject matter. 

Knowledge handoff videos

A knowledge handoff video allows an exiting employee to hand over undocumented knowledge to an incoming employee. 

For instance, the previous office manager may create a knowledge handoff video for their replacement to provide insight into different administrative team members’ strengths and weaknesses.

While it's best practice for this to happen in person so the incoming employee can ask questions, this isn’t always possible since the replacement may start after the previous employee has already left. In this case, a knowledge handoff video is the perfect solution.

Company policy reviews

Company policies are often long-winded, complex documents that are tiring to read.

Video can be a fantastic way to summarize or clarify key points so new employees don’t have to sit and read for hours before they can get to work.

Create more effective onboarding videos with Colossyan 

Onboarding videos are a powerful way to improve new employee learning, increase knowledge retention, and promote productivity. 

However, the traditional method of creating onboarding video content is lengthy, cumbersome, and expensive. Additionally, since producing new videos takes so long and costs so much, most companies’ onboarding videos are outdated and not as helpful to new hires as they could be.

Colossyan, our AI video generation platform, helps you solve both these issues.

With plans that start at just $19 per month, Colossyan is cost-effective even for small businesses. Get off the ground quickly and create your first training video using our pre-built employee onboarding video template or schedule a demo with our team of experts to learn more.