No one starts a new job or takes on new responsibilities at the office knowing how to do everything, which is why corporate training and mentoring are so important. Training has become increasingly high-tech, with over 90% of employees reporting that they have completed training through video. However, nearly half of employees aren’t yet empowered to use video to share their knowledge with colleagues, according to Kaltura’s 2019 “Video and Learning at Work: State of Video in the Enterprise” report.
This data suggests that companies may be focusing too much on top-down, external training and are not yet leveraging expertise that already exists within their organizations to create their company-specific, in-house education. These numbers are surprising when you consider that the majority of employees (69%) prefer video over written documentation when it comes to learning.
Employees are receiving video education and prefer video education, yet they don’t have the ability to create video training content for their teams. This gap between how companies are training their employees and the capacity these companies have to leverage employee expertise for knowledge-sharing leaves significant untapped return on personnel investment on the table.
The Advantages of Peer Learning
Consider that employees are always helping each other learn new skills, whether through a formalized process documented as training or not. HR Daily Advisor agrees that there are advantages to peer learning in skill-based activities. Why limit that type of inter-staff education to live, in-person training? Capturing informal knowledge-sharing for broad internal distribution and reuse just makes sense. And by empowering employees to create videos to support their peers, organizations can reduce the number of hours more experienced employees spend training newer employees, even as training capacity increases.
Turning ad hoc peer-to-peer training activities into employee-created videos also has the benefit of codifying into semi-formal curricula the training activities that are already taking place on the fly. This strategy can help workplaces standardize processes and ensure that everyone is working from the same page. Ultimately, providing and maintaining a library of employee-created videos would free up time for additional cross-training and advanced learning opportunities.
Providing staff with the means to make their own videos wouldn’t just benefit the employees who learn from them, however. The employees creating the training content would also have the opportunity to realize the value of their own skills, boosting their confidence and, down the road, their achievement. Additionally, this type of employee empowerment is likely to lead to greater workplace satisfaction and loyalty as they can see their impact on office culture and processes.
Tapping Intellectual Capital
Employees are already increasingly comfortable with creating their own video content. In fact, 88% of employees see video use at their company as steady or growing, and nearly one-third of employees are already creating videos for work purposes. That number will only grow as older generations leave the workforce and Generation Z enters. But with almost half of employees reporting that they lack even the basic tools to create and share video securely at work, many employers still need to create the business environment to tap into the intellectual capital that’s lying untouched.
Responding to today’s demand for video training isn’t just about moving corporate training out of the classroom. It’s about helping employees improve their skills and performance by giving them the power not just to direct how they learn required skills but to direct how they share them with their colleagues.
