There’s no disputing that video has been an important medium during the pandemic. After all, live video has helped people connect with each other and feel part of a team. But real-time video calls have become overused and Zoom fatigue started setting in some time ago.
And despite strong productivity claims, this way of hybrid working reduces how good practice is spread by ‘osmosis’. Many people are distributed in time and space. This means vital tacit knowledge can stay locked up in heads, on synchronous digital channels like Zoom, or in long textual threads on Slack.
But, we need our people with domain expertise across the organisation to share good practice, to teach key skills, and model behaviours. And this can’t just be one-to-one – it needs to be at scale.
As a result, asynchronous content is back in vogue. Some designers have experimented with asking subject matter experts to share short videos that can be embedded into programmes or shared as learning pathway resources. The end results are patchy: content often goes off-topic, videos are too long, or technical hurdles get in the way. This is no surprise though – digitising traditional watercooler learning moments isn’t easy.
It’s one thing to have a one-to-one conversation with a colleague, but knowing that a video could be shared with the whole company adds a different layer of pressure on creators. This is why many learning designers are not only avoiding the cost and complexity of traditional video production, but also the unpredictability of self-filming by recording interviews with subject experts on Zoom or Teams calls. This lets them guide the conversation while taking care of the technology. Whilst this does reduce costs compared to traditional shoots, the amount of administration can be Kafkaesque!
Each interview typically requires a set-up call to run through scope and purpose. This is followed by the main recording session. With each session taking 30-60 minutes, there’s also additional administration around scheduling calls and rescheduling work missed while away from desks. This impacts other important jobs as interviews can take place at different times of the day including ‘out-of-hours’ depending on where your experts are based.
And when all the content is recorded, the editing process can be complex. People are too busy to watch long interviews so content needs to be reduced into bite-sized chunks. Editing can be a slow and laborious format as retaining context and meaning is challenging when abridging content.
With so much complexity, how can you overcome all of this? What can you do to provide the right support, scaffolding, engagement approach, and tools to make the curation of employee-generated video agile and repeatable? How can you amplify domain expertise in a scalable way?
By widening your pool of experts and making it easy for them to reflect and share concise, on-topic experiences, without real-time support, means you can have a direct impact on skills and performance even when strapped for resources.
Join us on 10th November 2021 to:
Tap into employee-generated content and solve these repeat learning design challenges
Find out:
- Where employee-generated content adds the most value to the design process
- How to discover the gold dust through interview frameworks and workflows
- Which challenges SMEs typically face when sharing knowledge on video
- Plus mini case studies and stories from the creator frontline.
