Lawrence Ragan

Communications, Inc.

The CEO has an important message and wantsto go live, with video, to the ENTIRE COMPANY...

ASAP!!!

Find out how: www.kontiki.com/webcasting

Everyone must see it AND... the visual experience needs to be flawless.

Can we reachremote employees?Can we deliver high

quality video?How can we pull this off?

1001 W. Maude Ave

Sunnyvale, CA 94085 • USA

www.kontiki.com

Tel 011 408.215.6400

Fax 011 408.215.6401

sales@kontiki.com

.How to create videos employees loveA communicator’s guide to crafting videos that captivate and engage employees.

SPONSORED BY:

Table of ContentsIntroduction 1

Why video is a great way to engage staff 2

CEO videos boost internal engagement 5

10 components of a successful internal video 9

IntroductionAt work, communicators compete with many distractions: social media, dozens of printed bulletins and memos, thousands of e-mails. Internal videos are one of the few ways to break through this uproar to reach employees with timely, high-impact, emotionally powerful messages.

The good news is, creating internal video that employees love has never been easier—especially with resources like Kontiki, a simple, low-cost video platform that has empowered companies all over the globe to boost their enterprise-wide employee reach and engagement.

But what constitutes a successful video? Who should be in front of the camera? And what messages work best in this medium?

Communicators at Jones Lang LaSalle, SAS, Mayo Clinic, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, La Quinta, Wells Fargo, L.A. Care Health Plan and Aerospace Corp. have done pioneer work with exceptional internal videos. They’ve figured out best practices to craft videos that captivate and engage employ-ees.

Mayo Clinic uses video to help employees understand what might otherwise be hard-to-digest con-tent, such as information about new strategic plans. Wells Fargo uses video to share news daily and to broadcast live events, such as its quarterly CEO town hall series. Aerospace Corp. and L.A. Care Health Plan use video to communicate leaders’ messages.

At Jones Lang LaSalle, the video team believes in respecting employees’ time by keeping video messages brief and to the point so as not to lose the audience. At Mayo Clinic, authenticity ensures employees receive compelling content with a strong emotional kick.

In partnership with Kontiki, this three-part series will provide best practices to help organizations discover ways to improve internal video communication and engage employees through video.

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Why video is a great way to engage staffInternal video communication is on the rise. Here’s why—along with how and when to use it.

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, a moving picture is worth much more: employee engagement.

There’s no doubt video is on the rise as a means of engaging staff. Seventy-one percent of communi-cators produce videos to communicate with employees, and 72 percent plan to increase their use of video, according to a survey.

“Communicators are competing for both [employees’] time and their emotional buy-in, with distrac-tions from social media to the thousands of emails in an employee’s inbox,” says Mike Merit, vice president for customer success at Kontiki, a cloud-based provider of enterprise video solutions.

Unlike print or email, video is a way to show there are real people behind corporate communications and important messages, adds Scott Kallstrand, senior manager for internal communications at real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle.

“Nonverbal cues, like facial expressions or gestures, can help convey a specific tone that is absent with email or traditional print communication,” he says.

When to use video in the Workplace

Some messages make for more engaging videos than others. If a topic can be viewed as complex or even dull, video can make it fun, engaging, and an effective way to communicate your key messages concisely.

For example, SAS, a business analytics software and service company, uses “explainer” videos to help put complicated terms, products and ideas into simple language, says Lisa Arney, internal com-munications video program manager.

When the company adjusted its medical plan last year in response to the rising cost of health care, it created a series of four-minute videos. The first featured the vice president of human resources, who discussed why the changes were being made. “It was our most-watched video of 2013, with nearly 9,500 views,” Arney says.

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In a second video, an HR benefits analyst used props such as a dollhouse and a toy car to offer an analogy of how deductibles work in health care just as they do with car or home insurance. She also used different colored Legos to illustrate which portion of the medical expense the employee would be responsible for under the new plan, and what portion SAS would cover.

“The visual of the colored Legos was particularly effective because it enabled employees to see how much the company would continue to pay even with employees sharing a larger portion of medical costs than they had in the past” Arney says. This video was SAS’ second-most-viewed video of 2013, with 8,300 views.

At the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, videos that share employee experiences and generate a sense of collective pride create more engagement than videos from leadership, says Jocelyn Sims, the internal communications team lead at the bank. In a video focused on the bank’s corporate so-cial responsibility efforts, for instance, employees talked about the bank’s commitment to CSR, the various volunteer opportunities and initiatives available, and examples of CSR in action, she says.

“The passion and dedication of those interviewed was palpable, and it really showed a side of the organization that some employees might not know about, especially those who were new to the bank,” Sims says. The video was shown at its town hall, which has the most employees present, and it later was posted to its intranet.

Kontiki has seen its clients use video in several scenarios that work well, one of which is to communi-cate best practices.

“La Quinta held a contest where employees submitted their best practices—everything from ‘remem-ber customer names’ to ‘provide a personal touch in the room,’” Merit says. “They made videos out of the top submissions and sent them out to all employees.”

When to avoid using internal video

Although videos done well and in an appropriate scenario can work well to engage employees, it’s not always the best medium for every internal communication.

“Video is one communication tool among many that should be employed for maximum results de-pending on the situation,” Sims says.

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Detail-oriented messages, or messages that take a long time to explain, such as organizational changes, are best left to email or print, Kallstrand says.

“Employees are busy and want to digest information quickly,” he says. “A five-minute video with a talking head explaining a complex topic sends a message that you haven’t thought about your topic from the employee perspective.”

Before producing a video at SAS, Arney’s team goes through a series of checks and balances, asking themselves, “Would I want to watch this video?”

“If the answer is no, we offer another communication strategy,” she says. “Video is visual. Having people talk for five minutes on camera without any supporting b-roll or photos does not constitute a compelling video.”

reaching out

Of course, video is also a highly effective way to engage remote employees as well, and is often a top priority for companies who use video as a means of communication.

“To engage remote employees, the most frustrating thing is feeling like headquarters doesn’t under-stand what’s really going on in the field,” Merit says.

To counter this, for live events, conduct polls and use a Q-and-A platform, being careful to include specific questions that speak directly to remote workers, says Merit.

To counter this for live events, he suggests you conduct polls that include specific questions that speak directly to remote workers. For on-demand video, consider using remote employees for con-tent ideas or production.

“For example, GM trained employees in each factory to conduct ‘man on the street’ interviews, which were then edited by the video team in HQ,” he says. “Wells Fargo takes employee suggestions on video topics and does a newscast featuring them.”

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‘video is here to stay’

Do you get it yet? If you’re not using video to engage employees, you should be.

“Video is here to stay. If you haven’t started using video, experiment. Try creating some simple videos on topics that aren’t overly high-profile,” Arney says. “Learn the ropes of the equipment and the software so that you can master the basic fundamentals then sit back and watch the reaction you get.”

It may be more expensive than emailing or posting something on your intranet, but done properly, video can engage your employees and help build a better business Payette says.

“If you want to increase employee engagement, you owe it to your organization, your employees, and yourself to join the video communication evolution,” she says. “You’ll be happy you did.”

CEO videos boost internal engagementPutting your CEO in front of the camera is a great way to engage employees. Keep these tips and chal-lenges in mind to make the most of your message.

When employees hear “CEO,” they may envision an unreachable suit in a corner office.

Executives today can—and should—communicate with their employees up close, often, and with a personal touch; video can be the best way to do that.

“Using video lets you capture small moments—those facial expressions and gestures where you think: ‘He’s a real person. He has feelings and opinions about this, too,’” says Annie Burt, institu-tional communications manager at Mayo Clinic.

For organizations with a large geographic footprint, video is an especially easy way to help employ-ees feel connected.

Wells Fargo’s TeamTV network comprises more than 20,000 screens companywide in roughly 6,700 office and store locations. It enables the organization to share news daily and to broadcast live events, such as its quarterly CEO town hall series, says Arati Randolph, Wells Fargo’s senior vice president for corporate communications.

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“After each town hall, we get incredible feedback, and one of the key themes is that people feel more connected to the company,” Randolph says. Employees can access the town halls on their desktops via Wells Fargo On Demand, its desktop video delivery tool.

That type of open, transparent communication is the top-ranking attribute to effective leadership, according to a survey, with 74 percent of employees viewing effective communication as very impor-tant.

changing employee behavior

Using video as a means to communicate CEO messaging helps employees to see the leader’s pas-sion and enthusiasm. Establishing this personal connection—even distantly through video—increas-es confidence, trust and loyalty.

When L.A. Care Health Plan celebrated its 17th anniversary this year, the communications team cre-ated a video featuring its CEO and a montage of events to illustrate the organization’s evolution.

“Video allowed us to create a narrative that told the story of the organization and created a human connection through a message from our CEO,” says Hovsep Agop, video communications specialist at L.A. Care. “It was much more effective than an email or a slideshow.”

Just because videos are typically more compelling than text doesn’t mean that you should use it for every leadership message. Scott Kallstrand, senior manager of internal communications at Jones Lang LaSalle, says informational messages boost engagement more than videos that ask employees to do something. For example, Greg O’Brien, who is CEO of the Americas for JLL, participates in a quarterly earnings video; employees typically watch those videos 95 percent of the way through.

Similarly, Aerospace Corp. uses executive videos as a way to change employee behavior. When the organization created an HR benefits video to educate employees on when they should go to an urgent care clinic versus a hospital emergency room, it saw major results, says Bryan Tsunoda, its director of internal communications.

“The corporation saved 88 visits to the emergency room over a 12-month period, which saved the company $63,360 on current costs,” he says.

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Mayo Clinic produces a regular video series featuring its president and CEO, Dr. John H. Noseworthy, in which he and a facilitator sit down every six weeks in an informal setting to discuss topics includ-ing scientific discoveries and other important matters in the news.

“During an internal video interview, our CEO answered a direct question about a recent external media interview he’d done that had gotten a lot of attention from our staff,” Burt recalled. “Dr. Nose-worthy kind of chuckled and got a big smile on his face - you could really see his human side coming out.”

videos require preparation

Getting your top execs to warm up to the camera and show their human side isn’t always easy. To get them engaged, control the room and make the subject comfortable, Agop says.

“Warmup questions are a real energy changer and can enliven an apprehensive executive. We’ve asked questions like, ‘What is your favorite rap song?’” he says. “Even CEOs and executives have a sense of humor, and if you tap into that, you can create a comfortable interview and a real connec-tion.”

The team at JLL spends time prepping the exec for sheer logistics: what to clothes to wear, who will be in the room, how he will interact with the script and, most important, practicing the content.

“The roughest videos we’ve ever produced are the execs who just finished reading the scripts two minutes ago and haven’t practiced,” Kallstrand says. “Videos take prep work. The greatest comfort level comes when the CEO is not going in cold.”

There is also the challenge of showing a polished leader who is also authentic. Authenticity wins with employees.

Prior to the Wells Fargo town halls, for example, team members submit questions for CEO John Stumpf through a callout on the company intranet, and the communications team identifies about 10 people to record their questions for airing during the live event. They alternate questions from the live audience with these video questions, so that all team members in remote viewing locations feel included.

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“People love John’s unscripted responses,” Randolph says. “Many tell us it is their favorite part of the town hall. It’s authentic and real, and we hear time and time again how much team members ap-preciate that.”

Don’t let perfectionism get in the way, Burt adds. A CEO’s video message doesn’t have to look pro-fessional. Mayo Clinic has found “homegrown” videos can sometimes be the most engaging. For example, Dr. Noseworthy completed the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge over the summer and recorded it himself while on vacation at his cabin.

“It was just him; you could tell there wasn’t a bunch of PR people behind him telling him what to say,” Burt says. “It was a super authentic, really nice message.”

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge video at Wells Fargo was “an absolute runaway hit” for the same rea-son, Randolph says. It was authentic.

Two staff members came from behind and dumped a bucket of ice water on Stumpf as he was writing a donation to ALS. After shaking it off, he announced, “Team members, that was for you!”

“While John was giving his remarks, we cut periodically to a “bucket sequence”—a bucket being filled with ice, being carried into Wells Fargo offices, being loaded into an elevator—which helped build viewer anticipation,” Randolph says.

setting the mood

Along with calendar constraints, the biggest challenge you may face when crafting a CEO leadership message is the creating the right environment.

“With lighting, for example, people don’t understand that our eyes don’t behave the same way as a camera lens,” Kallstrand says. “Just like you don’t want your executives coming in cold without hav-ing looked at the content, you shouldn’t just swipe your camera without having worked through all the essentials.”

Your best bet is to put in the time to scout locations. Figure out where the ambient noise is, where the best natural lighting is, and whether your best bet is to go into the studio.

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Ultimately, if you’re not doing video with your CEO now, you should be, but don’t feel as though you have to get to a professional level quickly. Start small: Use your iPhone at the leader’s desk for an informal, 30-second chat or update for an internal blog somewhere, Burt says.

“Just put your toe in the water. Let him see how it feels to be on camera, let her get a feel for how she might want to communicate an issue using video, and then just work your way up.”

10 components of a successful internal videoLights, camera, action! Have these tips in mind to keep your employees engaged.

Employees are inundated with internal communications, such as email, intranets, social media or, most recently, video.

For the faces behind the camera, it’s easier to create a bad video than a good one. So, what makes a video great, rather than abysmal?

These 10 tips will help your organization’s communicators hit the sweet spot:

1. Know your goals. Though traditional metrics are important, you have to go beyond views and con-sider whether people are doing what you’ve asked them to do, says Annie Burt, institutional commu-nications manager at Mayo Clinic.

“Were you looking for a behavior change or a cultural reinforcement? Were you looking for some sort of action to take place or for information to be shared? Based on what your goal was, [getting that desired action] is really the ultimate test of videos,” she says.

2. Consider your message. Before you create a video, make sure that’s the right medium for what you want to communicate. For example, if there is an organizational restructuring or major change in the offing at your organization, video wouldn’t be appropriate, says Jocelyn Sims, internal communica-tions team lead at Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

“That’s a message you would want to have some face-to-face conversations about and one that re-quires the opportunity for questions and dialogue,” she says.

At Mayo Clinic, one rule of thumb is to pick up the camera when the team wants to breathe life into stories that are otherwise flat. Oh, and one more thing—don’t just feature talking heads.

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3. Be brief. People are busy. Respect their time.

“If you give employees a 35-minute video, they’re going to lose interest pretty quickly,” says Scott Kallstrand, senior manager of internal communications at Jones Lang LaSalle. “It can be the most engaging video in the world, and they’re still going to fall off because they’ve got other things to do.” Typically, the team at Jones Lang LaSalle should last for a minute or two. After two minutes, people stop watching.

“Make sure you get the full message across in two minutes versus five minutes, or whatever the time period is where you know people dive off,” he says.

4. Be authentic. Authenticity reigns for internal videos, because it gives organizations the opportu-nity to create a compelling and emotional connection.

For example, Mayo Clinic produced a video called “Miracle in the Cornfield,” featuring a patient shar-ing the story of a near-fatal farm accident. Throughout the video, which was shot in his home, you see photos of him throughout his life, and his friends talk about what it has been like for them, says Burt.

“You really understand, very subtly, that the patient is not on a stage or in a studio—we’re actually in his home and he’s telling his own story. Having the video subject describe in his own words what-ever the story is, and creating that place where the story comes to life can really help to have a video hit home,” she says.

5. Think visually. Visuals add a human element to what might otherwise be hard-to-digest content. For example, a couple of years ago, Mayo Clinic announced a new strategic plan—the Mayo Effect—and then held a contest asking staffers to convey in a video what they thought about the plan. Here’s an example.

“We had 60 some video entrants, which is not a huge number for an organization of our size, but many of them were team entries, so we had 60 teams take the time to produce a video,” Burt says.

Employees voted on the videos by giving a one- to five-star rating based on the content.

“When it was all said and done, we had thousands of staff that were engaged because of these vid-eos,” she says. “Even though there were only 60 submissions, our reach was thousands.”

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6. Get equipped. Fortunately for many organizations, employee engagement videos don’t require feature-film quality. Equipment available today makes it easier for amateurs to create video.

When L.A. Care Health Plan started shooting video, they used iPhones, two DLSR cameras with video capabilities, and other basic equipment, says Hovsep Agop, video communications specialist. While shooting its Employee Pride Program videos, for example, the staff used humor, adopting a black-and-white silent movie theme to make the series engaging. It transcended what they had to shoot with.

These were low-budget projects, and the video specialist position didn’t yet exist, Agop says.

“We used the video equipment we had available: a home video camera and an iPhone,” Agop says. “To compensate for the unequal quality of this equipment, we used a black-and-white filter, effects, and royalty-free silent movie style music to tie in the actions and tell the story humorously.”

7. Tell a story. Know what story you want to tell, and convey it as quickly as possible and in the most engaging way you can.

“Videos should include a solid story arc and include genuine reflections and employee voices,” Sims says. “That means real people and real voices, not scrubbed scripts or canned speeches. You don’t necessarily need five people saying the same thing. You need one or two saying it really well.”

Mayo’s Burt suggests doing the research to understand what your audience is looking for.

“A video won’t solve all of your problems, and not everything we have to share is compelling just by its nature,” she says. “That doesn’t mean it’s not important, but it may not warrant a video to go with it.”

8. Use your assets. Once you’ve completed the video, maximize the packaging and use every rel-evant communication channel available to drive awareness and viewership, says Arati Randolph, senior vice president for corporate communications at Wells Fargo.

In videos that can be promoted internally and externally, share a news article on the company intra-net, in external publications and through posts to social media, Randolph says. For internal videos at Wells Fargo, a “typical communications package includes an email invitation to watch before the event, a follow-up email from CEO John Stumpf, and a corresponding internal news article with in-structions on how to view the archival recording.”

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9. Have a plan. All videos should have a well-defined purpose and detailed plan before shooting begins. The more planning on the front end, the less confusion later.

It’s all about prep work so there are no surprises, says Kallstrand. He spends a lot of time scouting video locations for Jones Lang LaSalle, checking out factors such as ambient noise or where the best light is. “You shouldn’t just swipe your camera without having worked through all the essentials,” he says. “It really is about anticipating all the possible scenarios.”

That thoroughness shouldn’t stop with the end of shooting, Sims adds; there should also be a clear review process to get approvals.

“Make sure everyone understands the goal of the video and what feeling, emotion or takeaway you want to leave viewers with to help guide the process and scope,” she says.

10. Have fun. Above all, don’t take yourself too seriously, Burt advises.

“People are pretty forgiving, and it’s kind of fun with outtakes—employees like to see that. They like to see that their employer is real and that there are people behind what can sometimes be faceless corporate communications.”

The CEO has an important message and wantsto go live with video to the entire company...

tomorrow.

Find out how: www.kontiki.com/webcasting

Everyone must see it AND... the visual experience needs to be flawless.

How are we going toreach our remote employees?

Can we deliver a qualityvideo experience?

How can we pull this off?

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