Video for HR Teams: Recruit, Onboard, Train and Keep Good People
HR teams have more use for video than almost any other department, and most of them use it for one thing at best. A recruitment film gets made, it goes on the careers page, and the rest of the employee lifecycle carries on with documents and slide decks. Planned together, a small set of films can help an HR team at every stage, from the first time a candidate hears of you to the day an experienced person decides to stay.
Recruitment: show the place before they walk in
By the time a good candidate watches your film, they've already read the careers page. What they want to know is what it's actually like to work there, and the only people who can tell them are the ones who do.
That's why a recruitment film works best built on staff interviews rather than a presenter reading the company values. Our OakNorth recruitment film was made that way, with people from across the bank filmed where they work and talking about why they joined. A short version can go in the email that invites someone to interview, and it does a lot of the selling before they arrive.
Onboarding: the first week, on film
New starters forget most of what they're told in their first week, because they're told everything at once. An onboarding film lets them hear it again when they need it. A welcome from the people they'll work with, a walk through how the organisation fits together, and what to expect in the first month all work well on film.
Made with real colleagues rather than actors, onboarding films also do quiet recruitment work. The new starter sees faces they'll meet in the corridor, and the place feels familiar sooner.
Training: the same message every time
Training is where video saves HR teams the most time. A film says the same thing to the first person and the five hundredth, whoever is running the session that day. It's especially good for anything physical or safety critical, because watching someone do a task properly teaches more than a paragraph about it.
The trick is to make training in short modules, each with one objective, so that when a process changes only one film needs reshooting. The training video production page covers how we plan them.
Culture and retention: keeping people
Retention is the stage most HR teams never think of filming, and it may matter most. Short films that celebrate a team's work, explain a change before the rumour does, or let a leader speak plainly about where the organisation is going all help people feel part of something.
Internal comms films don't need to be polished to work, but they do need to sound human. A leader reading a statement to camera rarely persuades anyone. The same leader answering three honest questions in their own words usually does.
A video strategy for HR
The films work better as a set than as one-offs. A single shoot day with five members of staff can produce a recruitment film, the onboarding welcome and a handful of short culture pieces, if the questions for each are planned in advance. Filming them separately would take several days and cost far more.
That planning is what a video strategy does. It starts from the HR problem, whether that's attracting candidates, losing people in their first year or training a growing team, and works out which films would help and in what order.
Where to start
If you've never used video in HR, start with the stage that hurts most. A team struggling to hire should make a recruitment film first. A business losing new starters early should make the onboarding film. Solve one problem well, then build on the same footage.
FAQ
How can HR use video?
Across the whole employee lifecycle: recruitment films for candidates, onboarding films for new starters, training modules, and culture and internal comms films that help people stay.
Should recruitment videos use real employees?
Yes. Candidates want to hear what it's really like from the people who work there, and real staff are far more convincing than a presenter or actors.
How long should an onboarding video be?
Short. Several films of a few minutes each, one per topic, work better than one long film, and they're easier to update when things change.
Can one shoot produce several HR videos?
Yes. If the questions for each film are planned in advance, one day filming a handful of staff can cover recruitment, onboarding and culture films.
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