Communicating through Crisis: How to make an employee video from home

Communicating through Crisis: How to make an employee video from home

Information is rapidly changing. It’s likely, you don’t even have time to read this message. We’ll be brief.

I want to show you how to get a video message out quickly to your employees during the COVID-19 pandemic..

Tools needed:

  • Smartphone

  • Phone tripod. If you don’t have this, books will do!

  • A person – that’s you!

  • Video editing app – not required but can come in handy.

  • Paper & marker if you don’t have time to edit your video (suggested option right now)

  • A computer

  • Cloud platform such as iCloud or Google Drive

Note: This is information is intended for leaders who have an important message to get out to employees during a crisis. This method works if your employees are working remotely or in an office. This is a DIY, non-animated video of yourself speaking to your team. If you need any other services related to employee communications, please reach out to us immediately by clicking here.

STEP 1: Develop the content…quickly.

Plan out what you want to say to your employees. Reach out to your vendors and internal support to ensure what you’re saying is accurate and up-to-date.

If you have multiple points in one video, use your paper and marker to write up simple transition points. For example, if you’re discussing work-from-home requirements, set it up as “point 1, point 2, point 3”, etc. Write out these points on a paper to help guide your viewer (aka your employee). This eliminates time needed for editing. The old-school way!

When planning what you’ll say, bullets will do. Don’t overthink it. Instead make sure your message is:

  • Direct

  • Simple and easy to understand

  • Confident

  • Transparent (this is how you build trust with your team!)

STEP 2: Set up to record

Set up your phone on your phone tripod (some of our favorites can be purchased here or here). If you do not have a tripod, use books to stand up your phone just the way you want it. Check out the video below to see this demonstrated.

Set your phone up horizontally, not vertical.

Flip your phone around so you can see yourself. Make sure you know what your employees are seeing.  Most importantly, your face!

Speak loudly, but calmly, and annunciate. 😊

Don’t worry about lighting. (If you are worried about lighting, check out the video for a helpful lighting hint!)

Don’t worry about clutter.

Now is not the time to stress about the way the video looks. It’s all about content right now and getting your important message out to your team with minimal effort.

STEP 3: Record your video.

Don’t worry about mistakes here. Who cares if you stumble over words? One take will do. Be honest, be transparent and stick to your script that you created in step 1.

Oh, and make sure your video is actually recording! This is a mistake that happens all to often…even with myself! Before you start to talk, make sure the time counter is increasing.

STEP 4: Save your video on a cloud platform.

More chances than not, your video is longer than two minutes. Which means, it is not so easy to get this video onto your computer and out to employees. You need to upload your video into the cloud.

If you have iCloud, save it there and access on your computer. Click here to read a quick tutorial from Apple.

If you have Google drive (this is what we use), save it there and access it on your computer. Click here to read a quick tutorial from Google.

If you don’t have any of the options above, send us an email by clicking here and we will help you out with this step. Unfortunately, there are a ton of options to list all in this blog. But we can help within a few minutes on the phone.

STEP 5: Decide how you want to share the video

  1. Do you want to share via email?

  2. Do you want to post it on the intranet?

  3. Do you want to share via text?

  4. Do you want to share within your chat platform?

We recommend all four! Usually your IT team can help with this. But, we are also here for you!

To make this even easier, the team here at brand28 is offering FREE hosting services for your employee communication videos regarding COVID-19. What this means is this, just send us your video and we’ll get it uploaded on our platform. We’ll provide you with:

  • A link to your video so you can easily email this out with no problems.

  • Embed code to your video so you can easily post this on your intranet with no problems.

  • Viewing reports, so that you can see who has watched the video. This is a great feature if you have a mandatory message going out.

STEP 6: Check in with your team

After you have sent out the video, check in with some team members to see if they got the video okay, and if they were able to view without any problems.

Need additional information? Have questions?


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