Understanding Video’s Role in Enhancing Business Workflow Productivity
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Introduction
Between the where-to-work flux and steady stream of workforce reductions, enterprises are operating in a challenging environment. Staying ahead of the competition — in terms of both talent and customer acquisition and retention — requires businesses to take a hard look at their workflows to identify how they can be improved to produce better results.
Digital platforms already are used to streamline a broad array of business processes. From providing systems that handle internal supply requisitions to managing comprehensive customer service knowledge libraries, workflow platforms are playing a huge role in helping businesses squeeze more efficiencies out of their day-to-day operations.
Even so, not all organizations are implementing all the productivity-enhancing tools at their disposal.
Corporate users should be looking for ways to make video a common part of everyday business workflows and processes. Video tools that integrate seamlessly with the workflow solutions that organizations already have implemented offer the most direct path to meaningfully infusing video into the day-to-day work experience.
This whitepaper provides a roadmap on the role that online video technologies can play in helping organizations tackle their operational challenges, identifying specific applications where savvy implementation of video capabilities can have an outsized impact on boosting workflow productivity.
A Productivity Crisis Takes Root
Business productivity is faltering in the post-pandemic workplace.
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 2.1% decline in business productivity rates in the first quarter of 2023. The drop comes on the heels of a year that produced a 1.3% decline in productivity in 2022 – the largest such decline measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics since 1974.
The change in economic fortunes appears to be impacting the business outlook of many corporate leaders. In a survey of members in late 2022, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) said that only 35% of the HR managers they surveyed describe their organization as “effective” in finding ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
The decline of productivity has corporate leadership looking for answers. Some organizations are pinning blame on flexible remote work policies implemented during the COVID era even though multiple industry surveys have identified productivity gains associated with the broader adoption of remote work options.
Many employers also have initiated workforce reductions in an effort to “do more with less.” The technology industry alone has eliminated more than 200,000 jobs in 2023, according to data compiled by Layoffs.fyi.
Economic history, however, has demonstrated that it’s difficult for companies to cut their way to prosperity. Reducing headcount only goes so far. Winning in this type of economic environment requires businesses to take a hard look at their workflows to identify how work processes can be improved to produce better results.
Online video technologies can play a significant role in helping organizations tackle their operational challenges, identifying specific applications where savvy implementation of video capabilities can have an outsized impact on boosting workflow productivity.
Infusing Video Into Existing Business Workflows
Digital platforms already are used to streamline a broad array of business processes. From providing systems that process internal supply requisitions to managing comprehensive customer service knowledge libraries, workflow platforms are playing a huge role in helping businesses squeeze more efficiencies out of their day-to-day operations.
Even so, not all organizations are implementing all the productivity-enhancing tools at their disposal. Of the HR executives who participated in the previously referenced SHRM survey, only 27% describe their organization as effective in implementing new workforce technologies, down 11 percentage points from levels cited in the prior year’s survey.
It’s unfortunate timing for business leaders to grow shy about implementing new technologies. Perhaps more so than ever before, companies need to implement solutions that help workers stay connected with their organization — and with one another.
In its 2023 State of the Global Workforce Report, Gallup found that 59% of workers are not engaged with their jobs, and another 18% of surveyed individuals said they are “actively disengaged” with their work. Gallup estimates that the
global economy experiences U.S. $8.8 trillion in productivity losses annually due to this work disengagement.
Video is one option in the corporate communications toolbox that can be used to stem the tide of worker disengagement. While a photo may be worth a thousand words, video offers the potential to fundamentally transform business communications.
Beyond facilitating basic communication, video enables viewers to derive more meaning by discerning a speaker’s tone or body language. Effective presenters are able to drive home their narratives with audiences by integrating a range of visual cues and inputs that enhance their message. Whether used in live events or on-demand recordings, video enables a richer form of communication that makes it possible for dispersed workers to better connect with one another.
During the COVID crisis, video meetings emerged as an essential venue for keeping remote workers connected. Growing end-user familiarity with video — coupled with the arrival of artificial intelligence technologies that make it easier to manage video — also has shined new light on the use of recorded video to facilitate knowledge sharing within the enterprise.
For better or worse, these forces have injected video into the corporate bloodstream, boosting market recognition of video as a technology that facilitates employee engagement and enhances productivity. At the same time, digital workflows have cemented their role as solutions that increase productivity in the enterprise.
To foster even more productivity gains, the next logical step for many organizations would seem to come in finding a way to combine the power of video-enriched communications with the efficiencies of next‑generation digital workflows. As the digital equivalent to the culinary marriage of chocolate and peanut butter, the merger of video with corporate workflows holds the promise of creating more value than either of the technologies could produce on their own.
Building Business Value Via Video
Video is much more than a vehicle for beaming entertainment into the living room. Rather, it should be viewed as a business tool that makes it easier for workers to create, share, and retrieve information in ways that help organizations operate more efficiently. Embracing this reality, corporate users are beginning to recognize video as a type of data that can be integrated into a wide range of business applications to enhance employee engagement and facilitate the sharing of institutional knowledge.
Think of any venue your company uses to share information today. Conference room meetings. Training sessions. FAQ documents. Memos. Emails. Chances are high that video can serve as a viable communications alternative that makes it easier for workers to share high-impact business knowledge with others in their organization on a timely and engaging basis.
Recorded videos, in particular, can serve as a storehouse of information that can be repurposed in ways that boost employees’ efficiency and productivity. Effective applications for video that are beginning to emerge in the corporate realm serve to illustrate the type of results that video adoption can generate in day-to-day business operations:
Workers in customer support centers can record answers that they develop to address both frequently asked questions and novel customer queries. Cumulatively, the recordings create a reference library that all workers – and particularly new customer service representatives – can access when addressing subsequent questions from customers.
When introducing new software solutions to the workforce, information technology teams can produce tutorials that provide employees help when learning how to use new applications.
New employees can be encouraged to watch pre-recorded videos upon joining a company, giving them access to basic organizational information and policies without having to schedule dedicated orientation sessions.
Organizations can implement policies (and accompanying video platform solutions) to automatically record internal meetings held via video. Meetings can be used as a reference tool when reviewing past team decisions. Clips from recordings can also be used to communicate key ideas from leadership to employees and for use in external marketing campaigns.
One-to-many video communications can be relevant in a range of real-time uses, extending the value of video beyond information archives. Valuable uses for live video in enterprise communications includes:
Executive leadership can communicate directly with a wide swath of a distributed workforce, enabling employees to hear about an organization’s strategic direction straight from the decision makers.
Training sessions for workers can be made available on a more widespread basis in a format that gives trainees access to an organization’s best instructors. (Live training events also can be recorded for later use, extending the value of a training session even further.)
Human resources teams can provide workers information regarding insurance programs, vacation policies, and other HR-related topics. By making sessions available online, HR teams can reach a broader portion of the workforce with a single presentation. Like employee training sessions, these presentations also can be recorded for on-demand access.
During a major corporate event, such as a merger announcement or workforce reduction, one-to-many webcasts can be used as a tool for executives to communicate a standardized message to many workers on a real-time basis.
Adoption of video in corporate communications can only be expected to broaden over time. Video is among the most viral of business communications technologies. Once workers see colleagues using video successfully, they begin thinking about the ways that they can put video to work to achieve their own objectives. The example set by video role models within an organization fosters a corporate culture that embraces the use of the technology in an increasingly broader array of applications over time.
Factors Sparking Broader Video Adoption In Today’s Enterprise
A perfect storm of market forces and technological advances are combining to make video more relevant in today’s corporate realm. It’s a confluence of trends that are spurring a virtuous cycle of video adoption: More people are using video in the workplace than ever before, and emerging technologies are helping organizations realize more benefits from that video than had previously been possible. As workers unlock value from video, they are predisposed to use it even more extensively, perpetuating the adoption cycle.
For better or worse, the pandemic served as the event kick-starting the current revolution in enterprise video. Remote work requirements during the COVID period prompted many workers to experiment with using video meeting solutions
for the first time. As more individuals have grown comfortable with video meetings, the natural next step for many has been to identify other ways to put video to work.
As video acceptance within the enterprise continues to expand, vendors are developing a range of new solutions infused with artificial intelligence capabilities that help workers to create and manage video in more effective ways.
Archived video, for instance, becomes more accessible and easier to navigate thanks to the integration of artificial intelligence capabilities. Automated speech-to-text solutions can create transcripts of videos that open the door to a range
of digital applications previously unavailable in the video realm.
Extracted text can be used to conduct content searches, enabling individuals to locate the right video passage quickly and easily. Likewise, the text can be fed into transcription engines, making it possible to create captions for video content in multiple languages.
The technologies combine to unlock information previously trapped in inaccessible video archives. Without automated AI solutions, knowledge embedded within a recorded video could be nearly impossible to find. With speech-to-text, that information not only becomes accessible, it becomes possible to surface it to workers around the globe.
Video’s growing flexibility – enabled by AI – provides a venue that facilitates the sharing of knowledge from workers who may not have the time to document their skills in traditional corporate communications channels. After all, not all workers are skilled writers with the ability to quickly craft well-written papers or articles.
For these individuals, the evolving world of AI opens the door to recording a video that captures their expertise. From there, workers can digest the content in the manner best suited to them. They can watch the video recorded by their colleague. Or, alternatively, they can read a memo automatically developed by AI based on information presented in that reference video.
With the burgeoning use of video for sharing information within an enterprise comes the risk of sensitive information being distributed outside the organization. Public hosting sites, even with the ability to make videos private, are not an ideal option. Enterprise-grade video platforms, however, help mitigate threats by offering robust content management features to ensure the right people have the right access to videos. This can range from establishing expiration dates to setting viewing permissions/passwords to designating who can create and post videos.
When workers are armed with the right technology solutions, video emerges as the easiest venue for creating and sharing work information on a widespread basis. AI solutions simplify the process of creating high-value video content. Additionally, they automate the management of video, fostering unparalleled flexibility in the ways that individuals can extract knowledge from video archives. And the appropriate security protocols provide peace of mind that this information is protected.
Unlocking The Value of Video Through Technology Integration
To get the most from video-enriched communications, organizations cannot limit the use of the technology to a few stand-alone use cases. Rather, video data must be integrated into workflows on a seamless basis that makes it as easy for individuals to use video as it is for them to employ text, images, graphics, and other content formats.
Sometimes, that can be difficult to accomplish in the nascent world of enterprise video solutions. Opinions can vary greatly on the tools that help organizations get the most out of video at the lowest possible cost. Some content creators will favor posting videos on Google’s YouTube service. Others will look to Microsoft’s SharePoint application as an option to store video archives. A host of other technology platforms are optimized for specific corporate disciplines, such as the marketing department.
Indeed, many organizations have been slow to develop over-arching strategies for implementing video technologies, leaving many with a mix-and-match set of solutions that create the equivalent of a “Video Tower of Babel.” Absent a coordinated approach to developing and managing video, these companies lack the tools necessary to integrate video with commonly used workflows. This can be a major roadblock to implementing video effectively. The integration of technical solutions is imperative for developing effective work processes and applications. In a 2023 survey of knowledge managers conducted by the American Productivity & Quality Center, 71% of those interviewed said that it’s essential for knowledge management solutions to provide a simplified and integrated user experience in order to be effective.
Applying these results to the prospects for the use of video in knowledge management, the unstructured, disjointed approach to handling video is the antithesis of the strategies that organizations should be adopting to get the most out of their video implementations.
Instead, corporate users should be looking for ways to make video a common part of everyday business workflows and processes. Video tools that integrate seamlessly with the workflow solutions that organizations already have implemented offer the most direct path to meaningfully infusing video into the day-to-day work experience.
Setting Upon A Corporate Video Strategy
As organizations evaluate their options in the video realm, they must engage in a two-step evaluation process.
The first step is to evaluate the appetite for video within your corporate culture. Are individuals within your organization inclined to embrace video? How much experience with video has your team developed during the years of the pandemic? Has this experience fostered greater interest in leveraging video in other business activities? Do you have video role models within your organization that can help introduce your employees to useful applications of business video?
Once you have determined that your organization’s corporate culture is open to the concept of using video more extensively, the next step is to take inventory of the digital workflows your employees use most frequently. Rather than embracing ad-hoc solutions for creating and managing video that may not have strict security and governance protocols, your team will be best served by enterprise-grade video platforms designed to fit hand-in-glove with the workflows already used by your organization.
The seamless integration of video solutions into digital workflows offers the single best opportunity to “normalize” the use of video, putting it on par with text, images, and graphic content commonly used in today’s enterprise. Organizations seeking to maximize the impact of video-enriched communications and knowledge sharing should prioritize video-enabling solutions that make it easy for workers to embrace video within the context of established work processes.
