The Best Examples of Effective Corporate Training Videos

With video more accessible than ever, corporate training videos are becoming an increasingly important part of the employee experience. Whether you’re providing videos on mobile devices or as part of an in-office learning experience, these video training manuals provide a more engaging and natural way for people to learn.

From explaining how the software works and improving employee skills to educating your team on new products and procedures, training videos are a fantastic way to show best practices and to educate your team without bogging them down with thick textbooks.

Video also helps employees retain knowledge. A study from Forrester Research revealed how employees are 75% more likely to watch training videos than to read long documents, emails, or articles. When employees actively learn and take part, they’re more likely to retain important knowledge and learn those important new skills.

At Gillespie Productions, we believe it’s important for our clients to understand what makes a good video and produce content that delivers on a specific need or purpose. In this piece, we’ll explore some of the best employee training videos we’ve seen that are already in use and give you an idea of what could be incorporated into your own company training videos.

Sage Appliances Barista Training Video

Sage Appliances is an award-winning kitchen appliances brand that helps people make better food and drinks, and as part of a promotional and training campaign, the brand teamed up with a local barista to show how to make specialty coffee from home.

Barista John David Gubbin leads the video, standing beside a whiteboard and delivering a masterclass on creating coffee with a Sage machine. It’s 26 minutes, making it a fairly long training video, but it’s by no means boring.

The barista explains key concepts with the help of the whiteboard, and the video cuts away to clips of him using the machine and demonstrating how to bring those concepts to life with the machine.

What makes this video so fantastic from the brand’s perspective is that it isn’t difficult to make. All you need is a nice set – in this instance, a kitchen – and a host. Throw in a whiteboard, and you’re good to go. Gubbin is also a good presenter, keeping the video-friendly and light, meaning this is by no means a confusing or difficult watch.

This is a great introduction to some of the best corporate training videos because it shows how simple videos can be really effective.

Mobile Technologies Inc.’s Security Training

This video is a great example of how simple videos can be super effective. Mobile Technologies Inc. developed a short video in which a female presenter explains how security equipment in a British cell phone store works.

There are two main shots in this video – one of the presenters and one of the presenter’s hands working with a customer showing a cell phone that is attached to the security equipment.

The video makes the instructions really easy to follow, with the presenter explaining what is happening and then showing how it works. It uses longer takes rather than lots of edits and maintains a very simple style. It is introduced and finished with some professional-looking graphics, and that’s all there is to it!

Saving Lives With the Resuscitation Council

“Resuscitation Council UK,” a British organization that provides courses and research on how to save lives, produced a video called “Lifesaver.”

This video is interactive, meaning viewers are directly placed into the role of somebody saving someone’s life. It contains several stories, with one person suffering from a cardiac arrest and another choking.

Viewers are given the opportunity to decide which action to take, making it an interactive way to learn – and something that feels more engaging than reading a textbook and taking a test afterward. When somebody is choking, for instance, the viewer is given options to choose from. Not only are participants judged on the action they take, but the time it takes for them to make a decision is also taken into consideration.

The video is made available online for free, which is often the case for training videos that have a wide audience and are designed to help people in need.

University of Colorado’s Company Statistics Video

The University of Colorado compiled important company statistics collected by its Employee Services department, delivering an easy-to-understand video for other members of the team to learn about the important work being done behind the scenes.

This is one of those company training videos that doesn’t require any presenter at all. It is made up entirely of graphics, and it displays the video better than a traditional PowerPoint presentation. Using slick graphics and transitions, along with a simple backing track, the University of Colorado showed just how many online courses it has delivered, how many people they helped with fees, the precise number of documents scanned and indexed, and much more.

Rather than a traditional training video, this video’s slick graphics offer an easy way to deliver a whole lot of data without boring viewers to death.

Dechert Law’s Educational Drama

Dechert Law used an educational drama to show executives how to operate during difficult situations, presenting a number of stories that relate to risk management, dealing with emerging markets, managing whistleblower cases, and more. It’s a great way to keep people engaged while also delivering important training and education.

“A Price Worth Paying” is a 35-minute drama that you could easily mistake for a TV show that builds from real-world experience and provides executives with an immediate insight into steps they can take to navigate real problems. If you’re looking for a way to show employees how to implement key concepts they have already learned about into their daily work life, dramatized stories are a great way to do it.

ReachOut’s Anti-Bullying Video

ReachOut is a leading mental health organization in Australia. It deals with a wide variety of issues that affect mental health and provides people with important information for improving their own mental health and also helping others.

In a video focused on workplace bullying, the organization shows people what is considered to be bullying, how to spot it, and how to navigate it. This is an important topic for any business.

Unfortunately, workplace bullying is fairly common, and in many cases, employees may not feel like they have much power to do anything about it. If you’re looking for a way to ensure that your employees know how to spot it while also feeling empowered to do something about it, a video like this is a great idea. Using animations and a voiceover, this video offers clear definitions in writing and presents some scenarios for people to look out for.

Animation is a great way to explain important concepts and provide examples and can even be incorporated into slideshows and traditional recorded videos. Training videos are a fantastic way to show employees that you care about certain issues, too. If you want your team to know that they can always come forward with their concerns, then training videos offer an explanation of how and when they should do it.

Chick-Fil-A’s Customer Service Video

Chick-fil-A is one of America’s favorite fast-food chains, and through the medium of video, the brand trains its employees to offer a warm customer experience. Its “Service and Hospitality at Chick-fil-A” video really exudes the warmth that the brand encourages its employees to extend to customers.

Using warm lighting, a calm voice, and relaxing music, this corporate video training clip features a professionally dressed presenter describing why it’s important to treat customers well. This training video only uses positive examples too. Instead of focusing on examples of employees being negative or offering a poor customer experience, the host reinforces a good customer experience by demonstrating how employees can do well.

You’ll see a video of employees interacting with customers, overlays with graphics, b-roll, and detailed explanations from the host about how to improve mannerisms, stay positive and ensure the best possible customer experience.

If you’re looking to boost morale in your team, this is a great way to do it. The presenter even offers some comments from customers who had good experiences, reinforcing how happy team members mean happy staff – and a better working environment.

The focus on positive content, the warm lighting, and the friendly and comfortable-looking presenter are some of the most important takeaways from this video.

Ohio State University Active Shooter Training

Knowing what to do in the event of an active shooter is an unfortunate reality today, and Ohio State University expertly put together a training video that gives people an idea of what it might feel like to be up against an active shooter. The video is filmed almost like an action movie, pulling viewers into the story.

The presenter is definitely speaking to a young adult audience here, with the focus being on students of the university.

You watch as an active shooter enters a building, and you are given multiple scenarios whereby police officers and students take action to protect themselves and others. And because it’s not really an action film, you get a real sense that this is authentic and true-to-life. Nothing is exaggerated, but the seriousness is perfectly conveyed in the realistic storytelling and visuals.

It’s six minutes long, meaning it’s not too short and it’s not too lengthy. Students aren’t going to get bored, and the presence of local law enforcement officers speaking directly to the camera and offering their advice creates an immediate connection between the video and viewers.

The video doesn’t just tell students what to do – it also explains what will be done by university authorities. It means that viewers know exactly what to expect in the event that a tragedy happens.

Combining direct commentary with dramatizations and visuals helps people learn by showing exactly what might happen. It’s also a great way of imprinting visuals into viewers’ minds, so they remember the video when they need it most.

Pagliacci Pizza’s Dough Tossing Video

Pagliacci Pizza is a restaurant from Seattle that developed a training video for staff showing how to perfectly roll and toss the dough. This video doubles up as a training video for staff and also a great advertisement, with the video published on YouTube where anybody looking to find out how to professionally toss pizza dough can find it.

The video is super simple. It’s presented by one of the pizza restaurant chain’s employees and simply follows him in the kitchen as he prepares dough and shows you how to toss it. And that’s really all there is to it: good lighting, good video quality, nice audio, and a simple message. Combined with the fact that the video went viral, and this is a great example of how training videos can easily become marketing tools.

If you’re interested in doing something similar, think of an important training topic for your staff and see if it’s applicable to other areas of life, or to people from outside your company. If that’s the case, then be sure to upload your new training video to YouTube or other social media platforms!

Pizza Hut’s Very 80s Training Video

Even just the first few seconds of this Pizza Hut video transports you back to the 1980s, but we think this is a good example of a training video because it proves how key concepts we’ve discussed in this piece are timeless.

Sure, the script can be sort of corny, but the principles here are the same as what we use today. There’s a presenter/main character, another character who is learning from the presenter – much like the viewer – and the video simply follows them around the kitchen and shows viewers how it works. This is our favorite part of this video, as it allows the viewer to associate and learn alongside the character on the screen.

It’s a long video, but it’s thorough – and that can be super important for a training video of this kind. This video could have easily been filmed in 2021, not 1988…except the quality would be much better today!

How to Get Your Own Corporate Training Videos

Corporate video training can be an incredibly effective tool. As we’ve seen in these ten videos, there are lots of ways to engage an audience, help people learn, and assist with knowledge retention

Some of the best corporate training videos out there double as marketing tools, and when done right, you could gain substantial online followings for providing important information that could be valuable in other professional and personal environments.

‍Gillespie Productions incorporates all of these tricks and more into our corporate video training services. We work with our customers to develop something unique and effective, and we’re always happy to discuss your needs and provide a detailed consultation.

To learn more about how training videos could transform how your business operates, call the team today at (920) 857-2224 and hire us!