A unique and Highly Effective Way to Train Your Employees: Silhouette Training Videos

We all know that training our employees is essential to business growth in the long run.  And in a world where turnover is at its highest, we as leaders within our companies need to be prepared to effectively train our current and new employees.

Studies have made it abundantly clear that the only effective way to do this in today’s environment is to utilize video learning.  If you have made it this far, then your clearly recognize the need to do so correctly and with the most cutting edge processes as possible.  One way that extremely well oiled organizations have done this is through: Silhouette Training Videos.

Silhouette training videos are meant to be direct and to the point.  They reduce distractions and eliminate 'the who' by focusing on 'the what.'  These videos help viewers to hone in on what is said, the actions taken, and the body language coming across.  These videos work especially well when teaching interpersonal communications and consumer interactions. 

Silhouette videos are filmed in a green screen studio, actors are needed to play the roles, scripts need to be written to train effectively, props need to be designed, and backgrounds need to be digitally created to fit the situations appropriately. These types of training videos require a lot of prep, but the result is clean, neat, direct, and timeless.

To create an effective silhouette training series, planning and commitment is required from various members or departments of your company.  These videos can be effective to send across franchises, or kept locally to train positions with high turnover.  These videos work well for training individuals through multiple scenarios in similar virtual locations or situations.  For instance, making 2-8 videos on how to communicate with a retail customer, deescalate a security threat, or deal with a disgruntled phone caller.  These videos have proved successful in sales, administrative work, customer service, and more.

These videos are not effective in showing detailed processes such as how a piece of machinery or technological device works.  These videos do not work well for low budget companies either as they require greater commitment to create.

Current and traditional training videos often lose their effectiveness because they are dated. Individuals see the era, the clothing, the location and sometimes put it in the 'irrelevant for my day' category.  In turn, silhouette videos stand the test of time in a way that no other training video can! Digital backgrounds and silhouette people don't age.

Silhouette videos are unique in their customization and can help easily overcome big issues for large companies. These videos are great in that they can incorporate many people in extremely varied scenarios without having to utilize company space to film.  One of the issues some companies contend with is that for filming to get done, several sets or spaces currently needed for business, need to be set aside for filming.  In addition, noise needs to be controlled so that the videos come out clean, which often means after normal business hours have completed.  Whereas filming in a studio and utilizing digital backgrounds eliminates the hassle and issues involved with regular training videos.

Another big issue companies face is the need for multi-lingual videos.  Issues have been seen when dubbing is simply slapped over existing content, or when these videos still maintain native audio with bi-lingual text added; meaning in both situations the effectiveness of the video is gone. The beauty of silhouette videos is that it hides the ethnicity of the individual speaking, removing any thoughts as to ‘this isn’t my language or my people,’ and the silhouette nature makes the dubbing come out much cleaner.

Some clients have found these types of videos helpful in creating good and bad examples.  We often suggest that these training examples be included in larger video, or in person training programs that include explanations or allow for audience participation. Soliloquies, voice overs, pauses for discussion, and on screen interactions with computer programs have also proven to be beneficial with this medium.

In a world where people don't seem to hang onto jobs for more than a minute, being able to train new employees fast, fix bad behaviors, and foster a positive company culture set on training, is priceless.  Don't miss your opportunity to better your company and watch as these specialized training videos take your company to the next level.