Hero stories show that even the greatest and most capable people aren’t perfect without training. While they overcome many obstacles with their initial skills, there are always challenges they can’t overcome without the guidance of a teacher.
Your employees are in the same situation; they run into obstacles that stop them from doing their best work unless they’re taught how to work better. Not helping them won’t make them disappear from a kingdom or put a horrendous curse on them like in movies. But it’ll keep them dissatisfied with how little they learn at work.
You can use Litmos to create video learning paths that teach employees the skills they need to overcome barriers. It also allows you to manage, record, and report your employees’ learning so you can easily review your course to make it more effective. This structure unlocks their potential, taking them from okay to adept at the skills they need the most.
1. Interview employees
You can’t know what employees want to learn without asking them, so interview them. It doesn’t matter if you think an employee should learn a specific skill; if it’s not useful to their job performance, it won’t matter to them. These face-to-face interactions allow you to learn which skills are actually important to your team and why employees want them.
Before talking to employees, ask leaders for reports on their team’s KPIs to understand their weaknesses. For example, employees who miss deadlines likely need a productivity or quality control course.
Now, prepare a list of open-ended questions to learn the sources of these problems. What the manager painted as a productivity issue might be a fulfillment one, which would need a different course. Ask those questions of employees to learn what’s genuinely bothering them, then follow up by asking how they think the problem can be fixed.
While talking to employees, remember that employees should feel comfortable. An employee who feels interrogated or judged is less likely to be honest. Let them know they can ask questions and also praise their work.
2. Create a script and a storyboard
Scripts and storyboards offer a preview of your video. Scripts show you the dialogue, while storyboards show you what will happen in each scene.
Stakeholders can look at these documents and share what they want to change. For example, they can read your script and point out ambiguous or unclear scenes you should clarify. By seeing your storyboard, they can help you brainstorm clearer, simpler, and more engaging ways to depict a scene.
Your script should be comprehensive and engaging so your viewer wants to stick around. Make sure it explains everything the employee needs to know to go from not knowing about a skill to being excited about learning it. Change the words, sentence order, and tone until you’re happy with it. Then, leave it alone. Come back with fresh eyes after a few days and find areas you can improve.
Once you have your script, you should create a storyboard. In the squares of a template, sketch what you’ll need to show for the script to make sense. Draw where your speaker will be, the charts supporting their argument, and the movements they’ll make. Show the result to your team and redraw anything they find unnecessary, dull, or confusing.
3. Make your video with Vyond
You’re better off using animation when creating training videos than live footage. Since you won’t need to rent a place or hire actors, you save hundreds of thousands of dollars in production costs and spend less time creating your video. Vyond is an intuitive animation tool you can use to animate your storyboard.
First, sign up for a free trial. Start a new project and launch the Character tab on the left side. Characters can look any way you want; they can be suit-and-tie managers or eccentric leaders. Play with their proportions, features, and clothing, and exit the creation panel when you finish.
Second, click the Audio icon and then on Add Audio to record your voice lines. Keep your head and spine straight while recording; tilting either will tire out your voice. You should also place the microphone slightly lower than your head, just between your chin and sternum, to record the best audio.
Now that your audio is ready, assign it to a character so their mouths move as the audience listens to the voice lines. Select the character who will speak and click on Add Dialog in the Dialog panel. Pick your existing audio and watch your character’s lips move while playing the video.
The only step left is to make the character move. Select it and open the Motion Paths menu on the right side. Choose how long a character will take to move from one position to another and the pattern it will follow. For example, will it zig-zag its way across the screen or follow a straight line? Set the parameters and see how everything looks.
4. Upload your video to Litmos
Litmos follows SCORM, which stands for “Sharable Content Object Reference Model.” It’s a structure for your courses that allows them to work well with any other system that follows the SCORM protocols. It enables you to create a course once and use it whenever you need it and on whatever platform you choose.
Companies devoted to training their employees are SCORM-compliant because they can import courses from one platform to another without modifying them. You can re-upload your company’s old courses and benefit from the platform’s robust reporting system.
You can upload videos of many file types—like .mp4 and .mov—to Litmos as long as they’re under 100 MB. This option is available in the Admin view on the right side’s dropdown menu.
Navigate to Content and then to Create Module. You can drag and drop one or more of your video files from there. If you have stable internet, embedded videos play without buffering or cutting.
5. Design a captivating thumbnail
According to a Zapier study, 90% of workers check work messaging apps for up to five hours each day. So, while most employees want to improve their skills, you still need to earn their attention. You can follow three best practices to design course thumbnails people want to click.
Start by adding text that explains why someone should click the video. If you created a productivity course for project managers, this text could be, “Achieve more while working half the time.” Knowing the value of a course from the start makes employees more likely to enroll in it.
You’ll also want to use contrasting colors in your thumbnail. Picking the right layout and adding persuasive text is useless if your thumbnails don’t stand out from other graphics. If you don’t know much about color theory, use contrasting color palettes others created.
You can apply these tips using Canva. Its free plan lets you design as many thumbnails as you want. Thanks to its large template library, you’ll also find designs that already use contrasting colors.
6. Analyze what could improve
Your course comprises assignments, videos, and a module structure. If any of these elements underperform, they’ll weaken the impact of your entire course. You maximize your course’s value by fixing its weak points.
Luckily, Litmos makes it incredibly easy to find and fix those weak points. Click on the right dropdown menu and switch to the Admin view. On the left side, click on Reports. You’ll see data such as the employees doing the most courses, the number of people who never log in, and how much of a course people watch.
There will be a Quick reports sidebar on the right. These are useful to stakeholders to report how a course performs in a specific area. For example, you can report how many people pass exams, reach certain milestones or answer surveys. Experiment with potential solutions if the results don’t look as good as they could.
Use Vyond with Litmos for your employee training
Vyond is an intuitive and versatile animation. Wish to finish a project faster without increasing your animation skills? Use one of our hundreds of free templates. If you can imagine it, you can do it.
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