Any finance organisation has employees working in different time zones and multiple locations, not to mention across different business lines, all heavily regulated and often divided by Chinese Walls; creating successful, compliance-adhering and transparent inter- and multi-divisional employee engagement across such a diverse and disparate workforce is both challenging and potentially expensive.

Technology, video in particular, could be the solution for finance organisations to connect employees and leave them feeling engaged and energized to do their best work; to bring their messaging to everyone within the organisation simply and efficiently; to have co-workers globally share new ideas and inspiration in a secure and transparent manner.

A recent survey carried out by Qumu shows that 58% of enterprise communication professionals find that enterprise video brings their employees “increased alignment with company goals,” while 44% are seeing increased engagement between employees and senior executives. Keeping employees informed and connected to everyone in the organisation – especially senior management – translates to a smarter, more engaged workforce.

There are a variety of reasons why video can bring about successful engagement:

Satisfy Generation Y’s Demand for Video

It is a fact that video attracts and engages younger workers. The finance sector employs a high number of people who have grown up with video playing a role in their personal lives through sites such as YouTube or services like Skype. These video-savvy employees want to communicate and access content in the workplace in the same way as they do in their daily lives.

The Social Media Factor

Video is a social form of content that can be shared, liked or disliked and commented upon. It creates interaction and encourages dialogue and exchanges of opinion. The video social factor ensures content reaches a wider audience facilitating engagement and collaboration.

Easier Collaboration

Projects in the finance sector often involve multiple staff spread across multiple divisions and countries having to co-work while servicing the same client. Think for instance of investment bankers working on a client’s IPO having to liaise with equity sales and traders to recruit potential investors. In situations like this, video could be used to enable live communication between disparate stakeholders, as well as to deliver progress updates from project managers through video-on-demand.

Visibility of Senior Management

Very often, in large finance organisations, CEOs and Managing Directors have very little contact with or visibility to the wider workforce. The CEO’s name may be known, but they might otherwise be perceived as unapproachable.  This is a problem for leaders as they struggle not only to engage with the workforce but also to communicate company vision, culture, direction and their own personality.  Enterprise video offers senior level executives a simple way to engage with those who work for the organisation, both through live events where the executive addresses the whole company, enabling employees to see and hear directly from them, or also by regular on-demand video messages. Video offers a more personalised way of delivering a message and of telling a story which results in the workforce feeling closer to the senior management team, engaged and consequently valued.

Timely Communications

Banking and Finance is an incredibly fast paced industry. When time is the essence, video cuts through the noise to deliver strong, urgent messages exactly when it is required. Not only can video be made instantly available, but clarity and transparency of the message can be guaranteed too. Additionally, video can instantly be distributed to an entire workforce, including remote employees on mobile devices, ensuring the message has a global reach.

Training and Development

Video is increasingly being used to deliver training and development – a key influencer in employee engagement. It makes perfect sense for big financial institutions with thousands of employees to offer training videos that are available on YouTube because such on-demand content can be accessed by individual employees at a time that is convenient to them. This is a more cost effective and efficient way to deliver targeted training to individuals as it eliminates unnecessary travelling and accommodation costs.

A Mobile Workforce

With 40% of all YouTube global watch time being from mobile devices, video is the perfect medium to access video content on smart phones and tablets. Videos on an internal network can also be accessed on mobile devices and this has created a way of working which was unthinkable a few years ago – people can access content and be productive even when traditionally little work can take place, such as when sitting in an airport lounge or on a train. It is nowadays possible to experience events and talks even if you cannot attend in person.

Measurability

Being able to measure impact on business is an essential element of any successful employee engagement strategy. Internal Communications and Human Resources teams can easily determine what impact the video content is having by having access to key information such as the total number of views a video has received or even from which workstations and devices a certain video has been accessed. This data creates a measurable metric of employee engagement.

Additionally, teams can analyse how individual videos performed and fine-tune programs over time focusing on content that achieves maximum engagement.

In conclusion, employee engagement is a key element of any successful organisation. Engaged employees are more motivated, more productive and more likely to stay. The tools and opportunities to enable this have never been better, or more wide-ranging, than they are now and companies that have chosen to invest in the right technology; have already started to reap the benefits.

Martin Nurser, VP and General Manager of Qumu.

Martin Nurser, Vice President and General Manager of Qumu EMEA, brings more than 25 years of enterprise and technology industry experience with emphasis on engineered systems and cloud technologies. He is a leading expert in channel and strategic alliance development and management, go-to-market planning, as well as market segmentation and business strategy formulation. His most recent corporate position was Director of Alliances and Commercial Development at CSC, a leading global provider of consulting and outsourcing solutions. Martin was instrumental in the development of a strategic alliance between CSC and Oracle. During his tenure, the CSC Oracle practice realised unprecedented business growth across EMEA. Prior to that, he has worked and consulted within the IT, Retail and Food & Drink industries. Martin has held a variety of board level leadership roles, including Sales and Marketing, Product Development, Business Development, and Operations.