Can you show me how to do that again? – The Power of Loom

 
When systemising and creating ‘one right way’ to do everything in your business, things can start to feel a little repetitive. It’s all very well the idea of having one right way to do everything in your business, but in reality, training the team and new hires in each and every task seems endless! 
 
It’s also a significant investment – According to the Association for Talent Development, businesses spend an average of $1,252 per employee on training and development initiatives. Of course this depends on the size of your team and particular role in question, but this cost is not to be sniffed at.
 
It’s our job to make this as easy as possible for you, and we’ve decided to share with you what we have found to be the most effective and efficient way of recording and sharing your training with your team in this post.

What if you only had to show your team once?

We encourage our clients to film screen recordings or videos of each routine task and share these with their team. Each team member has access to the videos and they become your ‘How To guides’ (or SOPs – Standard Operating Procedures as many refer to them).
 
But, doesn’t that take ages?!
 
Filming a screen recording takes the same length of time as it takes to demonstrate the task to your colleague or employee, so only as long as it would take to demonstrate the task anyway – why not record it so that you don’t have to repeat yourself over and over? 
 
Before you dive in to start creating your own screen recordings and videos, here are some hints and tips on how to film the perfect screen recording for training your team:

Hints and tips for recording a How To Video using Loom

 

  • 🎥 Use Loom so that the content can be easily edited and shared with your team. It’s ready straight away, and can be accessed by anyone you share the link with, anywhere in the world, at any time
  • ✏️ Make notes about what you need to say ahead of time and stick to the process calmly and clearly, explaining every step as you go as you would 1:1
  • 🔕 Make sure you won’t be disturbed, that there’s little to no background noise, and turn off notifications so that these don’t crop up on your screen
  • 🔐 Close or minimise any open windows that aren’t part of the process, and make sure nothing personal is showing on your screen
  • 😊 Smile, speak clearly and not too quickly! You really can hear it in your voice, and it’s more engaging
  • 🤫 Try to type quietly if you’re typing on screen for the purpose of the video as it can sound really loud on the replay. Don’t bang your desk or shuffle paperwork too much for the same reason
  • 🎬 Each video should be a standalone video (not referring to something that was said or done in a previous video) UNLESS there’s a clear step-by-step training plan in place where they watch the videos in a certain order and have to have completed one before progressing to the other. This applies if the process is very long and you need to break it down into chunks
  • 🙋 Each video needs a clear introduction which includes the title of the task, ‘Hi, this is a How to video showing XYZ and we need to do this when ABC occurs / we receive a signal from EFG’
  • 💬 Talk through the task as if your trainee or colleague is sat next to you. Make it conversational but informative. The more engaging you are, the more likely they are to retain the information. This also helps those who’re nervous about being filmed. Although you don’t have to have your face on screen, your voice is on screen and it’s not everyone’s cup of tea! Pretending that you’re talking to a colleague directly is a great way to calm those nerves and realise, actually, how good you are at training!
  • ➡️ Speak and move slowly and move your cursor around with purpose, and not too quickly around the screen
  • 🤢 Scroll calmly and slowly when you’re showing your screen (we don’t want your team getting seasick!)
  • ⏸ When you click from step to step or screen to screen, remember to take a breath and pause briefly between clicks so that people who have never done it before can learn and follow (what may be second nature to you may not be for them)
  • ⁉️ If something else crops up in a video and you have the opportunity to problem-solve, don’t try and cover too much under one title because it gets overwhelming – just make a separate video. For example if you’re searching for a particular customer in your CRM and there is more than one entry, create a separate video on ‘How to merge a duplicate contact’
  • 🧑‍🔧 Remember, the video is for anyone and everyone that may benefit from it, and your colleagues may change – so use job titles and not names where possible
  • 🏋️ Speak as if you’re training someone brand new – try to keep away from using business-specific acronyms or language that you didn’t know before you started at the company. That way your training will be suitable for a complete beginner
  • ☺️ It doesn’t have to perfect – we’re human and stumble on our words and that’s ok as long as the information is there 🙂

Here’s a Step-by-Step guide for recording the perfect screen recording How to:

1. Title – State the title of the video at the beginning of the recording so that your colleagues know they’re watching the correct process

2. What are we doing in this video?

3. How often do we have to do this? What are the triggers for this process?

4. Why is it so important that we do it this way?

5. What do we need to be aware of?

6. MAIN CONTENT – The actual process, main content of the video, and the ‘why’ for each step

7. At the end – do we need to notify anyone that we’ve done this? Is it part of a chain of events?

8. At the end – say whether there’s also a step by step written guide/checklist to follow

9. Are there any next steps videos they should be aware of?

10. Save the file in a standardised way [How to XYZ – Department/Role – Business Name – Initials – Date]

11. Watch the video to check it’s clear and contains all the information you want to share

12. Edit the video if necessary by simply trimming the beginning and end of the video

13. Make sure the video is password protected if you’re showing something that’s private to your business

14. Share with whoever is learning this process, and even better, embed into your Trainual account and back up with step-by-step guide and/or a checklist

15. Ask for feedback. Was it clear? Are they left with any questions unanswered? Were there any steps missing?

See Loom in action

If you’d like to see this in action, here’s a quick example of a Loom screen recording I made whilst writing this blog, demonstrating how you can protect your video with a password:
Imagine building up your own library of training videos like these, delegating some to your most efficient team members who really know their roles so that they can record them too. Life changing! Rather than repeating yourself or watching your managers answering the same questions repeatedly, you are building evergreen training content for your team.
 
By housing your training videos in a training platform like Trainual (https://trainual.grsm.io/loom-blog) they are available on demand, searchable and organised by role too.
 
You can embed your training video directly from Loom (no time consuming download and uploading) and follow the video with a step-by-step process backed up with screenshots from the video.

How does this look in Trainual?

Click here to watch this in Trainual
The beauty of this is that no matter where in the world your team is, regardless of time zone or work pattern, the content is available 24/7. No more online group training sessions or refresher courses (unless they form part of constructive team-building of course), just readily available training, on demand!
 
If you’re not quite ready to delve into Trainual just yet, Loom allows you to organise your videos using folders, so you can separate training out by department, role, type of software it relates to… whatever works best for you. 
 
The search function allows you to find pretty much any video if you’re strict and stick to a logical file naming system. If you wanted to categorise these further, you can tag your videos using hashtags such as #HowTo #OpsSOP #FinanceHowTo #XeroProcess #MarketingHowTo etc. and your new hires and existing teams can search for a video they need, or simply contact a colleague asking for a Loom on whatever they’re missing, so that this can be used in the future for all the team.
Explore Loom here

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Author

Marianne Page

Marianne is the author of three books, and is currently working on her fourth, whilst regularly writing her blog, we hope you enjoy it :-)

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