Ep94 Vidyard VP of Talent, Lisa Brown on the Power of Asynchronous Video in HR
While many of us flailed around during the first months of COVID-19, Vidyard was ready. In this episode, I chat with Lisa Brown, Vidyard’s Vice President of Talent, to discuss her experiences as a talent leader during this crisis and how she’s leveraging asynchronous video communication to bring out the best in everyone.
If you haven’t heard of Vidyard before, it’s a powerful video platform for business. “Think about asynchronous communication sort of on steroids,” she says. “We have super-powered analytics, top-notch security integrations with other business tools, and lots of features.”
I invite you to listen in as we explore what asynchronous communication means for talent recruitment and all things HR.
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Ep94 Vidyard VP of Talent, Lisa Brown
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Vidyard’s Embrace of a Digital-First Model
Vidyard had a head start in using video messages for team communication, and I was curious how their use of it had evolved over the last 18 months as they fully adopted a digital-first model of working.
She didn’t hesitate: “Our performance was high. … There are a few areas that we still needed to dial up and improve. But we thought that the advantage of going digital first was a strength of our company.”
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t still value face-to-face meetings. “We also see the need for in-person time. And so while we're fully distributed in digital, in our recruiting practices, in our everyday setup, we’re going to maintain what we’re calling our collaboration hubs.”
Using Asynchronous Communication to Build Connections
Lisa and the Vidyard team are already a step or two ahead of where the rest of us are when it comes to using video for asynchronous communications. I asked her to share an example of how they did it.
“It’s been embraced by the leadership team,” Lisa shared. “We consistently send out a Friday communication from our co-founders. It’s roughly five to 10 minutes in length. It’s a summary of the week that we just had -- highlights how we won with a customer. It talks about our key stats and statistics. And the feedback from our team has been outstanding. You can watch it again. Like if there’s something that Mike Litt, our CEO, says, and I didn’t quite catch it, or there’s metrics that maybe I’m not as familiar with. I can quickly go back, listen to it again.”
Lisa also shared how HR can benefit from asynchronous video. “Like imagine doing training, you want to send out a new code of conduct,” she says. “Do you want to send out some type of security review? You send it in a video to track how many people watched it, how much they watched. And it satisfies a lot of requirements.”
How to Use Video to Create Memorable Recruiting and Onboarding Experiences
Part of active talent recruitment is to leave a powerful, positive first impression. Asynchronous recruitment videos can help meet that goal: “Imagine, for the recruiters out there, how many passive candidates you reach out to, and you get no response back at all. All you have to do is pull up their LinkedIn profile, throw it up on a video and ask them to reach out to you or at least review, but watch your video. You’ll be astounded. You’re going to get a 99% return on your communication.”
The same approach with recorded videos can be applied to onboarding new team members: “Think about all the content you absorb as a new hire on that day one, you can’t remember half of it, or at least I couldn’t. We archive everything in video with quick snippets, like how to access your benefits,” she shares. “I think people actually like the ability to absorb it in one format and then to absorb content again in a fashion that is either at the speed that they want or the frequency that they want to watch it.”