5 Use Cases for a Corporate YouTube in Organizations

Previously I've discussed the benefits and uses of micro-blogging, badging and virtual worlds inside an organization. It's time to tackle video sharing. There are a few ways in which you can bring a YouTube like experience to your employees. You could use YouTube of course, but your security people might get a little wobbly in the knees on that one. There are other stand-alone cloud-based services that you might want to investigate such as Fuse and MediaCore. If you have implemented or are thinking of implementing a human capital talent suite, options like SuccessFactors and Kenexa have some built-in video sharing options for you. Of course collaboration platforms like Jive or Confluence come with it as well. Come to think of it, you don't really have an excuse not to have a video sharing option available to your employees. If the pinata is there, you might as well take a swing at it. Once you have video sharing in place, what are some of the effective ways in which you can utilize it within your organization?

1) Social Learning

Well well well. You knew it had to be on the list, right? What better way to use video sharing than to promote it as a learning tool amongst your employees. I'm not talking about professional learning videos you pay for from external vendors which you then might upload to the system. I'm referring to user (employee) generated videos that are created on whatever topic is imaginable. There is much going on within your organization -- and via the brilliant minds of your team members -- that can be recorded through the use of webams, screen captures or other camera modes. It can easily be uploaded and shared to increase the collective intelligence of all. That is social learning.

2) Executive Communications

Are you bored reading long emails from your C-Suite articulating the need to cut back on operational expenditures like travel or learning? What if the C-Suite used the video sharing platform to convey those same thoughts? Would the message be interpreted differently, perhaps more positively? If your video sharing platform has built-in comments or a discussion board it also provides the opportunity for an actual dialogue to ensue with those aforementioned C-Suite members. Monologues are often interpreted as hierarchical let alone email missives; a kinder and more collaborative way in which to convey news of this sort could be through a simple webcam created video fro the desk of the C-suite.

3) Corporate Communications

Outside of Executive Comunications via the C-Suite or senior management personnel there is additonal employee communication that needs to be shared as well. How is this done today? My guess is it's usually done via email with the odd dose of intranet bulletins coupled by really infrequent face-to-face town halls. What if videos were used to compliment some of the aformentioned modalities? Imagine if short webcam recorded bulletins were issued to employees via their personal profile page or email itself? This video-based sharing can easily help the interpretation of corporate communications and it might even be done in such a way such that humour is used as well.

4) Curated Learning

If employee generated videos might be termed social learning -- as depicted from number one in the list above -- there is an opportunity to use the video sharing application to curate and post videos from people outside of your organization. There is much knowledge 'out there' so why limit yourself to professional learning organizations or employees? TED, for example, has many short videos you can embed into your platform. Of course this brings up the point about curation. I've written about the act of curation before and yes, it's so important it's in the Flat Army book as well. Why aren't you (or perhaps members of your learning team) curating other user generated videos outside of your organization? Why aren't they being posted to your video site? There is much free -- and global -- video content out there and it's my opinion that it can be curated and repurposed for your own employees.

5) Employee Recognition

One final yet impressive manner in which to take advantage of a video sharing system is through the recognition of employees. Imagine Sandeep has rung up his best sales quarter ever. Sure, an email might be nice but if a very short video was created by the Head of Sales and shared with the entire organization, it can have a significant impact on both Sandeep and his colleagues. Imagine Jillian has won a prestigious award and her business unit's Vice President records a short video congratulating her on such an accomplishment. Wow! That would be both engaging and impressive. In summary, it's my belief we're under utilizing videos inside our organizations. There are many benefits to adding it as part of your company culture including the 5 I list above.