Study: How Video Improves Remote Employee Collaboration

Video isn't just for reaching customers or potential customers: it's also useful in-house. The business video platform provider Qumu released an interesting study on how businesses are using online video to work more effectively with remote employees, called "Maximizing Remote Employee Collaboration with Video."

Qumu surveyed over 100 corporate communications experts in June, 2012, to find out how they're using video and what benefits they found. Often, video points to better communications and lower costs.

The mobile revolution has absolutely hit the office, and Qumu found that 73.6 percent of those surveyed said that uploading video from company events or trade shows was a valuable use for smartphone video uploading.

Marketers know that, for online video, shorter is often better. Surprisingly, the same is true for internal training videos. The best length for training videos is between 2 and 4 minutes, said 41.2 percent of respondents, and between 5 and 10 minutes, said 38.2 percent. Only 3.9 percent thought training videos should be longer than 10 minutes.

There's a place for both live and recorded video within the office. Respondents prefer live video overwhelmingly (79.4  percent) when collaborating with colleagues on a project.

No one wants autoplay. Qumu asked respondents their must-have features for online video, and the ability to start and stop the video topped the list (86.3 percent). After that came the ability to download the video (53.9 percent), showing that workers want to re-watch or repurpose videos at will.

The survey even showed when people would rather watch video than take a call or an in-person meeting. The number one event that workers would rather replace with video were all-hands company or department meetings (62.4 percent). They're notorious time sinks, and respondents would rather get the same information from their desks.

Someone's got to make all that video, but respondents said that the time involved in video production kept them from making videos (44.6 percent). After that, 39.6 percent said they lacked the skills required to use editing software. It looks like businesses need software so intuitive that it doesn't feel like work.

To view the entire whitepaper, visit Qumu. As of this writing, the download link is in the bottom right corner of the homepage.

Video conference image via Shutterstock.

Troy Dreier's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net