Rethinking Employee Onboarding for a Modern Workforce
For companies of all sizes, onboarding is a defining moment in the employee experience. It sets the tone for how your organization communicates, supports, and develops its people. And in today’s competitive talent landscape, it’s also a reflection of your employer brand.
Yet too often, onboarding is inconsistent, manual, or overly reliant on static content that’s quickly outdated. As teams grow, locations expand, and roles diversify, the challenge becomes clear: how do you deliver a high-quality, engaging onboarding experience at scale, without overburdening HR or relying on costly video production?
That’s where employee onboarding videos come in.
Modern onboarding videos allow companies to standardize critical information, bring culture to life, and provide new hires with a consistent, welcoming experience—no matter where they are or what role they’re stepping into. In this post, we’ll explore how organizations are rethinking onboarding through video, what sets the best employee onboarding videos apart, and how video creation platforms make it easy to build personalized, scalable onboarding programs without the need for a dedicated video team.
Your Onboarding Experience Is Your Employer Brand
The onboarding experience should not be treated as a checklist of tasks to complete. Rather, it’s a time when the employee can get a real sense of your company culture, values, and how you treat your people.
First impressions matter, and onboarding is where you start shaping them. In today’s hybrid and remote work era, this is especially important as employees want to feel welcomed, inspired, and supported from day one. That’s why smart companies are discovering that there is a better way to onboard, and it centers around video.
The Role of Employee Onboarding Video in Shaping Culture, Retention, and Ramp-Up Speed
The best companies understand that onboarding doesn’t just help employees do their jobs—it helps them belong.
- Culture: Video has the power to bring your mission, values, and leadership voice to life in ways that static documents and email simply can’t. A short welcome message from your CEO or a culture walkthrough gives new hires a sense of connection.
- Retention: When employees feel seen, supported, and aligned early on, they’re far more likely to stay. After finishing an effective onboarding experience, 91% of employees reported feeling a strong connectedness at work, according to Glassdoor.
- Productivity: Onboarding videos accelerate ramp-up time by giving employees the right information, in the right format, exactly when they need it, with 49% of employees reporting higher contribution to their team within the first week.
When today’s workforce wants flexibility, clarity, and purpose, the right onboarding video delivers all three. Thankfully, you don’t need a full production crew to create a scalable video onboarding experience. With SundaySky, companies can scale onboarding with personalized, engaging video content. Whether you have 50 new hires or 5,000, SundaySky makes it easy to deliver standout onboarding videos for new employees.
What Makes a Great Onboarding Video for New Employees?
A great employee onboarding video isn’t just informative, but it’s also thoughtful, creative, and tailored to the person watching. A one-size-fits-all approach to onboarding may check the box, but it won’t resonate with employees.
Personalization is what sets standout onboarding videos apart. Whether it’s a custom welcome message from a department leader, a tool walkthrough tailored to a specific role, or region-specific HR guidance, personal touches show new hires that you’ve thought about their experience, not just the process.
With personalization, teams can:
- Automatically customize video content by department, role, or location
- Deliver only the most relevant information to each employee
- Keep messages aligned with evolving teams, tools, and policies
This approach ensures every employee starts their journey with content that feels intentional, relevant, and aligned from day one.
The Rise of Creative Employee Onboarding
Gone are the days of dull training videos and static welcome messages. Creative employee onboarding is on the rise, and it’s making a huge impact on employee satisfaction and retention.
Forward-thinking HR and Learning & Development teams are using tools like AI-generated avatars, interactive video, and role-based content to create dynamic onboarding experiences.
Here’s how creative onboarding sets itself apart:
- Avatars and virtual hosts: Offer consistency and professionalism across geographies.
- Interactive elements: Let new hires choose their journey—what they want to learn about first, or dive deeper into.
- Bite-sized, modular content: Employees can go back and rewatch at any time.
- Multilingual support: Speak to your workforce in their language.
And the best part? Anyone, whether they have experience with video personalization or not, can create customized, branded, professional-looking videos quickly, using drag-and-drop tools and built-in templates from SundaySky.
What Sets the Best Employee Onboarding Videos Apart
What makes the best employee onboarding videos truly stand out? Personalization and scalability.
Personalization makes new hires feel like the content was created specifically for them. A new sales hire shouldn’t receive the same onboarding experience as an engineer or a product lead. When videos speak directly to an employee’s role, department, or location, they’re far more engaging—and far more effective.
Scalability is just as critical. As companies grow and hiring volumes fluctuate, onboarding programs need to keep up without requiring more time or headcount. Video makes it possible to deliver consistent, high-quality onboarding to every new employee, no matter how fast your team is expanding.
By bringing personalization and scalability together, the best employee onboarding videos are created, empowering organizations to modernize onboarding, streamlining the experience for new hires, and easing the burden on HR and IT teams.
How InTouchCX Uses Onboarding Videos as a Critical Part of the Employee Journey
InTouchCX is a leading customer experience provider that relies on video to drive a seamless, engaging onboarding process. They overhauled their traditional onboarding experience of static training materials with dynamic, interactive onboarding videos.
These videos:
- Introduce company values in a memorable way
- Guide employees through technology tools and workplace protocols
- Highlight inclusion and belonging
- Feature leaders and real team members, creating an instant connection
IntouchCX is an inspiring example of how video can transform employee experience, fostering a sense of support, growth, and community from the very beginning of the employee journey. This approach reduced time-to-productivity and made a measurable difference in new hire engagement. Read the full customer story.
Examples of Powerful Onboarding Video Types
If you’re wondering where to start, here are some of the most effective types of onboarding videos you can create:
1. Welcome Videos
Personal greetings from executives, founders, or department leads go a long way. Bonus points if they’re personalized by team or location.
2. IT + Tools Walkthroughs
Show how to log into key systems, request tech support, and navigate your tools, so day one runs smoothly.
3. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) + Culture Introductions
Video helps express company values, diversity initiatives, and inclusion programs authentically.
4. Manager Messages or Team Intros
Let future teammates introduce themselves, share what they love about the company, and offer tips for success.
Each of these touchpoints builds trust and confidence, turning anxiety into excitement.
Getting Started: Modernize Your Onboarding with Video
Modern onboarding isn’t just about what new hires need to know—it’s about how you deliver it. With SundaySky, companies are creating personalized, creative onboarding videos at scale without the budget, time, and resources required for a traditional video production team.
Whether you’re overhauling your onboarding or building from scratch, SundaySky gives you the tools to scale video across locations and roles, personalize content by audience, measure engagement and optimize over time, and lastly, deliver an onboarding experience that’s fast, memorable, and human.
Ready to modernize your onboarding with video? Discover how easy it is with SundaySky.
