It’s no surprise that the last two years have taken a significant toll on all employees and employers!. We have all learnt new ways of working: Previously conceived notions of what was possible in terms of flexibility, hybridity and effective engagement have all but transformed entirely. What might shock you, however, is that across Asia, Europe and the US, 47.4 million people left their jobs voluntarily in 2021 – and 4.5 million of those were in the UK alone.

Simply put – the game has changed. With a huge variety of options now available to a skilled digital workforce, retention has become the name of the game for businesses. It is more crucial than ever to keep those great employees in your business, because there is more reason than ever for them to leave.

Those who do stay will, of course, be working from home, at least for the most part. Homes that might be spread across the four corners of the globe. Hybrid working models are the norm now, but that doesn’t mean they feel normal.

We all remember the challenge of adjusting to Zoom meetings during that initial, pre-hybrid wave. At first, moving to video-only engagement seemed impossible. Who didn’t attempt a stilted team social hour from their desk? But there is so much more to using video as an engagement tool than simple meetings. Like every great challenge, it contains a great opportunity – and this opportunity is greater than most.

This is an opportunity to realise just how powerful video can be, both as an instrument of the L&D function and a means of engaging your colleagues on a more meaningful level over great distances. In doing so, people leaders have an opportunity to pick apart retention and identify what it really means for greater effect.

Let’s break it down with just a few examples.

Livestream Your Culture
Communication malaise is a very real problem for hybrid workers. In lieu of face-to-face interaction, a barrage of emails and pings might cause your colleagues to disengage, in order to focus on the challenges at hand. Before you know it, you have isolated, overworked and under-engaged teams, disconnected from the central hub of your organisation.

A live-streaming platform to communicate company updates, event recaps and executive messages, makes communicating with your colleagues active and engaging. By taking the streaming habits from our everyday lives and transporting them into the workplace, you can make engagement with your culture an easy and natural part of the hybrid working day. You never forget the story of your favourite movie – how do you create that same connection from your employees?

On-Demand Learning in the Flow of Work
The age-old challenge of balancing training with work has certainly not become any simpler over the last two years. Video provides a twofold advantage. Livestreamed, it provides an active, dynamic and multilateral way to train hybrid teams in the flow of work. Recorded and stored, it provides a high-quality database of engaging learning materials, easily accessible at the click of a trackpad.

Imagine creating binge-worthy content that trains your teams while keeping them engaged and retained. Video technology provides us with an opportunity to make this a reality.

Onboarding That Actually Engages
A recent survey revealed that, on average, Gen Z and Millennial workers stay in their jobs for three years less than their Gen X coworkers. Engagement is more important than ever, from the very beginning of the employee journey, right the way through to the exit interview.

First impressions are everything. Emailing a 20-page pdf to your new graduate hire is going to say all the wrong things about where your organisation is heading. With a live streaming video communications platform, real-time, dynamic engagement can be provided from the get-go. No matter where your colleagues are based, they can be onboarded in a powerful way, plugged straight into your culture with the necessary expertise to get started. Try doing that with a welcome pack.

2022 is a pivotal time for businesses. With the great resignation unlikely to fatigue any time soon and the challenges of hybrid working becoming central to the HR agenda, using the right technology to engage your colleagues is essential. Adopting streaming habits in the workplace is an inevitability, but doing so ahead of the curve is an advantage. For your employer brand, HR leaders, L&D professionals and every colleague.