About 2bn people in the world own a smartphone and about 7bn mobile devices currently exist. It’s safe then, for internal communicators to assume that most employees will be one of that number. The majority of delivery drivers, engineers, bank tellers, secretaries, oil drillers, mechanics, consultants, accountants, lawyers and leaders have a video camera and sound recorder in their pockets.

The implications that has on internal communications are huge. There are, of course, security issues to be dealt with regarding privacy and sharing. But, the opportunity has arisen for employees to speak up, to contribute their thoughts and insights and to share them with their colleagues. Internal communicators have recognised the power in this and have begun to turn toward user-generated content as a major source of video communications.

Jeremy Stinton, chief operating officer at Buto, a company that helps organisations engage, retain and build their audiences using the Buto enterprise video platform, says, user-generated video will help companies produce the required volumes of content when budgets are growing tighter. He adds that user- generated video often feels more authentic and realistic than professionally-produced content. “Ultimately,” he adds, “A company is going to end up with a balance of user-generated content alongside flagship content produced by professional companies.”

Communicate magazine carried out research in association with Buto to examine the changing uses of video in internal communications. Only 23.3% of over 100 respondents from the internal communications profession said their organisation currently encourages user-generated video.

However, 35.6% say they don’t yet, but plan to do so. That shift is complemented by the 71.7% of IC professionals who believe their employees want to share more of their own content. The future, one respondent says, is user-generated.

Employee engagement efforts have been bolstered by the evolution of digital technology. It’s easier for internal communicators to reach employees and for employees to reach their colleagues across the organisation. However, for non-desk bound employees or non-traditional companies, the standard intranet/ email one-two punch is less effective.

At a roundtable discussion with eight senior internal comms professionals from the financial and professional services sectors, a representative from a major British bank said, “I think what we’re finding at the moment is in user generated content, there’s a big shift towards that. I think [people] love seeing their colleagues on film, but knowing that they’ve done it themselves and that there’s always that edgy DIY sense to it, they quite like that as well. In some sense, it’s not propaganda, because a colleague has made it.” The value, thus, of user-generated content, is the ability of internal communicators to reach employees who would be unlikely to watch a centrally-produced video. Her colleague adds, “This user-generated stuff is more what colleagues want to see.”

The Manchester Fire & Rescue Service features both user-generated and centrally-produced video to great success. The mix allows internal communicators and corporate leaders to disseminate the messages they want, while also allowing for a more personal view by employees. Asda is another that encourages employees to create videos and post them to a central online hub called the Green Room. Tullow Oil, a London-based oil exploration company, sent simple recording devices to far-flung employees on the job and ran a series of diary-like videos filmed by employees around the world. These ran alongside professionally- produced films featuring corporate leaders speaking to the internal audience and giving investment reports for stakeholders.

User-generated content also allows passionate people to take their enthusiasm for their job and share that spirit and their knowledge with their colleagues across the business, Stinton says. And, it is relatively cheap to produce. Only 24.7% of survey respondents said their budgets for video will increase over the next 12 months. For cash-strapped internal communicators, using the smartphones available in everyone’s pockets is an obvious solution.

But one of the perennial challenges with user-generated content is with regards to quality. Professional films are fantastic because they are produced by people with filmmaking and storytelling experience. Getting employees to understand both and deploy that understanding in a short video is a challenge for internal communicators. “The big risk with user-generated content is around quality,” Stinton says. “Where I see clients being successful with user- generated content is when they just encourage people to use their mobile phones. I’ve seen people fall down when they try to provide employees with a lighting kit and a camera on a tripod. [The employees] get sucked into the technology, rather than being concerned with telling a story.”

One way of tackling this challenge is to create a simple guide for user-generated video outlining some basics of smartphone filming, the importance of sound and emphasising the ways in which filmmakers should plan ahead of time. “Life most things in life, planning is key,” Stinton says. A potential filmmaker, he adds should, “Think about what they want to say and their messages and what their audience really wants to know and understand. How is that going to fit within the objectives of what they’re trying to achieve.”

For in-house teams, another problem with video content in general is the cultural taboo around watching video at work. In some organisations, it may be inappropriate to watch a video while on the job. For front-line employees with managers concerned primarily with customer service, watching a video is still sometimes seen as a waste of time. The IC professional at the bank says, “The culture in some parts of the bank is, ‘Why are you sat watching a video when we’ve got customers?’ There’s quite a cultural difference between teams that are based in the back office or head office and teams that are customer- facing. That’s one of the challenges that I think we have. We have a population of managers who are about serving the customer. And maybe they haven’t yet made the connection that if they watch this or read this they’re going to be better informed.”

Yet employees will watch their colleague’s content, even if they have to do so at home on their own devices. About 21% of respondents say employees watch video at home while 80% say video is watched at work. Most internal comms professionals with disparate workforces say mobile dissemination is essential for the success of video communications. Survey respondents agree. Some recount the cultural barriers that discourage video and IT challenges and problems with access – even on mobile – that plague their video objectives.

One persistent challenge is technical. Hosting a number of videos can be nearly impossible for some companies. Even if videos can be hosted on an intranet or other employee site, office computers may not be literally up to speed to enable clear viewing. To solve this problem, Buto has developed a simple hosting and management system for internal comms videos. Stinton says management of content can be overlooked and poor practice leads to badly tagged videos, poor search capabilities and poor distribution. By ensuring the management and technology are functional, and by engaging with all the stakeholders involved in internal communications, Stinton says Buto can ensure that people engage with videos.

However, leaders still may be sceptical of the potential of video for internal communications, thus requiring astute measurement of a video’s ROI. A roundtable attendee who overseas internal communications for an international property management firm says her role involves balancing the needs of the company itself and the messages from corporate leadership while trying to encourage user- generated content to make sure employees understand their purpose within the organisation. Proving the value of video has never been more important, and it is getting easier.

The property management communicator says the organisation can derive profiling metrics from viewers which then allows internal communications to better target audiences within the organisation. However, most attendees and many survey respondents are still trying to measure the impact of video.

At the moment, views are the most-used tool for measuring ROI (60.4%) but feedback and shares (51.6%) are also prominent. What roundtable attendees wanted, though, was a way to measure behaviour change and business benefits. The bank communicator says, “If we are spending let’s say £2m a year on video, then how is that directly impacting the bottom line and in what way? Because that for me is return on investment. Engagement isn’t solely down to video or not.” Another person adds, “It’s difficult to look at video in isolation,” and that cultural change or tenable fiscal benefits are more easily measured when considering video as part of a wider communications strategy.

But, Stinton points out that measurement need not be obtuse and opaque. Direct calls to action can be added to videos that measure engagement with the message, but cultural change can also be judged if the right metrics are outlined from the beginning. “The starting point for analytics is always to understand what you want to achieve and working out how you can measure those objectives,” he adds. By doing so, communicators will be in a better position to prove the value of video for the internal audience and thereby gain support from leadership.

The future of internal communications is likely to be a visual one. Externally, this is a change already understood by brands. Internal communicators are only now able to prove the case for the use of video internally and for encouraging user-generated video across the organisation.

One respondent says of video, “I think it will grow and grow, driven by and often created by, end users. The next generation wants and needs exciting and engaging content, much less words and pictures and far more videos.” Most agree that the future of video is strong, though many call for more ease of use and better targeting. However, video is here to stay as part of the internal comms mix and according to one respondent, “Video will continue to grow as a viable, needed and expected communications and training resource.”