Employee Generated

Most of the time at The Edge we're striving for brilliance - honing every word, polishing every frame. But occasionally we get to work with films that are precisely the opposite: raw, uncut, in the moment - but every bit as effective.

Employee-generated video has a massive buzz right now, and for us one of the most exciting applications is what we call "the lessons learned piece".  

Sharing lessons learned is an age-old problem for communicators. Some vital new piece of knowledge crops up somewhere in the organisation, and if everyone could get hold of it, then the benefits could be huge. But how? Magazine articles, intranet stories, employee awards, all help.  But employee-generated video can offer a more rounded, ‘stickier’ solution.

Face to face we learn from our peers, on the job. Colleagues tell war stories about successes and failures and we take it on board. Tell those stories to a camera, simply, without edit or ornament, and surround them with the Web 2.0 tools to comment and share, rate and tag, and you have the raw materials to exploit a knowledge asset which is currently only utilised a fraction as much as it could be.

These aren't simple projects to get off the ground. There are a host of details that need to be discussed: cultural, practical, technical, around workflow, risk, integration with learning and knowledge resources. But the potential prize is enormous: bottom-up learning, valuing frontline expertise, the sharing of tips and tricks learnt on the ground, about whatever makes your organisation tick: dealing with customers, or market insights, or how to use particular tools.

If you'd like to know more about this and other ways that we're helping organisations harness employee-generated video and drive real benefit, contact Martin Ross, martin@edgepicture.com.