How to Create Training Videos With No Equipment

You could spend hours teaching the same processes, steps, or tools over and over again. Or you could spend 30 minutes creating a customized training video that does the job for you. 

But when you have no equipment (and no big budget)...

… all that saved time sounds like a pipedream. 

At least it was before you landed on this post!

Thanks to AI and text-to-video tools like Synthesia, the process isn’t as hard or expensive as you might think. If you’re an expert in what you want to teach (which methinks you are!) it’s downright easy.

This post guides you through the step-by-step process of creating an effective training video with no equipment. 

First, what is a training video in a corporate context?

Corporate training videos are one of the most effective methods to simplify concepts, instructions, and information for employees. With the primary goal of delivering knowledge practically and engagingly, training videos will drive better results for both your employees and customers. 

You can rely on a training video to: 

• Better onboard your employees
• Help employees learn unfamiliar tasks, tools, or roles
• Create compliance training that changes day-to-day behavior

Why use videos instead of more traditional classroom training?

Various studies and research papers have indicated a significant positive correlation between training videos and profit. Beyond sheer convenience, here’s why companies opt for video training over other options: 

• Companies that offer comprehensive training programs note a 218% higher income per employee compared to companies that don’t.
• Employees are 75% more likely to watch a video than to read documents, emails, or web articles.
• Viewers retain 95% of a video’s message compared to only 10% of text-based messaging.  
• Data shows that organizations with a strong onboarding process improve retention rates by 82% AND save 50% more time in the process.
  

How to create a professional training video for your employees with no equipment🎥

“No equipment” sounds like a big scary challenge if you need to create training videos. But the reality is fancy camera equipment, studio lights, video editing software, and movie-grade microphones aren’t meant for training videos; they’re meant for film studios! 

A lack of equipment frees you up to focus your time on the actual learning materials — not learning how to produce a film. 

Here’s how you can create a training video in six steps. 

Step #1: Pick a style and type of training video

Humans love learning from other humans. When creating training videos, presenter-style (also know as talking head) videos shine out as one of the best types to pick because they hold viewers' attention and feel personable. 

For a presenter-style training video, the presenter hosting or starring in the video can be the instructor, scenario actor, or subject-matter expert (SME). 

These presenter-style videos are commonly called “talking head” or tutorial videos and are frequently paired with screen recordings. For demos and video tutorials that cover product usage, screen recordings are the perfect way to show certain information instead of just telling it.

Take note of these time-intensive training video types

Since this article is about the easiest, fastest way for you to create an employee training video, we won’t be focusing on these two styles of training videos. However, that’s not to say they aren’t helpful in the right context! 

Animated training videos

Animation is a great way to illustrate a complicated concept such as blockchain, the intricacies of cyber security, or industrial operations. Everything from whiteboard animation to character animation can help you better communicate your lessons. Animated videos are best done by an external team who are experienced in creating visuals. 

Interactive employee training videos

Interactive training videos are upgraded by elements that are, as the name suggests, interactive. It's a video format where learners can complete quizzes, participate in gamified learning, follow branching story scenarios, and click certain hot spots. Interactive videos are an excellent way to engage learners but are time-consuming to create. To learn more, check out this video tutorial. 

Step #2: Set goals and objectives for your training program

All instructional videos start with the same two goals: 

1. Easily comprehend and learn the material
2. Internalize and recall the content when needed

To achieve this, it’s important to clearly understand to whom you want to convey your message, what you want to talk about, and why the audience needs to learn it. 

Who is the video for? 

Who are you talking to in this video, and what information is relevant, useful, and engaging to them specifically?

👉 Identify your audience by researching past performance indicators, interviewing your staff, consulting with your stakeholders, or talking to your employees directly. 

What is the purpose of the video? 

What is the exact information you want your employees to walk away knowing? 

👉 Identify the knowledge gaps you want to resolve and the concepts you wish to build upon.

Why does your audience need this information? 

How will this information help change your employee's life for the better?

👉 Identify the positives of learning this information in terms of career, work-life balance, growth, and any other factor you deem relevant. 

Step #3: Create your training video script and storyboard (optional)

A good script is essential to keeping your audience’s attention. And lucky for you, with steps one and two in the bag, preparing a script is 10x easier. 

Following a proven framework is a surefire way to guarantee your script's effectiveness. Here’s a proven 6-step formula: 

1. Introduce with phrases like, "In this video, you'll learn how to X..."
2. Explain why it’s important to learn with a phrase like "Knowing how to do X will allow you to..."
3. Demonstrate how to perform the task or action.
4. Show the finished result of completing the task correctly.
5. Quickly recap what’s been learned.
6. Finish with a call to action that guides employees on the next step.

Step #4: Choose a free video training template

Thanks to video templates, you can still create great training videos even if you don’t have any prior design experience or professional video editing software.

Choose from over 55+ of Synthesia’s training video templates to fast-track the entire process of making a high-quality training video. 

You can fully customize your video template, from animations and transitions to colors, fonts, images, and videos. Add a screen recording, custom AI presenters, and more. And because your customizations can be saved, it’s simple to duplicate your video and scale up your production.

Step #5: Generate your human-like AI avatar and voice over

Synthesia’s technology eliminates the need for equipment - no video camera, no learning lines, no audio editing, no voice actors, no microphones, no separate screen capture software, and most importantly - no need to listen and relisten your draft to check how your voice sounds!

First, copy the sections of your video scripts and paste them into Synthesia STUDIO slide by slide. Next, click ‘Generate’.

Using text-to-video technology, Synthesia will generate a human-sounding narration of your text, complete with an AI avatar of your choice. Easy peasy 🥳.

See how it works here:

Step #6: Review the training videos with corporate stakeholders and gather feedback

If you have any reviews or adjustments, now is the time to do them. Other than that, your first online training video — entirely made without equipment — is complete! 

From here, uploading your training video, tracking engagement, and moving on to other tasks is a fully realized reality.

And if you ever want to make changes to the content, or even the language of your video, it’s simple to go in, change your script, and generate the video again.

See just how effective training videos can be

Check out how these three companies create video tutorials using AI to empower their workforce and scale operations. 

• Teleperformance uses video to train a global workforce & saves up to $5,000 per video in costs.
• BSH uses Synthesia to develop training that gets 30% more engagement and is 70% more cost-efficient.

If you want to achieve similar results for your company, but don't know where to start - Why not begin by creating a training video for free to test out Synthesia?

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