How To Write an Onboarding Video Script

acx Want to make your video script informative and enjoyable to watch?

You need a new employee program framework for your company that:

✅ Delivers the correct need-to-know information.

✅ Warmly welcomes your new employee with your company’s culture and values.

✅ Gets new hires still nervous after the recruitment process excited and motivated about their new role!

This post breaks that framework down into three simple steps. So you can write scripts that keep employee engagement at an all-time high.

What is the purpose of an onboarding program? 

Orientation content improves your employee's productivity in their new position.

You can talk to your new hires about your company all day long. But to ensure they’ll grasp and use this information, you must make your presentation memorable. 

And that’s the purpose of an orientation video — to keep a new employee engaged and help them process and facilitate information retention.

If you get these videos right, your new hires will adapt more quickly, get excited about working with you, and be motivated to do their best.

Now, let’s introduce you to the framework that’ll help you write spot-on orientation video scripts that give employees a great first week👇

Write an orientation script in 3 easy steps

Getting a new employee up to speed is an extensive process for any business that will require a sequence of videos.

Your company may suit a simple format consisting of 4 videos for optimized employee engagement in their first week:

1. Welcome video: A warm, personalized welcome to your new hire showcasing the company’s highlights and the schedule of their onboarding process.
2. Orientation video: Delve deeper into the company’s history and culture, informing the new employee on the internal policies and procedures, and core values.
3. Getting started: Introduce the new hire to how their day-to-day routine should look like, what tools they’ll use, what workflows they’ll follow, and the whole team around them.
4. Skills training: Create microlearning experiences for new apps, or missing skills that were identified during the recruitment process.

Or, if a new position requires a greater amount of training, your company might prefer a more granular process, with even more videos spread out in time. The choice is up to you.

Here’s how you can approach script creation methodically 👇

Step #1: Use the STORY framework to lay the foundation

The STORY framework is a concept developed in-house by Synthesia Learning & Development experts, originally created as a guide for scriptwriting explainer videos.

STORY is an acronym for script-writing that stands for:

✅ Setting the emotional tone: Consider the core emotion you want your audience to feel when they hear the script.

✅ Targeting the audience: You think about the profile of the employee who needs to hear this information. Who is affected most by this emotion?

✅ Outlining the obstacle: You identify the issue you’re trying to overcome by delivering this information to the new hire.

✅ Revealing the resolution: Write all the information an employee need to receive so they can overcome the obstacle you identified.

✅ Yes! It works: You confirm why delivering this exact information will help you overcome the obstacle of the target audience.

Step #2: Write a five-sentence outline

Next, you write one sentence for each of the five elements of your STORY framework, aiming for specificity and clarity.

For setting the emotional tone

What emotional tone do you want to use, and how will you set the stage to support that tone?

For targetting the audience:

What can you tell your new employees that they’ll instantly identify with and that’ll lock their attention and keep them engaged?

To outline the obstacle: 

What exactly do you need to tell them at this stage of the recruitment process?

To reveal the resolution:

How will you help them work towards your goals by sharing this information?

For Yes! It works:

What do you expect from your new hires as they finish watching this video? What’s the CT? The next step to take?

Step #3: Expand on all the points of your script 

Finally, you begin to expand on the main points of the script.

You work with the STORY framework and the 5 sentences you crafted, trying to write bullet points of the information that will go in the video.

You’ll feel more comfortable expanding on all these points if you also have a video template in mind.

For reference, you can use this employee onboarding video template we’ve pulled out from the 55+ templates in the Synthesia library 👇

Why recorded vs. in-person orientation? 

In-person orientation can be a more immersive experience, but it also challenges managers and new colleagues in many ways:

• It's inflexible and time-consuming: You set the orientation schedule well in advance of the first day of your new employee. Everyone involved must be in the same place at the same time. Should other obligations or commitments occur suddenly, you have your hands tied.
• Can cause information overload: You have to convey a large amount of information in a short timeframe. There’s pressure to stick to a schedule. And the manager’s constant presence can be intimidating, making a new employee perform suboptimal.
• Can inhibit employee engagement: There’s little room to pause for extra questions. Engagement is possible but not necessarily facilitated. New hires might feel disconnected, unable to interact with colleagues as much as they’d want or expect.
• Leaves room for inconsistencies: Managers repeat the same information. But their mental focus can shift depending on various professional and personal factors. Thus, information consistency and accuracy can change, despite their best intentions.
• Brings up safety issues: The pandemic outbreak forces additional cautionary measures. Managers must supervise the implementation of safety standards, provide protective equipment, and juggle the limits of in-person interactions.

All these implications considered, virtual training mitigates most in-person challenges.

Employee onboarding videos provides new employees with consistent, accurate information about your company that they can absorb at their pace and retain easier. All while saving the managers’ time and company budget.

How to make the most of an excellent new hire video script

A lackluster delivery could make even the best script in the world miss the mark among your colleagues.

With your orientation script ready, it’s time to create the video using solid visuals and a clear voice, free of background noise.

Take your script to the next level by filming the content or using a video-making tool like Synthesia.

Voice options include hiring a professional actor to read the script, trying to do it yourself with your best acting voice, or experimenting with AI text-to-speech technology. 

AI tools are gaining popularity for their speed, ease of use, and flexibility. Plus, AI voice quality can surprisingly compete against one professional actor at a hard-to-beat price.

Ready to learn how to make orientation training that skyrockets employee engagement?

If you’re on a budget and anticipate the need for customizing orientation videos multiple times in the future, here’s some food for thought.

You know how to get through the recruitment process.

You know how to write the script.

And you saw how working with a video template can jumpstart your video creation.

Follow the steps outlined in the guide below and turn your welcome script into a fully-fledged video within minutes.

👀Try this free demo to generate your first short AI video for your most recent employee in the next 5 minutes.