A short-form video strategy for earning employee attention

Before Merck’s communications team released a single lesson in its new employee training series, it posted a run of TikTok-style sketches starring a senior communications leader. And the employee audience responded to them — the sketches pulled in nearly 1,000 subscribers to the series.

At Ragan’s Employee Experience Conference in Nashville last month, Craig Thomason, director of global employee and executive communications at Merck, said that employee-facing executive videos work best when leaders get on board at the outset.

“When you arrive early to change, you have time to think,” Thomason said. “You have time to prepare. You have time to experiment. You have time to adjust, and you can help people to understand what is happening before the uncertainty fills the silence.”

Thomason said the harder part is getting employees to spend two minutes watching.

“When we begin with content, we often create messages to answer questions no one is asking,” he said. “So when we begin with the audience, we can create something that they can use.”