How to plan a CONTRACTOR INDUCTION VIDEO...version of a video script and say “make this”. This is the fastest route to tedium. Re-member: You’re a content specialist, not a video

CONTRACTOR INDUCTION

VIDEO

F R E E w h i t e p a p e r

How to plana

http://www.rossiterandco.com/

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how to plan a contractor induction video

About the author

Kevin Rossiter has been producing Contractor Induction videos almost continuously since 1989.

He’s worked in the chemical & process industries, construction, petrochem and retail

- and just about anywhere where contractors are used on a regular basis

- in the UK, Middle East, Far East & Africa.

In this time he’s won 11 awards for his work.

His Contractor Induction clients range from major high street retailers like Sainsbury’s, HSBC and Lidl to industrial safety leaders like DuPont and BP, and food producers like KP Snacks and Northern Foods - and many more.

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What does Good Look Like

The purpose of this white paper is to enable you to know what to expect and how to plan ahead for your next Contractor Induction video so it really works.

We already know that the quality of Contractor Induction videos in circulation varies hugely.

Sometimes a poor video is the result of underfunding or poor effort

- but often it’s down to poor planning

- or not knowing the right questions to ask.

I’d like to help enable you to get the best possible result from your Contractor Induction video.

But what exactly is the best possible result?

Contractor Induction Video Introduction

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10 Must-Have Wins for a Contractor Induction video

1. Significantly more of your contractors will comply with your SSOW.

2. Significantly more of your contractors will actively engage with your safety culture & behavioural safety standards

3. You’ll be aware of a reduction in corner-cutting and other incident-generating unsafe behaviours

4. Less contractors will turn up only part-prepared, eg, incomplete RAMS or PPE

5. Contractor-related RIDDORS will go down

6. The actual time taken for induction will dramatically reduce

7. Your company image & brand will look better - not worse.

8. You can better cope with a sudden influx of contractors, eg, at plant shutdown.

9. Contractors will generally seem better behaved and less “cowboyish”

10. Every Contractor will be validated as having received safety induction video training

These 10 Wins will only happen through careful advance planning of your Induction video.

Let’s now look and see what you can do to:

• Plan more effectively and get a more effective final result• Add value to your video production

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Planning your Contractor Induction Video

1. Knowing what content to include in your video2. One site - or many - multi site operations3. Getting your team onboard4. Estimating video runtime5. Establishing a budget6. Who else needs inducting7. Timing your production 8. Your safety brand9. Using some imagination10. Using actors11. Using graphics12. Validation & interactivity13. Types of electronic validation14. A final word

The intention here is not to try and tell you how to buy a video production.It’s more about showing you how to plan so you naturally pick the best supplier for precisely what you need.

14 Point Contractor Induction Video Plan

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Working out your video’s content isn’t as obvious as it sounds.

A video isn’t simply a visual transcript of your Safe Systems of Work manual

- or a cut down version of your Induction powerpoint.

So right at the beginning - now - list through the specific content points you need to cover in your video.

List them as simple bullet points. Once done you’ll have a clear briefing document you can show to potential video suppliers.

Here is a suggested content list. It doesn’t cover everything for all companies, but it’ll hopefully give you a good start.

• Intro - who you are• Site access, parking, gatehouse, IDs,

PPE, permits, risk assessment, method statements (RAMS), formal dialogue. Also site egress if relevant.

• Emergency procedures• Specific site hazards• Site rules• Environment, neighbours, “soft” issues.• Summary

Once you have this list, you can:

> use it as part of your tender document

> invite potential suppliers to come up with creative options to realise your content, especially the key areas where you need to make a big impact, such as a site hazard, or parking arrangements, or a new safety/environmental campaign

Knowing what content to include in your video

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One site - or many - multi site operations

Ask yourself:

> Will one video cover all sites?

> Or will you need slightly different versions of the video per site,

- eg, where the hazards are different on one of the sites?

- eg, where the sites are vastly diffe-rent in layout or process?

> Or can you top & tail each video with a local intro and outro, and keep the same core content?

If you have one site, then the job of video production becomes easier.

But if you have more than one site - or many sites, eg, like a national retailer, con-structor or global manufacturer, then you need to starting thinking closely about the differences between the sites.

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Getting your team onboard

You’ll know who to invite, but I can suggest:

• Engineering / Maintenance Manager• HR Manager• H&S Advisor (probably you who’s reading this)• Corporate Comms person• Operations or Plant Manager• Quality Manager

You’ll need your colleague’s help in the production of your Contractor video.

So start by inviting key players in your organisation to add to your supplier brief, and possibly attend the final supplier selection meeting.

The best way to get everyone involved is to ask them:

• what they want out of the video?• what the video should include to achieve their objectives

For example:

- Corporate comms will have strict rules about the brand

- HR may have established learning routes in the way they train, and you should follow these as appropriate

- Operations will have pet hates about contractors they’d love you to fix

- Engineering & maintenance will be concerned about special permits for dangerous work, like working at heights or demolition and suchlike.

If you involve these people early, they’ll be your friends later.

But if you ignore them, they can also torpedo you later when you miss out a point of concern for them.

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Estimating video runtime

My own experience is that they average 15-17 minutes.

Once you know approximately how long you think your video is going to be, you can provide a more accurate specification to potential suppliers.

For example, you can specify how many days filming you require.

This is important as filming is relatively expensive, and you don’t want too much or too little.

Here’s how:• You can reckon that a

day’s filming will ultimately produce about 5 minutes or so of runtime video.

• So a 15 minute video will need a 3 day shoot.

How long should your Contractor Induction video be.

They can vary from 10 minutes to 20+ minutes.

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So specify a 3 day shoot.

Equally, if you know your video is going to be short & prescriptive - say 10 minutes - then a 2 day shoot need only be specified.

As a point of interest, you can also calculate how many words there’ll be in your video Again here’s how:

• Voiceover speed is 100 words per runtime minute• So a 15 minute video will comprise 1,500 words

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The last section showed you how to estimate how many days filming you’ll need.

And typically your final video will be anything from 10 to 15/17 minutes long.

If you have a multi-site operation, then it’ll be even longer.

To get an order of cost, you could budget somewhere between £500 and £750 GBP per runtime minute of finished video.

Your final per minute runtime cost may be higher or lower than this.

But £500-£750 per minute will give you a starting point for your order of budget.

So a 15 minute video will cost, say, £7,500.

Establishing a budget

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If you’re producing an induction video for contractors, then it’s only a short step to produce 2 more videos

> 1 for Site Visitors

> 1 for New Starters

Site Visitors often include visiting VIPs, clients and similar.

These are the sort of people your organisation will want to impress

- so producing a dedicated Visitor Induction video is seen as a good thing in their eyes.

A short 2-3 minute induction for Visitors won’t add that much to your bill, and cost significantly less than if you produced it separately later.

So there’s an economy of scale to be had here.

New Starters are often shown the Contractor video, as many of the points covered, the hazards etc, are the same for both

- although workwear will differ.

For not a lot less, a separate New Starter version of the Contractor Induction can be produced

- again with significant economies of scale, compared with producing each one separately.

Who else needs inducting

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Timing your production

For example, if there’s some site refurbishment underway.

It might be better to produce once it’s completed, and the site looks better on camera.

Or you may prefer to film during Annual Shutdown - or not.

Or you may be launching a new sa-fety brand, or other safety initiative you’d like to time with your release of the Contractor video.

Typically it takes around 3-4 mon-ths to produce a contractor induc-tion video

- although it can be done in 6 we-eks r even less.

However be prepared to work quite hard if you need your video produced quickly.

You can produce a contractor video at any time.

But some times are better than others.

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6 weeks is quite a challenging production window.

12+ weeks is often better, and carries less chance of an error-in--haste.

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You may well have a separate safety brand - different yet aligned with your main company brand.

Or in the same way, you may have a behavioural safety slogan you’re pushing hard.

What you need to consider is how you’d like these brands & messages incorporated into your video.

You may want graphics and animation to bring them to life

- or you may prefer to have some interview soundbites with contractors discussing the usefulness & effectiveness of your safety slogan

- adding human faces to the written slogan.

Your safety brand

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Using some imagination

So how do you stop this happening to you?

There are very few surefire formulas to keep an audience awake during a “boring safety video”. But a little imagination can always go a long way.

Contractor Induction videos are very prescriptive by their very nature.

And this makes them inherently boring.

Which means ½ your audience could be asleep within 5 minutes of watching.

Here’s how to approach it:

• Use actors if you can

• Use animation & graphics

• Capture wild sound while filming. Even quiet “factory hum” sounds better than just voiceover rattling on in a world of silence.

• Use music a little - here & there - but not constant throughout

• Make sure your brand, your safety themes look impactful - as these are important.

• Plan your filming so no scene ever lasts longer than 7 seconds without cutting to at least one more view or angle (called cutaways in the trade) - use lots of cutaways.

• Make sure you use a proper professional scriptwriter. Don’t simply hand over your version of a video script and say “make this”. This is the fastest route to tedium. Re-member: You’re a content specialist, not a video production specialist. Use a profes-sional writer.

• Include 1 or 2 one-liner talking heads, eg, your CEO making a public commitment to safety. These break up the tedium of endless voiceover. But keep these one-liners to a maximum of 24 words, which is what the BBC do in their news reporting.

The above points are all useful discussion points when interviewing prospective video producers, helping you keep the initiative - and not simply “being told”.

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Using actors

With so many good reasons not to use actors, why should you bother?

Start by considering that every scene in your forthcoming video will need people in it

- from the Fork Lift Truck Driver who observes the site speed limit

- to the Engineer who’s tempted to “workround” your lock-off procedures

- to the 2 fitters who sweep up after them.

A lot of people are going to be required.

And they all have to be scheduled to be in the right place at the right time in the right clothes during your video shoot.

Here are 9 Big Reasons to use Actors

1 - Using a couple of local contractors instead of actors means paying contractors to play in your video. So it’s never free to use contractors. Equally, your own staff will unlikely have the time to spare for a 3 day shoot.

2 - Amateur actors (own staff) look very wooden on camera. They’re untrained, so what do you expect. And your audience will repeatedly yawn.

Many companies initially baulk at the idea of using actors in their Contractor Induction video.

There are many reasons for this, inc

• “Actors aren’t real people”• “Using actors sounds too fake”• “Actors are expensive”• “Actors sound too fancy for us”• “Our own people can act well enough”• “Everybody can tell they’re actors,

so what’s the point”Chap

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3 - Actors can register thought & intelligence on their faces, eg, when considering whether to interfere with a locked-off zone - or - when spotting something unsafe - or - when engaging with anyone else in the video (like reporting an unsafe condition to a line manager). Amateurs cannot do this.

4 - Actors are quick to work with. Own staff are very slow, eg, Most scenes are filmed 2-3 times at least, from different angles. The “own staff” never remember what they did from one take to another. They get it wrong, and this makes for more repeat shots. Everything takes longer, you you get less filming done.

5- Own staff are often secretly anxious about appearing in a video - even if they’re keen. This anxiety shows in their eyes - and audiences don’t like it. Who does?!

6 - Actors can make short speeches - and do this well, eg, reinforce the need to report all incidents and near-misses - or - respect the local neighbours - or - other critical points needing emphasis. This is not only useful, it also adds much needed imagination & variety to the video.

7 - Actors will give you a pair of likeable characters who can feature throughout the video - so your audience will relate better to what they’re seeing.

8 - Own staff can get pulled off the job in the middle of a shoot to deal with an emergency, eg, an unexpected delivery, a line failure, etc. Then suddenly your shooting schedule is in jeopardy, and in danger of over running.

9 Actors will be free of the facial faults that audiences might dislike or decry, eg, bad teeth, big spots or blemishes, gross fatness, funny eyes, and so on

That’s it with actors.

They add interest, show intelligence, work quicker, keep the audience watching, and aren’t much dearer than hiring contractors in to play the parts.

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Animated graphics serve a number of functions in a Contractor Induction video.

These functions include:

• titling your video so it starts off by looking impressive and professionally produced

• adding subtitles to speakers

• captioning key learning points

• showing performance stats, eg, industry average accident rates

• illustrating a safety concept, eg, a pyramid that shows how for every 10,000 unsafe behaviours there are 1,000 incident or near-misses, 100 minor accidents, 10 major accidents, and one fatality (author’s note: figures for illustration purposes only)

• boosting the prominence of your safety brand with animated graphics

I can add one overall point to the above functions of graphics.

It’s this:

“Graphics generate an overall thematic unity to the production

- visually binding together a series of disparate video clips into a visually coherent whole.”

Using graphics

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Validation & interactivity

- it’s not enough to simply show your video to your Contractor audience.

You need to validate the training received.

If your firm is small, and contractors are mostly onsite during shutdown, then a Paper Test and a short Q&A dialogue may well be sufficient.

However if you have a multi-site operation

- like a 4 plant manufacturer

- or a retail network

- or building sites across the country

then a distance learning approach with some form of electronic validation become more important.

Whether you need a simple paper test

- or a host of interactive online quizzes

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Types of electronic validationBroadly, there are 3 main types of electronic validation you’ll need to consider for distance learning.

These are

1 - Interactive DVD

2 - interactive multimedia

3 - Online validation

Using interactive DVD

This works well where there isn’t any available bandwidth for online tests, such as a construction site

- or where there isn’t spare laptop - like many retail stores.

The interactive DVD has Q&A at the end of every section, which the audience can answer.

Controlled with a TV remote button box, multiple choice questions can be asked.

If they pass they move onto the next section.

If they fail, they have to revisit the section they failed.

There are numerous combinations of waying of setting up interactivity

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Types of electronic validationOnline validation

Your whole Contractor Induction process can be online, including the video.

It can validate with multiple tests and quizzes

- using drag and drop

- or clicking inside a picture to, say, identify a series of hazards

- or take a “game style” approach.

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The results can also be automatically fed into your Learning Management System (LMS) if you have one, using SCORM and similar.

And the online package can be ported to an offline USB stick, for when the bandwidth isn’t available to go online.

Online validation is a big field - this is just a taster.

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The thanks you receive for your Contractor Induction video production will partly depend on how good your colleagues & directors think the video is.

But perhaps more relevant is the criticism you might receive if all doesn’t go as well as expected.

Unlike many other types of project you undertake, a video has absolutely no hiding place.

That’s because everything in your video will be 100% visible for all to see - flaws and all

- and possibly every day for the next 10 years!

This suggests that penny pinching on the budget will win you little thanks

- compared with the “unhelpful remarks” you’ll hear from snipers who’ll only be too ready to criticise your efforts.

I mention this as it pays to make a video well

- and not to cut corners that will sooner or later leave you exposed to perhaps unfair criticism.

A wise person once said:

“I don’t mind paying to get a thing right

But I can’t afford to get it wrong”

So decide for yourself where your real value lies.

A final word

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Contact

If we can be of any assistance with your Training requirement don’t hesitate to get in touch

WEBSITEhttp://www.rossiterandco.com

PHONEUK 0845 366 4131International: 0044 1695 726887

Thank you for reading our White paper

http://www.rossiterandco.com/customer-contact-form



Documents

How to plan a CONTRACTOR INDUCTION VIDEO...version of a video script and say “make this”. This is the fastest route to tedium. Re-member: You’re a content specialist, not a video