How Video Training Cuts the Carbon Footprint at Work

What if your company’s training program could help employees learn while also producing less waste? Traditional employee training often has a much larger negative impact on the environment than you might think.

For example, employees may have to travel via car or airplane to receive training, trainers must commute from one office to another, and businesses print hundreds of pages of materials. In addition, physical locations of training sessions require energy to run them.

The good news is that the introduction of video training simplifies everything. By providing webinars, companies eliminate unnecessary trips, save on printed materials, and allow everyone to learn in the comfort of their own office or home.

Determine Where Training Generates Carbon Emissions

Before making any kind of change, figure out how your existing training program operates.

•  How many workers are required to fly in for training?
• How far do they need to travel?
•  Are people flying between offices, or spending hours on the road?

Transportation isn’t the only thing that matters. Other aspects to consider are printed materials, certification, meals served, and the location of training.

You don’t need precise carbon emission calculations. Rough estimations can help to define emission sources.

Use Video Instead of Unnecessary Travel

Imagine that your company has employees who work in different parts of the country. Every couple of months, they come to a specific area to participate in training. While training is necessary, do all employees actually have to travel for it?

Probably not. There are training courses that can be learned through videos. Employees can watch videos in their office or at home, thus minimizing the time and money spent on travelling.

The video courses can cover everything from learning & development videos to software classes and workplace procedures. This, however, does not mean that face-to-face training should be done away with. There are still many activities that are only possible in person.

Keep the Lessons Short and Focused

Video training isn’t automatically sustainable. A three-hour video can still consume significant digital resources, especially if much of the content isn’t necessary. That’s where microlearning comes in.

Instead of putting everything into one long course, break training into short lessons. One video can cover a single process, skill, or concept. Employees can watch a five or ten-minute lesson when they need it. They don’t have to sit through an entire course just to find one piece of information.

Shorter lessons can also make training easier to update and reuse. Employees are generally more likely to finish a focused lesson than a marathon video.

Reduce Paper With Digital Content

Think about what happens when a training manual becomes outdated, there is a policy alteration, or an update in the software system. In such cases, printed manuals become irrelevant.

Digital learning minimizes those problems. Instead of publishing a new manual, the firm simply updates the existing digital material. The employees can get the most recent version almost instantly without having to wait for the new manuals. This method is especially useful for corporations that need to revise their training materials frequently.

 Leveraging AI to simplify updates

Using AI-based microlearning videos can be an option for companies that want to create flexible training. Consider a situation when a company needs to modify a five-minute lesson because of recent internal procedures.

With the help of AI-assisted video production, the relevant section may be updated without revising the whole training course. Moreover, businesses can create short lessons for different teams or roles with the help of artificial intelligence.

Making Training More Sustainable

Reducing the carbon footprint of employee training does not always mean making it less effective. In fact, opting to use online training allows employees to access the necessary information, replay the course content, and learn at their own pace.

The first step is to analyze your current program and then tweak it for sustainability. Video training won’t eliminate the environmental impact of workplace learning, but it can make a big difference.