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Larry Mutenda | What makes a good employee onboarding video? A good employee onboarding video tells new hires one thing they need to know in their first week, such as the mission, the values or the safety rules. It uses real people or clear animation, and it ends by telling people where to go next. The examples below run from about one minute to six minutes, with one longer culture film. |
An employee onboarding video is a short film that welcomes new people and explains how the organization works. Companies use them in the first days of a job, before and after the paperwork. A union can use one to welcome new members. A health system can use one to welcome students.
The first weeks matter. Gallup reports that only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job onboarding new employees. A video will not fix a weak program on its own. It does make sure every new hire hears the same message, told the same way, on day one.
This list moves between animation and live action. Three of the examples are animated videos we produced. The other six come from employers that published their videos on their own official channels.
We picked videos that suit a new hire or new member in their first weeks. Some were made for onboarding. Others, like the culture films, are our suggestion for where they could fit. Each one had to be published by the organization itself or by the person who made it. Each one also had to play on this page.
For our own videos, we describe what the script says and why we built it that way. For the others, we stick to what the organization has published about the video. Where no measured result exists, we say so.
A quick side-by-side before the full breakdown.
| # | Video | Company | Onboarding job |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Company orientation | New Gold | Mission and partnerships |
| 2 | Welcome to Atlassian | Atlassian | Values for remote starters |
| 3 | HEE Welcome Animation | Health Education England | Student welcome |
| 4 | Google interns’ first week | Peer stories | |
| 5 | Member orientation | Manitoba Nurses Union | Union structure |
| 6 | What It’s Like To Work At Zappos | Zappos | Culture and core values |
| 7 | Spotify Engineering Culture | Spotify | How teams work |
| 8 | HubSpot Culture | HubSpot | Culture and benefits |
| 9 | Health and safety | New Gold | Safety expectations |
Client: New Gold, a Canadian gold producer.
Project type: 2D animation, 2:01.
Communication challenge: Give employees one clear account of the company mission, its mines and its agreements with the Indigenous nations whose lands it operates on.
Creative approach: The script moves in a straight line. Mission first. Then what the company mines and how. Then the partnerships that give it the licence to operate. It closes on how employees stay informed.
The video names what the agreements cover: environmental stewardship, education and training, employment and business opportunities. A new hire learns why these relationships matter to the business.
The last section speaks to employees directly. It points them to quarterly virtual town halls, crew meetings and site town halls, where they can ask questions and give feedback. That gives the orientation a next step. It is the kind of project we plan through our training video production service.
Welcome to Atlassian is a 3:24 video that Atlassian published on its official channel in October 2020. Atlassian employees speak from their own video calls.
The idea is stated in the video description. Atlassian is not just about the workplace. It is about who the people are and how they work together. While the team is apart, the values stay the same.
It works because it answers the question a remote starter has on day one. Will I still feel part of something? The company answers with its own people on the kind of call the new hire is about to join.
By the numbers: No result has been published that we could verify.
The HEE Welcome Animation is a 2:21 animated video from Health Education England, the body responsible for education and training of the NHS workforce in England. It welcomes students and introduces who HEE is and what it does. HEE merged into NHS England in 2023, and the video now sits on NHS England’s workforce, training and education channel.
The video uses simple 2D characters and shapes. The word “You” appears on screen as the focus of the welcome.
Animation suits an organization that most students will never see as a building. It turns a large public body into a few clear shapes and faces, and keeps the attention on the student.
By the numbers: No result has been published that we could verify.
Google interns’ first week is a 5:50 video from Google in which five recent summer interns talk about what it means to work there. Google published it on its main channel in 2013.
The description sets the expectation plainly. Interns and full-time hires work on meaningful projects and are expected to have an impact from the start.
Peers are the messenger. A new intern hears what the first week feels like from someone who just lived it, not from a manager. That lowers the stakes of the first day.
By the numbers: No result has been published that we could verify.
Client: Manitoba Nurses Union.
Project type: Whiteboard animation, 2:01.
Communication challenge: Show members how their union is organized and how to take part, without a rulebook.
Creative approach: The script opens with a welcome and a scale fact: the union represents more than 13,000 nurses across the province. Then it builds the structure from the member outward.
Your local is your home base, your crew at your worksite. Your region brings crews from the same area together. The board, the annual general meeting and the bargaining committee come next, each in one or two sentences.
The video ends with three actions: join a local meeting, attend an AGM and take part in education events. We cover more member and staff training work in our corporate training video examples.
What It’s Like To Work At Zappos is a 2:39 video from the Zappos Stories channel in which six employees from around the company explain why they look forward to coming to work. It is part of a series on how the company’s 10 Core Values shape daily work.
The employees speak in their own words. Customer Loyalty Lead Geena Apelu says, “It’s a safe place to be who you want to be.” Treasury Analyst Johnnie Brockett explains that hiring the best people is key to keeping the culture going.
It works as onboarding because the values arrive as stories from colleagues. A new hire remembers a person long after they forget a list.
By the numbers: No result has been published that we could verify.
Spotify Engineering Culture Part 1 is a hand-drawn animated video by Henrik Kniberg that Spotify first shared on its engineering blog in 2014. It runs 13:13 and explains how the company organized its engineering teams.
The drawings show autonomous squads, tribes and chapters, and the idea that alignment enables autonomy. Kniberg notes in the description that it is a snapshot of 2014, not a description of how Spotify works today.
It was not made as a formal orientation. It shows how far a drawn explanation can go. A structure that would take pages of text becomes one picture that grows on screen as the narrator talks.
By the numbers: No result has been published that we could verify.
HubSpot Culture is a 3:31 video from HubSpot, published in 2015, in which the co-founders and employees describe the company’s approach to culture. It focuses on transparency and employee autonomy.
The description lists what that means in practice: flexible work hours, unlimited vacation and tuition reimbursement. It also points to the company’s written Culture Code.
The video and the written code do different jobs. The film shows the people. The document holds the detail. A new hire gets both.
By the numbers: No result has been published that we could verify.
Client: New Gold.
Project type: 2D animation, 1:03.
Communication challenge: Explain what “health and safety is our number one priority” means on the job, in about a minute.
Creative approach: The script asks the question every new worker has heard: what does that actually mean? Then it answers with specific behaviour.
Never compromise on safety. If a job cannot be done safely, it cannot be done. Stop work when it is not safe. Respect colleagues who raise a hazard. If one of us is unsafe, we are all unsafe.
A short video like this sits well beside a longer orientation. For more on planning one, see our guide on how to make a training video.
The nine videos above look different. They share five habits.
New Gold has one video for the company story and a separate one for safety. Zappos covers culture. Nobody tries to cover payroll, parking and product in one film.
Interns speak to interns at Google. Employees speak to employees at Zappos and Atlassian. Where no single face fits, as with a union or a health system, animation carries the message.
The Manitoba Nurses Union video builds the union from the local outward. Spotify draws squads and tribes. A structure is easier to learn when you can see it.
Go to a town hall. Join a local meeting. Stop work when it is unsafe. The video should leave the new hire knowing what to do next, not just what to think.
HubSpot pairs its video with a written culture code. New Gold points employees to town halls and crew meetings. A video starts the conversation. People and documents carry it on.
An employee onboarding video is a short video that welcomes new hires and explains the company, its values and how work gets done. The examples on this page run from about one minute to just under six minutes, plus one 13-minute culture film.
Start with one purpose, such as the mission, the values or safety. Add a welcome, the few facts a new hire needs and a clear next step. Keep policies and forms in separate material.
Live action works when real employees can speak for the culture, as in the Zappos and Google examples. Animation works for structure, safety and policy, as in the New Gold and Manitoba Nurses Union videos. Our training video production page covers each approach.
Most of the examples on this page run between one and four minutes. Google’s intern video runs almost six minutes. Spotify’s culture video runs over 13 minutes, which suits a deep dive more than a first-day welcome.
Start with one company orientation and one video for the most important rule, often safety. Add videos for each role or site as the program grows. We have produced video for organizations for more than 15 years.
The strongest onboarding videos on this list keep the job small. Each one welcomes a specific audience, explains one part of the organization and points to a next step.
If you are planning one, start with the single thing a new hire must understand in their first week. Then choose animation or live action based on who should deliver that message.
Larry is the Founder and Producer at Mammothic Films, with more than 15 years of production experience. He leads a team that creates story-driven videos for businesses and brands. A marketer, designer, and animator, Larry has overseen the production of more than 1,500 videos for Fujitsu, Logitech, Warner Brothers, NFL, Blockdaemon, Astronomer, Canonical, and 370+ other companies in Canada, the United States, and around the world.
Larry is a devout Christian who believes in placing God first, and that everything else is a blessing that comes from serving Him. When he’s not working, he’s hanging out with his wife and three kids, playing the piano, or sightseeing.