Online Video Expands Role In Training, Collaboration

Computerworld - While some companies are struggling to keep employees from watching online YouTube videos in the office, others are turning to video technology to improve internal training and collaboration, and to expand external marketing programs.

One approach is for businesses to post internally created videos on YouTube and other social networking sites to market themselves and their wares.

But some companies, like Philadelphia-based Rohm and Haas Co., are making a bigger investment. The manufacturer of specialty chemicals, construction materials and other products later this month will launch what it calls a corporate YouTube site for its 15,000 employees around the world.

Rohm and Haas officials said the companys internal site will be used to provide workers with access to training videos and information about a wide variety of topics supplied by their peers.

Charles Wallace, chief technical architect and IT director for global architecture and infrastructure at Rohm and Haas, said that a searchable library of online videos supports the natural tendency of workers to bypass the knowledge base and go to their next-door neighbor [at work] or to the employees who know to get answers to their questions.

Wallace said company officials expect that the system will help it achieve an important goal  reducing travel  by providing employees with access to their co-workers via the video site, which will be called PrimeTime.

The companys internal affinity groups  workers with common interests in performance management, career development and mentoring  were among the creators of the first videos for the library, Wallace said. Rohm and Haas expects 50 to 75 PrimeTime videos to be available to employees when the program debuts.

The videos are created and will be run using the Studio hosted webcasting service from Interactive Video Technologies Inc., Wallace said.

Over the long term, Rohm and Haas plans to extend access to Studio so that ever-increasing numbers of employees in all departments can produce videos for the PrimeTime library, Wallace said.

The Studio tools combine and synchronize audio and video, PowerPoint presentations and screen captures with one-click publishing on the desktop, according to Interactive Video officials. The system can also track the use of those videos, the company said.

Greg Pulier, founder and chief technology officer of Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Interactive Video, described the efforts of Rohm and Haas and other companies to build internal sites as moves that democratize webcasting.

Such sites, he said, allow many employees to create, post and view videos that provide important information to other workers on their corporate desktop systems.