5 Benefits of Captioning Corporate Talent Development Videos

When it comes to training and talent development videos, closed captioning isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s essential for delivering the full value of your content, and there are plenty of additional benefits as well!

Here are five of the top benefits you’ll discover by adding captions to your company training and talent development videos:

1. Legal Compliance

If legal compliance is driving you to think about captioning, you’re not alone. 25% of respondents in 3Play Media’s 2020 State of Captioning, reported that legal compliance was the top captioning driver for their organization.

Federal disability law requires that employee training processes be accessible to people with disabilities. That means closed captions are necessary to make training videos accessible to deaf or hard of hearing employees. A number of organizations have discovered this the hard way – through lawsuits. For example, FedEx Ground was sued for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act for its failure to caption employee training videos.

Closed captioning internal training videos and talent development videos sends the message that your brand is aware and inclusive of people with disabilities – and it’s one way to protect your company from an accessibility lawsuit.

2. Improved Employee Focus

Studies on Facebook video and YouTube video show that closed captions increase watch time, which means they’re effective at keeping viewers focused. This doesn’t only apply to social media videos! Captions help viewers focus better on the content of your training videos, too.

Long training videos or talking-head style videos often lack compelling visuals, which makes your viewers vulnerable to distraction. If they can read along with captions as the video plays, they’re more likely to stay engaged.

Of course, if you receive a request for closed captions to accommodate an individual with a disability, your company is obligated by the ADA to provide captions. However, it’s best to be proactive and provide an environment and content where accessibility is matter-of-course.

According to the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI), a private think tank, 30% of working professionals in the United States have a disability, much lower than the approximately 3.2% who self-identify as having a disability. Additionally, with 60% of those who have hearing loss are either in the workforce or in an educational setting, it’s likely that someone in your own audience could really benefit from more accessible video content.

So, just because you haven’t received a request, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t provide captions. Start captioning your videos, and improve focus for everyone.

3. Increased Retention

One way to increase the retention of information is to use a combination of visual and audio content. This helps individuals to fully process and understand information, rather than just memorizing it. When you truly understand something, you will be able to retain it much better than simply memorizing it.

According to neurologist and educator, Judy Willis, “The more regions of the brain that store data about a subject, the more interconnection there is.”

Hopefully, if you are going to create training videos, you are providing information that is helpful and important for individuals to actually learn and remember. Closed captions can provide the visual reinforcement your videos need to deliver lessons that stick.

4. Viewing Flexibility

Training can be very time consuming, especially if it involves watching hours of tutorials and videos. If your training videos have captions, then employees can watch them in sound-sensitive environments even without headphones. Adding captions allows you to consume videos on a noisy train during the commute to the office when there are others around you that you don’t wish to disturb, or even when you’re multi-tasking like working out.

The more training they can do on-the-go, the sooner they can complete their training and learn something new!

No captions on those training videos? Then you’re limiting how, when, and where employees can learn, which can be frustrating in today’s on-the-go society.

5. Improved Understanding

If you hire employees who are not native English speakers, closed captions are a great way to ensure clear communication in your training videos. They’re even helpful for native English speakers who are unaccustomed to decyphering certain accents or dialects, or if new vocabulary is used.

Captions can also easily be translated into multilingual subtitles. This is especially important for global organizations that want to ensure consistent communication across countries and languages.

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Register today for the FREE webinar, Quick Start to Captioning to learn the basics of how to add closed captions to your videos to make them fully accessible, searchable, and SEO-friendly!