Understanding Coronavirus and how to use video to explain its effects

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) is significantly changing how businesses are operating worldwide. We’ve seen giant corporations - like KPMG London, or Amazon’s Seattle office - completely transform into empty concrete shells with the hasty shift from office to home-based working. And when businesses make these decisions, we often wonder how they can help their employees understand.What we do know is, people are resorting to video to explain what the coronavirus is, what impacts it is having on businesses and of course, countries and life. In this blog post, we are showing how companies are using video to describe the impacts of the coronavirus, and the other ways video can be used to educate your colleagues about the interesting times ahead…

On January 31, the World Health Organization published their video ‘Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)’ using VideoScribe which defines the Coronavirus family, the illnesses that they cause - ranging from the common cold to severe diseases - and now, the COVID-19. Since being published at the end of January, this video has racked up over 3.2million YouTube views and encouraged thousands to comment and share their thoughts on YouTube alone. 

A great challenge that medical and scientific specialists face is explaining the risk and complexities of these diseases in common language for the majority population to truly comprehend. What the World Health Organization did brilliantly in this example, is use the simple illustrations that are included in every VideoScribe subscription and a voice-over to support the illustrations and text on screen. 

So, you have an explainer video on what the virus is (or at least, you can share the World Health Organization’s version so your colleagues are fully aware of COVID-19’s origin and symptoms). Now you need to create a video to show what’s going to happen with the new working from home arrangements. 

The next example showcases tips on how to make the best out of the new working situation in a simple whiteboard animation style. Titled ‘Work from home in times of coronavirus’, the creators, simpleshow, use video to promote various recommendations and techniques to make working from home as effective as possible for the employee and of course, the business.

Now, just to clarify, this example was not created using VideoScribe. However, that does not mean it’s not possible. We created our own video guide to working from home during the coronavirus crisis. Check it out:

If you’re looking for more tips and recommendations on how to stay productive when working from home, read our blog on the ‘9 ways to use video to stay productive while remote working’. 

Video has been proven to increase knowledge retention. In fact, Forrester Research states that employees are 75 percent more likely to watch a video than to read documents, emails or web articles*. Plus, during times where having face-to-face interactions are becoming sparse, we need to get key messages across quickly, and make sure they stick. 

To create your own coronavirus explainer video, or a video guide on working from home, start your free 7 day trial of VideoScribe by clicking here.