How to make employee onboarding videos, one task at a time

Onboarding video script: one task in 4 minutes

Record in a practice account or a sandbox, with sample data a new hire will also see. Speak more slowly than feels natural, and follow this order.

1. 0:00–0:15 · Who and what. “This is for new support specialists. By the end you will have claimed and answered a practice ticket.”
2. 0:15–0:40 · What you need. “You need a helpdesk login and the Agent role. If the Queue tab is missing, message the IT channel.”
3. 0:40–1:00 · Where to start. Show the exact starting screen and how to get there from the home page.
4. 1:00–3:15 · The task. Name each control, click it, then pause on the result for two seconds. One action per sentence.
5. 3:15–3:40 · What done looks like. Show the finished state: the ticket marked Solved, the confirmation, the entry in the list.
6. 3:40–4:00 · If it goes wrong. Name the one common failure and who to ask: “If Save is greyed out, your role has not synced yet. Ask your team lead.”

Example: a first-week video list for a support hire

Here is what the set looks like for a new support specialist at a small software company. Seven videos, about 26 minutes in total, each tied to something the hire does that day.

The “Done when” column is the important one. It gives the new hire and the manager the same test for whether the video worked.

Checklist to put under every onboarding video

Paste this block into the wiki page or LMS lesson that holds the video. It covers what a video cannot: searching, copying, and knowing whether the content is still true.

• For: role and team.
• You need: accounts, permission level, sample data. Who grants each.
• Steps: the same steps as the video, numbered, with menu names spelled exactly.
• Done when: one observable result.
• If stuck: one named person or channel.
• Owner: who keeps this video current.
• Recorded on: date, and the tool version if it has one.
• Next review: a date no more than three months out.

Keeping onboarding videos current when the tool changes

Onboarding videos go stale one label at a time. The helpdesk renames “Assign to me” to “Claim,” and at 2:10 of a four-minute video the narration and the screen no longer match the product. With a flat video file, you record all four minutes again. With a Qreata project, you pick Replace Take (the Rerecord tool in the editor), Shift-drag across 2:05–2:20, re-record those 15 seconds in the updated interface, and export. The range has to sit inside one segment and can’t cross a cut, and the retake has to fill it: a shorter one is rejected, a longer one is trimmed.

This is why the project file is worth keeping next to the exported MP4. Store it where the video’s owner can find it, named after the task.

Internal tools are the other reason to record locally. Onboarding videos show admin panels, customer records, and salary or HR systems. Qreata records, edits, and transcribes on the Mac, with no account and no upload unless you press an upload button. A sandbox account is the first choice for anything a new hire should not see. Where you have to show the real system, Blur · select elements blurs a salary column or a customer list while you record and follows it as you scroll, and the Blur tool in the editor covers a fixed rectangle afterwards. The local transcript also lets you cut by word and remove silences and filler words, and a segment can play at up to 4×, so the 40 seconds you spend waiting for a sync become 10. That is how a rambling six-minute take becomes a four-minute one.

New hires often watch in an open office with the sound off. Captions in video burns word-highlighted captions into the MP4, so they show in any wiki or LMS player. You can also copy the transcript text as a first draft of the written steps under the video.

Three limits to plan around. Qreata does not export SRT or VTT caption files and the caption style is fixed, so if your company requires a caption file, create it in the LMS or video host. It has no quizzes, SCORM packages, or completion tracking, so upload the MP4 to the system that does. And it runs only on Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 14 or later. If several team leads will record, the Team license is $149 once for up to 50 Macs. A fair ten-minute test in the 7-day trial: record one task with the script above, then replace a 15-second section as if a button had been renamed.

Mistakes that make new hires skip onboarding videos

If people ask a colleague instead of opening the video, one of these is usually why.

• One video for every role. A support hire sits through the sales CRM to reach their part.
• Recording at expert speed. You know where the button is; they are seeing the screen for the first time.
• Recording in an admin account, so the new hire’s screen has fewer menus than yours.
• No “you need” step. The hire is blocked at 0:20 by a missing permission and assumes they did something wrong.
• No date and no owner, so nobody knows whether the video is still true.
• A title like “Helpdesk overview.” Name it after the task: “Claim and answer a ticket.”
• Videos scattered across chat messages instead of sitting next to the written procedure.