How to Create Employee Onboarding Videos with Screen Recording

Onboarding new employees is one of the most important—and time-consuming—tasks any team faces. Screen recording transforms this process by letting you create reusable training videos once and share them with every new hire. Instead of repeating the same walkthroughs in live calls, your team can focus on answering questions and building relationships.

Why Screen Recording Is Ideal for Onboarding

Traditional onboarding often relies on:

• Shadowing sessions that require senior staff availability
• Written documentation that can feel dry and hard to follow
• Live calls that are impossible to rewatch

Screen recording solves all three problems. You capture the exact steps on screen, add narration with your microphone, and publish a video that new hires can pause, rewind, and replay as many times as they need.

Benefits of video onboarding:

• Consistency: Every employee sees the same information delivered the same way
• Time savings: Record once, share with unlimited new hires
• Accessibility: New employees can learn at their own pace
• Easy updates: Re-record only the sections that change

Planning Your Onboarding Video Series

The best onboarding programs are structured as a series of short, focused videos rather than one long recording.

Recommended Video Categories

1. Company overview – Culture, values, and team structure (3–5 minutes)
2. Tool setup guides – How to configure each software tool the role requires (2–4 minutes each)
3. Core workflows – Step-by-step walkthroughs of day-to-day processes (5–10 minutes each)
4. Policy and compliance – HR policies, security practices, and data handling (3–5 minutes)
5. Role-specific tasks – Responsibilities unique to the position (as needed)

Keeping each video under 10 minutes improves retention and makes it easy to update individual sections without re-recording everything.

Setting Up for a Professional Recording

Before you hit record, take a few minutes to prepare your environment.

Clean Up Your Screen

• Close applications and browser tabs you won’t need during the recording
• Hide personal files or bookmarks from the taskbar and desktop
• Use a clean browser profile or incognito mode for web-based tools
• Set your display to a standard resolution (1080p works well for most tools)

Choose the Right Capture Mode

Recorded gives you three capture modes:

• Full screen: Best for walkthroughs that move between multiple apps
• Window capture: Ideal for focused software tutorials
• Area selection: Useful when you only need to show one part of the screen

For onboarding videos, window capture or area selection keeps the viewer’s attention on the relevant interface instead of everything else on your screen.

Configure Audio

Voice narration is essential for onboarding videos. A few tips:

• Use a dedicated microphone rather than your laptop’s built-in mic
• Record in a quiet room to avoid background noise
• Speak slowly and clearly—new hires may not be familiar with the product names or terminology you use

Add a Webcam (Optional)

A picture-in-picture webcam overlay makes onboarding videos feel warmer and more personal. It works especially well for company culture or team introduction segments. Keep it small and positioned in a corner so it doesn’t obstruct the content.

Recording Best Practices

Use Zoom Effects to Guide Attention

Onboarding videos often show complex UIs with many small buttons. Use Recorded’s zoom effects to:

• Zoom in before clicking a button or menu item
• Zoom out after completing a step to restore context
• Highlight navigation paths by zooming through a sequence of menus

This eliminates the frustration of viewers squinting to see which option you selected.

Narrate Your Actions Out Loud

New employees don’t just need to see what you’re doing—they need to understand why. As you record:

• Announce each step before you take it (“Now I’ll click Settings in the top-right corner”)
• Explain the purpose of each action (“This is where you configure your notification preferences”)
• Call out common mistakes (“A lot of people miss this checkbox here—make sure it’s ticked”)

Keep a Script or Outline

You don’t need to memorize a script word for word, but having a bullet-point outline ensures you cover every step without rambling. Keeping an outline visible on a second monitor (or printed next to you) helps you stay on track without interrupting the flow.

Pause Before Transitions

When moving between sections or switching applications, pause for one or two seconds. This gives viewers a moment to process what they’ve just seen and makes editing easier if you need to trim the transition later.

Editing Your Onboarding Videos

After recording, a few edits can turn a raw capture into a polished training asset.

Trim the Silence at the Start and End

Most recordings have a few seconds of nothing at the beginning (before you start narrating) and at the end (after you finish but before you stop). Use the editor to trim these sections so the video starts and ends cleanly.

Remove Mistakes with Split and Delete

If you fumbled a step or mis-clicked during the recording, use the Split shortcut (C) to cut around the mistake, then delete the segment. There’s no need to re-record the whole video for a small error.

Add Zoom Points After the Fact

If you forgot to zoom in on a key area during recording, you can add zoom keyframes in the editor to focus attention on the right part of the screen at the right moment.

Sharing and Maintaining Your Onboarding Library

Organize by Role or Topic

Create a shared folder or internal wiki page for each role that links to the relevant video series. New hires should be able to find any video without asking someone.

Update Videos Regularly

Software UIs change. Plan to revisit your onboarding videos whenever you make a major tool update. Because each video covers a focused topic, you’ll typically only need to re-record one or two clips rather than the entire series.

Gather Feedback

Ask new hires which videos were most helpful and which were confusing. Direct feedback helps you improve future recordings and prioritize which sections need updating.

Checklist for Your First Onboarding Video

[ ] Identify the topic and write a short outline
[ ] Clean up your screen and close unneeded apps
[ ] Set capture mode (window or area)
[ ] Enable microphone; test audio levels
[ ] Do a 30-second test recording to confirm quality
[ ] Record the full walkthrough using your outline
[ ] Trim start and end in the editor
[ ] Remove any major mistakes using split and delete
[ ] Add zoom effects on key actions
[ ] Export and share with your team

Conclusion

Screen recording is one of the most effective ways to scale your onboarding process. Once you’ve built a library of focused, well-narrated videos, new employees can get up to speed faster and your team spends less time in repetitive training calls. Start with one core workflow, record it, and build from there.

Happy recording!