Telefónica Tech’s commitment to employee learning and development has been invaluable to my personal and professional growth.

All things creative

As a Creative Marketing Associate here at Telefónica Tech, my role differs from the rest of the Marketing team. I’m responsible for the output of all things design and ensuring we are always on brand. A typical day-to-day for me doesn’t really exist, my role is extremely varied – and that’s why I love it! One day I could be producing a guide or social graphics, and the next I could be producing video content or giving our website some TLC.

Being given the time to explore and expand both existing and new skills is invaluable. Telefónica Tech offer guaranteed learning and development (L&D) investment to all employees, allowing up to ½ a day per week as ‘L&D time.’ I am mostly self-taught, so having designated time and budget to get professional training from external sources and streamline my skills helps me to become the best in-house creative resource I can be.

Finding the right course

To really maximise the opportunity to learn and develop myself and my role, I thought about what new skills I would like to add to my bank.

The use of video to promote people, projects and businesses has become increasingly popular in recent times, and after the marketing department made the decision to take some videography skills inhouse, I jumped at the chance to explore this new skill.

I was recommended a 2-day video course by Mallard Productions by a former colleague and having already worked with the business at both a previous company and at Telefónica Tech, it was a no brainer that it was who I’d like to go with.

Incremental is extremely passionate about ensuring everybody across the business has dedicated time to develop their careers and having an ongoing learning and development plan is such a positive way to ensure this happens.

Lights, Camera, Action

After two years of online training courses, it was great to finally have some face-to-face training! My 2-day video production course took place onsite at the Mallard office in Glasgow’s west end. The team were so welcoming and immediately put me at ease from the second I walked in the door.

Day 1 key take-aways:

• Did you know the average adult consumes around 6 hours of video each day? A stat that really stuck in my head throughout the training.
• Always store your data effectively… there is nothing worse than losing a full day’s worth of footage!
• There’s A LOT of effort that goes into Pre-production before the video camera is even switched on. Who are we targeting and why? Where will the content be going? It is important to take this into account during the early stages of production to ensure you capture the right footage for the right audience and platforms.
• Never underestimate the importance of lighting – hard versus soft lighting in videography can totally change how somebody is perceived by the audience.

Back for round 2

What happens after you’ve gathered all your footage? Day 2 covered video post-production where I got to use Adobe Premier Pro editing software. Importing video footage and slicing it up to include all the clips you need, editing the audio, adding music and getting your footage to a basic edit is step 1 of post-production. The 2^nd part of the day was spent exploring transitions, improving the colour quality of your video, adding effects, changing titles and adding captions. Due to my previous knowledge of Premier Pro I managed to progress onto some advanced skills which was great fun and covered the likes of changing the colour of an object in a frame.

I found the course intense and jam-packed full of information, but I walked away with a new confidence and attitude towards videography, and I will definitely be looking to do some more training in this area going forward to widen my skillset!

Applying the learnings back into my day job

In terms of capturing an audience’s attention, I believe video marketing is the way forward. Thanks to Telefónica Tech’s commitment to employee learning and development, I now have the skills and confidence to produce higher quality videos, which in turn will drive better engagement results.

Internally we are in the process of launching an internal video service which will allow the wider business to request some video creation. Whether this is for a video introduction to a prospect or for a recruitment drive, this course has provided me the crucial skills to ensure we create videos to impress both the Telefónica Techists who requested it and the audience who views it!

If you enjoyed my learning and development blog, check out Greg’s story on how working at Telefónica Tech, while simultaneously studying at university gave him the skills he needs to succeed in the business world. For any further information, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.