After producing more than 1,500 videos over 17 years, we’ve pulled together some of our best training video examples to show what went into making them work. That includes the teaching approach, the visuals, the pacing, and the one decision behind each that made it land.
| Quick answer: Training videos run a little longer than marketing explainers, because they have to teach and not just persuade. Across the 15 we produced for real clients below, runtimes span 0:59 to 6:39, the median is 1:48, and about half come in under two minutes. Length follows the job: a single concept or a culture piece earns about a minute, a full step-by-step procedure earns as long as the task honestly takes. |
A training video is an animated or live action video that teaches someone how to do something, or why it matters, clearly enough that they can act on it. That could mean onboarding a new hire, following a procedure, staying compliant, or understanding a change. Unlike a marketing explainer, its job isn’t to persuade a stranger; it’s to help a specific audience actually learn. If you’re weighing a project of your own, it’s worth reading these next to the kind of work on our employee training videos page.
Below you’ll find 15 videos we made for real clients, grouped into four areas: employee training and onboarding, customer education and how-to, eLearning and higher education, and compliance, safety and workplace culture. For each one we’ve named the specific choice that made it work, so you can borrow it rather than just admire it.
Length is worth paying attention to, but for training the honest answer is different from the marketing-video rule of thumb. Shorter is better for attention. Most people finish a one-minute video, and far fewer finish anything past twenty. But a training video also has to actually teach the thing. Across these 15 the median runtime is 1:48 and just over half run under two minutes; the longest, a step-by-step how-to, runs 6:39 and earns every second because the task has that many steps. The rule we work to is simple: make it as long as the job requires, and not one beat longer.
| Runtime band | Videos | Share | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1:00 | 1 | 7% | Microlearning, single-idea reinforcement |
| 1:01 to 1:30 | 3 | 20% | Short concepts, culture and values |
| 1:31 to 2:00 | 4 | 27% | The default training explainer |
| Over 2:00 | 7 | 46% | Procedures, eLearning modules, multi-step topics |
Every video here is real client work, not a showreel of stock scenes. We picked the 15 that best show a specific decision that made the training land. That decision might be about pacing, tone, length, or restraint. They span sectors on purpose: higher education, government, healthcare, utilities, nonprofits, mining and ecommerce, so you can find the one closest to your own audience. You can see more of the work on our portfolio.
| # | Client | Sector | Format | Runtime |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | UBC Canada District | Higher education | Scenario-based | 1:31 |
| 2 | LeanBC | Government | Process explainer | 1:29 |
| 3 | Manitoba Nurses Union | Healthcare / union | Explainer | 2:01 |
| 4 | Yukon Employees Union | Union | Explainer | 2:03 |
| 5 | JM Bullion | Ecommerce | Customer how-to | 1:48 |
| 6 | Rancho Water | Utilities | Customer how-to | 6:39 |
| 7 | Accounting Aid Society | Nonprofit | Customer education | 1:32 |
| 8 | Oregon Dept. of Education | Education | eLearning | 3:55 |
| 9 | Oregon Dept. of Education | Education | eLearning | 3:26 |
| 10 | Western University | Higher education | Instructional | 1:10 |
| 11 | DRCF | Education | How-it-is-made | 2:50 |
| 12 | YWCA | Nonprofit | Social learning | 1:31 |
| 13 | New Gold | Mining / resources | Safety and culture | 1:25 |
| 14 | Small Business BC | Public sector | Compliance / accessibility | 3:18 |
| 15 | Creamy Stories | Learning and development | Microlearning | 0:59 |
Some training is hard to make not because the subject is complicated, but because the audience arrives with their arms folded. This episode is one of a six-part series covering sensitive workplace topics. This is the kind of material that, taught as a lecture, gets the completion rate of a fire-safety PDF. The choice that carries it is scenario over explanation: instead of telling viewers what good practice looks like, the video drops them into a realistic situation and lets the tension play out, so the lesson lands as recognition rather than instruction. Animation does real work here too. Illustrated characters let us stage an uncomfortable interaction without the awkwardness of actors, and they keep the tone even across six episodes. When the audience resists the subject, dramatize the situation instead of describing the rule.
DMAIC stands for define, measure, analyze, improve, and control. It is the kind of process framework that puts a room to sleep on a slide. This ninety-second explainer had to make an abstract methodology feel concrete and sequential, so a viewer comes away understanding not just the five words but how they connect. The design leans on clear visual structure: each phase gets its own beat, the animation carries the logic from one step to the next, and nothing competes with the idea on screen. Process training works when the video mirrors the process rather than reciting it. It stays ordered and visual, one step at a time.
Training made for a union membership has to clear a bar generic corporate content never faces: it has to feel like it was made for these members, by people who understand their working reality, or it’s dismissed on sight. This two-minute explainer is built with that scepticism in mind. The framing, the examples and the tone are pitched at nurses and their representatives, not at a generic “employee,” so it reads as respect rather than a message pushed down from above. Two minutes is the right size for an explainer whose job is to inform a decision or clarify an entitlement. It is long enough to be clear and short enough to watch on a break.
A lot of member communication fails because it’s written in the language of the policy rather than the language of the member. This explainer takes something members need to understand: how a process or entitlement works. It makes that plain, visual and calm, so the video answers the question before it turns into a phone call. The craft is in the plain-language script and the pacing: it never assumes prior knowledge, and it never rushes the part people actually get stuck on. Good explainer training is measured in the questions it prevents, not the information it lists.
Not all training points inward at employees. This one teaches customers how a precious-metals retailer packages and ships high-value orders. In doing so it does a second job the brief clearly understood: it reassures. When you’re shipping something expensive, showing the care that goes into the box is training and trust-building at the same time. At under two minutes it keeps to the procedure and lets the process speak. The choice that makes it work is treating a back-office operation as something worth putting on camera. Most companies hide their fulfilment; showing it clearly, without hype, turns a routine step into a reason to buy again.
Conventional wisdom says keep training videos under two minutes. This one runs six minutes and thirty-nine seconds, and it’s right to. It’s a genuine how-to for a utility’s customers: how to find a leak on your own property, step by real step. Cut it to two minutes and you’d leave people stranded halfway through the task. The lesson isn’t “long is fine,” it’s that length should follow the job. Because the procedure has real steps that have to happen in order, the runtime is structural, not padding. What keeps a long video watchable is chaptered pacing: each step is its own clearly signposted beat, so a viewer can follow along and skip back to the part they need.
Getting a letter from the tax authority is most people’s idea of a bad day. This ninety-second video, for a nonprofit that helps people with their taxes, takes that spike of anxiety and defuses it: here’s what this letter means, here’s what to do, you’re going to be fine. The design choice is tone management. A subject that could be intimidating is handled with calm, plain language and a steady visual pace, so the viewer’s stress comes down instead of up. On a nonprofit budget, that reassurance is done with clarity rather than expensive production, proof that the emotional job of a training video is a writing-and-pacing problem first and a budget problem a distant second.
Public-sector eLearning has a reputation for being the driest content on earth, and this piece quietly refuses it. The subject is assessment: what it is, and in a companion video, why it’s done at all. At just under four minutes it uses animation and clear visual metaphor to make an abstract policy concept concrete, and it treats its audience as professionals rather than trainees to be processed. The length is earned by the depth of the topic, and the pacing keeps a longer runtime moving. That respect for the viewer is why it reads as eLearning worth finishing rather than a compliance box to tick.
This is the companion to the piece above, and the pairing is the whole point. Weaker training would define the term and move on; this one takes the time to explain why assessment is done, because educators who understand the reasoning apply it better than educators who’ve only memorised the rule. Building it as a second, focused video rather than bolting the “why” onto the “what” keeps each one clear and lets a viewer take them in the right order. When understanding has to transfer to new situations, teach the reasoning. Memorization doesn’t travel.
Not every instructional video needs to be a full module. At seventy seconds, this piece on prototyping makes a single concept land and gets out of the way. The discipline of a short instructional video is choosing what to leave out: there’s no room for a warm-up or a recap, so every second advances the one idea. That restraint is exactly what makes it re-watchable and easy to slot into a larger course. It is a focused clip a learner can return to, rather than a long video they have to scrub through to find the part they need.
“How it’s made” is one of the most reliable formats in all of instructional video, because a physical process shown in order is inherently satisfying to watch. This piece on how milk products are made takes a real production process and walks it through step by step, using animation to show what a camera couldn’t easily capture. At just under three minutes it has room to cover the full sequence without dragging, and the clear visual progression does the teaching. When you’re explaining a process, the strongest structure is usually the process’s own order. Follow it and the video half-writes itself.
Training on social issues is easy to get wrong. Too preachy and people switch off. Too soft and it says nothing. This ninety-second piece threads it by informing clearly and letting the message carry its own weight rather than hectoring the viewer. The animation keeps a serious subject approachable, and the tight runtime forces the script to make its point and trust the audience with it. For awareness and conduct topics, the tone is the strategy: respect the viewer’s intelligence and you keep them watching; talk down to them and you lose them in the first fifteen seconds.
Values videos are where sincerity goes to die. Most are a wall of stock footage and abstract nouns nobody on the site believes. This one, made for a working mine, had to do the opposite: make a set of company values feel true to people who spend their day underground, not in a boardroom. At eighty-five seconds it’s deliberately short, because a culture piece overstays its welcome faster than any other kind of training. The choice that saves it is grounding. Each value is tied to the actual environment and the actual work. When the imagery belongs to the audience’s world, the message reads as “this is who we are here,” not “this is what head office wants us to say.”
Workplace accessibility is exactly the sort of obligation training that gets made once, badly, and never watched. This three-minute piece treats it as something worth doing well: it explains the what and the why in plain terms, uses clear visuals to make the guidance concrete, and keeps a measured pace that respects the viewer’s time even at a longer runtime. Compliance content earns its length when it’s genuinely useful rather than merely present. That is the difference between a video people finish and one they scrub to the quiz. Clarity, not fear, is what makes obligation training stick.
This one runs fifty-nine seconds, and that’s the entire discipline. Microlearning fails when it’s just a long video with the end chopped off; it works when it’s built from the start to deliver a single idea and get out. This piece makes one point about storytelling and trusts the viewer to take it and go. The craft in a sub-minute video is almost all in the cut. There is no room for a warm-up, so it opens on the idea. There is no room for a recap, so it ends on it. That constraint is exactly why microlearning is so effective for reinforcement and refreshers: it fits in the gap between two meetings, and people actually finish it.
Read back over the 15 and the long ones and the short ones share the same DNA. Every strong example does one job and knows exactly what it is. Each is the length its job requires and no longer, whether that is fifty-nine seconds or six and a half minutes. Each shows more than it tells, putting the procedure, the situation or the idea on screen instead of narrating around it. And each has a point of view: the calm we built into the IRS-letter video, the grounded realism of the mine values piece, the scenario tension in the UBC series. None of it depends on budget. It depends on knowing who’s watching and what they need to be able to do afterwards.
The projects above cluster around a few jobs that video does better than a document or a slide deck: onboarding a new hire so day one is consistent every time; procedures and how-to where seeing the steps beats reading them; scenario-based learning for sensitive or judgment topics people resist; customer education that deflects support tickets; and compliance that people actually finish. If your topic is on that list, video is usually the right call.
The honest answer is that it depends on three things: length, whether it’s animated or live action, and how many videos you’re making at once. A single short animated explainer sits at one end; a multi-part eLearning series with scripting, storyboards and localisation sits at the other. The biggest saving is almost always planning a series together rather than commissioning one-offs, because the script, design system and voice carry across every module. The best way to get a real number is to tell us what you’re teaching and who needs to learn it. Start a conversation here and we’ll scope it honestly.
If any of these sparked an idea, that’s the right instinct. The fastest route to a training video that works is to start from the ones that already do. We’ve been making training and eLearning video for 17 years, and these 15 are a small slice of the work. When you’re ready, tell us what you’re trying to teach and who needs to learn it. That’s the only brief we need to start.
