Why do presentations to employees turn out "below average"?
The quality of online training, awareness, and promotional materials provided to employees by their organizations (it doesn’t matter if they are commercial or otherwise) often falls short of expectations. Think back to your own personal experience. Compare the presentations and webinars your company has prepared for clients with those intended for internal use. In most cases, you’ll find that the internal materials fall short in quality compared to those designed for external audiences.
Why does this happen? There is a common belief that investing significant time and resources into creating internal content is unnecessary. The assumption is that since employees are required to review the materials, they will engage with them regardless of design quality, audience engagement techniques, or marketing strategies. Consequently, there is no need to use the arsenal of catching and holding attention, used when working with customers. This is roughly the reasoning of many customers and authors of online presentations for internal use. As a result, such content often features prolonged, formulaic, and careless presentations, with limited and low-quality illustrative materials. These presentations tend to be boring, difficult to engage with, and, frankly, unpleasant to review.
This is indeed true. However, not all organizations have the time or resources to produce high-quality content for clients. Is it really necessary to elevate the standards for internal online presentations? And if so, how can this be achieved?” – many managers might ask, especially in small and medium-sized companies. Let’s explore these questions.
Employees are also customers
Let’s start by answering the first question. Why should efforts be made to improve the quality of internal online content? First of all, employees are just as human as customers. Moreover, they are, by and large, your customers too. While they don’t purchase goods or services with money, they are exchanging their labor for compensation from your organization.
Your employees are influenced by the same factors that affect your customers. If the content is overly long, their attention may wane or completely disengage. Poorly illustrated and formulaic material will be less memorable. Unintelligible and poorly structured speech of the speaker will be perceived with a minus sign. And so on and so forth.
Now think about why, exactly, do you create or commission online content for your employees? As a rule, it’s to teach them new methods, present important data, or introduce key ideas. Essentially, you want them to ‘buy into’ information that is crucial from the company’s perspective, which in turn is expected to enhance their work efficiency and, consequently, the overall efficiency of the company.
Will you succeed if your online presentation lacks proper marketing form and content? Probably not. The potential loss from ineffective content will likely far exceed the cost of investing in high-quality materials.
On top of that, it’s worth considering that your internal presentation may well catch the eye of someone for whom it wasn’t intended for a variety of reasons. In fact, if it does not contain any secret information, why would employees not share this kind of material with acquaintances? Consequently, attention should be taken to ensure that any content created by the company, including for internal use, contributes positively to the company’s image rather than detracts from it.
The same engagement principles that work for external audiences apply even more to team-only presentations, where internal audiences may default to disengagement without the social pressure of an external event. For practical tips on keeping any audience locked in, see our guide on how to win over your presentation audience.
Hire robots
Let’s address where to find the resources for producing quality online content for internal company use. The answer is the same as for any other resource – automation and technology. We live in a time of unprecedented automation and robotization. Yet many people continue to create online content the “old-fashioned way” while complaining that they don’t have enough time for anything else. Imagine someone today complaining about spending too much time typing on a typewriter or hand-coloring black-and-white photos. This is similar to those who complain about the time and effort required for online presentations while overlooking the many new tools available to streamline the process.
Use AI writers to create scripts for presentations and texts. Collaborate with AI artists and AI directors to design content with illustrations and videos. Trust virtual assistants and speakers, such as our Pitch Avatar to conduct them. Think of how much time you could save by creating a digital presenter – for example, a doppelganger who looks like you, speaks like you, and accurately voices any text in the language of your choice with the intonation of your choice. For team-only presentations with multiple speakers, you can even assemble a team of digital presenters (each one representing a different internal expert) so your onboarding, training, or strategy sessions run on demand without scheduling a single live meeting.
Modern technologies and solutions dramatically reduce the time spent working on online content, while making it brighter, more original, and more effective. Take advantage of these opportunities.
Beyond the live meeting: Make team-only presentations work asynchronously
One of the biggest challenges with team-only presentations is that they typically require everyone to be online at the same time. For distributed teams across multiple time zones, that’s a real constraint – especially for onboarding, compliance training, and internal product updates that every team member needs to absorb.
This is where asynchronous presentation sharing changes the game. Instead of recording a live call (where AI-powered presentation tools can help), you can convert your team’s slides into video presentations with AI avatars and voice-overs – then distribute them exclusively to the team members who need them, on their schedule, in their language.
The benefits for team-only content are significant:
- Consistency: Every team member gets the same polished presentation, whether they’re in headquarters or working remotely. This is especially valuable for corporate learning programs and sales enablement workflows.
- Analytics: Track exactly who watched your team-only presentation, how long they engaged, and which slides prompted questions – critical for compliance training and HR onboarding.
- Scalability: Upload your presentation once and let AI deliver it in multiple languages with localized voice-overs. Softprom used this approach to cut SDR onboarding time by 75% across 12 languages.
- No scheduling conflicts: For teams that present the same deck repeatedly, AI avatars automate delivery – no more coordinating calendars across time zones.
If your team-only presentations currently live inside PowerPoint or Google Slides, a good starting point is to plan your presentation with a technical brief that defines the internal audience, speaking roles, and content restrictions for each section – then let AI handle the rest.
Good luck to everyone, successful presentations, and high income!
