When I think of "Human Resources", I am reminded of the old Saturday Night Live skit featuring Gilda Radner as Miss Emily Lettilla, the schoolmarm character who doubled as an in-depth reporter for the newscast. She would start out by saying something like: "Now what's this I hear about "Human Racehorses"? and then continue her tirade until interrupted by Jane Curtin who would correct her. There would be a moment of silence, followed by: "Never Mind�" But it DOES point out that the title "Human Resources" is so often misunderstood.

The first thing you have to do is contact your prospective client and set up an appointment with their human resources director. At the initial meeting, do not presume to tell them how to run their respective Human Resource Department. And never assume that all budgets are created equal. You have to show your prospective client that it may be easier than they think to create and produce an entertaining and engaging training program, without falling back on the same tired Power Point Presentation.

There are several ways to go about this without a great deal of expense. In every Human Resource Department there is usually at least one creative person who has the vision and ability to come up with a unique approach to a traditionally boring subject. It is their responsibility to educate employees on the many ways of increasing work flow, decreasing injuries, streamlining an operation, or following a specific criteria or procedure.

Now, as we all know�. Within the first ten or twenty times an instructor has to convey these messages they can perfect their presentation, perhaps enforcing specific subjects with drawings, slides, or even a supportive Power Point Presentation. But sometimes even the best Power Point Presentation is still not much better than a glorified slide show. More importantly, the instructor, after six months of telling the same tired story will start to sound like a jaded tour guide telling us to "look here" and "look there"�� Not exactly the inspirational message that the boss envisioned, and probably many employees will have forgotten they even saw a presentation after a good night's sleep. While this method may appease the company's OSHA requirements it probably won't have much lasting effect on the employees themselves, resulting in the same number of injuries, product overruns, or improper procedures.

So how do you make a lasting impression in the mind of the average every day working Joe and Jane? Well, one of the most effective means of relaying crucial information is to use humor. For some reason, if you can get people to chuckle about a subject that is usually boring and tedious they tend to retain the point you are trying to make. Sometimes a live skit can keep people's attention span alive, but that takes a certain amount of commitment from the key participants, and increases the chances of job duties causing conflicts and last minute changes and cancellations.

One alternative would be for the HR person to videotape the skit beforehand and then play the video in their presentation. But then they STILL have to make basically the same presentation over and over to each new set of employees. Here's where your plug for video services come in handy: "How about just committing the entire presentation in a well planned video? If your department has access to a camcorder you could shoot the footage yourself at your own company's time and expense and then hire our production services to edit your project. We can also add a music soundtrack and professional title pages to create a presentation that all employees will remember."

If there are no "Stephen Speilbergs" in the Human Resources Department, then try to sell the director on the concept of having you studio shoot and edit their video. Advise them to start by assigning a creative director to write a basic outline of the proposed video project. This might be focused on a start up procedure, how to dispose of hazardous waste materials, or even the required techniques for proper hand washing. Typically, once an outline is written, hold a pre production meeting with the key personnel on the project. At this meeting do a walk through of the script and discuss what kind of footage would be needed to convey the message. You might discover possible shooting problems and suggest alternate ways of conveying the message. At the end of the meeting both you and the HR director will have a basic understanding of the project as well as how much time it would take to produce the concept, and then offer an educated studio budget estimate to the project manager or HR director. Once approved, it's just a matter of setting up the location and following the shot list, which is created from the script. The advantage of this method are: First, You can assure them of professionally shot sound and video footage of the highest quality. And second, since you are responsible for the location footage you can speed up the editing process because you know which takes are the "keepers".

Point out that the difference between getting their point across and just wasting employee's time can sometimes be the way they convey their message.

At some point it would be advisable to give an actual demonstration of your concepts. Find a good video project that you have already done along the lines of your approach. Get permission from your previous client to edit and show some scenes to other prospective corporate clients. Make a suitable demo reel with segments that are descriptive of your approach and show them to your client. And by all means don't make your examples too long.

"I have with me today three examples of well thought out and prepared scripts that get the message across using comedy as the vehicle. All three come from the same source, and I'd like to thank Mr. Wile Coyote of Acme industries for allowing me to use these examples."

Then it might go something like this:
"In the first scenario we had to tackle the hazards of Particulate Matter, not exactly a spine-tingling subject that keeps employees poised on the edge of their seats. But John came up with a great idea, borrowing from those old black and white Japanese Kung Fu movies and their cheesy out of sync audio dubbing problems. . . . . . "
-SHOW FIRST SEGMENT -

"This video was 26 minutes in length, and it was produced with plant footage, title pages, and descriptive narrative, but it only took five minutes of foolishness to keep everyone interested from start to finish . . . . . . And by adding credits we not only kept to the theme of the Classic "B" movie but we also managed to include all those who assisted in the project, thereby giving valuable kudos to all the employees, who in turn talked it up to other employees."

"This next example is one of two spoofs we made on the popular Star Trek series. The first project was produced in 1999 and was so popular at Acme that a sequel was produced in 2000. Here are some excerpts from that video.
- SHOW THE NEXT SEGMENT -

"This last example was done last year for Industrial Products, Inc. It was a safety training video, which usually covers a variety of very important but dull subjects. I got an idea to do a spoof of the old Saturday Night Live "Mr. Bill" segments. Since the "actors" were PlayDough the cost of materials was very reasonable and the shoot was easy to set up."
- SHOW LAST SEGMENT -

"These three examples represent just a few of our successful projects. They are talked about among employees and management even today, although several of them are over four years old. If nothing else, that tells you that they stick out in the minds of the very people they were meant to educate on the subject matter at hand, and I don't think you can ask much more than that."

It takes guts sometimes for someone in a company to decide to use comedy in telling a serious story, and sometimes this approach will not work. It all depends on your prospective HR client (and his vision), the subject material, and of course, how good of a salesman you are in the first place. If you can demonstrate to your client that with a good, well planned script, you can use comedy to lighten up an otherwise dull subject, you are halfway there. Show them how entertaining this video would be to watch and point out that it would stay in the minds of the employees, and that by engaging the amateur talents of some of those employees and then publicly patting them on the back for a job well done it also improved the working relationship between management and employees.

What more could Human Race Horses ask for?