Article
employee generated video for a small business team
4 October 2026 · 9 min read
Post on Xemployee generated video: the short answer
employee generated video is video made by the people who work in a business rather than by a marketing team or an agency: the person on the packing line, the one who runs wholesale, the owner. for a small business it is the most honest footage there is, because it is filmed by the people doing the work while they are doing it.
most of what ranks for employee generated video is written for large companies running a campaign: a brief goes out, a few volunteers record something about company culture, a recruiting team cuts it together. that is a project. it ends. this page is about the other version, for an owner with a handful of staff: each person keeps a short video diary of their own work, and once a week the whole company's week comes back as one film, in order, told by the people who lived it.
the film at the top is a dramatisation. fernhill coffee, nisha, tom, mei and the rest are made up, the people are generated, and they are not underway customers. what they do in it, the private diaries, the weekly picture of the company and the week in one cut, is how underway's company record works today, and the rest of this page says exactly what that is. the slack message nisha gets is real too, word for word: when a series crosses a milestone, underway says so in slack or whatsapp, with nothing to do.
why would a small team make employee generated video together?
because one person cannot see the whole business. in a six-person company the owner hears about the packing line jamming when it has already been fixed, and hears about wholesale doubling as a number on a spreadsheet. the person who was there tells it better, and tells it while it is still happening, before it becomes a tidy story in a monthly update.
there are three honest reasons to do it, and they stack:
- a record of the company in its own voices. a year from now there is a history of how decisions were made and by whom, and what it felt like at the time. nobody can film that afterwards.
- a weekly update nobody has to write. the week in one cut is everyone's episodes in order, which is the update a new hire, an investor or a partner will actually watch.
- marketing that is true. people buy from businesses they have watched work. footage of the real week, told by the people in it, is what a customer, a stockist or a future employee trusts. this is marketing, and it works because it is not staged.
what it is not is a performance review on camera. the moment a diary becomes a way to check up on staff, people stop saying anything real, and the footage is worthless. underway is built so that cannot happen: more on that below.
what does each person on the team actually do?
each person keeps their own series. it is the same thing a solo founder gets in underway: their own interview, their own numbered episodes, their own private memory of what they have said before. a short interview, once a day or as often as they choose, whenever suits them. the questions are about their work that day, asked out loud, and the answers are cut into an episode in the order they were said. nothing is reordered and no words are added.
the interview aims for about three minutes of answers and stops at five, so it fits round a shift. on a day someone would rather not be on camera, they can answer by voice only and it becomes a podcast episode. nobody is required to record, ever, and nobody's streak is shown to anyone else.
in the film, tom films the packing line jamming and mei films the week wholesale doubled. those are the kind of things a daily diary catches: one person's problem, one person's good week, each told by the person it happened to. the owner films too. her episodes sit beside everyone else's, not above them.
what stays private in a team video diary?
this is the part to read before asking anyone on your team to join. under company record the company owns what is recorded: the episodes, the cuts and the footage. that is said in the invite and again on the first screen, in plain words, and each person acknowledges it before their first episode. the app will not let anyone record until they have, on the web or the phone.
three things stay each person's own:
- their personal memory: the notes the interviewer keeps so it can ask better questions next time. nobody else reads it, and it is deleted if they leave.
- their raw footage, which is always theirs to download, on every plan.
- their open loops, the things they said they would do. each one has a switch: shared with the company, or hidden from it.
if someone leaves, or is removed, their series is closed rather than deleted and stays in the company archive. a retake replaces the answer it was recorded over, and the replaced take is deleted, so a fumbled answer does not linger anywhere.
what does the owner see, and what can they not see?
the owner, and anyone the owner makes an admin, sees who is in the company, their role and how many episodes each person has made. that is the whole view. there is no screen that shows someone's streak, their personal memory or a take that was not published. the interviewer is not a reporting tool, and it is built not to be one.
| the owner sees | the owner does not see | |
|---|---|---|
| people | who is in, their role, whether they have joined | anything about how often they 'should' film |
| episodes | how many episodes each person has made | any take that was not published |
| habit | company-wide targets, like episodes across the company | anyone's streak |
| memory | the company bible | anyone's personal memory |
| the week | the week at the company in one cut | a ranking of who did best |
one honest note on the week's cut: it is made from everyone's finished episodes of the last seven days. a finished episode is the answers someone kept, so anything said in a kept answer can appear in the company's week. that is why the ownership note comes first, and why each person can strike a line from their own cut before it matters.
how does the weekly employee generated video come together?
two things happen each week, and they are different.
the company bible is a page that says what the company is, what changed this week and what is stuck. it is built every monday from summaries of the week's episodes and the open loops each person chose to share, and an admin can build it any time with a button. every week's version is kept, so you can read back through the weeks. it is written only from that material: nothing is invented and nobody's private memory is read.
the week at the company is the film. an admin presses cut the week, and the server cuts everyone's episodes from the last seven days into one long-form video, in the order they were filmed, with a card before each episode naming who is speaking and which episode it is. it needs at least two episodes across the company. it renders on the server and lands under the owner's account. in the film it comes back on a friday because that is when nisha presses the button; it can be any day you like.
the same rules hold as for every underway episode. chronological, not shuffled to open on the best line. only what people actually said. the result is the week told by the people who built it, which is a different thing from a highlights reel.
employee generated video tools: what this is and is not
there are good employee generated video tools for other jobs. vloggi is built for collecting video from staff for a campaign or a recruiting page, with prompts and review, and editors like capsule help a marketing team turn it into something polished. if you want a one-off culture film for a careers page, that is the right shape.
company record is a different shape: a daily habit for everyone, a private diary each, and a weekly film that is a by-product of it. it is deliberately small. there are no brand kits, no approval workflows and no admin view into anyone's diary. if you need a reviewer to sign off every clip before it exists, it is the wrong tool.
how to start a team video diary with underway
- start your own series first, on the free episodes. three episodes, no card. you will know whether the interview works for you before you ask anyone else.
- create the company from the account tab, company record. it is $299 a month for the owner and four seats, and more seats can be added.
- invite people by email. each invite is a link that opens on a page saying who owns the archive. nobody records until they have read it.
- let each person set up their own series and their own rhythm. do not set them a target. company-wide targets exist, like episodes across the company, and when one is crossed everyone's today screen asks about it.
- after the first week with two or more episodes, press cut the week and watch it together.
the hardest part is not the tool, it is the ask. tell people plainly what the company owns, what stays theirs, and that you cannot see their streaks or their unkept takes. then film your own, every day you can. a team copies what the owner does far more than what the owner says.
questions about employee generated video for small teams
what is employee generated video?
video made by the people who work in a business, about their own work, rather than by a marketing team or an agency. in underway it takes the form of each person's own short video diary, with the whole company's week cut into one film.
do my staff have to film every day?
no. nobody is required to record, and no streak pressure is ever shown to an admin. each person films as often as suits them, whenever suits them, and can answer by voice only on a day they would rather not be on camera.
can the owner watch everything their team records?
no. admins see who is in, their role and how many episodes they have made. never a streak, never anyone's personal memory, never a take that was not published. the week in one cut is made from everyone's finished episodes of the last seven days.
who owns the footage?
under company record the company owns what is recorded: the episodes, the cuts and the footage. each person is told this and acknowledges it before their first episode. their raw footage is always theirs to download, and their personal memory is never read by anyone else.
how much does it cost for a team?
company record is $299 a month for the owner and four seats, and more seats can be added. anyone can try the interview first with three free episodes and no card.
is the fernhill coffee film real?
no. it is a dramatisation and the people in it are generated. fernhill is not an underway customer. the product, the questions and the cut it shows are how underway works.
where to go next
if the business already exists and you want to start with your own story first, read building in public for small business.
everything stays private until you choose otherwise. how that works is in private until you go public.
why a long record of honest episodes matters to investors and hires: eighty episodes as due diligence.