Second City's new way to hold on to new hires.

More than 20 leading companies from across the Fortune 500 have
signed on as founding subscribers to RealBiz Shorts Talent, the new video subscription service from Second City Communications (SCC) designed to help organizations address strategic challenges in human resources and talent management.

RealBiz Shorts Talent is slated to launch in the Fall of 2014 and will feature a full range of video content designed to help HR leaders engage and excite employees around important issues – including employee onboarding, performance management, leadership development, conflict management, and others.

Second City Communications, the business solutions division of the world renowned comedy theatre -The Second City, created RealBiz Shorts video libraries four years ago and currently features subscription content for ethics and compliance, life sciences, and sales enablement.

“We are pleased to secure an amazing array of founding companies for RealBiz Shorts Talent across a diverse and dynamic range of industries – including consumer packaged goods, healthcare, high tech, financial services, and manufacturing – to name a few,” said Steve Johnston, president of Second City Communications. “The initial response is incredible and points to the need for new, unique, and engaging employee communications around critical HR and talent issues confronting nearly every company,” Johnston

More than 400 global companies – including Google, MasterCard, DOW, CVS, Pepsi, and Hitachi – subscribe to existing RealBiz Shorts libraries for content that dramatically improves employee engagement, internal communications, message retention, and training ROI.

The Fall 2014 expansion into the HR and talent management arena includes Second City’s trademark co-creation process which involves collaborating with founding subscribers in a series of workshops aimed at developing content grounded in their issues and challenges.

“We are in the process of implementing a new talent management system where a lot of the content and thinking is new for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Integrated talent management is a critical business need and you have to know what is important to accomplish goals,” said Joseph Cheatham III, director of training and development for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. “We are excited to join Second City Communications to help tailor a true differentiator for HR – material that both grabs people’s attention and helps develop programs and talent,” he added.

RealBiz Shorts is the largest library of business-focused humorous content of its kind. RealBiz Shorts videos are popular communication tools to help companies draw attention to and reinforce their most important policies and training in a positive way, to help mitigate risk, and help change the culture around how these subjects are received.

“Farmers has a strong history of collaborating with Second City Communications, finding great ways to engage employees through award winning social learning programs that have had a positive financial impact in our organization,” said Ilene Haber, head of learning and development, Claims at Farmers Insurance. “We are excited to expand our collaboration to HR communications with RealBiz Shorts Talent.”

Second City’s unique perspective on engaging employees with genuine, authentic, and engaging content dealing with HR and talent issues – especially for onboarding and retaining new employees – is the focus of Fast Company magazine in an article titled What Improv Can Teach You About Holding On to New