Every Monday, a new group of hires starts at a hospital network. And every Monday, someone in HR gives the same first-week talk: where to pick up your badge, when orientation runs, how clocking in works, who to call about pay.
It is never quite the same talk twice. One week the person forgets to mention the seven-minute clock-in rule. The next week they say time-off requests need one week's notice instead of two. A new nurse misses a punch on day two because nobody told her to report it the same day.
None of this is anyone's fault. It is what happens when important information lives in whoever happens to be free on Monday morning.
The fix I keep coming back to is boring and effective: write the first-week part of the handbook as a short script, voice it once, and hand every new hire the same file. Here is how to do it in ElevenLabs Studio, using a made-up hospital network, Mercy Ridge Health, from a lesson I built in the real app.
The business case
Count what the Monday talk costs you:
- 20 to 30 minutes of an HR person's time, every week, for the same content.
- Small differences between groups, which turn into missed badge pickups, late time-off requests and "nobody told me" conversations.
- No record of what was actually said.
An audio briefing fixes all three. It is the same every time, it can sit in the welcome email or onboarding portal, and when a policy changes you edit one paragraph and export again. A new hire can listen on the drive in.
The one real risk is names. AI voices slip on names, and a new hire notices when their HR partner's name or the Chief Nursing Officer's name comes out wrong. Most of the work below is about getting that part right before you spend credits on the whole script.
Step 1: Start an audio project
In ElevenLabs, open Studio and click New blank project. Studio asks what kind of project you want. You want a narrated file, not a video, so pick Audio project ("Begin an empty audio project").
Click the title at the top and give it a name you will find again. Mine was "Mercy Ridge new-hire briefing".
Step 2: Paste the script, one paragraph per idea
Paste the script into the editor. The trick here is structure: put each topic on its own line. Studio turns every line into its own paragraph, and that matters later, because you can fix or regenerate one paragraph without redoing the rest.
The Mercy Ridge script has eight short paragraphs:
- Welcome, and what this briefing covers.
- Day one: Security desk in Building C at 7:30 a.m., bring a photo ID, your badge is also how you clock in.
- Orientation: Monday is the network welcome, benefits and HIPAA training; Tuesday is the unit tour with your preceptor.
- Clocking in: no more than seven minutes before your shift; report a missed punch the same day.
- Paid time off: requests at least two weeks ahead; PRN staff pick up shifts in the staffing app.
- Patient privacy: only open charts you need, never discuss a patient in a hallway or elevator.
- Who to call: the HR business partner, Linh Nguyen, and the CNO's welcome coffee with Doctor Adaeze Okonkwo.
- Thank you, glad you are here.
The footer estimates about 1:20. That is the right length. If your script runs past two minutes, people stop listening, so cut it down before you voice it.
Step 3: Select everything before you pick a voice
This one cost me a redo. If you pick a voice with nothing selected, it only applies to the paragraph your cursor is in. In my first run, only the last line got the voice.
Click into the text and press Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on a Mac). The panel now says Edit Speech (8). Click the Voice box.
Search for a stock voice. I used Sarah - Mature, Reassuring, Confident, because calm and clear suits a first-day briefing. Use a stock voice for company audio, not a cloned voice of a real employee. If that person leaves, you do not want their voice still welcoming new hires.
Step 4: Test the hardest paragraph first
Before you voice the whole script, go to the paragraph with the names and click Generate. Studio voices only that paragraph and plays it. In my run it cost about 220 credits, roughly one per character.
Listen closely to "Linh Nguyen", "Adaeze" and "Okonkwo". This is where you find problems cheaply.
Step 5: Fix names with Pronunciation rules
Click Pronunciation in the left rail. Under Add pronunciation you get two fields:
- Word in text: the word exactly as it is spelled in the script.
- Say it as: how it sounds.
Keep the type on Text, so you write it the way it sounds instead of in phonetic symbols. The rules I added:
| Word in text | Say it as |
|---|---|
| Nguyen | Win |
| Okonkwo | oh-KONG-kwoh |
| Adaeze | ah-DAY-zay |
Click Add pronunciation after each one. Studio saves them in a dictionary for the project, and the dictionary stays on your account: next time it shows under Other dictionaries, so next month's briefing starts with the names right.
One rule I give every HR team: ask the person how they say their own name. A guess written as a rule is still a guess.
Click Regenerate on the names paragraph. Generation History now shows two takes; the ticked one is the one Studio uses. Play both. If a name is still off, change its Say it as and regenerate. If the older take was better, tick it instead.
Step 6: Export one MP3
Click Export at the top right. Set Media type: Audio, File structure: Single file, Audio format: MP3.
Before it spends anything, Studio tells you the cost. Mine said 913 credits to generate the remaining paragraphs. That is a good habit to notice: you only pay for paragraphs that have not been voiced yet, which is another reason to test the names paragraph first rather than generating everything twice.
Leave the Publish tab alone. It shares the project publicly, and an internal HR briefing has no business being public.
Click Export. Export status shows the file at 0%, voices the six remaining paragraphs, then joins all eight. Mine took about 20 seconds and produced an 85-second MP3. Click Download.
Before it goes out
Two checks, every time:
- Play it once, start to finish, yourself.
- Have someone who knows the people named check the names.
Then put it where new hires already are on day one: the welcome email, the onboarding portal, or the screen at badge pickup.
Where this pays off later
The real win shows up three months from now, when the PTO rule changes. You do not re-record anything. You open the project, edit paragraph five, and export again. Every new hire from that day on hears the new rule, said the same way.
The same pattern works outside healthcare: a law firm's first-week briefing, a property management company's new leasing agent orientation, a call center's "how your first shift works". Anywhere one person repeats the same talk every week.
If you want to try ElevenLabs Studio for this, here is the link I use: ElevenLabs (affiliate link: I may earn a commission, at no cost to you).
Practice it step by step, free: https://learn.ynteractive.com/content/elevenlabs-studio-handbook-briefing
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