Compliance training. It’s not exactly a phrase that audiences hear then get excited about. Even the name “compliance” gives a flavour that they’re doing this to meet a benchmark, and if everyone meets the minimum, everything’s going to be fine. However, that’s not how most modern organisations think about their work or about compliance. Most have a much more ambitious approach to their products and services. So how can organisations beat the reputation of compliance training as a hoop to jump through?
Consider most people want to do well at their jobs
Too much compliance training is aimed at preventing the worst case, not nurturing the best case. Cue cliches of negative newspaper headlines spinning across screens and people ending up behind bars. However, most people are conscientious and care about their work. How do you appeal to a culture of excellence, rather than a culture of not breaking the law? There’s a gulf between the two. Focusing on positives doesn’t mean you don’t need to spell out the consequences of non-compliance. However, giving people the knowledge and skills to play a part in an organisation’s success is a lot more motivating than a message of “don’t do anything bad”.
Focus on the real issues that impact performance
Sometimes, people know what to do but incidents still occur. They know when behaviour has risks or that inaction can confound a problem. The problem is in the culture of taking action and the real challenge is building a culture where people do things right rather than the quickest or cheapest way. Here, the focus needs to be on building a mindset at all levels that it’s okay to hold things up and follow the rules.
In any compliance topic, your run through the actual facts might be concise, with much more time spent on the human behaviours that cause problems. You also need to champion the human factors that, harnessed correctly, drive excellence. Focus on application and make sure what people learn translates to real performance in their roles. Not only does this translate to better business results, but it gives you better data from the training. It allows you to cross-reference actions in the real world versus actions people chose in simulations and assessments.
Acknowledge people have been here before
If you’re worried people are just clicking through the content and doing the quiz, be honest about whether they’ve actually done the training before. Multiple times. Some organisations recycle the same training with minor updates. Others start fresh but don’t actually present any new content. Is it a surprise people who have been with the organisation for a while tune out a little? Kineo answer this problem this in three main ways:
- Separating new starters from the people refreshing knowledge: These are two different learning needs and where possible, experiences for established employees should be streamlined to re-engagement, reminders and updates.
- Using adaptive learning that personalising training based on user input: This might be “testing out” of part of the learning because they can prove up-front they know their stuff. It might be giving different content based on an attitude or level of confidence they express. It could also be filtering content based on the information they give around their role, responsibilities or level of experience. Through this, we only give individuals the information they need and respect their current level of experience.
- Finding an interesting new twist every year: Most compliance training has a few headline items that organisations need to cover each year. Wrapping these up in an interesting article or treatment, especially one speaking to current trends, can hook an audience and provide genuinely interesting content. For example, content around fraud might lead with the evolving technologies criminals are using. Could the reader be caught out by these new techniques? Finding an interesting hook and presenting something genuinely new paves the way to refresh the general core principles.
Never lose the humanity
Whether it’s impact on the employee, their colleagues, customers or society, compliance makes a difference. Focus on human consequences helps build emotional connection . Again, that’s not just about warning people about consequences if they break the law. It’s presenting view of the organisation in which employees can thrive and have a positive impact.
Separate learning material from resource material
Don’t try and cram every eventuality into your learning in the hope employees will memorise what to do. There might be cases where you want people to look that up, especially if process and procedure might change between learning roll-outs. If you want people to engage with a policy, you may ask people to read the documents then complete learning about how to apply it. Decide carefully what needs to be in the learning versus what should be available as a resource, and be careful not to confuse an information design problem with a learning problem.
Go from compliance with rules to committing to excellence
Focusing on excellence and positive impact elevates compliance training, alongside personalisation and a push to giving employees interesting new content every year.
At Kineo we’re passionate about providing experiences that answer real organisational problems while providing experiences their employees find engaging and rewarding. A focus on context and application not only leads to better performance in role, it gives you better data. You can use this data to prove impact but also find areas to further focus and improve the training.
Drop us a line if you have a compliance challenge that can benefit from an engaging, data-driven solution.