The importance of compliance training cannot be stressed enough. But that importance doesn’t light an instant spark of curiosity among employees.
Businesses that don’t notice positive changes in their culture of compliance often fail to examine their training methods. The reason compliance training fails to leave an impact is that most employees walk away without retaining anything they learn.
But what if you can make your training highly interactive and get your employees to actively engage in it? Here, we discuss 8 ways to turn your compliance training into an activity your employees will look forward to.
Ramp it Up with Activities
You might have put together a great training program. But without activities, it would just be an endless stream of theoretical information. Today, it’s easy to get bored with everything that doesn’t grasp our immediate attention, and compliance training is no exception.
The best way to boost the training engagement meter would be to fill it up with activities in all the right places. This could include group tasks or fun challenges. Activities will not only keep learners engaged but also ensure they stay focused on the subject matter of the training.
Make it Job-Specific and Realistic
Compliance training is all about familiarizing employees with policies, regulations, and safety standards that govern a specific industry.
A great training program helps employees apply what they’ve learned with ease. Since activities are a great way to make training more effective, it’s best to ensure they are realistic and specific to the learner’s job position.
When the training is job-specific, employees naturally view themselves or place themselves in specific scenarios your training paints. This, in turn, helps strengthen their compliance muscle and job efficiency.
Don’t Overwhelm Learners
What happens when you expect learners to grasp too much, too soon? They end up retaining nothing.
Instead of overloading your training with oceans of content, you can simply break it down into bite-sized chunks. This can be done by ensuring your content is brief and easy to digest. You can strategically break your training down by doing things like:
- Keeping paragraphs and sentences short
- Dividing the information into various sections
- Turning complex topics into a variety of interactions
- Using lots of media
By consuming small chunks of information, your learners can easily consume valuable compliance-related information without getting overwhelmed.
Include Quizzes
Quizzes are awesome for training programs of all kinds and compliance training is no exception. When your learners know a quiz is coming up at the end of each session, they’ll naturally pay more attention to score well in it.
This will, in turn, make them enthusiastic to navigate the upcoming sessions with heightened focus. What’s more, interactive quizzes – from fill-in-the-blank to visual multiple-choice exercises – will reinforce the knowledge they gain throughout the session. The result? Your learners will retain valuable information and feel naturally conditioned to apply them in real life.
Present Case Studies or Real-Life Examples
The main reason learners find compliance training boring is that they don’t find the information relevant. They don’t see how it applies to their professional situations and fail to understand the repercussions associated with a lack of ethics.
A great way to get them in their compliance shoes would be to deploy real-life examples or case studies. You can either extract narratives from the news or dig up ethical dilemmas that may have appeared in your organization’s history. Make sure the case studies you present resonate with your employees’ roles, the departments they’re in, and the industry they’re a part of.
Gamify It
Gamification can make training more exciting and add a dose of healthy competition. With quick leaderboards, instant feedback, rewards, and more – employees will not only enjoy the process but also feel motivated to finish their sessions. Compliance training can tap into gamification in several ways:
- By crafting a story
- By offering badges and reward points
- By posting completion stars on the dashboard
- By narrating activities
Focus on Visuals
In today’s world, visuals speak louder than words. Regardless of how concise you make your written content, your learners are bound to lose their attention at some point. This is where the power of visuals comes in. Include images, videos, slide shows, or presentations in your compliance training sessions.
Break the text up with images. Deploy short, engaging videos to make information easy to consume. Your image snippets could display valuable stats or summarize important points. Since videos appeal to both audio and visual senses, they could highlight a case study or narrate a scenario that requires learners to respond with their insights.
Ask Questions
Videos are a great ingredient for an effective compliance program. But how do you find out if learners actually consume information instead of just passively moving through the video?
The answer in two words: Ask questions.
Your questions could include how compliance concepts apply to your employee’s role. They could also test the learner’s approach toward an ethical dilemma. Questions ensure your employees not only understand the compliance literature but also actively contemplate how to implement it.
Incorporate Discussions and Include Live Sessions
To make online compliance training more engaging, it’s important to allow learners to learn from each other.
This can be done through discussion forums where learners can interact with each other throughout the program. For instance, let’s say you present your learners with a unique compliance-related situation and expect them to resolve it in the best possible way. By allowing them to discuss the challenges and brainstorm solutions with their co-workers, you can not only keep their engagement levels high but also ensure they retain what they learn.
Parts of your training program can also include live or in-office instructor-led sessions to help learners share ideas with each other.
Designing a Compliance Training Program that Truly Matters
A great, interactive training program helps organizations glean countless benefits. For starters, your employees retain most of what they learn. This helps them take a proactive approach toward compliance-related issues in the workplace.
When all your learners understand how to implement what they learn, your organization naturally strengthens its compliance culture. An organization with a solid compliance culture spots and corrects misconduct before they translate into disasters. What’s more, with an army of well-informed employees, your organization will craft a great company image. In short, compliance starts with training. If you’re looking for a training partner that brings real results, reach out to Ethico now!
