The Human Factor: “Please Acknowledge That You Have Read and Understood”

During a job search last year, Ihad the opportunity to talk with a number of different training teams, in avariety of organizations. Many of those teams were working on compliancetraining. In team after team, as we talked, a pattern emerged – whether they deliveredit online, virtually, or in the classroom, compliance training typically wasn’twhere training teams spent their creative energy.

Team members often described theircompliance training as boilerplate. Learners were required to take it, and as aresult, the training team spent focused time and effort working on things otherthan creative treatments to make the content engaging. No one actually used thewords “captive audience,” but they might as well have.

On one level, taking a utilitarianapproach to compliance training makes sense. As the teams noted, employees enrolledin compliance training won’t quit without completing the training because it’sa requirement of their employment. The ultimate goal of the offering is to makesure that the organization can demonstrate that all of the employees who arerequired to meet a particular standard know about their requirements. A boilerplateapproach can easily meet that goal.

On the other hand, compliancetraining is some of the most important work that training professionals do. Generally,when an organization requires compliance training, it’s because it’s importantfor employees to remember why they’re held to a particular standard, or how toperform a critical function. It’s likely that the training is mandatory becausethere are serious consequences, for the employees and their organizations, ifthey fail to meet the standards the training is meant to explain. When youthink about it from that perspective, compliance training might be some of themost important training to develop with an eye towards inventive treatments.

Creative approaches make good businesssense

A more creative approach can payoff by making it easier for the learners to maintain focus, helping them getthrough the content more quickly, and improving their retention of the materialwhen the course is over. As a side benefit for the training department,interesting and engaging training makes a great portfolio piece. Stakeholderswho are surprised by a little unexpected inventiveness in their compliancetraining tend to remember the approach long after the content itself has gonestale. As a result, they’re more likely to see the department as a value-addedone, and want to get the training department involved in their next initiative.

Those are some pretty compelling reasons for deviatingfrom the boilerplate. Even so, proposing more creative treatments can raisered flags for customers, management, and stakeholders. The potentially higher costsand additional time required for development are, not surprisingly, frequentlycited as reasons to stick with the tried and true. The other, not always voiced,concern is that creative content can feel like a risky move for both thetraining department and the customer.

The risks of creative course content

When considering creativeapproaches, customers’ concerns often fall along two lines. They worry that theirmessage could be lost or overshadowed by the treatment as the trainingdepartment gets caught up in the creative side of delivering the content. Consideringthe legal, monetary, and reputational consequences that could result if thecontent misses the mark, fidelity to the message makes a lot of sense.

Even more frequently, customers hearthe word “creative” and translate it as “silly.” They worry that a creativetreatment could send the inadvertent message to learners (or even their ownmanagement) that the content is not important, or that they do not need to takeit seriously. A training department tuned into the customers’ concerns mayavoid suggesting inventive treatments for fear of losing credibility orappearing not to have understood the business need.

Striking a balance

Good compliance training startswith the same principles as other good training, and keeping sight of thecustomer, the audience, and the business need goes a long way to creating theright balance for any training program. A compliance-training program may be notthe right project to try out your most experimental techniques, but there’s amiddle ground. Concentrate on using the best techniques to deliver the message,and address your customers’ concerns by explaining the learning principlesbehind your decisions. In the end, you’ll be able to deliver content can thatcan meet the customer’s goals without leaving the audience painfully bored.