5 Ways to Drive Employee Engagement with Training

In our 2020 Ethics and Compliance Benchmark Report Survey, a majority of the senior ethics and compliance leaders we surveyed reported a lack of confidence (a sentiment that carried into 2021) that their E&C programs are achieving desired outcomes in a number of key areas.

Concerns about the effectiveness of training programs included:

• Raising awareness and understanding of regulations
• Creating uniformity and standardization in work methods
• Preventing or reducing misconduct
• Managing risk more successfully
• Creating a more positive work culture

The underlying factor in each of these outcomes is training. When working with clients who struggle with E&C program effectiveness, we often find the design and format of online training curriculum to be an inhibiting factor. This is particularly true post-pandemic, as many companies were forced to rapidly adopt software and processes to support remote work and training.

When pivoting ethics and compliance training to online formats, it’s not enough to merely digitize manuals or link to videos of lectures. Frontal teaching methods, stale content, and rote memorization of rules and controls are discouraging to online learners. Poorly constructed training modules can diminish the retention of information and impede the adoption of desired behaviors.

There is an art and a science to designing online learning experiences that keep engagement and motivation high—particularly now when the workforce is suffering from an overabundance of screen time on all fronts.

Here is a sampling of SAI360’s techniques for optimizing online learning formats:

1. Keep instructional elements short

Learners who are presented with large chunks of one-way static content will only be able to follow attentively for a certain length of time when sitting in front of a computer screen. Videos, texts, and other linear media without interaction should not last longer than the average attention span of online learners.

2. Increase engagement with variety

Learners lose interest when monotonously clicking through question-and-answer pages of identical format. Online training material should alternate between different forms of media, providing learners with a diverse variety of training styles to keep them engaged. A best-practice E&C training program blends games and simulations, videos, short five to 10-minute courses, and performance support tools.

3. Enable learning anywhere, anytime

Hybrid work schedules are likely to be the norm for the foreseeable future, so flexible training formats that offer mobile and tablet-ready learning experiences are critical to employee engagement. It strengthens the autonomy of learners if they can learn where and when they want. Thanks to responsive design, it’s not difficult to develop training courses and modules that can be accessed independently of an app and on all types of end devices—whether laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

4. Recognize the benefits of snackable content

Micro refreshers can have a big impact. Not every training session has to take up a big block of 30 or 60 minutes. Sometimes you reap more interest and retention with a two-minute video or a five-minute quiz.

5. Make it interactive

Phases of passive information intake should always be supplemented by interactive modules that require learners to become active and make a decision. This way, theoretical knowledge imprints powerfully as practical knowledge.

The SAI360 team has spent 25 years in the trenches helping organizations prepare for, respond to, and learn from ethics and compliances threats of all shapes and sizes. Over that time SAI360 has developed a formula for highly effective experiential E&C training programs. Modularity, variety, entertainment and interaction are at the forefront of our approach.

Take a look for yourself by testing our learning formats in key risk areas including anti-bribery, code of conduct, and conflicts of interest.

E&C learning best practices whitepaper

Ethics & Compliance Training that Works: Elevate Online Training with Experiential learning – Details about building E&C online training programs that are impactful and engaging.

Learn about our comprehensive and customizable E&C Learning solutions. Or, contact us to see how we’ve helped organizations like yours.