Ethics & Compliance Learning
How to Keep Learners Engaged in Compliance Training
In this digital era, and its constant barrage of information, genuinely captivating learners remains a significant challenge.
Attention spans are short and dopamine-driven content consumption levels are high. It is not just about presenting facts and figures anymore; it’s about creating easily digestible and deeply compelling narratives that resonate in real ways.
Reimagined compliance training now demands inspiring change and fosters a culture of continuous learning.
How to Spark Learners’ Interest and Engagement
In a webinar hosted by SAI360—5 Tips to Keep Your Learners Excited for the Long Haul—SAI360’s Steffi Prange-Jones, Senior Business Development Manager, and Mark Evans, Account Manager, shed light on how to engage learners on vital topics via a fresh perspective and offered insights to redefine common training approaches.
Below are five key takeaways.
1. Less is More: Get Back to Basics
To effectively engage learners, training courses should be tailored to the audience’s language and context, emphasizing real-world relevance and practical benefits for their daily work.
Before diving into advanced training techniques, first establish a baseline. When starting out on your learning journey or switching to a new learning provider, go back to basics. Understand past struggles, acknowledge key industry risks, identify any regional differences, and seek to better define the general nature of your workforce.
A good starting point is Code of Conduct training, which provides an overview of compliance risks. From there, you can focus on high-risk areas like anti-bribery, cybersecurity, data privacy and protection, and competition law.
2. Implement Campaign-Based Learning
Breaking up training into smaller, more digestible chunks can be more effective and flexible than offering lengthy sessions that may prove draining or hard to fit into an already busy work schedule. Here are three examples of effective approaches:
- SAI360’s established concept of “prime, train, sustain” has proven to be an effective training approach that involves introducing learners to a topic, providing in-depth training, and then offering refresher courses or microlearning to reinforce and sustain the knowledge
- Short microlearning is effectively used to prime learners before introducing core training
- Just-in-time training can tie in themes with seasonal activities of departments, supporting content for specific risks occurring throughout the year
Emphasizing key risk areas across different formats will ensure the learning experience feels fresh and interesting, letting learners proactively versus reactively test themselves to establish where further training is needed.
3. Embrace Modern Learning Trends
With the rise of easily available and highly accessible streaming platforms like Netflix, learners are now very much accustomed to on-demand, bite-sized content. A key benefit of a Netflix-style microlearning method is it puts control in the hands of learners and allows learning to be tailored around their job function and also their work schedule.
Since the pandemic, video has become a favorite choice for absorbing information, as a rapid research report from Fosway Group has highlighted. Videos allow you to address different learning styles–visual, auditory and kinesthetic–and can often be more engaging and memorable than text-based formats. With the ability to watch videos on smartphones, videos enable learners to learn on the go and when there is an acute need to access the information.
Effective training campaigns involve multi-stage approaches, utilizing quizzes to assess needs and prioritizing topics based on employee feedback and varied intervals. Bite-sized learning continually builds real proficiency in the workforce, therefore offering a mix of longer e-learnings with shorter video snippets or microlearning not only caters to mainstream preferences but also achieves successful training outcomes.
4. Think Outside the Compliance Box
Consider integrating your compliance training with broader internal communication campaigns. Be clear about who you are as a company and what you want to achieve. Clarity will help transform how compliance is perceived in your company.
Design and disseminate slogans and short guidelines that connect with your greater workforce. Larger companies, for instance, often set good examples in terms of communication and branding, but this approach, of course, can be leveraged by companies of every size.
5. Regularly Review and Adapt
The world of compliance is ever-evolving, with new regulations and risks emerging regularly. It is therefore essential to periodically step back, analyze your organization’s training needs, and adapt curriculums accordingly.
Take a variety-focused approach. Try incorporating different training formats throughout your program, such as videos and action-rich learning simulations. Loop back to your compliance policies and procedures within your training content to achieve higher recognition and acceptance of the internal compliance program.
Use online training’s flexibility to your advantage, playing around with what learning schedules you offer (for example, morning offerings versus afternoon or evening), device preferences, and to what extent and in what ways your analytics assess employee engagement so you can better identify future training needs and turn them into actionable insights in the future.
Ultimately, use the best approaches most suitable to your company and industry situation by picking and choosing which learning trend works for you. Along the way, recognize the potentially transformative power of internal marketing and communication for your compliance program.
Final Thoughts
Keeping learners engaged requires a mix of understanding their journey, leveraging modern learning trends, and continuously adapting to the changing landscape.
The future of compliance training is about engagement but also empowerment. As we stand at the crossroads of technological advancements and shifting organizational dynamics, there’s a pressing need to view compliance not as a mandate but as a mission. A mission to equip individuals with the right tools, knowledge, and mindset to navigate uncertainty in an increasingly complex world.
Organizations moving forward must continually strive to make learning engagement meaningful, impactful, and unforgettable.
Learn More
Click here to watch SAI360’s webinar: 5 Tips to Keep Your Learners Excited for the Long Haul.
Click here for a demo of SAI360’s “Know Your Risk” training, which evaluates employee risk competence and offers data-driven insights to enhance training effectiveness.
