Every Compliance Training Should Be Like This

Chelsea Rowe Chelsea Rowe, Employee Communications, Employee Engagement, Learning, Learning and Development, Training and Development

Airlines are trying to make waves with their in-flight safety videos these days. The latest comes from Delta, who is betting that you’ve seen an internet sensation or two… check it out here because it’s amazing:

Obviously this is a wicked smart marketing move on Delta’s part—that goes without saying. It’s also a brilliant way to do their compliance training because it keeps you tuned in for the entire video, AND all of the familiar meme/YouTube videos peeps help you store that in-case-of-emergency information. It’s incredibly sticky. They even have multiple versions of the video you can select “for entertainment purposes” to get you to review the training material again.

Delta has the same problem you do: You’ve got some compliance-based training that has to go down by a certain date to satisfy the powers that be. Now you’ve just got to beg, plead, and send reminder emails like it’s your job to convince everyone to get it done. Oh wait… lucky you.

I wish I could tell you that there was some magical mind hack hot off the presses from some psychology research journal that would solve all your cat-herding woes. I wish I could tell you that gathering all of the internet’s sensations into one study is fast/cheap/easy! But, I can’t.

What I can give you are 6 things you should be doing to make it easier to get all the participation you need for your next compliance training.

#1 – Make sweet training videos like Delta did! This is obviously the big budget option. But for the rest of us, there’s festivus and these other things you can do no matter what your budget…

#2 – Make it as accessible as possible. This one comes from my experience with online survey research. Surveys that require you to provide a unique ID number and password to the survey system have lower response rates than surveys that automatically log you in. Eliminate as many extra steps as possible while still keeping it secure.

#3 – Keep it visually lightweight by creating white space. Has anyone else had the experience of opening up a survey or online assessment thinking, “I’ll just knock this bad boy out quickly right now… ” only to opt out as soon as you saw a daunting amount of text? As someone who designs online training, the last thing I want is to spend more time cat herding because my online training was daunting and caused the user to second guess whether they really had time/wanted to do that now.

#4 – Break it up. In my experience, when I can break up an online training into 7-12 minute chunks, I get better results. More employees tend to start (and actually finish). I’ve also noticed that past that 12-minute mark (or when people start to think it’s going to take more than about 12 minutes), they start to try to click through without actually reading the materials.

#5 – Develop a value proposition. Oh, and the value proposition isn’t that HR will stop sending reminder emails once they’ve completed your compliance training. It’s also not that you can grant them peace of mind knowing they’re all trained up thanks to your handy-dandy online training. If you’re looking to do this on the fast/super cheap, the first “x” number of folks to complete get a Starbucks gift card or company swag. If you can invest more $$$/time, consider doing a broader Employee Values Proposition (EVP) study—then, where it makes sense, use the results to make compliance trainings more appealing by building in training on something employees want.

#6 – Informally ask for feedback. Actually have informal conversations with some of the people who’ve flirted with or exceeded the deadline on your compliance training. Are there certain people who will serially push these kinds of activities to the very last minute based on who they are (and not your training)? Sure, but chances are you’ll talk to at least a few people who could tell you that they avoided completing it because of some aspect of the training/training invitation that you can change moving forward.

For best results, try all 6. Like I said, there’s no quick fix or life hack that will suddenly make employees jump for joy when  your online compliance training invite hits their inbox (joy and compliance… two words that are not often seen in the same sentence). That being said, I’d love to hear what you’re doing to get employees to complete your training (other than creating kickass training, of course… you’re on FOT so I know your training content in on fleek). Hit it in the comments.

FOT Note: This Rant is brought to you by the good folks at Meridian, who like us enough to be an annual sponsor at FOT for all content in our learning and development track (and don’t expect that we run any of this by them ahead of time). They’re also up for having fun to the extent that they’re sponsoring the live Learning and Development Hangout Series which hits the airwaves next Thursday, May 28 at 2PM EST.  Just a little tip: you’ll want to be there…