ENGAGING YOUR LEARNERSCompliance Best Practice Guide

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3INTRODUCTION

Compliance training is a must, yet it seems to be a tricky area

that many companies struggle with. A course is created with

a purposeful intent, but learners dont always care about that

intent, especially when it is delivered in a mundane way. They

zone out, go through the motions and move on to the next task

of the day. Its as if your learning never happened. The only proof

you have is that check in the box.

Earlier this year, we developed a global survey in partnership

with Elearning Industry to analyse compliance training and

communication trends in corporates. The responses indicate we

have quite a bit of blah, scraping by, and just ok learning.

We can do better and learners deserve more than mindless

clicking.

In this guide, well discuss how to make compliance elearning

more palatable, exciting, and memorable through some simple

but highly effective design tips and techniques.

4M ost employees typically dont embrace their compliance training with open arms. And thats putting it mildly. In fact, most employees do their best to avoid it or find ways to suffer through it. Perhaps the answers to your latest compliance elearning quiz are posted on the break room refrigerator so that everyone can get through it as quickly as possible.

Why the lack of love? Various reasons ranging from lack-luster design to poor communication programs and follow-up campaigns, to the fact that they are almost always mandatory and we know everyone hates mandatory! When you have to take it, most of us just start to squirm. Generally, we dont enjoy being told that we have to do something, especially if we dont see the relevance.

Compliance training may not ever be loved by people, but theres a lot you can do to make sure its not painful, and actually does what its supposed to: reduce risk.

So whats the issue?Every day were inundated with information. From the moment we start our days, we have to answer emails, review information and complete all the various tasks associated with our jobs. Its definitely a challenge to keep track of it all. On top of all that, we are told that we have to do compliance training.

Arent we already busy enough and overwhelmed with the everyday flurry of activities without you wanting us to do something that, frankly, just feels like a waste of time?

These days, employees are suffering from learning fatigue. According to LRNs 2013 Ethics & Compliance Leadership Survey Report, 60% of respondents identify Online Education Fatigue as their top challenge. Thats a lot of sleeping learners! Either that

or theyre busy multi-tasking: writing an email, talking on the phone, and checking Facebook all at the same time. Sound familiar? These days, we have a lot of competition for peoples attention.

However, compliance training still has to get done and there must be a good reason to do it. Lets face it; there wouldnt be thousands of hours of elearning on compliance topics if there werent good reasons for it.

One of the main reasons that organisations develop training is to meet compliance regulations and legal requirements. Lets be honest, organisations really do need to tick off a lot of boxes. Compliance training is essential and seldom done effectively by more traditional methods, especially if you have to hit the entire population at once by a critical date.

According to LRNs 2013 Ethics & Compliance Leadership Survey Report, 60% of respondents identify Online Education Fatigue as their top challenge.

Kineo 2014 Compliance Training & Communication SurveyThis past spring, we conducted a global compliance and communication survey. We asked: How would you rate the effectiveness of your compliance learning programs? Responses included:

6.6% Not Effective 27.9% Ok, but needs improvement

38.5% Meets Standards23.8% Above Average 3.3% Very Effective

Right in between

just ok and meeting

standards

} Where we are

} Where we want to be

THE CHALLENGES OF COMPLIANCE TRAINING

5B efore you get started designing your compliance training programme, take the time to sit with whoever is in charge of compliance/risk reduction and discuss their intentions. This critical step so often skipped will allow you to define just how you will measure your results, help you produce an appropriate plan, let you formulate Q&A, and ultimately drive the design of your compliance elearning module. To make the creation process seamless and reduce the risk of error, be sure to ask them these questions:

What is the risk? Why is this important now? Whats

changed from how we were doing things yesterday?

Are we already beyond risk and in trouble? What can we do about that (which may have nothing to do with training, but that shouldnt stop you from trying to help)?

What are the consequences? How likely are they? What will they cost us? What will be the consequences for everyone concerned?

What happens if we do nothing (compared to the cost of the potential consequences)?

Who needs to do something differently? What exactly do they need to stop/start/do differently?

What are the mistakes that were making that we dont realise? Why are they mistakes?

How will we know weve reduced the risk? (Again, not something that a training intervention could hope to answer on its own, but you need to be part of the solution)

Who should people talk to if theyre unclear about what to do?

You and your internal customers should be in complete agreement on the answers to all of these questions: Complete them before you begin discussing how the training will work.

Quick Tip: If you can get the answers to these questions, you have every chance of following through with a solution that addresses the intent. As leaders in the industry, our advice is not to move on until you have these questions answered.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN DESIGNING

This critical step will ultimately drive the design of your compliance elearning module.

6I n our 2014 Compliance Training & Communication Survey, we asked: How would you like to improve your compliance programs?

76.6% responded: More engaging design and content.

Clearly, this is an area many struggle with. Compliance has a negative reputation to begin with and then its perpetuated by bad design and snooze- worthy content. So, how can we make compliance elearning more engaging?

Whether were taking an elearning or a more multi-channel approach to compliance training, there are design ideas that we should consider including. We may not be able to include every tip in every design, but if you can throw in a few good ideas you might just have a hit on your hands.

Additionally, by this time in the process, you and your internal customer should be very clear on the core intentions; your design approach should flow from there.

Lets look at some tips for creating more engaging content and some elearning examples that will help you see those principles applied.

Begin with a compelling storyWe all love a good story. Stories invite us in and get us interested. With creativity, learning can mimic a good story. Rather than having a plain screen with questions, make the content interactive and engaging giving your learners opportunities to participate. The most effective stories are chewed contextual, realistic, unusual, concrete, human, easily accepted and discovery-oriented.

Quick tip: Begin with the end in mind. What is your ultimate goal for telling this story? Have a vision and develop smaller stories to complement the whole.

Lets talk about what makes a story impactful.

Create relevant consequences and scenariosCause and effect. What would happen if you took a risk and skipped a critical step in a process? Could

you get away with it? What would happen? Could you lose your job? All risks have consequences and creating a course that capitalises on those mistakes makes the content stickier and impactful. And like a good drama, it adds intrigue to the story.

Develop characters with corresponding narratives that will resonate with your learners. The stories should incorporate situations that the learner might face on the job in real life.

The best way to show how risks and consequences can play out is through example. Theres a natural narrative

to showing how doing/not doing something exposes a company to a risk as well as the fallout and consequences for the company and the individual. Scenarios following this type of narrative embed in the memory far better than a presentation of straight facts. Make the

A NEW DESIGN APPROACH FOR COMPLIANCE

Develop characters with corresponding narratives that will resonate with your learners. The stories should incorporate situations that the learner might face on the job in real life.

7best use of that narrative by creating simple storylines for your module.

Quick tip: Be sure to make the consequences relevant and realistic. As soon as someone is forced to look at something and can legitimately say, I would never be in this situation, youve lost credibility and youve wasted their time.

Create distinct consequences for different job types. Get the learner to successfully understand the material and appropriately comprehend the consequences of not knowing. This also keeps the learner engaged; making it more memorable, which is the main goal.

If you can source true stories from your organisation, then great, but we advise against using real names. Taking risks like indicating this happened last week is about as far as you can and should go on a personal level when referring to organisation examples.

If you dont have examples from your organisation, you can construct stories, either from profiled cases in the public domain, or through scripting simple narratives.

The top three narratives in compliance elearning take these formats:

1. Self-contained case studies:A one or two screen exposition that typically follows the flow of:

Context: this person was in this situation

Action: they did / didnt do X Consequences: impact on the firm

the customer, and them Reflection: what they should have

done to reduce the risk and avoid the consequences

These can work well for overall context setting and to emphasise key points of risk throughout a module. The screen shown earlier is a truncated version of this.

2. Episodic case study:Where a module has a more involved set of steps, you could construct a case study that learners return to as the module progresses.

For example, if theres a three step process for compliance, you could have case studies in the context of each process, updating the story with each step.

3. Expert story:Get your SME involved by sharing their stories and experiences. You could record their stories with audio or video. We have clients shooting great footage on their iPhones. The cost for capturing authentic voices is nothing like it used to be. Real people sharing real experiences provides credibility and authenticity that will get people paying attention.

And dont feel the need to include endless numbers or anecdotes focus on the key risks that youre trying to communicate and ensure that the stories are tightly constructed and support your overall intention.

Quick Tip: Scenarios dont have to be media driven to be immersive they just need to be plausible and well-constructed to make the decision points sufficiently challenging. All the effort is in the scripting. Make sure the elearning stands up to scrutiny, and push your SMEs hard to help create realistic, challenging scenarios and questions. Take a look at the example below:

Here the learner is taken through a short scenario and then presented with decision points.

8Shorten and sharpenHook them from the beginning. Your elearning should be sharp, short, and memorable. Structure your compliance course around your key message. Dont inundate your learners with unnecessary content. Stay focused on your intention for creating the course. It will help you stay on track putting the most crucial information at the forefront.

Less really is more. Make it bite-sized. The last thing your busy employees want to do is to take another lengthy course. Most people will mentally check out and run through the course not absorbing a thing. Consider cutting up your course into shorter courses think courselet. If you stay short, sharp, and memorable you will be right on target.

Make every screen countCondensing your course into bite-size nuggets will force you to look at the content with a more critical eye. Every screen, every point, every word should have a reason for its existence. Put yourself in the learners shoes. Ask yourself, Is this content filler or truly relevant?

Quick tip: It is easy to lose sight of this when designing your training. Organie your training by keeping your message to three or four main points to give learners a chance to remember your message.

Think about what is easier to remember; reading a question and marking the right answer, or being fully engaged while watching a story unfold in front of your eyes and then helping the main character choose the right path forward. I bet you chose the second option.

Remember: It isnt the length of the course that makes it impactful, its the content and the way it resonates with the learner.

Quick tip: Design for multiple devices. Make your content easily viewable. Consider making your compliance content accessible via multi-device so it is easy to access on the go. And because youre creating short nuggets of content rather than long courses, it will be easy to digest when employees are on the move.

Learn more at: www.kineo.com/adapt

9Make the learners role clear and provide a clear call to actionThe most important aspect of any compliance elearning is proving that people actually know what they need to do in the real world after they finish the training program. Help them see how they can take this information back to their jobs, what they should look out for, and how they should change their own behavior.

Design your course so that people have a clear sense of what they need to do in order to reduce risk for the company and for themselves. Be sure to make what needs to be done very explicit, not just in the policy. The learner should understand his/her responsibility and take into consideration what needs to be done to reduce risk. The learners role cant be about simple recall of facts that will fade away from short term memory within minutes. It must involve putting those facts into practice.

Quick Tip: Assessment is going to be the backbone of your compliance approach. More than anything, you want people to be able to show they get it. Design an assessment that you and your internal customers agree is tough enough; meaning you really need to know what to do and how to do it. Then give people complete control over when they do that assessment. You dont want to force people through some screen by screen, locked-down piece of learning. Make it relevant, sharp, interactive and new.

So, what can elearning bring to compliance training? It can convey key messages with

pacing and tone; if well designed it can break down a complex set of risks and build up a clear picture point by point

It brings consistency where a webinar or cascaded model of delivery may not

It can be more engaging than a passive document or one-way video or audio piece through a combination of different interactions and uses of media

The learners role cant be about simple recall of facts that will fade away from short term memory within minutes. It must involve putting those facts into practice.

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It can introduce challenge through well structured, searching questions that require intelligent response

It can be personalised by giving users some choice and possibly some recommended pathways through the content depending on who they are and what they need to know.

Most importantly in a compliance context: It can give you proof. Dissemination of documents, audio overviews are good at giving context, but theyre one way traffic. Assessment (and tracking of elearning via an LMS) simply proves that people have done something. Yes its true; you cannot force people to learn. But you can design an assessment that challenges people and gives you a stronger basis to measure what is working and whats not. You can call that a cover your backside strategy. But when the regulatory authorities come knocking to see how effectively youve reduced risk, you know that is what they will look for.

Elearning doesnt have to be the high-end option either. With more rapid tools like Articulate Storyline currently being used in organisations, creating a short focused elearning course does not have to break your budget.

Lastly, compliance training doesnt stop on the screen.

If youre aiming for lasting behavior change, it helps to provide a continuous learning experience. Most of us dont change our behaviors after one viewing of a commercial or reading one news story: Behavior change takes time. Advertisers know this well and its why organisations are willing to spend so much on marketing.

Start thinking more like an ad agency. Design programs that communicate consistent and clear messages through a variety of channels on a regular basis. Even if your learners have taken your elearning, let them see the key themes and messages throughout their day in the form of posters, and email reminders, and links to short video that reinforce what needs to happen. Lather, rinse, repeat. Reinforce, repeat, remind.

Compliance communication campaigns are crucial to long-term success that goes beyond box-ticking. However, sending an email every couple months hardly constitutes as a campaign, so be honest with yourself here. Are you really delivering a thoughtful campaign? Also, what incentives do employees have for paying attention?

Though, email appears to be a popular delivery method, it may not be the best. Be sure to measure open and click rates. Have a call to action and make it voluntary to see who is really paying attention.

If you are sensing that one particular communication channel is being overused or getting stale, consider new tools or experiences to mix it up. Better to adapt than to continue delivering content to a disengaged audience, or, worse yet, a non-existent one. Get a clear understanding of your employees and their preferences. Are they more likely to respond to an email, a meeting announcement, a lunch & learn, a poster in the hallway, a competition? Be proactive in understanding what they are most responsive to.

In our 2014 Compliance Training & Communication Survey:

61.4% responded yes to having a compliance communication program in addition to training.

81.3% selected emails as one of the top tools for delivering compliance communication.

Other top tools included: Webinars, Videos and Posters

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