The power of fun. It has a way of engaging us, even when the topic of conversation is rather dry and boring.
Imagine a compliance video covering harassment and discrimination and ethical issues. Typically, the L&D department will use scare tactics and other traditional methods to reinforce the pitfalls and repercussions of non-compliance.
Now imagine a TV-styled talk show called Workplace Tonight! which tackles the dreary topic of codes of conduct – and imagine that the host is called “Acton Nicely” … kind of brings a smile to your face already, doesn’t it?
The brief from the client was to help make ethics and compliance training memorable and easy to recall in the situations where it would be needed most.
The producers collaborated with a writing team from The Colbert Report, along with comedy writers from The Second City to put training modules together for a group of pharmaceutical companies.
The topics included areas such as harassment and discrimination, bribery and corruption, conflicts of interest, and the importance of speaking up and of ethical leadership.
The result was a meaningful piece of entertainment, with the right dose of humour to tickle an emotive response – making it easy to remember when it mattered most.
So, you might be thinking how you can get the entertainment levels up for your compliance training, without breaking the bank, by hiring the writing team from the John Oliver show.
Here are some points to ponder.
How compliance training can be fun AND deliver results
A lack of engagement in mandatory compliance training is putting organisations at risk – legally, financially and brand.
In today’s environment in Australia, where sexual harassment laws are being broken, tested and tightened – there is a greater risk than ever before, and organisations need to use a more targeted and impactful approach to ensure their training sticks.
It is particularly surprising to see organisations from the entertainment industry in the news headlines for misconduct complaints. One would think that they, of all organisations, would be getting the communication right.
The facts are, that most compliance training fails – and for the predictable reasons:
- There are a lot of rules and regulations when onboarding – there is a danger of employee ‘overwhelm’ if delivered too much, too soon.
- The courses are too long. With Millennials dominating the workforce, they expect shorter bursts or learning when and wherever they want it, so micro-learning and short, bite-sized eLearning which is personalised to people’s roles and context is king.
- Lack of engagement with traditional courses. L&D that focuses on delivering more engaging experiences, imagery, storytelling through video, and higher involvement, such as gamification – is more accessible than ever and can also augment existing training to bring it to life for learners.
Leveraging the power of Play to engage and reduce stress
During Covid, is an excellent time to roll out compliance training.
With 88% of employees encouraged to work from home, businesses that use gamification and the power of play in their training, can improve productivity, earn loyalty and decrease employee stress and anxiety.
So what is gamification?
It is the application of game-based elements (games, points, badges, leaderboards, competition, rewards, etc.) in real-world activities to increase audience engagement. By deploying these tactics, companies accelerate the learning process, improve retention rates, and promote a fun environment. In fact 80% of employees enjoy the game-based learning at work more than traditional training methods.
An impactful and successful game-based learning program includes:
- Identifying the core business goals and how gamification can help achieve them
- Investing in professional instructional designers who can develop and run a successful training
- Developing programs that have fun aspects to engage the learner in friendly competition and provide a sense of personal achievement
- Testing the employee experience and continuously improving the concept
Fun Training Games that Promote the Power of Play
With the stress of 2020 still affecting our lives, we need fun now more than ever. Depending on the industry, training content, and audience there are several games worth considering to engage your employees. Some games are ideal for powering up your asynchronous learning, such as:
- Wheel of Fortune®:Train concepts through the Wheel of Fortune game show format using word puzzles
- Jump:Challenge employees with a game that challenges players to reach new heights by targeting boosts, avoiding obstacles, and answering questions
- Match 3:Excite employees with the most popular casual game mechanic [2], in which they must create identical combinations of three or more icons and answer questions along the way
Building a fun training game may take trial and error to determine what best fits the business objectives and employee preferences. No matter what game you decide to implement, it needs to be motivating, entertaining and rewarding for employee engagement.
If you’ve used games and are ready to level up, consider creating your own ‘arcade’ and fill it with games, activities, challenges, videos, learning content, points, badges, leaderboards, and prizes. By creating a destination filled with daily challenges you will reduce learning friction, eliminate boring compliance training, and see a significant increase in engagement and knowledge retention.
To find out more about how you can leverage gamification in your compliance training, talk to the team at ITC Learning – contact us here.