A key aim of compliance training is to ensure its content is retained effectively. Organizational psychologists have conducted research that suggests this is where dramatic storytelling can help. Read on to learn why storytelling is paramount for your learners and how to incorporate drama into your compliance training solutions.
People Learn Best from Stories
Peg Neuhauser’s work shows that learning delivered through a well-told story is remembered better, and for longer, than learning delivered through factual text. This finding is supported by Jerome Bruner’s work, which shows that facts delivered through a story may be 20 times more likely to be retained.
As most compliance-related legislation and regulation continues to focus on individual conduct and decision-making, compliance training is increasingly adopting the successful storytelling techniques used to change behavior in other corporate learning environments such as health and safety; customer service; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); and leadership.
Why Is Storytelling Paramount?
Because humans identify deeply with stories, storytelling in compliance videos enables people to imagine and explore how they would act in specific circumstances, learn from mistakes, and examine behaviors in a risk-free environment.
Storytelling is an effective way to demonstrate the consequences of poor decision-making. While compliance may lack drama, noncompliance carries significant consequences, as numerous organizations have discovered. Stories also enable organizations to showcase values and decision-making in context, rather than as abstract concepts. It is equally important to show the consequences of good decision-making. A story that shows the prevention of a major problem delivers a powerful and positive message.
The Importance of the Right Story
Using alarming stories and news in traditional compliance training is typical. But is this approach landing with the learners?
By the time news stories make it into course content, they are often “old news.” They feel distant from the learners, creating a perception of, “It would never happen here!” The traditional style of featuring fictitious scenarios in compliance training is also problematic. Let’s face it—they have a reputation for being dull and lifeless by simply presenting straightforward facts. Both styles fail to elicit the level of emotional engagement that actively changes behavior, nor are they memorable.
How Do You Get the Best from a Story?
It is important to choose the right story and to tell it in the right way. What is “right” will depend on many factors, including the topic, audience, learning objectives, and, of course, your budget.
Following are considerations when planning to use storytelling in your compliance training:
Learning Objectives
Identifying the key learning objectives is essential in all types of learning. These objectives should be the focus of the drama. For compliance training, these would typically include:
- Personal responsibility and accountability
- The importance and impact of a particular rule or piece of legislation
- How to recognize “red flags”
- When and how to escalate concerns
Format
Dramatized video will garner the biggest impact, but illustrated graphics or stories built from photo stills are also impactful alternatives. The important thing is to draw the learners in with recognizable characters and situations and the right level of jeopardy to keep their attention.
Location, Location, Location
Setting the story within your firm delivers the most impact. However, this approach may sound alarms. The argument against this approach is based on the notion that we should avoid depicting our own people engaging in improper behavior. This is understandable, but most compliance breaches are not due to individuals deliberately doing bad things; instead, these breaches result from mistakes, a lack of understanding, or failures to follow a process or escalate concerns.
Techniques
There are a variety of techniques to maximize the emotional impact of a compliance drama:
- Netflix-style trailers released ahead of the learning
- Spaced learning with a cliff-hanger at the end of a multiple-part drama
- Recurring characters whose personalities and backstories can be developed
- “Sliding doors”-style alternate endings
- Blended learning that uses the same characters in posters or other learning materials—lifting the characters and their dilemmas off the screen and into the workplace
Compliance Training in Action
A financial services organization required a course on trade and transaction reporting. This compliance topic is characterized by its high level of technicality and complexity, presenting substantial risk that frequently leads to significant regulatory fines.
The learning objectives were derived from the repeated failures listed in the disciplinary notices published by the regulators—inadequate procedures, manual mistakes, a misunderstanding of the rules, and a failure to monitor and raise concerns.
Here, traditional compliance training would fail to engage the learners or change behaviors. The situation called for drama!
Our solution includes a three-part video-drama set in the client’s office. The course captures the learners’ attention from the start by jumping straight into the drama.
Part 1: Opening Scene
A senior executive receives a call from the regulator who is preparing to launch an investigation. The executive schedules an urgent meeting with their team to formulate a response. To capture the learners’ attention, we start by focusing on the negative outcomes that arise from making errors.
Tutorial Content
The subsequent tutorial content delves into examining the purpose and significance of the rules. This information is now contextualized with the underlying motivation that nobody wants their boss to receive a similar distressing call from regulators.
Part II: Second Scene
In this scene, the learner becomes part of the meeting. They rewind the clock to see what went wrong and how the errors occurred.
Tutorial Content
The tutorial content provided in this section encompasses a comprehensive overview of the rules, existing processes, roles, monitoring, and other related aspects.
Part III: Third Scene
The internal investigation uncovers a manual error that a junior employee had detected. Despite the employee raising a concern, their line manager failed to address it appropriately.
Tutorial Content
The tutorial content for the final scene focuses on personal responsibility and escalation. It looks at the importance of escalating and acting on concerns and the consequences of failing to do so.
The drama brought a dull compliance topic to life, and the three scenes addressed all the learning objectives. Stills and images of the characters could then be used to extend the learning experience through blended-learning resources. The story is memorable, and being reminded of the scenes immediately brings back the emotion of that call, that meeting, and the training about how to avoid becoming an extra in that drama!
Compliance Training—Let’s Bring It to Life!
Compliance training is a vital part of most organizations’ learning strategies. To equip your learners with the right knowledge in a way that leads to sustained behavior change, it is vital that your training is memorable.
Interested in incorporating drama and storytelling into your compliance training? Get in touch today.
About the Authors
