Learning is a complex thing. One of the seven elements you need to master as an E&C pro is communicating and training ... In other words, ensuring people learn. Since there’s a lot of noise in the E&C space around how best to ensure people learn (and, being honest, I’m one of those folks making noise), I feel a responsibility to call it like I see it. And what I see is this: “get engagement,” “you gotta engage,” “no engagement, no learning”.
Yes … and that isn’t enough.
Let me unpack that idea a bit. You hold a position of power in your org; generally, when the E&C team speaks, people listen. In order to actively listen, a human must engage. That means YOU ALREADY HAVE ENGAGEMENT. So, if someone has engaged—and since the common wisdom is that engagement is the piece you need to have—why then do things still go sideways?
Because, if all you have is engagement then as soon as the next shiny thing pops up, the engagement ends. You got their attention, but the next loud thing took it away. Learning only happens when we make a CONNECTION.
A visual representation of your employees connecting with your messages. |Source: ABC’s Boy Meets World via Giphy.com
You can get all the engagement in the world and still see no behavioral change. For E&C pros, the goal (and the challenge!) is getting employees to apply what they learn correctly when they are doing their jobs. When you feel like all your training and comms are not making a difference, it’s probably time to stop focusing solely on engagement and get to work on connection.
So how do I do that?
🎯 First, identify the real problem. (Hint: It’s not engagement.)
In my experience the problem is relevance: The content, or message, is not related to a given employee’s role, job tasks, or responsibilities. And when that’s the case, employees figure out pretty quickly that whatever the message, it’s a waste of their time and energy to pay attention to it.
The solution: Stop worrying about whether your training is “boring,” and instead focus on whether it’s useful. When it’s useful to someone, then, intrinsically, it won’t be boring because it’s directly relevant to their work. Don't worry about gamification or shiny engagement toys until your training is useful to your audience.
🪖 Next, remember that you don’t need to transform your employees into an army of compliance professionals.
Being a compliance pro is your job. Their job is something else that the business needs. And because your jobs are different, you shouldn’t try to train them the same way you were trained (unless, of course, they are doing compliance-type work, and then yeah, you’re gonna need to train them the same way).
For most employees, engagement and connection happen when you meet them where they are. Don’t give them the “here’s a risk; it’s your responsibility to figure out next steps” spiel. If they knew how to spot issues and mitigate risks on their own, they wouldn’t need compliance training in the first place.
📋 Now, start framing your training around their tasks.
Risks don’t just magically materialize from thin air. They happen because someone does a task in a way that exacerbates any inherent risk contained within that task.
For example, you do not get in trouble because corruption is a thing that exists in the world. The trouble happens when a salesperson approves a third-party invoice with an obvious red flag, and accounts payable doesn’t catch it, which results in your company paying a bribe.
That wasn’t supposed to be on the menu! | Source: Hell’s Kitchen on Fox’s Food Club via Giphy.com
The task in this scenario was to review an invoice for red flags. You can train employees to do it and to improve at it, thereby creating a connection because this task is immediately applicable to their job. Once that connection is made, they’ll catch the next red flag, pause to get clarity, and/or raise their hand to ask a question. Which are all the things you want them to do because that mitigates risk!
And bonus: you can determine whether these connections are working via monitoring and auditing! These types of tasks are measurable; they can be checked, scored, and reviewed. The data can then be used to identify and help upskill someone who just doesn’t get it, or to discipline someone who doesn’t want to get it.
Does this style and approach take more time and effort than focusing on engagement? Yes. Is it the right time and effort to spend? Yes, absolutely. Not only will you be engaging more deeply with your organization and the people in it, but you’ll also be connecting with them directly on things that could otherwise adversely impact your org. And that, friends, is how you and your program add value.