Entertaining Training 
In this episode of Creativity and Compliance, Tom and Ronnie discuss the importance of creativity as a vehicle to improve influence and impact.
Ethics & Compliance programs tend to focus on 7 fundamental elements of an “effective” compliance program – written policies and procedures, compliance leadership and oversight, training and education, effective lines of communication, internal monitoring and auditing, enforcement of standards through disciplinary guidelines, and prompt response to detected problems through corrective actions. And yet, most programs are inefficient and ineffective. This is because they are missing the most important element…creativity!
Stop Serving Prison Food
You may have all the right ingredients for a tasty, nutritious “meal”, however what you really have is:
You may have all the right ingredients for a tasty, nutritious “meal”, however what you really have is:
- Policies that are bland and on hard-to-reach shelves
- Communications that are bitter and full of empty calories
- Training that leaves a bad taste in your mouth
- Leaders who go on long, intermittent fasting
- Employees getting fat on sweet, unhealthy, easy to access misbehavior
- Ignoring the Chef who then treat you like the busboy who is there to clean up their mess
“We’re serving prison food and wondering why our organization isn’t in better shape!”
We Need To Season & Cook The Food
The food we’re serving has no flavor and hasn’t been cooked. It has no nutritional value. To unlock the potential of your program, we need to take the time to season and cook the food. In this metaphor that means making an effort to add some creativity to all your training and communication touchpoints.
- E&C Branding: Make sure your image (name, logo, tagline, mascot) matches the helpful, welcoming, supportive resource that you are.
- The Code & Policies: Make sure your core resources are simple and easily digestible.
- Communications: Regular communications and learning reinforcement should be short, playful, positive and entertaining so that employees will want to indulge on these nutritious snacks.
- Training: Avoid the large once-a-year e-learning binge-meal. Shorter, more entertaining meals will leave to healthier body and mind.
- Leadership: Packing up short, entertaining nuggets for leaders to deploy. If it has some entertainment value and doesn’t take up a lot of time, leaders will pass out these snacks on your behalf, without the eye roll.
Creativity isn’t a luxury, it’s essential.
Taking a little extra time to make your programming more creative, playful, positive and entertaining makes it more likely that your employees will ask to meet the Chef, give you a good yelp review and will voluntarily visit your restaurant on a more regular basis. So don’t forget to flavor and cook the food!
Ronnie Feldman is the CEO & Creative Director at Learnings & Entertainments, a learning content provider made up of comedians and entertainers with a focus on corporate risk. www.LearningsEntertainments.com