5 Reasons To Use Storytelling In Compliance Training

Compliance training is not something employees historically look forward to. The typical experience is too long, too slow, too generic, too…compliancy? Most often, it’s boring. But your company isn’t boring! You’ve got stories to tell! And telling those stories not only adds context to the valuable lessons you need to get across, it changes the way your staff views training, and your company in general. Here are five ways that storytelling can enhance your company’s training experience.

1. Stories Are Memorable

What’s your favorite movie? Your favorite book? Could you explain the narrative to someone who’d never seen or read it? Of course you could! Think about how many words you’d use to tell the tale from start to finish. 100s, maybe thousands! Do you think of yourself as someone who can memorize 1000s of words at a time? Most of us can’t. But when ideas are strung together attached to a narrative, our brains process them in a way that’s easier to recall later. 

There’s an amazing Stanford University study that split graduate students into two groups and presented each with a series of words written on index cards.  The participants were asked to try to remember as many words as possible.  The first group was directed to use rote memorization, the second to form little narratives for each card, weaving a story that included each word on the card. The results were astonishing. The rote cohort recalled 13% of the words on average. The narrative cohort recalled 93% of the words on average.

Once you’re aware that a method of teaching produces a result that is SEVEN TIMES more effective, it becomes almost negligent to not capitalize on it.

2. Stories Are Unique

I often comment that every company has a policy that says, ‘Don’t pay a bribe,’ but that the way bribery presents itself is specific to each entity.  If you’re a company that’s big enough to send out compliance training, you have a risk of bribery.  But would you use the same language to train someone how to interact with a government official whose hand is out for a facilitation payment to ‘expedite the process’ as you would for when someone at a record label is trying to get their artist onto your popular playlist?  Or a doctor asking for speaking engagements in exchange for using your products?  You could…but would it connect?

Using narrative storytelling in your training customizes the experience for your audience and lets them know this training was made just for them.  It’s immediately obvious to most employees when a training has come ‘off the shelf’ and is designed to just ‘check the box.’  But a custom story, told in your offices, at the conferences your staff attends, or at the meetings your employees take with 3rd parties helps the user relate to what they’re seeing.  A realization from the trainee of “Oh, yeah, that just happened to me/someone down the hall!’ immediately sparks their curiosity and focus.  It leads to “What should I do in that situation?’ as opposed to “Why are they telling me this, I don’t ever deal with that!”

Your goal is to educate your staff in a specific, targeted, and pragmatic way so they know what’s expected of them in the situations they’re put in.  Your employees deserve a training that speaks directly to their experiences.  Using stories that feature them in scenes that reflect your work environment accomplishes both.

3. Stories Are Fun!

Training can be fun.  I recognize that’s a weird thing to say – but it’s true!  Training has a deservedly bad reputation.  Most are made simply for the sake of being able to say they were done and almost none consider the user’s experience.  All the most successful phone apps, video games, and online shopping experiences are constructed around user experience.  And since those activities are often what people are up to when they should be paying attention to a training, perhaps there is something to learn there!

Our technological culture brings a layer of interactivity to most of our experiences and replicating that within a narrative structure is an incredibly effective way to engage your audience.  I’ll leave it to my business partner Scott Petts to talk about what he refers to as “meaningful interactions” in a training environment, but getting to that choice point – the moment where the user has to consider what they’d actually do in a given situation – requires setting the scene.  Using storytelling to lead your learners down a path toward a decision provides necessary context but also allows for creativity and humor to be part of the overall experience.

We have no say over things like the average modern-day adult’s attention span.  What we do have say over is the type of experience we want people to have while they’re taking their training.  Keep it short and keep it relevant – but don’t forget to have a little fun - your staff will appreciate the effort!

4. Stories Are Diverse

If you work at a large, global corporation, it is a near certainty that you employ people from a wide range of races, sexual orientations, gender expressions, accessibilities, and more.  It’s challenging these days to address diversity in a way that doesn’t trigger intense emotions, but this isn’t about legislation or who happens to be in power in any given country at any given moment - representation matters. 

Now consider that training is something more than just telling your employees what the rules are.  It’s a company-wide communication.  It’s one of the rare moments when you have the entire staff’s mandatory attention and can express who you are as a company.  It’s a chance to let everyone know they are seen, that they matter.

Using storytelling in your training allows you to present a diverse array of characters.  The simple act of representing characters with different names, skin tones, orientations, and backgrounds sends an impactful message that every single employee should feel welcome. 

We love hearing feedback (positive and negative!) from our clients, and we’ve heard quite a bit over the years.  Nothing has been more meaningful to me personally than when a Spotify employee commented, upon watching one of our custom episodes featuring the awesomely snarky, blue-haired, young Indian-British woman Prisha, “That moment when you feel seen in a training for the first time.”

5. Stories Are Timeless

One of the true measures of a training’s effectiveness is what is commonly referred to as ‘stickiness’.  While it’s important to present something in a manner that is understandable in the moment, it’s equally necessary for the lessons to stay with the learner so they can utilize their newfound knowledge in practical settings.  Simply put, a training’s usefulness shouldn’t end when the training experience ends. 

Using memorable stories and characters in your training gives your lessons longer lifespans.  Your staff will organically share thoughts about the experience around the present-day version of the ‘water cooler’.  The more people are talking about the training, the more the lessons are repeated in their heads.  Additionally, it allows you to capitalize on iconic moments and people from the training through the use of ancillary content such as posters.  We’ve even had the experience of our clients creating custom emojis of their favorite characters and using them in Slack messages to one another!

When people are invested in a narrative and characters attached to lessons, they internalize those messages as identifiable with what they’re invested in.  That is what the term ‘engagement’ in this context means – people actually caring about what’s going to happen next and excitedly moving forward to see it.  Once you’ve achieved that, you’ve got a captive audience that’s ready to learn!