We all have attended mandatory training that is less than inspiring. It’s usually boring, full of dos and don’ts, extremely wordy, and produces very little learning transfer. I promise you that mandatory training can be fun with the right design, materials, and delivery! Let me share how Concerning Learning makes mandatory prevention of sexual harassment training an enjoyable experience.

The Problem: How do I make mandatory training fun and less painful?

Most mandatory training is not engaging nor interactive. Frequently it is just a page-turner, data-dump that where very little learning occurs. Let’s face it, by its nature mandatory training is a check-the-box activity that no one really wants to attend. So the question is how do you make it less painful and fun because you have to do it anyway.

Another challenge of mandatory training is that it is often an annual requirement where the same people attend it year after year. So how do you achieve the same learning objectives and design the training differently? 

The Solution: Gamify Mandatory Training

The key is to keep your design short, fun and impactful. Here are a few tips to help you…

Do your homework—It’s important that you do your homework (learner and organizational analysis) to see what led up to the mandatory requirement. This will help you get the learners bought into the learning process and the mandatory need. It also enables you to lead an engaging discussion during the debrief.

 Get Them Acquainted with the Policy—I created a crossword puzzle to get the learners familiar with their sexual harassment policy. The fill-in-the-blank questions align with the learning objectives. Have you ever watched a group of adults try to complete a crossword puzzle with 32 answers in 15 minutes? It’s is so exciting to see the learning happen while they try to complete the puzzle.

Make Them Think—Most mandatory training promotes passive learning. The key to making topics like sexual harassment engaging is to get learners to do the heavy lifting. I used the debrief to share the answers and have meaningful discussions. The discussions make connections between real-life situations and the contents of their policy.

In order for the learners in my class to complete the crossword puzzle, they had to become familiar with their sexual harassment policy.

Encourage Collaboration and Competition—It’s always a great way to create engagement when you add the opportunity for learners to work together to complete a task, even if the task is a crossword puzzle on a sexual harassment policy. To add a little more fun to a collaborative learning experience, I added a little competition to see which group can could come up with the most answers.

The Results: Sexual Harassment Allegations Have Decreased

This year, Concerning Learning conducted 15 Establishing a Harassment-Free Workplace workshops in five days. Previously, we trained 500 employees in the same organization. As a result of our approach to mandatory training, the number of our clients’ sexual harassment allegations has decreased considerably and learners no longer dread the mandatory requirement to attend this annual workshop.