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Brent Schlenker's avatar

Much of our L&D lives are still hung up on that recurring notion that "we need to do better". But do we? Let's get this part out of the way: Yes, of course, we should always be striving to do better. And the digital assets or learning solutions we create should be powerful enough to chance behaviors and drive real change. Okay, now that we've dispensed with that, let's get back to reality. Compliance training exists for legal reasons. Legal issues are highly defined and detailed... lots of fine print. If a company can PROVE X, Y, Z, things, they will not be held liable for issues that would incur large financial costs. Solution: Hire person/team to do what legal doc says; no more, no less. And require that there is proof. That's all any company is concerned about. And that's why training courses are as mundane as they are. This is also why no company will spend more money to "make them better". Why would they. There is no such thing as being MORE compliant than you were before. You are compliant, or you aren't. Auditors will come in, review the documentation that proves everything is compliant. But they won't take your training course. Even if they did, they would say, "damn... that sucked...but you covered everything. You pass. See ya next year". Until the law says "prove that your training directly caused behavior change with a double blind study" you will never get your business leaders to buy a refrigerator. Small ice cubes get the job done.

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