5 Tips for Leading an Annual Day of Compliance Training
In this Compliance Clip (video), Adam provides 5 tips for leading an annual day of compliance training. As many banks continue to have an annual day of training that includes at least some compliance training, it is important for compliance professionals to be able to effectively deliver the content of the training. The reality of this is that the deliver can be a challenge because staff often resist the training and push back a bit or even complain that it doesn’t apply to them. Therefore, it is essential that compliance training be delivered in the best way possible. Adam uses this video to provide 5 tips (and a bonus) that he uses when leading compliance training for all employees of a financial institution.
Also, if you are interested in having Adam speak at one of your future compliance training days, you can contact us at members@compliancecohort.com.
Video Transcript
The following is a transcript of this video.
This Compliance Clip is going to talk about leading an annual day of compliance training. What could be more exciting than that?
What happened last week was I had the privilege to lead a bank in their annual day of compliance training and I did this for about 400 employees or so. And we had a lot of fun. I've done compliance training for banks in the past, but this time I wanted to make sure it was a fantastic day, which it was. We did about three and a half hours of compliance training to all employees at this pretty good-sized organization, and it went really well. So what I thought I would do in this Compliance Clip is share some tips with you on how this went well and what I did to prepare. So these are some tips for you iIf you're doing this annual day of compliance training, like a lot of you still do - I know some of you don't, - but some of you do on days like Columbus day, Veterans day, President’s day, or even Martin Luther King day. So there's some tips that you can use to conduct this all-employee training.
First and foremost, I think it's important to tip number one, know your audience. You have to understand who your audience is because in these annual days of training, you have very few compliance people and us, compliance people, like to talk to compliance people, so it's important to understand who your audience is. We have everybody from tellers to lenders to janitors, directors and the president, CEO and everybody in between. So we can't get into the weeds too much. We have to really understand how to approach this and make sure that we're talking to everybody, which is a task in and of itself. That's tip number one.
Tip number two is to understand the expectations for the day. Are the expectations to go into the weeds? Probably not. The expectations are probably to make sure that everybody is comfortable. Whenever I do compliance training on annual days of training like this, what I do is I have a good conversation with the director of compliance or the management team and ask them what are the expectations. What are we trying to accomplish? Why are we doing this training? Who is this for? And just getting a clear picture and some clear communication as to what is being done.
It's very important and it will help. Believe it or not, this is one of the most important things you can do to help ensure a very successful day of training. That's tip number two.
Tip number three is to keep it simple, stupid. And stupid is usually me. What happens when we have an audience of a vast variety, we really need to, I hate to use this word, but water it down. We need to take a step back and talk at a high level. We're talking about high level topics and giving high level pictures rather than going into the weeds. And for us compliance folks, I understand that's difficult to do sometimes because we know so much, we have to teach a 101 course where we could probably teach an 808 course. So really keeping it simple. And again, going back to tip number one is to know our audience. That's the best way to cover everybody. And if we have a large group, it's the best way to keep everybody engaged.
Speaking of keeping people engaged, tip number four is to teach in stories. One of the things I love to do is to tell stories. For example, I wish I had a story here, but I don't, this is a three to five minute compliance clip so I don't have time to do that. Just imagine I was talking about Jack and Jill and how they met this wolf. And that's a terrible story. Anyway, the idea is to teach in stories, right? When we teach in stories, people remember it.
Some of my favorite comedians are comedians who tell stories. So I love to incorporate funny stories about myself and relate to compliance and actual case studies. So it's two different things you can do: tell stories about yourself and your family related to compliance, or you can talk about actual case studies that relate to the topic in hand. But when you tell stories, it'll make it much more enjoyable for everybody - you and them. Believe me.
Tip number five is to have fun. I've actually, over the years, really tried to study comedy, believe it or not, I'm terrible at it. I wish I could do a day or a compliance clip of just stand up compliance comedy. Boom, right? That'd be fun. But I've yet to do it. If you really want me to do it, email me and say you liked this video and you want me to do it. And maybe I will get to that point sometime. I don't know. We'll see. But I like to have fun. I like to incorporate comedy. I like to tell stories. I like to laugh and incorporate games and do things that make it fun. And that will make your day go much better when you're doing an annual day of compliance training.
Now I wanted to throw in a little bonus! We got a little bonus tip here over here. Of course, in preparing for this, one through five are things on how to really plan your day, but when you're preparing, if you're the one doing the training and you're speaking, the best advice I have is to actually run through it and speak like you're speaking to your audience.
When I'm speaking to 20 people, that's a whole lot different than when I'm speaking to 400. So for last week, what I did was, actually here in my studio, I was practicing in my mind, pretending that there were 400 people there. And I went through it several times with 400 people. In fact, I was imagining closer to a thousand, so when the day came and there was actually 400, I really wasn't nervous at all. I knew exactly what to expect. I saw the venue the night before I was planning for it, and that's just some of the things that I do to prep for an annual day of compliance training.
Hopefully these tips are beneficial for you. Some of you I know do these annual days of compliance training. Some of you may actually want to hire this out like the bank did last week.
That's all I have for today. I hope you found this Compliance Clip to be fun and a little, little entertaining, but that's all I have for you today.