Welcome to a new edition of “Dear Connie, the Compliance Training Specialist,” where Connie answers questions about life science compliance training concepts and discusses new ideas for making that training more effective.
This week: Connie hears from a compliance training manager looking for a more exciting way to train new sales representatives.
Dear Connie,
I know I should change my new hire compliance training session for the sales representatives because my PowerPoint deck might be getting a little stale, but I only get an hour in front of them, so I don’t really have time for a more creative approach. Any suggestions?
Concerned Compliance Manager in Cambridge
Dear Concerned,
You may be surprised to hear that an hour is more than enough time to conduct a more engaging and more memorable live training session. Now is the time to ditch that overused and dull PowerPoint deck!
Make it More Competitive
Research shows that learners are motivated by competition. So how about creating a Jeopardy-style game format with questions designed around your company’s policies and risks? In my experience, five categories, with five questions per category, fills an hour of time. Make sure you take a few minutes after each question to explain why the answer is right or wrong and ask the participants for examples of similar situations they have faced.
Depending on the size of your audience, I suggest you pick 3-5 participants per team to “represent” groups in the audience and have representatives buzz in once they think they know the answer. It’s a great way to take the learning to another level and create an interactive experience where ideas are exchanged with the audience. One warning: have someone there with a timer to make sure they don’t buzz in and then take forever to figure out the answer.
Make it More Engaging
You could also create an interactive workshop where the participants are divided into groups and asked to “solve” compliance scenarios together. Break the workshop into two activities to keep it moving and make sure each team has a tablet or laptop on a table. I like the idea of a Compliance Sprint as the first activity. Have the teams solve a series of exercises (a card sort works well) based on situations they are likely to encounter in the field.
You could also mix in a Compliance Mystery. The same teams play compliance “detective” and solve more complex scenarios with the help of a series of clues. The clues can be emails, phone call transcripts, business cards from a meeting, or whatever clues help provide hints about the scenario. Be creative and make it fun, but make sure you make it realistic in terms of their work activities. Of course, both activities should be scored and tracked on a leader board to raise the engagement level even more.
If you have the time and resources, you can certainly create the game or the workshop in-house, but my friends at PharmaCertify (that’s the compliance training division of NXLevel Solutions) have workshops just like the ones I described that are easily customized with your content. I’ve been there when their clients have used their workshops, and wow it is fun to watch the learning! They’d be happy to demo the workshops for you. Just email Tessa Hoyer at thoyer@nxlevelsolutions.com.
Thanks for the question and remember to make it fun and make it memorable!
Your compatriot in compliance training,
Connie