Welcome to this installment in the Building Better Compliance Training series. Our mission at PharmaCertify is to help you reduce risk through better compliance training, and my goal in this series to provide you first-hand tips and ideas for creating a more effective compliance training curriculum.
In my last post, I revealed the formula for making compliance training more effective: Core Training + Reinforcement + Performance Support = Integration (C+R+PS = I). This time, I focus on the ”R” of that formula and offer five proven methods for reinforcing core training to help ensure your learners recall key concepts and policies when adherence is needed most, particularly during interactions with healthcare professionals.
Since studies show that as much as 90 percent of information learned during one event is forgotten within 30 days (remember the Forgetting Curve), here are five ideas to help ensure your learners don’t fall victim to this sad statistic:
Go “micro” to make it memorable.
Microlearning is all the rage, and for good reason. Targeted microlearning modules (we call them Compliance QuickTakes) are an ideal way to reinforce critical concepts introduced in core training. Launching a QuickTake on gifts and meals soon after core training on promotional practices, for example, helps improve retention of your company’s policies on a topic fraught with compliance risk.
In addition, today’s eLearning development tools (e.g., Articulate Storyline) make it easier and more cost effective than ever to create reinforcement modules from larger, foundational eLearning. So don’t fall into the trap of thinking one-and-done eLearning is going to meet the needs of a team facing the risk of the proverbial Forgetting Curve at every turn, especially when the opportunity to flatten that curve is just a few select reinforcement modules away.
Lights, camera, animation!
Animated video, featuring illustrated characters, is a compelling method for developing modern videos and a welcome relief for audiences steeped in the disappointment of reinforcement programs populated with dry content and unrecognizable stock photos. Illustrated characters offer a flexibility not easily matched with stock photography, and let you easily create a set of actors equal in diversity to your company’s personnel.
One of our clients regularly launches “Compliance Moments” videos to reinforce key topics from their core training. The programs feature serious content presented in a light (sometimes humorous) tone to help make the messages stick. The secret is in the writing and having a scriptwriter who combines a keen sense of instructional design with an awareness of how to create realistic scenarios is a must to make the training work. (P.S. we have these.)
Solve a compliance mystery.
Who doesn’t like a good mystery? And who wouldn’t prefer solving a compliance mystery over the typical slide-based presentation?
The days of a compliance officer speaking to a PowerPoint deck are fading fast and your learners expect a higher quality of workshop training. As importantly, a strategically scheduled compliance mystery workshop gives you the opportunity to take a “deeper dive” into the content and immerse participants in the learning, whether the environment is live or virtual.
It’s the ideal reinforcement opportunity as learners act as compliance detectives, work together to identify red flags and determine the best course of action for each scenario. To ramp up the learning even more, try sharing team scores from a leaderboard during the workshop.
It’s engaging, it’s modern, and it’s a great way to make the training relevant as you enhance retention of compliance policies and best practices.
Play a game…virtually, or in a live workshop.
Games work for reinforcement. In fact, according to a recent study, 80 percent of US workers believe game-based learning is more effective. And if they believe it, they welcome it, especially over the standard compliance training formats.
While games such as JEOPARDY! (which we also offer), come with the built-in advantage of being familiar to the learners, the format and gameplay doesn’t have to be recognizable to be effective. The key is simplicity, fun, and flexibility to customize the categories with your content.
Put simply, games work for reinforcement because they require participants to retrieve information from the long-term memory, process it in the working memory, then re-encode it back into the long-term memory (okay, maybe that wasn’t put simply).
“Escape” to more effective reinforcement training.
Escape rooms are a familiar concept for your audience. And familiarity breeds learning.
So, why not create a virtual compliance escape room to help reinforce the rules and policies around topics like virtual sales calls, speaker programs, and medical conferences? The virtual rooms we have created for clients feature a series of clickable clues followed by a series of knowledge checks based on those clues.
An important note: the knowledge checks should be challenging enough that learners will need to revisit the clues to think through the correct answers. Make it subtle and challenging. Returning to the clues to recall the correct information helps the knowledge retention process and serves to strengthen reinforcement of the messages.
Throughout 2022, we will continue to post articles on this blog, as well as infographics and tips sheets on the Insights page of our website to help you build a better compliance training curriculum. In the meantime, if you’d like to see demos of the products referenced in this article and discuss how we can help you reduce risk through training, contact us at info@pharmacertify.com.
Thanks for reading!
Sean Murphy