In this article, we’ll cover:
- Present the Compliance Objective in Positive, Non-Threatening Language
- Create a Main Character That the Audience Can Relate To
- Check and Reinforce Comprehension
- Place the Audience in Hypothetical Situations and Demonstrate Consequences
- Focus on Action as an End Result
- Follow up with Research
What Is Compliance?
Compliance refers to behavior that is consistent with requirements, guidelines, or best practices. Government agencies, corporate home offices,independent oversight boards, and others can impose restrictions and regulations, often leaving supervisors or managers to implement and enforce local compliance policies. Making videos for compliance training standardizes the training process across your organization while adapting the video content to suit your employees and workplace cultures.
Compliance involves several processes, including:
- Awareness of requirements
- Understanding of requirements
- Motivation to comply
- Opportunity to comply
- Ability to comply in complex real-world situations
Compliance videos can address each of these processes, raising awareness by explaining or presenting information. You can use training videosto promote understanding by wording explanations in terms that the audience can relate to, using visual aids and other cues. You can also use interactive videos with quizzes on the video’s core concepts to check understanding as employees learn new concepts.
A video that engages with the audience and provides them with benefits to complying can increase motivation to comply. Using specific real-world scenarios as examples illustrates to the audience that they have the opportunity to comply.
If your audience reports an inability to comply (that the policy is too vague, restrictive, confusing, contradictory, etc.), the video can show practical workarounds to perceived obstacles. If your audience reports that they lack the resources to comply, the video can demonstrate ways to access needed resources.
#1: Present the Compliance Objective in Positive, Non-Threatening Language
Audiences in compliance videos often feel defensive, perceiving the training as a punishment or as an indication that the company does not have confidence in the way that they carry out their jobs. An early priority for a compliance video is to encourage openness and respect the audience’s need for autonomy and self-esteem.
Emphasize that the company is providing the audience with valuable knowledge that they will need to navigate changing workplace requirements. At first, focus on what is gained through compliance rather than previous non-compliant behavior.
Avoid words that are loaded with political meaning. Labeling an initiative to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace as “sensitivity training,” for instance, may cause some viewers to disengage and potentially mischaracterizes the goal of the video.
#2: Create a Main Character That the Audience Can Relate To
When making videos for compliance training, consider that your audience might feel more open to change if the information comes from a guide, a friendly older colleague persona, rather than a supervisor, consultant, or corporate representative. The guide should demonstrate an understanding of and empathy for the way that compliance measures impact their work lives. They should be confident and optimistic about achieving compliance goals.
Using an animated character without a clear race or ethnic background is a tried-and-true way of keeping the character relatable to members of all ethnicities, genders, and cultures.
#3: Check and Reinforce Comprehension
Without being so effusive in praise that it comes across as condescension, show approval throughout the video as the audience demonstrates understanding of compliance objectives. In cases where participants have misunderstood, gently prompt them to consider the question again and focus them on the point where their understanding differs from policy.
Provide an opportunity for participants to provide feedback, including any confusing aspects of the video. This provides important feedback and allows the audience to see compliance training as a two-way conversation rather than something the participant passively experiences.
#4: Place the Audience in Hypothetical Situations and Demonstrate Consequences
In real-world contexts, the audience will find themselves in situations where they will choose to comply or not. Your video should illustrate those choice points and invite the participant to choose how to respond.
For example, if the compliance video is on responding to mental health crises in the workplace, you can show different scenarios and the likely outcomes of each one. With an interactive video, you can let the audience choose how they would respond.
After the audience has chosen, show them the consequences of their choiceby inviting the participant to see how each choice impacts themselves and others.
#5: Focus on Action as an End Result
In many contexts, calls to comply with ethical or practical standards can seem like an appeal to moral virtue or membership in a virtuous society. While this is not a bad thing,as a sense of moral virtue inspires compliance, it is important to make that the audience goes beyond awareness to action. The participants should not come away from the video feeling virtuous for having watched the video or alienated if they do not inwardly share the company’s values.
Providing clear calls to action at the end makes it easier for participants to translate good intentions into action while offering common ground to reluctant participants. The audience for a recycling compliance campaign may include ardent environmentalists and skeptics, but even the skeptics are more likely to go along to get along if the system is clear and framed in an inclusive way.
#6: Follow up with Research
Once your corporate compliance training is underway, it is important to know whether or not the video works.If compliance is still not where your company would like it to be, use feedback from the previous compliance training sessions to improve the video before trying again.
Get Help Making a Compliance Training Video from a Top Video Production Company
Bee Video Production offers a track record of success in making customized videos for compliance training. We use the latest video editing software, state-of-the-art animation tools, professional graphic designers, trained voice actors, and more to deliver professional, high-quality videos at a competitive price.
Whether you are starting a new compliance program or designing an intervention to combat a decline in compliance levels, we will create a groundbreaking and innovative approach customized to your specific circumstances.
Take the guesswork out of making videos for compliance training by choosing Bee Video Productions. We will work with you to understand your company and employees to make effective training videos. It is never too late for a fresh start. Call (647) 625-9629 during business hours for a no-obligation consultation.