Designing Compliance Training that Doesn’t Suck
Because your learners are doing their best—and your course should, too.
Last time, we walked through a morning with a learner who simply couldn't engage with her mandatory DEI training. It wasn't because she didn't care about the topic; it was because the course didn't care about her actual day. Her reality of sick toddlers, buzzing inboxes, and brain fog simply wasn't accounted for.
If compliance training is going to truly make a difference, it has to respect real life.
Compliance isn't the enemy. The way we deliver it often is.
Yes, the topics are serious: workplace safety, harassment prevention, cybersecurity, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). They matter deeply; they protect people and foster better environments. But we sabotage our own goals when we present these crucial subjects like disembodied policies, featuring bland cartoon avatars and a "Click Next" timer that assumes compliance equals comprehension.
The content isn’t the problem. The design is.
Let's talk about what it actually looks like to design compliance training that doesn’t make learners feel punished for showing up as human beings.
Respect Their Load
Your learner is tired. Their day is already overflowing. They might be juggling childcare, battling an overflowing inbox, grabbing a quick bite during a working lunch, or still reeling from a challenging meeting.
Design for that reality.
Break it down: Offer learning in small, digestible chunks, ideally 5–10 minutes each. Think micro-lessons, not marathon sessions.
Allow flexibility: Let them start, stop, and resume without losing progress or getting stuck.
Ditch the gatekeepers: Say goodbye to forced timers and locked navigation. Trust your learners.
When we assume learners have unlimited attention and bandwidth, we're not setting them up for success; we're setting them up to fail.
Design for Partial Attention
You aren't competing with Netflix or a captivating podcast. You're competing with real life: urgent calendar invites, a flurry of Slack messages, or a phone call from daycare.
Design like your course will be paused, resumed, and interrupted.
Marry visuals and voice: Use both strategically to reinforce key messages (think dual coding). If they can't fully focus on the screen, the audio should still convey the core message.
Reinforce concepts: Repeat important ideas in varied ways, not just verbatim. Give them different angles to grasp the information.
Keep it scannable: Utilize clear headers, ample whitespace, and intuitive navigation. This way, if they're quickly scanning, they can still pick out the critical points.
If they only absorb 60% the first time, give them an easy path to find the other 40% when their attention allows.
Make the Language Human
"Corporate speak" is the ultimate engagement killer. If your course sounds like two policy manuals having a stiff conversation, it's not learning—it's just noise.
Write like you're talking to someone you respect, someone sitting across from you.
Authentic voices: Let characters in scenarios sound real—they can be messy, unsure, and nuanced, just like people in real life.
Abolish jargon: Unless you're explicitly teaching a technical term, ditch the industry jargon. Speak plainly.
Match the tone: Let the tone fit the topic. Be warm when discussing human experiences, and appropriately serious when addressing sensitive or critical information.
Clarity is not the same as formality. Respect doesn't require stiffness.
Create Space for Meaningful Engagement
Learners genuinely want to care and understand. But they won't if your course treats them like a mere checkbox.
Make space for real thought, not just rote answers.
Prompt reflection: Use open-ended reflection prompts instead of "gotcha" trick questions designed to catch them out.
Acknowledge complexity: Be honest about gray areas when they exist. Life isn't always black and white, and neither are many compliance topics.
Relatable scenarios: Craft scenarios that truly reflect what happens in your workplace, with your people, and your challenges.
If you want real engagement, give them something real to engage with.
Be Honest About Why It Matters
Learners are savvy. They know when something is just about legal coverage. But they also recognize when something is genuinely personal, urgent, or fundamental to a shared, healthy culture.
Lead with what’s truly at stake.
Start with people: Begin by illustrating the human impact, not just the policy number.
Share authentic stories: When appropriate, share real stories (anonymized, of course) not to manipulate, but to humanize the concepts.
Embrace complexity: Tell the truth about the challenges and nuances. Don’t sanitize the hard parts.
Trust is built when we stop pretending there’s only one right answer to every complex human interaction.
What Not to Do
Let's just be crystal clear:
Don’t lock the "Next" button. Ever.
Don’t force 45 minutes of mind-numbing content just to get to a five-question quiz.
Don’t write scenarios where characters speak in stilted, unnatural ways.
Don’t assume your learner has the emotional bandwidth of a robot.
The Reframe
Your learner isn't resisting your course. They're surviving their day, just like you are.
Design like you’re on their side.
Because the difference between resentment and reflection?
It's not the content. It's the design.