Years ago, my oldest son took a job at a company that had fuel pumps next to their warehouse, and every employee who worked near the pumps was required to complete a mandatory online safety course.  Naturally, my son completed it while we were both sitting in his living room, half-watching a movie while working on our laptops.  

“Can you believe how bad this course is?” my son laughed, holding up his computer so I could see the ghastly clip art on the slides.  “And this is a huge corporation!  You’d think they could afford to have someone like you make some better e-learning.” 

I shrugged and said “Well, it’s not very good because it doesn’t have to be.  Their lawyers just want to say ‘we told him not to vape next to the fuel pumps’ in case you blow yourself up.”

My son stopped laughing, let out a heavy sigh, and went back to clicking through the module. 

Punchlines aside, my son’s experience is fairly representative of how most people take compliance training: half-distracted, just clicking slides for the benefit of lawyers who just want documentation that slides were clicked.  But this can backfire, by making employees cynical about things that – in some cases – might actually be life or death.

So what can organizations do to ensure compliance training actually produces… compliance?  Well, AI-based interactive training might finally provide the answer to make compliance training effective, even on a typically limited compliance training budget.  Let’s break down the challenge, and how AI-based workforce training can solve it.

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When “We Told You So” is Not Enough

Over the years, my company has been approached by organizations who sincerely cared for the safety of their customers, communities, and staff – whether it was banks seeking to prevent fraud or hospitals in regions with high HIV infection rates wanting to protect staff against needle sticks.  

Traditionally, we would do our best to make these courses relevant and engaging, adding dramatic testimonials and plenty of multiple choice “What would you do?” questions.  In one case the CEO of a manufacturing company told us to include his personal phone number in case employees felt pressured by managers to cut corners on safety.  But even these approaches couldn’t completely dispel the sense that the organization was being forced to say things to employees being forced to listen.This dynamic is unfortunate given that most compliance topics are actually critically important, and compliance training is designed to help people avoid the worst case scenario whether that’s a lawsuit, an environmental disaster, serious injury or even death.  

The disconnect between the importance of the subject matter and the indifference of audiences ultimately comes down to a trick of psychology.  As Sam Harris points out in “The Moral Landscape,” humans have a willful blind spot when it comes to abstract versus concrete risks. We can intellectually understand that something is incredibly hazardous while emotionally feeling that it could never happen to us – until it does.  

So how can AI help us shock learners out of this complacency? 

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The Power of Simulation

The cruel paradox of compliance training is that people often don’t take compliance seriously until they’ve witnessed or experienced an incident – the very thing the training is meant to prevent. 

Thankfully, AI gives us a way to square this circle: by creating highly realistic simulations which offer a digital space to experience dangerous real-world lessons.  If there’s ever been a case for the value of simulation training, it’s the aviation industry: after airline captain Chesley Sullenberger safely landed his passenger jet in New York’s Hudson River, he testified that simulation training prepared him for the heroic landing and has since been an advocate for more extensive simulation training for pilots, generally.  

Just as flight simulators revolutionized pilot training by allowing them to safely experience crash landings and mid-air equipment failures, AI-driven scenarios are doing the same for everyday compliance training.  

For instance, in our Cal-OSHA safety simulation, the AI doesn’t just show you pictures of workplace hazards – it puts you in the shoes of a worker on a commercial construction site, challenging you to spot violations while a very realistic (and sometimes confrontational) AI foreman tries to pressure you to keep working.  Or imagine a role play where you’re a nurse, three hours into a twelve-hour shift. A patient is coding, alarms are blaring, and in your rush to help, you accidentally get stuck with a used needle – but instead of multiple choice options you have to remember what to do and type or speak it into the AI simulation, as a countdown timer adds an element of pressure.  

And even if we can’t create elaborate 3D games on the level of a flight simulator for every topic, the simulations can show photos or video clips of actual workplace accidents related to the scenario to create a visceral emotional connection between the imagined scenario and real-world consequences.

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