More Than a Checkbox: Three Situations Where Training Should be Mandatory

As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, when I used to tell people at parties that my company designs training programs, they would start complaining about some safety or ethics course their employer forced them to take. It’s reached a point where I now avoid the word “training” altogether and say, “I’m a consultant specializing in workforce skills development” – which at least doesn’t cause people to suffer traumatic flashbacks to cheaply produced videos their HR department made them watch.

But if people hate mandatory training so much, why do organizations keep inflicting it upon employees?

Well, in some cases, mandatory training does work. For instance, jurisdictions that require safety training tend to have significantly lower workplace fatalities than jurisdictions that don’t. And there’s also evidence that mandatory training for higher-level professional skills like leadership results in better performance.

However, other forms of mandatory training are less effective. A study by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs concluded that there was basically no difference in people’s behavior one year after completing mandatory training on topics like diversity, sexual harassment, or ethics compared to people who received no training at all.

So, what are we to conclude from all this? When should organizations make training mandatory and when should they give up or find a better approach?

Making Government-Mandated Training More Engaging

In some cases, mandatory training requirements are decided by governments, not employers.? And governments love mandating training, from safety training in the construction industry to anti-money laundering (AML) training in the financial sector.

Unfortunately, most employers respond to these mandates by trying to deliver the required training as inexpensively as possible, with little regard for quality or effectiveness – often settling for cheap, off-the-shelf e-learning that requires users to repeatedly click an “acknowledged” button as a synthesized voice reads the text of government regulations over poorly designed slides.

Of course, if the only concern is to allow the organization’s lawyers to say, “But we told them not to touch the electrical wires!” after someone touches the electrical wires – this might be enough. However, if your organization genuinely wants to change behavior, there are other, better ways to go about it.

While some rote or pre-recorded training is inevitable (just so employees can hear the exact, legally approved wording of government-mandated messages), you can reinforce the important points of compliance training during onboarding and coaching/mentoring sessions. Hearing an experienced coworker share a story of how they witnessed a horrific accident when someone ignored safety rules might drive home the need for compliance better than any recorded lecture.

You can also have participants “design their own” compliance training as part of their onboarding process. For instance, a bank could have frontline staff conduct a simplified risk analysis, identifying signs that a customer might be engaged in illegal activity. Generally, making the process interactive and engaging people’s critical thinking can make the message stick better than having them sit through a rote presentation.

Making Leadership Training Mandatory to Make It More Equitable

While most employees want to receive training on leadership skills, the selection process to participate in leadership development programs is often biased against employees from marginalized groups (i.e., women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals). When executives are allowed to choose candidates based on a vaguely defined notion of “leadership potential,” they will overwhelmingly select tall, conventionally attractive men from the dominant ethnic group.

Mandating leadership training for employees at a certain level who meet specific performance criteria can help counteract selection bias. Likewise, mandatory mentoring programs can help? high-performing employees from marginalized groups develop social connections with senior executives they might not otherwise have associated with, while improving job performance by as much as 20%.

That said, in order for mandatory leadership training to lead to greater representation in leadership, organizations need to be committed to addressing bias in performance reviews and promotions. Otherwise, mandating leadership training and mentoring risks wasting marginalized employees’ time.

Making Learning Mandatory… While Letting People Choose How to Learn?

Typically, the brunt of mandatory training falls on the lowest-ranking members of an organization. Non-managerial staff are forced to sit through 40% more mandatory training than managers, while receiving less access to voluntary professional development training that could actually help their careers.

One way to make learning opportunities more equitable without massive costs is to provide employees with a fixed quarterly or annual “learning stipend,” then require them to provide an account to their managers regarding how they spent it – for example, “I took a presentation design course online, and here’s how I applied it on a recent pitch deck,” or “I attended a workshop on conflict resolution, and here’s how I resolved a disagreement with a coworker using what I learned.”

That said, while there is a lot of excellent learning content available at a reasonable cost (e.g., on LinkedIn Learning, at community colleges, through the online extensions of universities like Cornell and Oxford, or even just on YouTube), there is also a lot of rubbish on the market. Hence, it might be a good idea to curate a list of recommended, pre-screened resources or require people to seek approval before spending their stipend with some unfamiliar training provider.

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While some employees will always resent mandatory training on principle, there are situations that require it (pun intended) or where the outcomes are justified. Hopefully this article offered some useful ideas for evaluating when and how your organization deploys mandatory training. And if you need help designing mandatory – or voluntary – learning programs, please consider reaching out to Sonata Learning for a consultation.