Written by Nicole Di Schino, PRINCIPAL consultant at spark compliance
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Compliance and Ethics Week is rapidly approaching!
What? You don’t have the most significant almost holiday of the year on your calendar? For shame. (I’ll save you the google, it’s November 6-12th).
Compliance and Ethics Week is an outstanding opportunity to raise awareness about compliance, but perhaps more importantly, it’s also a chance to have a little fun. Even at the most ethical of companies, the compliance department isn’t always the first stop for a good time. But a week celebrating all things compliance and ethics is an opportunity to take a light-hearted approach to educating employees about very serious topics.
Here are a few of my favorite ideas for hosting a memorable, impactful event:
Make It a Competition
It’s no secret that the Spark team, as the creators of Compliance Competitor (an interactive, digital game designed for training high-risk teams), loves a gamified approach to compliance training.
The reason is simple, gamified training isn’t just fun, it’s incredibly effective. Studies show that 60% of employees are more engaged in gamified training than in trainings using more traditional methods. That engagement pays off big time with employees who participate in a game-based training having 40% higher retention rates than their peers who take traditional trainings.
Incorporating games into your corporate Compliance and Ethics Week doesn’t have to be complicated. Consider hosting a trivia tournament over lunch, send your employees on a virtual scavenger hunt, or put together a compliance-week bingo card. Sweeten the pot with some fun prizes for participants and watch your engagement levels jump.
Compliance and Ethics Week is also a great excuse to conduct some targeted, game-based training using Compliance Competitor. Home Depot, for instance, brought its Compliance Champions together to play Competitor during its 2021 celebration. Compliance Week games can also drive participation and learning with high-risk groups, executives, and even members of the company’s board.
Consider QR Codes
Our friends at Southwire are big fans of including QR codes in their ethics and compliance communications. This year, they took the QR trend to the next level by emblazoning a code on the arm of bright yellow t-shirts worn by leaders across the company during Compliance and Ethics Week. The shirts were so popular that leaders who missed the ordering deadline tracked the compliance staff down to beg for the extras.
The QR Code wasn’t just fun or novel – it served the sneaky purpose of providing employees with additional information about Southwire’s ethics and compliance program and about the other activities the department was hosting during its celebratory week.
Keep the Party Going
Once you find something that works during Compliance and Ethics Week, consider whether it can be used to increase employee engagement with Compliance throughout the year. You can host a quarterly trivia game, for example. Or ask employees to find clues to a riddle embedded in communications you send throughout the year and announce the answer at your next annual celebration.
We hope these ideas have your creative juices flowing.
Do you have a favorite Compliance and Ethics Week activity? If so, message me on LinkedIn, I’d love to hear what you have planned!
