Do your employees consider security awareness training a boring requirement? Would they rather be somewhere else?
Most companies loathe security awareness because they feel training is a work obligation they must fulfill rather than an interesting learning experience.
Employees view mandatory training programs as an unwanted distraction to workdays. As a result, they dismiss training as something they must do to fulfill a job requirement rather than the chance to learn pertinent information applicable to their profession and the security of your organization. When perceptions like these are present, many trainees will leave the training sessions without having learned anything.
At AwareGO, we take care of the training with our comical approach and employees enjoy watching our videos. But, beyond the videos, you can increase the effectiveness of your entire program from start to finish with a few important steps.
Work and Home Applications
Stress to your employees the significance of security awareness as an application not just for work tasks but also for home use. Password protection, viruses and phishing affects the home user just as much as the corporate user. Inform your employees about the personal security benefits so they apply an even greater importance on what they learn.
Simplicity
Security awareness training should not be complex. It should be interesting, creative, informative and most of all, simple. Prepare your employees with a brief synopsis of what they will be learning several weeks prior to the training. Put up posters and send emails announcing the details of the event so employees know what to expect. If your employees don’t know what is ahead, they will anticipate the worst.
Incentive
Even with the best training videos, your employees may expect a boring session. Try to keep the experience light and engaging. If your training videos are enjoyable like ours, send snippets before the event so your employees will look forward to some entertainment while they learn.
Also, schedule a catered lunch to entice employees to attend. Hold an informal quiz session after the training and reward right answers with prizes.
Make sure to keep the lines of communication open during training and leave the floor open for questions. Give your employees every chance to speak up to encourage engagement.
Security awareness training with the right preparation and resources can be entertaining as well as valuable to every organization concerned about protecting its assets.