On this Thanksgiving Day 2012, as we make efforts to be
aware of what we are grateful for, I can’t help but gravitate to other related
aspects of awareness – employee awareness. Specially, employee awareness
training and how it effective it is.
The other reason that this topic comes to mind is because I
am currently developing a new privacy awareness curriculum for my company. Like
every other developer of training, I am concerned about many things: the
delivery, the topics, the accessibility of the material, the level of interest
of the participant, the language I use, the vernacular, the jargon, and on and
on.
I think training practitioners are at a point that it is no
longer reasonable or practical to simply create a 90 minute training module
packed with every law, regulation, procedure and policy statement about the
topic in question, and rationally believe that it will have any impact on the
employee. In fact, recent studies show that the shorter (15-20 minutes), more
pointed training concepts that involve more interactivity with the viewer
result in better retention of the material, and ostensibly, better overall
compliance with your privacy, security or compliance objectives. I have also noticed
that a trend towards ‘gamification’ of training is getting a lot of press for
the way it mimics the participant involved in a video game. The idea is that
this level of interaction engages the viewer on almost of sensory level, thus
allowing them to fully embrace your curriculum, and ultimately your message.
I have a theory about employee awareness that involves three
stages of awareness. It is my opinion that a majority of employees move through
these three stages throughout their professional engagement and exposure to
training in general. You can also see how, as a developer of awareness programs
and as someone who is responsible for company privacy awareness overall, I am
very interested in not only how employees move through these stages, but how
quickly and efficiently.
The Three Stages of
Employee Awareness
Stage 1 of Employee awareness is what I term the “I want to
do the right thing” stage. Every employee (hopefully) comes to the organization
with the best and most honest of intentions in mind. What they may lack is an
understanding of what the right thing is – as your company defines it – and how
to go about doing it. This is where the
onus is completely on the trainer to create a program that lays out the
intentions of the curriculum in clear and unambiguous terms so that every level
of employee throughout the organization walks away with the right message.
Stage 2 of Employee Awareness is what I call the “Is this
the right thing?” stage. This level of awareness is where most employees in
most companies are. The assumption is that training has been given already or
that employees are somewhat aware of what they should or should not do as it
relates to say, data privacy, and are conscious of some degree of best practices.
This stage is also when employees are starting to exercise their knowledge and
e-mail or call me with what they think is the proper way to protect or disclose
data and what to just make sure it is correct. If your employees are reaching
out to you before they act, then you know that your awareness campaigns and
profile is starting to take root and pay dividends.
The last Stage of Employee Awareness is the “Employees just
do the right thing” stage. Since your
staff now knows what is and is not the proper way to handle, process, share or
store data, they no longer have to either wonder about it or ask you about it.
What you have done to raise the visibility of privacy or data security
awareness in your firm has now come full circle to bringing everyone up to the
level of consciousness that you have. Not many companies are at this level of
awareness utopia however. It takes a lot blood, toil, sweat and tears of
employee engagement to get to this point, but it is possible – regardless of
the industry or silo your company is in. And well worth striving for.
If your company is already in Stage 3 of Employee Awareness,
then you have something extra to be thankful for this year. ;-)
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