Question: Can someone help make the case (financial and time investments) for engaging memorable eLearning instead of “compliance training” that is cheap, quick and dull?
Answer: The answer to this question depends upon the perspective and motivations of the type of person to whom you are posing it. Think of the old “what’s in it for me?” concept. For example, if you are approaching people in executive leadership positions (control the budget, have a stake in seeing the company perform at a high level, etc.) ask them whether they want their investment in training to have a meaningful impact or if they simply want to check a box that says they have complied with a regulation and have effectively limited their liability compared with doing nothing. If this training is strategic in targeting specific company/organizational goals, then you can make the case for how your approach to the training will most effectively impact those goals.
If you are talking to the target audience, what might they prefer? Do they just want to click through the content and get a checkmark that says they completed the training, or do they see how professional growth and development as a result of this training can play a part in their long term success as well as safety, work enjoyment etc., not to mention the overall improvement across the workforce and organization as a whole?
Alternatively, what is the danger of having the entire organization view training as a boring requirement that is really meaningless and a waste of time? The truth is, the difference between memorable and boring training can often be as small as adding a decent audio track and upgrading the images slightly. In my experience it oftentimes does not take much to transform training from good to great. This is exactly the kind of thing that the experts at eLearning.net do all day long. We believe in the “you can do it and we can help you” philosophy of eLearning whereby we take whatever boring training is in place now and give it a significant audio/visual upgrade without breaking the bank.