More than a checkbox: Unlocking value and professional growth through compliance training with Emtrains Director of Partnerships and Strategic Accounts, Jennifer Dowdy

Dan: Welcome to L&D in 20, your go to resource for all things workplace learning, brought to you by Go1. I'm your host, Dan Hayward, Chief Customer Officer and Industry Veteran. Today, we'll be speaking with Jennifer Dowdy, Director of Partnerships and Strategic Accounts at Emtrain, where she has spent nearly seven years helping organizations scale employee learning and analytics to enhance inclusion, trust, and performance.

With over 20 years of experience in major account sales and partnerships across multiple industries, Jennifer leverages data driven insights to improve workplace culture. She's passionate about empowering businesses to make better decisions for their people.

Jen, welcome to the show.

Jennifer: Thanks, Dan. So happy to be here.

Dan: It's great to have you. Okay. So, the topic of today is compliance training as an opportunity to advance skills, which I just love. Um, so a couple of questions to kind of kick us off. Um, so some employees or many employees within the workplace are only getting, um, upskilling when it comes to compliance training, can you kind of describe the opportunity that that creates and how you think about elevating the employee experience during compliance training?

Jennifer: Yeah, I think it's important to start off with what most people think about when they think about compliance training. And it's typically these routine for the business, for the sake of laws and regs, or for the sake of mitigating risky behaviors or poor behaviors in the business and in the communities we serve, such as our clients.

Uh, and when we think about compliance training, it's, it's this have to do, not get to do, right? And what is in it for the employee or the learner is typically a distraction from their regular productivity day or their lives where they have to sit in these hours long trainings. They're compulsory. And a lot of what happens in these trainings as, as everybody has been through them at different phases of their career is that you're sitting there and you're really faced with a lot of policy, laws, and or obvious scenarios of what to do and what not to do. And for different people, it can be less obvious depending on where they are in their career. So when we think about an opportunity to advance skills, the way we want to think about compliance training is it's an opportunity to develop skills.

Every moment that you engage your employees and especially in a compulsory fashion where you have to do a mandatory training is an opportunity to engage the employee or the learner and give them something additive and valuable that not only they can apply in the business but in their, in their lives.

Dan: Yeah. I love that. So, so practically what are you seeing in terms of some of the content and how are you integrating some of those other skills into that, that compliance training?

Jennifer: My founder and CEO Janine Yancey says it perfectly. And for those who have pets and for those who don't, you know someone who does. Uh, we think of this as the pill and the peanut butter. So, when you think about, you know, having to take a medicine, give a medicine, it isn't an ideal situation, but it is for your health or for your animal's health in this, in this metaphor.

Uh, so when you think about being able to, uh, reach an entire audience of your employees, your, your audience of your business, and you are thinking about what can I do at this time. Advancing skills like how to communicate better, how to resolve conflict, how to take a step back, slow down and slow our judgment down, slow our thinking down.

Checking your bias. Uh, different, different elements of the human condition you can tackle as part of a compliance program. Because what compliance is really addressing is not so much laws and regs. Those follow behavior. Behavior is what gets us into the position of having to have mandatory programs for compliance.

And so when we think about behavior, what an opportunity to address skills development and actually address a condition that we're all experiencing in our lives as well as at work.

Dan: Okay, that's great. I love that. And so then, as we think about kind of now that we've captured some of those, uh, those, um, those passive learners or those compliance learners kind of interest, we've piqued their, their interest. Any, any, um, thoughts or experience of the, you know, the multiple clients that you work with, of how they've kind of transitioned some of those learners from kind of doing just the required learning to then moving on to kind of more inspirational, inspired learning?

Jennifer: Absolutely. It's how you say it and it's how you tackle it. So, I have a 30 plus year sales background, and in sales training, you learn a lot about how marketing engages the audience, you learn a lot about how you're engaging your buyer, your prospective buyer, we learn about personas, and we learn about the motivations of buyers.

Your learners are buyers. Your learners are another audience. And if you think about it, like any marketing or really well done advertising, you have to connect with what the learner is interested in and whatever it is that you're trying to roll out in a compliance program should be no different than what would interest me to purchase something off of social media.

You are trying to appeal to a sense of career development, advancement, and most learning programs are coming out of talent and talent development, talent succession strategies. In compliance, oftentimes we find that the stakeholders are going to be legal, risk, uh, employee relations, often there's a lot of attorneys involved.

So when we think about what we can do, it's how you say it and how you engage the learner around a set of skills that will develop them, not only for their role within the company that they're performing in, but for their career and in their lives, dare I say.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, that's great. And just to kind of, uh, jump onto a, a little, um, comment you made, made there. I think one of the really interesting things about compliance training is those multiple stakeholders. So you just kind of mentioned there's, yeah, there's going to be probably the legal team, uh, compliance, um, HR, uh, what may be involved.

L&D might not be the primary buyer. So could you just talk to me a little bit about kind of how you navigate, um, you know, how to navigate that internal stakeholder kind of, uh, discussions and what you've seen work well.

Jennifer: I think that what really works and what I've learned, uh, because L&D is a newer part of my career, right? I've been doing this, this space for seven years under, uh, compliance as a specific part of learning and development. And L&D typically is the platform that the compliance program sits in. And so what I find to be some of the most inspired client scenarios that we see is where corporate communications, internal communications are involved.

And we are finding out what other programs employees are spending time on, whether they're company sponsored or they're things that are more grassroots level, where, where the organization has sponsored employee resource groups, where there's different groups of representation. So, when you're finding out how employees are engaging outside of the actual funded program for compliance or even the L&D programs, and you're bringing that perspective that you've gathered out from the field into the L&D's visibility. L&D is wanting to listen. They are wanting to innovate. And often they're just so slammed with what is the typical L&D program. So being able to be creative and bring back that perspective from the field. Um, also the companies that we see working really effectively on programs that are engaging employees around skills.

Are not limiting it just to an L&D funded initiative where you see, you know, an annual compliance program, you see other skills development and other learning programs, leadership development, uh, even, even new employee onboarding programs. When you think about the different training programs that L&D has to steward for the organization.

The thing that we see working really well in some of the most innovative companies, um, some of them are our clients, uh, is that they are actually putting the programs, not just within the learning system, or, or just within where people can go and, and this is where we get the idea of passive learning, um, where we can actually put programs where, these kinds of skills can be developed and entice an active learning culture.

And so if you have a CRM, which most organizations will, if you have a community site and you are able to put these programs and also the results of these programs is shared in data driven storytelling, out to the employee base and actually maybe duplicate the areas in which you're going to engage employees around the business, making it available outside of the learning management system.

That's been a really important mover that we've seen some of our more innovative clients doing.

Dan: I love that approach. And I think, you know, what we see typically within organizations is like those different functions will have different expectations and different objectives.

So a legal team coming and checking out compliance will make, will be very different to that kind of internal communications team. But I think kind of aligning internally around kind of what are our expectations, not just, uh, from one functional, but organizationally and how are we uplifting and up leveling the workforce through this acquisition of great compliance training.

That's fantastic. So, I know one of the things we spoke about, uh, previously, you and I was the fact that in compliance training, there's a, there's a real need to create a speak up culture. And at the same time, we now have multiple, five generations, uh, in the workforce with different kinds of cultural practices, and we're, can you talk to me a little bit about, you know, what you've seen and how you've seen, um, the differences of creating a culture to navigate, you know, these generational differences in the workplace?

Jennifer: Absolutely. So we think a lot about multicultural differences and how to bring people together around a shared understanding of topics or concepts like respect. So often times, again, when we talk about compliance training, we never want an organization we're working with to call it their compliance program.

It is called their compliance program. But what we try to do is help them with a message around respect, inclusion, belonging. And when we think about those concepts and ethical decision making, we want to have a concept of what good looks like. So, establishing things like a shared language for your skills development program is a really important strategy in how you're going to roll out any program.

Again, it's how you say it, what's in it for the learner, and appealing to those audiences. And across five generations, what is readily, um, available at the tip of most of the emerging workforce's tongue is some of these issues of what work should feel like, what good looks like, and being vocal about your needs.

I am a stepmother to a 17 year old boy. What he is comfortable talking about is not what, you know, older generations or more experienced seasoned generations of executives. Or even in our own family members at the dinner table. It's not the same as what they're comfortable talking about. So things like politics, religion, conflicts in the world, climate.

These things are at the tip of a, an emerging workforce's tongue. And so knowing how to navigate that across five different generations at work, plus adding in multicultural layers, there's a real art to that, but it gets down to our shared experiences as human beings. So, when we think about tackling what things feel like at work, and tackling some of these concepts that may be drier, more legalistic concepts to impart, we get down to our basic behavior skills and how we make each other feel at work.

And it gets down to good manners. Or also being able to create space for multiple generations to tackle things. So, when you're teaching skills around uh, let's just say anti harassment, right? Often times it boils down to, are people having a bad day and they just lost their manners for a moment? It doesn't necessarily have to be the end of that meeting or the end of that professional relationship.

You can teach people how to navigate multiple generations in the workforce by teaching respect skills. And also how to apologize, how to navigate a misstep, and how to actually recover the opportunity to deepen the trust just in your own team meetings. So starting there with your one on one and your team relationships, as well as figuring out, that leadership needs to advance the skills to be able to manage these multiple generations in the workforce.

And that also comes down to how we approach manners and professionalism at work. You've got to teach people to be comfortable in creating space, and it's often called conflict resolution, but we think about it a little bit more. Deepening that relationship and trust means holding space for accepting, but also understanding and being curious. And finding commonality in our lived experiences at work and being able to apply that into any program that you're, you're putting out at scale to develop.

Dan: Yeah, no, I love that. I love that insight. I think kind of the, the commonality piece definitely feels like a, you know, like a, a key, a key opportunity for a lot of organizations. Okay. So now we're going to move on to our next segment. Uh, it's called the 60 Second Budget Breakdown.

Uh, so from a, from an L&D perspective, uh, or from a, yeah, from a perspective of you supporting your many, many clients, kind of what, what would you say the most important three things that you'd advocate that they spend their money on right now?

Jennifer: People. I think that spending your money on people and appointing them into positions that are cross functional is super important. Um, this is, this is the opportunity that will be a difference maker, especially in a time where we rely on so much technology. And we are also looking at ways to apply automation and things like AI, as well as being able to bring in, uh, different ways of engaging employees, especially when it comes to talent and succession planning, talent mobility programs, investing in your people.

And when I think about L&D and, and the hierarchical organization, you know, especially a matrix organization, when you think about the way that we staff for talent acquisition, when you think about the way that we staff for employee relations and human resources business partners, L&D needs to have that representation across the org chart so that L&D has that same agency to go in and tap for gaps and blockers and also find opportunities.

Skills assessments and skill development usually come out of performance reviews, assessing skills through different programs. L&D usually stewards that data around builds business cases. And when you're thinking about investing in those budgetary areas, and then you have sort of these outlier organizations that are integrative or trying to be integrated within the business like D&I, or you think about the sales program, sales usually gets their own bucket of training, right?

But being able to stretch across all of the functional aspects of the organization, having L&D have their own. Actual business partners that are sitting within the seat of the organization to not only tackle issues that they're identifying, but also the opportunities. So making sure that L&D is listening to the sellers, listening to the clients and the community served by the business, but also making sure that each from leadership and the executive board, all the way down to the new hires who are in their emerging career, being able to tap into what people need and what their expectations of learning are within the workforce, not just within that company, is going to really create a strategy out of the L&D programs that allow for you to meet people where they are.

Dan: I love that, that strategic learning, business partnering is, is definitely something that we don't see all that often. Is that something that you've seen in, in the organizations that you're supporting?

Jennifer: I have, I have, yeah, and some of the more progressive, this is not for every size company, obviously, you advance your, your functional staff, according to your growth, right? We have to, we have to be mindful of a budget and an investment strategy, but being able to have a culture of that established from any size company so that as you grow, and if you get into the largest companies and you're taking learnings from what the largest top performing organizations are doing around the world, really finding out how they're advancing their L&D programs and building a community around those functions that are outside of your business too, so that you're taking those learnings into the business, and applying them according to what you have the available investment to do, but always be pushing to build that business case to grow learning around concepts like curiosity.

We can't wait for the emerging workforce to advance to leadership to get leadership development quality training. We can actually tap in and start finding out and applying what learning can do for an organization at all stages of growth.

Dan: So now we're going to move on to our next segment, uh, Lifelong Learning.

So can you, uh, yeah, give me an example, describe a time where a situation that you're working on, um, turned out differently than you expected, either, yeah, positively or negatively, and what were, Couple of the key learnings that you had.

Jennifer: I would take this back to, to selling. And I think that all, all of us in business can relate to sales. Uh, when you think about putting and applying your typical sales motions, you've got a recipe, you've got a methodology, you have a process that you follow.

And I think that one of my biggest learnings around, around selling L&D was coming into the L&D space. I really, I really thought as a learner who had been taking these programs that it was one way. I was delighted to find out how much change management, organizational development, and how much data opportunity there is in this particular slice of a business.

And so my, uh, my surprise in entering this space. I've always sold according to metrics. And when you go into a compliance space, you're not really able to find metrics except for when people have claims or you read in the news about the DOJ doing an investigation. And it tends to be really juicy after the fact, but being able to actually tap into organizations who are struggling to find better ways to do that.

To be good partners together. That was one of my eye opening experiences. It's obvious around selling that people want to get to better metrics and better outcomes. But being able to tap into a community of HR leaders who I think get kind of a bad rap and L&D comes in as sort of the, the tech solutions team, but being able to see how many people want to actually do good was one of the most eye opening experiences of my last seven years.

Dan: So Jen, I'd love to know, uh, what's the biggest L& D win of your career?

Jennifer: I love this question, Dan, and the reason is, is because of selling, I think that the wins have to be the wins for your clients and the communities they serve. And so when you think about compliance programs, um, some of the, we've done this with several of our clients here at Emtrain, one of the things that I think was one of the most rewarding programs that we serve is that we did a compliance program that dealt with inclusion, belonging, and we expanded that from just the employees to the contingent workforce, and then it expanded out to the supplier and the ecosystem of our client, Cisco.

And that was a, an enormous win for us professionally. And also around a purpose, a shared purpose in the world. So these programs include things like inclusive language, uh, being able to speak up at the workplace in a productive and constructive way, um, through an upstander program, and taking it beyond those respect skills to applied skills that are relevant not only to the employee learners at Cisco, but out into their supplier and their partner communities.

Creating that kind of expansive learning program around these topics, um, is under purpose for Cisco and being able to be a provider of that kind of learning and development program where you know that these skills are going around the world into Cisco's ecosystem. That is an enormous win because people have given amazing feedback and actuallyasked more  engaged questions from their communities around how they can apply these skills and more of these programs within their own workplaces.

Dan: That's, that's amazing impact. That's great

And now we're going to move on to our final segment, Self Development Hacks.

So what is your personal kind of go to, where do you go to grow? What's your favorite L&D or learning related content or resource?

Jennifer: I thought about this question a lot and I think that to learn we have to be uncomfortable. Um, I'm a natural introverted personality, which is ironic because I've been in front of people selling for 30 plus years.

And what has been, I think, a secret to my success is pushing myself to be uncomfortable to grow. So tapping into people and, and actually pushing myself to form community and relationships that are not just within that near term window of, of achieving my goals. And actually forcing myself to work with people, practice the skills of curiosity and actually talk with more and more people, pushing myself to make introductions that are cold introductions to people that I just want to learn from, not sell to, so that I can, engage myself as an active learner, because if I am only relying on the technology that's out there, I'm relying on only my curiosity, not challenging myself to grow.

Dan: Thank you for sharing. So Jennifer, that's it. We've come up on time. Thank you so much for coming onto the show today and sharing your insights with us.

Jennifer: It was a pleasure.

Dan: So, thanks for tuning into the show. I'm Dan Hayward, Chief Customer Officer, and that wraps up another episode of L&D in 20. We hope you found today's discussion as engaging as we did. Whether you're listening on the go or at your desk, we'll catch you on the next episode and until then, keep learning.