8 ways to start using AI Conversations in your compliance program

You know that feeling when you want to coach every employee on how to handle a conversation? But also, you can’t split yourself in a million different ways?

Role play is a powerful learning tool, but employees often feel uncomfortable experimenting with workplace conversations—and let’s be frank, it feels a little awkward to practice these skills in a room of your peers with some compliance officer on the receiving end. But how else are you supposed to take an abstract concept and make it feel real to your employees? As much as we love a good Code filled with FAQs and scenarios, it’s time we give our employees an opportunity to practice having gray area conversations in an environment where they can feel safe and finally translate policy to practice.

Enter AI Conversations. Role play, but beefed up for the 21st century.

AI Conversations lets your employees apply organizational policy to real-life scenarios they’re likely to encounter in their day-to-day activities. Using an instant messaging-like interface where they can speak or type, generative AI responds naturally, enabling employees to test a range of responses. The AI tailors each conversation and response, adjusting based on how each employee interacts, creating a truly personalized, responsive, and immersive experience. At the end of each conversation, employees receive a scorecard that highlights their strengths and provides coaching and guidance on areas for improvement. Best of all? Employees can choose to interact with the generative AI by typing or speaking; the AI character then responds in kind using a lifelike written or spoken voice.

If you are fighting a case of shiny object syndrome (SOS), let me share why AI Conversations is more than an answer to the latest compliance buzzword.

Here are eight triggers to deploy AI Conversations when you’re a purpose-driven compliance practitioner.

1. The employees you train in small groups perform better than those who don’t receive 1:1 attention, and your program lacks the resources to go on an in-person training tour.

By simulating real-life scenarios, role-playing encourages employees to think on their feet and respond in ways that align with your Code and organizational policies.

AI Conversations brings one-on-one coaching to your employees’ fingertips. By engaging in a gray area ethics and compliance situation in simulation, employees get the small group experience and results, without incurring the operational costs of in-person workshops.

2. You’ve received tons of reports to your helpline on a specific topic, and you need your employees to know how to navigate the concern in real life.

Most employees don’t intentionally set out to do the wrong thing, they just may not be prepared or know how to apply the Code or policy and do the right thing in the moment.

AI Conversations not only coaches employees on recognizing risks, your policy, and speaking up, but also soft skills that are harder to train without practice like respect, empathy, and professionalism.

3. Your employees have completed their annual training and you notice they didn’t perform well in specific risk areas.

Whether your annual training feels like a check-the-box exercise or it helps employees master their understanding of risk areas, there’s always something to improve in your program. If assigning course after course and doing the same things over and over again feels like punishment to you, just imagine what it feels like on the receiving end as an employee.

Get targeted with remediation and deliver training using another modality. We, as compliance practitioners, ought to focus on the outcomes of training like seeing actual behavior changes, not just whether your employees got better at taking the end-of-course quiz that traditional training offers.

4. You want to make the most out of your compliance week celebrations.

It seems like everything has a day or a month these days—if you missed International Joke Day, we’ve got World Emoji Day just around the corner. For compliance practitioners, Corporate Compliance & Ethics Week in November is probably more top of mind. So instead of just drawing awareness to the fact that your organization has a compliance program, give employees meaningful resources they can use throughout the year.

Instead of assigning lengthy courses on abstract risk areas every time a Corporate Function Holiday comes up, offer employees a short, meaningful training that’s relevant to the day and respectful of employees’ bandwidth. Our AI Conversations can help you transform your policy into practice in just a few minutes and have a long-play impact on everyday interactions.

5. Your audit outcomes are weak in specific risk areas.

Audits tell us what has happened at our organizations. So while you can’t change what’s in the past, you can help your employees to do better going forward. Before now, employees lacked an opportunity to practice tough conversations and get real-time feedback, unless their manager or the compliance team were on hand to provide feedback. Even then, it’s easy to feel uncomfortable in these situations.

Show your employees what to do when they encounter tricky situations during their day-to-day. Generative AI provides bespoke feedback to employees at the end of every brief conversation and gives them the opportunity to immediately try again and improve their performance.

6. You’ve noticed people understand the policy but don’t know how to apply it in real life.

Practicing conversations in a safe space is key to success in any critical workplace situation. We’re able to rehearse conversations like job interviews, talking to your manager about your workload, or asking for a pay raise because these are commonplace situations we (or someone we know) have been in—and there’s plenty of guidance for how to approach these types of conversations online.

AI Conversations empower each employee to actively participate in their learning experience because they can respond in their own words. Most importantly, they receive feedback in a no-judgment, no-pressure environment so they can further refine their skills next time.

7. Employees haven’t read (or even opened) business-related policies.

Be honest. If you weren’t a part of your company’s compliance program, would you have read all the company policies by now? Probably not. Like many of your employees, you’d probably read the ones that matter to you most: time-off, tuition reimbursement, and remote work.

AI Conversations lets your employees apply the policy to scenarios they’re likely to encounter in their day-to-day life. Using an instant messaging-like interface where you can speak or type, generative AI responds in a natural way and lets your employees test a range of responses.

8. You want your employees to give open-ended responses, not just pick from a multiple choice quiz.

Even your highest performing employees need a bit of continuous improvement. If your data shows that your employees have mastered their online training, level-up their experience and have them demonstrate they’re true masters of gray area situations.

AI Conversations helps employees of all levels refine their communication skills through experiential learning and role playing.

I’m excited to deploy AI Conversations to my colleagues here at Learning Pool as a follow-up to our Code of Conduct training. I know once you see and experience these conversations, you’ll understand how this tool can be a powerful asset in every program.