Tools to keep your employees engaged—and awake!—during your annual security trainings
The trainings for those who hold a Personnel Clearance (PCL) cover largely the same information year after year. It’s understandable that cleared personnel may mentally check out when they’re sitting through the same material once again. If you’re giving these trainings, keeping your participants engaged can prove to be a challenge.
The information in these trainings is crucial for both your company’s and national security, so it’s important to get everyone invested as much as you can. Utilizing a few different tactics can help you make sure everyone gets the most out of these annual briefings.
Gamify your Briefing
People are naturally competitive; if you can incorporate some kind of game or quiz into your meeting, you may find people are paying closer attention—especially if there’s a prize on the line. You can tailor these to your employees, either using workplace examples or focusing questions to be relevant to their positions.
Gamifying your briefings may help break up the monotony of having to learn the same information every year. Injecting a little fun into your meeting can only help things. Whether you offer a gift card, some company merchandise, a custom trophy, or even just bragging rights, you may find some healthy competition gets more employees participating than before. The Center for Development of Security Excellence has a list of security-based games you can try playing at your next briefing.
Use Real Examples
Consider pulling from real-world examples rather than just speaking in the abstract on the concepts you have to cover. For insider threats, a great example could be the Google executive who stole information about their self-driving car program, Waymo, in order to start his own company. Concrete instances of the things you’re learning prove these are threats that do actually happen and need to be taken seriously.
Along with that, consider using examples of threats that happened at your own company. If an employee fell for a phishing email, that could be a great learning opportunity for other employees. This can also be beneficial in showing your team that it’s OK to come forward and report when they make mistakes might help you prevent future security breaches. Having a real example that’s so “close to home” helps employees stay engaged and may lead them to report mistakes in the future before they cause more serious problems for your company.
Using pop culture references can also be a great way to get your employees listening. Use a classic movie as an example of insider threat or include references and memes to the office’s favorite TV show. Not only will it be more interesting, but they may be reminded of what they learned next time they sit down for a Netflix binge.
For example, you could pull from the movie Home Alone to go over the five steps of Operations Security (OPSEC). Here’s how Adamo uses it in our briefings:
- Identify Assets: The McCallister family had a big beautiful home, all items inside their home
- Identify Threats: Intruders, burglars
- Identify Vulnerabilities: leaving home unattended
- Assess Risk: The McCallister’s will come home to their house destroyed and items stolen, financial loss
- Develop and Apply Countermeasures: How Kevin protected his house when he suspected burglars.
- Other ways could be having someone watch your house while you’re gone, having someone turn on and off lights occasionally, take out trash, get mail, etc.
The more you can get your employees engaged, the more likely it is they’ll retain the important information from these trainings. The information may not change every year, but that doesn’t mean you can’t change up your delivery.
If you want help in presenting an engaging security briefing or to enhance your security programs, Adamo can come alongside your team with our FSO support. We can run the training or help you build a program for yourself that fits your company’s culture. If you want to know more, contact us and we can get you on the path to better security.
