While it’s true that businesses are more aware than ever that they need to train their teams on cybersecurity awareness, getting teams on board with the idea is often where the challenges begin.

Quite simply, many employees are not motivated to do mandatory compliance training. Completing standard training courses on topics that are traditionally considered to be boring, such as data protection and security, can feel like a chore. As a result, employees will often try to avoid doing the training as long as possible.

When they do finally complete the training, usually after getting reminders and warnings, they complete it as quickly as possible; this means the information is not fully retained because the employee is so disengaged.

In these training scenarios, the business is merely ticking a box to say that the employee has completed the necessary training, which will satisfy the regulators, but the benefits to the business are lost.

For example, this approach to training does not help to develop a culture of employees who are security-aware and behave in ways that protect the business. With cyberattacks being a continued threat to many organisations, no matter the size or industry, an effective cybersecurity training strategy is essential.

But how do you boost employee engagement in your security awareness programme? Read on to find out.

How to boost engagement in security awareness

To make cybersecurity training more engaging, there are a number of best practices you should implement:

Use interactive training

At the core of most training programme failures, is the content you serve up to your team. Put bluntly, the world of cybersecurity training is littered with dull, dry and dreary training courses.

If you want your teams to actively engage in their training, then you should choose a provider who places their emphasis on creating entertaining content that your teams actually want to take. Storytelling, animations and interactive elements all boost engagement in security awareness training, which help embed lessons and positive behaviours in your team.

Keep your training short and actionable

There’s no requirement for cybersecurity training to last an hour at a time, and yet, much of the available training does. Your teams are busy and will typically prioritise their workloads overtraining, especially if the latter is going to take up too much of their time.

So, when delivering your training, prioritise finding a training partner that utilises short-form content with a focus on simple, actionable advice. Using a mix of content, such as a short bit of video and some interactive slides, is far more engaging than a long set of slides without any animation.

Use humour

Cybersecurity can often feel like an overly dry and serious topic, this means traditional training content often contains formal language and a serious tone. However, using humour within training content helps to boost engagement and keep employees coming back for more.

Use incentives and gamification

Incorporating games and puzzles into training courses, known as gamification, is a highly successful way of creating more engaging training content. Employees have more fun and enjoy working towards incentives, such as collecting points, in the same way, video games are enjoyed due to the accomplishment of getting to a new level or high score.

Bob’s Compliance and Bob’s Culture training packages incorporate fully gamified learning experiences that are built around the principles of experiential learning. Our new ‘Hook, Line and Sinker: The Game’ course helps employees to develop behaviours that will prevent phishing, smishing and vishing attacks, through engaging games and activities.

If you are looking for a way to increase employee engagement with your security awareness programme, get to know our products now.