Russ Berland is back on this episode of The Compliance Life to share how he uses creative communication to change compliance culture.
Changing Culture at BearingPoint
Tom Fox credits Russ with being one of the first persons to come up with a compliance movie. Russ relates that the lack of an integrated culture was one of the biggest issues at BearingPoint in 2007. His goal was to build company culture, and expectations around the same. Research suggested that they should start with their training, so Russ and his team came up with the idea of a series of videos – a “mockumentary” – similar to The Office. The team gathered stories from employees, which became inspiration for the script.
The first series of videos about the fictional Agreva Group was a phenomenal success. Russ relates that the “magic for us was that because they were our own stories, the people at BearingPoint recognized them and empathized with them…” After each six minute episode, a senior official would talk about the policies that applied to the situation portrayed in the video, and what the characters should have done. Russ comments that the training was the talk of the company: people eagerly looked forward to the release of the next episode, and diagnostic surveys showed marked cultural change as a result. One of their employees even became a local celebrity from acting in the series. They subsequently created a column and a second series of videos.
Tom comments that using the employees’ stories not only made them more targeted and engaged in the series, but also allowed Russ to gather information. Their post-diagnostic surveys helped them to measure the effectiveness of the training. Russ adds that engaging the senior leadership to talk on the videos made them the mouthpiece for the culture they were trying to create, while setting the tone from the top.
Resources
Aventiv Technologies