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Spice Up Your Compliance Week

Fun and engaging ideas for a memorable Compliance Week this Fall

It’s that time of year again – changing leaves and shorter days mean it’s the season for corn mazes, carving pumpkins, college football…and Compliance Week! While your colleagues are likely itching with excitement for the first three, would they say the same about Compliance Week?

Coming up with new and engaging programming is challenging and time-consuming, and each Fall we get asked, “How can we spice up our Compliance Week?” or, for our repeat clients, “How can we outdo what we did last year?”

This year, we’ve decided to proactively pull together our recommendations for low-cost, creative activities that build an engaging Compliance Week and share with the broader compliance community.

1. Identify A Goal

Before selecting activities, it can be helpful to start by aligning on a goal for the week. The Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics describes “awareness, recognition, and reinforcement” as the core principles for Corporate Compliance and Ethics Week.

More specifically, though, what outcomes would you like to see or what behaviors would you like to reinforce? This can help focus your messaging for most impact. Consider, for example:

• Are you trying to do some Compliance PR? Compliance can be scary for employees who mostly associate it with investigations and discipline. Others may associate it with boredom, recalling slogging through required trainings and read-and-attest policies. A well-executed Compliance Week can help break down those preconceptions and focus on engagement and approachability.
• Are you aiming to strengthen lines of communication with the business? You may have employees who are looking to engage more with the Compliance Team but don’t know where to look or who to contact. Compliance activities can be designed to guide employees to your Compliance intranet page or establish live or virtual face-to-face contact with your team.  How can you make your team even more approachable?
• Is there a particular topic you want to clarify or emphasize? You can develop your themes and programming to highlight trending or high-risk compliance areas, perhaps tied directly to your compliance risk assessment.

In many cases, all of the above are true. The important piece to remember is to not try to tackle too much. It’s better to deliver on one goal than to do some of everything and overwhelm.

2. Decide on Your Activities

Now for the fun part! We’ve compiled the list of ideas and inspiration for interactive Compliance activities across both live and virtual audiences. Consider adding incentives to up the stakes, either by offering entry in a prize raffle for participation or by awarding prizes based on a leaderboard.

Engaging Games:

• Two Truths and a Lie: This activity is particularly effective for getting to know the Compliance Team. Present participants with 3 statements and ask them to determine which is the false one.  For virtual, include the 3 statements for each team member in the department and reward the top score.
• Compliance Wordle: Plenty of sites have popped up offering a “create your own wordle” option.Each day of Compliance Week, send out a custom Wordle puzzle with compliance-themed words (e.g., Value, Guide, Trust). This is a low-effort but enjoyable and familiar game for employees.
• QR Code Scavenger Hunt: Place several QR codes around the office, starting at the Compliance booth. Each QR code leads participants to solve a Compliance riddle to find the next code. Completion of the final question earns them a prize or raffle entry.

Trivia with a Twist:

• Giant Jenga: Most folks are familiar with the classic block game. The big version is the perfect eye-catching activity to draw people over to a booth in the office. On each of the blocks, add a knowledge-based question the participant needs to answer to win an award (small prize) or face a consequence (such as having to go again!).
• Putting Challenge: Set up a small mini golf putting green and assign trivia categories to each hole on the green. Categories could include Compliance Team get-to-know-you questions, policy quizzes, or general fun facts. After putting into a hole, participants answer a question from that category to enter the raffle. A hole-in-one grants an automatic raffle entry!
• Spin the wheel: Have participants spin a wheel (either live or virtually) to pick a Q&A quiz category. Categories may be topic-focused (e.g., social media, cross-functional interactions, meals) or format-focused (e.g., Pictionary-style draw-your-answer, act it out like Charades).

Creative Communication:

• Compliance Week Playlist: Make a Compliance topic soundtrack for your Compliance Week with an AI song generator. You can share the playlist internally and use it for background tunes at a booth. You can also get the whole organization involved by requesting mad-lib style Compliance terms – the best submissions get featured and a shoutout in the playlist!
• Videos from Leadership: Share some short, “TikTok” styled video messages from company leadership throughout the week to highlight the importance of Compliance and demonstrate leadership commitment.

• Compliance Comic Strip: Create characters and tell a series of brief stories with a daily Compliance comic strip. For added fun and familiarity, make members of your Compliance Team the stars of the story.
• Compliance Selfies: Think Snapchat or Instagram filters but with your Compliance Week brand, theme, or slogan. Employees can send in their best pic to enter a Compliance Selfie Competition.

3. Get the Word Out There!

Have other fun ideas to get your teams in the Compliance Week spirit? Feel free to connect and share with us!