Five Tips for Building a Strong BSA Training

How to Make BSA Training Impactful and Engaging

Are you dreading your required annual BSA training, but know it is something that you have to do? Are your employees dreading the training, knowing they will just sit and click, click, click through the same old tired content and complete the same old standard quiz? Well, it’s time to wake them up with some helpful hints to creating and/or supplementing impactful and engaging training.

Here are a few suggestions for developing your annual training:

1. Set the goal/purpose of your training. Have a clear understanding of the business goal that this training will support. By starting with the end in mind, it will help you create a better final product.
2. Determine the desired outcome. Have a vision of what tasks or actions you want your employees to perform or acquire by the end of this training.

3. Know your audience/audiences. Your training should be specific to your audience. The training that you deliver to your frontline employees will not be the same as the training you deliver to your C-levels. By understanding the differences and accommodating the training, this will offer a better experience for all. 
   1. Frontline – Your frontline employees want the training to be interactive, engaging and fun. Bring them into the training, and let them share their knowledge and experience – “Honor thy expertise.”
   2. C-level – Make it short and powerful. Hit them where it will count the most. Talk to the impact, to the bottom line, revenue, and to them personally. Be ready to share real life stories of other institutions, their leaders, etc.

4. Blend your methodology/media. You do this by blending online learning with lecture, audio/video, news clips, real life and personal stories; these all play a role in the way we as adults learn. By blending these methods, it meets the learning styles, (Auditory, Visual, and Kinesthetic) as well as creates engaging content. Remember that you can have multiple shorter training sessions that build on one another rather than one long “all included” session.
   1. PowerPoint – Keep it simple and use powerful images. Your text should be high level and minimal.
   2. Videos, links and news should be relative and impactful. They should be embedded within the PPT so you don’t have to use multiple tools.

5. Create Action. It is important that you put into practice the actions that you want to see implemented with your teams. You can use scenarios, video, simulation, and/or hands-on exercises within the training curriculum. This will ensure that you have not only modeled, but allowed the participants to practice in a safe environment, so that they learn the correct/expected behavior.

At Banker’s Toolbox, our education team provides thorough, interactive training on our various products. “BAM Academy” training is conducted on-site at our Austin, Texas headquarters. At BAM Academy, customers spend three to four days with our experts and leave training with a wealth of product knowledge to make their BSA program more effective.

Similarly to the guidance above on required annual training, our team aims to make training as dynamic and effective as possible. “The trainers were very knowledgeable and the information was presented in a practical format that was easy to understand… I really feel like I have gained a great deal of knowledge to help me when I return to my bank, ” said one BAM user who recently attended training in Austin.

Training is an important component of building a strong culture of compliance. It is meant to set your institution up for success, not to burden you with another task. When you utilize the tips above to make your training engaging, both you and your audience will benefit!

You may also be interested in: Four Tips for Delivering Your Training (Part 2).