If you haven’t worked with us before, we want to show you what we can do. We’re giving away custom texting videos to five companies. Just fill out the form below or click here to enter.

I’m a huge fan of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. (Anyone else excited for the season 7 premiere this week??)

Recently, a few conversations about compliance have had me thinking about one of my favorite scenes.

In the clip above, Detective Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) is texting his old-fashioned captain (Andre Braugher), who begins all of his text messages with “Dear Jake” and signs them “Sincerely, Raymond Holt.”

From a comedy perspective, the scene works because the audience — like Jake — knows it’s strange to include formal greetings and signatures in text messages. Jake even tries to help his boss by telling him this, but Holt is stuck in his ways. The captain “notes” his employee’s suggestion but continues communicating in the awkward and outdated way he always has. Oh, Holt.

Captain Holt’s old-fashioned nature is one of the personality quirks that make me (and other Nine-Nine fans) love him as a character. But it’s not so cute when companies do it.

You’ve heard us say it before: Technology has changed the way we communicate. It’s also changed employees’ expectations of their workplace experience.

Employees want the companies they work for to communicate the way they do, and when the workplace experience doesn’t hold up, it can cause frustration (see Jake shaking his head) — and even turnover.

Yet a lot of compliance training looks and feels ten years old, or worse — actually is ten years old.

Perhaps the worst offenders are the vendors advertising massive libraries of compliance training. Not only is it impossible to keep a library that size up to date, but the business model inherently discourages innovation and customization because selling the old stuff off-the-shelf is more profitable. When their clients are forced to deploy training that feels outdated or doesn’t reflect actual work experiences, they create a cultural divide between the company and its employees. This divide frustrates employees, reduces engagement, and limits the effectiveness of the training.

(Side note: We’ve heard this frustration from so many companies that we decided to build our own library — and more importantly completely rethink the library experience. Email us at [email protected] if you’d like to learn more!)

So how do you avoid the cultural divide and connect with your audience?

Communicate the Way Your Employees Do.

Start by looking at how they talk to each other. Where are they connecting? What are they sharing? Do your compliance communications fit into the conversation?

For the Rethink library, we regularly find inspiration for our products by looking outside the compliance industry at popular media. When we come across videos, memes, or ads we love, we ask ourselves if the format could work for a compliance message. In fact, that’s how we came up with one of the latest formats in our library: texting videos!

In addition to Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I’m also a big Harry Potter fan (and you now know the two sources for 50% of my pop culture references). When I came across this Harry Potter texting story, I fell in love with the format. Not everyone gets text messages from the Dark Lord, but almost everyone can relate to receiving a text that leaves them unsure how to respond.

So we asked ourselves: Why not use that medium to play out an ethical scenario the way an employee might encounter one at work, in real-time?

Even better: These texting videos are completely customizable. You like the message but think a different scenario would resonate with your employees? Great, let’s swap it out. We’ll work with you to determine the right scenario for your audience and build it out. (And if that sounds time-consuming, don’t worry: This process typically only takes two weeks from start to finish, and only thirty minutes of your time. Yay, technology!)

Want a Free Texting Video of Your Very Own?

If you haven’t worked with us before, we’d love to get to know you and show you what we can do. We’re giving away five custom texting videos. Just fill out the form at the top of this post or click here to enter.

The giveaway closes on February 19, so enter now before you miss out!