Beiersdorf · Anti-corruption - Always on the right track

In many companies, employees need to be trained in a myriad of compliance topics. The problem is that staff often find these training courses dry, complicated and boring. The Corporate Compliance Management team at Beiersdorf is keen to address this, using innovative concepts that ensure effective learning about compliance. In 2024, Beiersdorf asked p didakt to redesign the existing anti-corruption training course in a creative way that would spark plenty of motivation.

Employees sometimes inadvertently violate anti-corruption regulations in the misguided belief that they are acting in the company’s best interests. To provide staff with support in relation to anti-corruption, Beiersdorf wanted to adopt a storytelling approach to raise learners’ awareness of the subject, cement their knowledge during the learning journey, and then support the transfer of this know-how to the everyday working environment through examples of everyday situations in a variety of work settings. Beiersdorf also wanted learners to have the option of skipping content if they are already familiar with it and putting it into practice.

In "Anti-corruption – always on the right track", p didakt used a neat creative trick to resolve the seeming contradiction between a storytelling approach and the desire to be able to adapt content in line with learners’ pre-existing knowledge (adaptivity).

The WBT starts with a street map. Behind every figure or section, there’s the story of a fictitious Beiersdorf employee.

All employees want to go to the same conference, but are using different modes of transport to get there. On the way, they encounter a number of challenges centering around the core topics of the anti-corruption guidelines. The storytelling sequences are based on various genres (crime thriller, love story, adventure, etc.), so they offer plenty of variety. They also link to employees’ everyday experiences at work. However, each sequence is a story in its own right, so learners can easily skip or omit certain ones. Experienced learners can therefore get to the point more quickly, without losing the thread.

Thanks to this creative combination of storytelling, an interactive design and adaptivity, the WBT produces a highly personalized learning experience – something that is very unusual for compliance training. The innovative concept ensures all employees are catered for, whatever pre-existing knowledge or preferences they have, and every learner can take the WBT’s key messages on board more easily.