American View: Why does some mandatory training cause more harm than it prevents?

Human Resources23 Jun 2026

Earlier this year, my role as head of security awareness, education, and training was made obsolete in a corporate restructuring. Nothing personal; just routine administrative evolution.

Earlier this year, my role as head of security awareness, education, and training was made obsolete in a corporate restructuring. Nothing personal; just routine administrative evolution. These things happen. Still, training people has been such an important part of my life that it’s become one of my default “lenses” for assessing the world around me.

This became a distraction for me this past Saturday night: I was in my office (a converted baby’s room) searching for open positions online. My darling wife was working in her craft room (a converted teenager’s bedroom) just across the hall. We’d both been at our respective tasks for most of the day and it was nearly midnight. I’d read through fifty or so posted reqs, while my wife had been knocking out mandatory annual training modules for her employer. Necessary activities, but not “fun” by any sane definition.

Just past eleven, I heard a groan from across the hall and poked my head in to see if my wife was okay. I could see a video playing on her computer – a vignette featuring people in business wear chatting unnaturally in a hallway – and assumed something in her latest training module had set her off. Before I could ask, my wife rolled her eyes and proclaimed that the module she was enduring was “torture.” I asked her why and got a hilarious critique.

My wife explained that the module she was watching had been made for either her employer’s HR or Legal department; it was a long-winded lecture on human trafficking. I figured this would be an easy course to design, as the topic’s primary learning objectives were clear and easily explained. I suspected the entire course probably only needed ten-to-fifteen minutes to make its points (e.g., if you spot X, report it to Y at number Z).

“Oh, NO!” she said through gritted teeth. “This is a mandatory one-hour long module.” I could feel the irritation radiating from her like a broiler. I felt (a) sincere sympathy for her plight, and (b) an urgent need to flee the area. My darling wife was ticked.

If our roles were reversed, I’m sure I would’ve been just as hacked off. Probably more so.

Nonetheless, I stayed and watched the video play. After a minute of content, I realized what had probably happened at her employer’s HQ that this was considered the solution. During the run-up to new year’s mandatory training campaign, someone important – probably a lawyer! – had decreed that all employees needed to be instructed how to recognize and report potential human trafficking. Nothing wrong with that.

HOWEVER! … rather than start designing the curriculum from Terminal Learning Objectives, as corpo best practice mandates, the person demanding the training insisted that the content block be a minimum of one hour of instruction. Seems it didn’t matter how much content there was to teach; the assignment wouldn’t “count” unless it drones on for sixty minutes. Barf! That’s how you alienate your audience and subvert your training goals.

I could tell from the video clips that the producers had done their best to make the mission happen. Instead of relyig on a businesslike lecture or traditional narration, these lessons were “taught” through dramatic segments bookended with stock video content … loooooong ones. Worse, the creators had scripted, shot, and edited their original video scenes like they were producing a telenovela. For example:

[Manager Jon] “Jane! … [five second pause] … can I have a moment?”

[Closeup of worker Jane’s anxious expression] “Um … [five second pause] … sure?”

[Jon] “This is a … [five second pause] … sensitive topic …’

[smash cut to Jane’s shocked expression that goes on much longer than it needed to]

[Jon] “Why don’t we … [five second pause] … step into my office?”

[dramatic music plays for ten seconds while the screen cuts to an unrelated stock video clip of someone watching scenery pass by while taking a car trip]

[Jon and Jane are now sitting opposite one another across a desk. Pan from left to right for 15 seconds to ensure everyone watching knows THIS IS AN OFFICE!]

“Remember, in this scene you’re silently contemplating the absurdity of existence while staring out the window of an Uber.”

My hat’s off to whomever edited that module. They padded it more effectively than a down coat on an Everest-bound sherpa. From a technical skill perspective, the training team achieved their objective ... at an inevitable cost.

See, my wife is a smidge ADHD and the training module’s … engineered … pauses … sandbagged … the … action … making her want to screech and break things. Her mind is always racing (in a good way!) so, to her, the mandatory module’s molasses speed was torture.

In the abstract, I find most corpo training to be needlessly long. I have yet to meet a CBT-module that I didn’t want to edit. That’s probably because I was brought up in the military, where very impatient commanders taught us junior officers how to brief in the most efficient was possible:

Know what needs to be said
Write it in the clearest, tightest prose possible
Have the answers to the most likely questions about your topic ready
Deliver your content and get off the stage

I brought that methodology with me to the corporate world after I mustered off active duty. That’s why I learned that the Army staff officer protocol is not how suits like to “do” meetings. I’ve noticed that many corpo events are performance art, not information synchronization activities. That is, forcing key employees to endure long assemblies specifically to show off your power while demonstrating that others don’t have power over you in turn. The information being presented in the meeting might not be true, while most decisions are either pre-negotiated or simply not made at all. A meeting isn’t for information sharing, operational synchronization, or decision making; it’s just polyester theatre.

“Keep smiling, peasants! Your misery sustains me like the fine wines I don’t pay you enough to afford. BWAH HAH HAH HAH!”

Having endured a lot of these meaningless melodramas over my career, I contend that the American corpo “every interaction is spectacle” understanding of “meetings” inevitably bleeds over into how those companies design, build, and deliver their “mandatory training.” I’ve slogged through too many “mandatory” CBT modules that contained little to no value. One I started building them myself, I realized that the awful design of most CBTs couldn’t just be an issue of insufficient developer skill. These click-next-to-be-miserable creations are – I believe – power plays. They’re the unidirectional audiovisual version of requiring all staff to attend an after-hours event: it’s a way to convey “I can make you suffer and you can’t stop me!” It’s posturing that pretends to satisfy training needs.

That was my assessment of the human trafficking course my wife was yelling at… not that it mattered. She couldn’t opt out of the experience. There were no live, instructor-led classes that would satisfy the requirement. She had to grit her teeth and wait while Jon and Jane … dragged … every … sentence … out … like … they … were … tranquilized. [cut to the view from an unrelated moving car for fifteen more seconds]

We finally got to bed a little before 1 a.m. once my wife finished her company’s hour-long monstrosity of a mandatory module. As I drifted off, I hoped that the poor actors who “starred” in that CBT aren’t company employees … because if they’re my wife coworkers and if she runs into any of them in the office, those poor folks will likely receive some … [cutaway with a “shocked gasp” sound effect] … intensely acerbic feedback.

For the sake of your workers, folks, please abandon the “minimum time” standard for your mandatory training. Focus on swift and efficient delivery. Your workers won’t necessarily thank you for it, but they also won’t be planning inventive and unnecessarily cruel ways to set you on fire either.