The background hum of the server room was softer than the grating, synthesized voice narrating slide 43: “And remember, phishing attempts can arrive even through a seemingly harmless PDF attachment.” I was clicking ‘Next’ before the narrator finished ‘PDF.’ This was my annual Cybersecurity Awareness training. I’d done this module every year for the last decade, and yet here I was, required to prove, once again, that I understood that clicking unknown links was bad.

This isn’t learning. This is compliance theater.

I criticized this process mercilessly in my head, inventing entire diatribes against the Instructional Design team and the Legal Department. I pass by elimination-guessing, clicking, backtracking-not by engaging with the content. The company’s investment in my education amounts to providing a legally defensible digital document trail showing that I was notified, should I later commit an error.

Poisoning the Well

This perfunctory approach poisons the well for genuinely useful training. If every mandated corporate education experience is a time-suck, we approach subsequent development opportunities with the same deep cynicism. When a valuable, detailed, skills-based course is finally offered, the internal monologue whispers, “This is just another 233 slides of animated misery designed to cover someone’s backside.”

“I needed to know the correct clearance for a double-wall stainless steel flue liner relative to combustible material-a measurement that changes yearly based on fire code updates. But no, I spent an hour learning not to use ALL CAPS.”

Zara’s industry treats knowledge as currency, not a checkbox. Her training involves practical application tests and peer reviews where failure means houses burn down. This dilution of specialized knowledge into generalized, liability-focused pap kills the soul of the workplace.

We tolerate it because we have to. We criticize it because it’s insulting. The counterargument is always: “But if we didn’t mandate basic harassment training, the environment would devolve.” Yes, but the mistake is stopping at the bare minimum required by counsel. The goal shouldn’t be to minimize the company’s liability, but to maximize the employees’ competence-and in doing so, liability naturally decreases.

Businesses that thrive empower the customer with genuine understanding. My cousin runs Diamond Autoshop. They don’t give a liability waiver; they show you the worn bushing, explaining why it failed. They treat transparency as their greatest asset. Why do we abandon this principle internally?

The LMS Irony

We pay a vendor $373,000 for a proprietary LMS that feels like a poorly designed video game from the 2003 era. This LMS then serves up content so risk-averse and generalized that it applies meaningfully to none.

The Shame of Structural Error

I remember once, during a massive system migration, I ignored a crucial detail about data structure permissioning. Why? Because the relevant training slide was positioned immediately after the obligatory ‘Workplace Safety’ module, which required me to identify a misplaced wet floor sign. My brain, already numb from mandatory content, simply skipped the technical slide assuming it was more of the same low-stakes content.

My mistake was structural, not technical-I failed to distinguish between compliance filler and actual required expertise. The shame was real because the internal rehearsal kept returning to: This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been systematically taught to disregard the training.

The Core Contradiction

When 93% of employees admit to clicking through training materials without reading them-and yes, I just made up that specific number, but it feels true, doesn’t it?-the failure is not the employee’s attention span. The failure is the system’s design.

The moment you design training primarily to protect the organization from a lawsuit, you inherently signal that the person taking the course is the problem, not the solution. We are assets when generating revenue, but liabilities when we need to be educated.

Mentorship is an investment in human capital; generic e-learning compliance is an expenditure on legal defense. Contextual training, specific to the job, demonstrates a belief in potential, not just concern for adherence.

The Exhaustion Loop

This charade is exhausting. I’m tired of being treated like a rogue element that must be corralled by pre-chewed content. We keep clicking ‘Next,’ hoping the notification in our inbox will finally stop flashing red.