Cargill Creates Approachable and Impactful Compliance Training with Vyond

Intranet articles with Vyond images saw 30% higher open rates

About Cargill

Founded in 1865, Cargill is a privately held, American global food corporation based in Minnesota. Cargill operates in 70 countries and sells to 125 countries, generating $165 billion in annual revenue.

Industry

Food & Agriculture

Employees

155,000

Challenge

Cargill is a company with complex global operations. Across the many countries where it operates, it’s key that employees understand the nuances of local laws, the importance of adhering to them, and the potential impact of noncompliance, like penalties and damage to brand and reputation. And it’s up to the Compliance team to fulfill that mission.

Christopher Annand, Director of Programs and Governance, is charged with guiding the company towards a more “principles-based” approach to compliance: communicating the positive behaviors the company wants to see, rather than outlining the many laws employees should avoid breaking.

To successfully engage the company’s workforce with this new, positive approach, Christopher felt the way his team communicated also needed to evolve. So he decided to move away from text-heavy training materials and, instead, create short, interactive, engaging video content that would be especially helpful to visual learners and more appealing to younger employees.

Approach

Aligned to the launch of an internal “Ethics Week,” Christopher and his team released new Vyond videos that covered critical subject matter and provided examples of what “good” looks like.

Instead of clicking through documentation, employees watched short videos where a lineup of recurring, recognizable characters explained topics like how employees should handle safety situations they’re unsure of, gifts and entertainment protocol, and conflicts of interest.

The team was so pleased with the Ethics Week pilot feedback, they expanded their use cases for Vyond to include:

Creating training video content that’s hosted on Cargill’s LMS;
Embedding videos on Cargill’s intranet portal to promote compliance programs;
Sending videos directly to employees via email; and
Using Cargill leaders’ Vyond characters in other static collateral

How Vyond helped

While Compliance content often gets a reputation for being boring and dry, Christopher said Vyond allows his team to create material that’s creative – even fun, where appropriate. And it’s helping their results: he and the team see much higher rates of employee engagement with content that includes Vyond videos and imagery.

On Cargill’s intranet site, employee open rates on compliance articles featuring a Vyond image were 30% higher than other articles without the imagery. Further, articles that included a Vyond video embedded in the content were 65% more likely to generate employee comments—and averaged about 20% more comments—than other articles.

“I can definitively say that if we incorporate Vyond videos into one of our front-facing articles on the website, we will drive readership of that article because people are curious, they’re interested, and for some people, they know this an established thing we do and they look forward to it,” Christopher said.

And in relationships with regulators, Christopher believes that Vyond helps signal how seriously Cargill takes compliance.

“We feel confident that we’re demonstrating a robust training program as a control for employees,” Christopher said. “Vyond gives us a way to continue that training and reinforce concepts with vignettes and advisories—going beyond traditional compliance course methods.”