The Cast of Good Vibes
A podcast for internal comms professionals who want to bridge the communication gap and build a more informed, aligned, and inspired workplace.
We explore how visual communication and behavioral nudges are reshaping the way modern organizations connect with dispersed, hybrid, and frontline teams. From amplifying compliance messages to delivering maximum impact on a tight budget, this is your go-to resource for snackable insights, bold strategies, and stories from comms leaders doing things differently.
Brought to you by the team at Vibe.fyi - the platform that transforms everyday screens like screensavers, lock screens, wallpapers, and digital signage into powerful communication channels that build culture, boost visibility, and drive lasting change.
Let’s cast some good vibes.
The Cast of Good Vibes
Snackable Learning: The Scienced-Backed Strategy Transforming Risk and Compliance Training
We uncover why so much compliance training fades fast and how to make critical knowledge stick using snackable learning, spaced repetition, and smarter channels. The focus shifts from awareness to automatic habits that reduce risk and improve decisions.
• The forgetting curve and the 80% decay problem
• Why annual training fails to change behavior
• Microlearning plus nudge learning as a system
• Long-term potentiation (LTP) and effortful recall explained
• Spaced repetition vs habituation and spam
• The five fundamentals: vibrant, lively, snackable, frequency, in-your-face
• Using ambient channels like signage and screensavers
• Moving from awareness to automatic compliance habits
For more insights on boosting communication and learning in today's workplace, do check out the research and resources from Vaughan Reed and his team at Vibe FYI
Welcome to the Cast of Good Vibes, where we uncover stories shaping modern workplace communication and learning. Today we're tackling a really big problem, one that costs organizations a ton of time and money. The fact that essential knowledge just seems to evaporate. We're looking at some fascinating research shared by Von Reed, who's the founder and CEO of Vibe FYI, all about how to beat this thing called the forgetting curve, especially in risk and compliance training.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And this exploration is really for you, the listener, the learner, who actually needs this knowledge to stick around. We're trying to go beyond just, you know, basic awareness training. We want to get into the actual neuroscience of how you turn that initial awareness into something automatic, like a habit.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, let's unpack this then. It's all been there, right? The annual compliance training. So what's the main challenge here? Why isn't this huge investment sticking?
SPEAKER_01:Well, the central challenge, the sort of cognitive crisis, is that organizations invest heavily, I mean, really heavily, in risk and compliance training. But the returns, they fade incredibly fast. It's a harsh reality based on how our brains work.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell And there's actual science behind this, isn't there? You mentioned the forgetting curve.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Exactly. We have to talk about Hermann Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist. His forgetting curve is, well, it's fundamental here. It basically shows that people can forget up to, get this, 80% of new information within just one week if there's no reinforcement.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. That's that's kind of shocking when you think about it.
SPEAKER_01:It is.
SPEAKER_00:So if you learn some critical data security procedure on Monday, by next Monday, most of it could be gone.
SPEAKER_01:Pretty much gone from active recall, yeah. And this isn't just about, you know, wasted budget, though that's part of it. In highly regulated fields, this memory gap, it leads to really serious problems. We're talking about things that could endanger personal safety, trigger huge financial penalties, or just trash a company's reputation. Think about critical workplace safety rules or complex healthcare regulations.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Right. So forgetting isn't just inconvenient, it's actually dangerous in some contexts.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Absolutely dangerous. And it highlights the failure of those traditional methods, you know, the big annual training dump or maybe a quarterly session on ethics or conduct. They create initial awareness, sure, people tick the box.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell But they don't deliver lasting retention or change behavior.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. They consistently fail on that front. The knowledge just doesn't embed.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Okay, so if the old way is broken, what's the fix? How do we tackle this 80% forgetting problem? You mentioned something called snackable learning.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Yes, snackable learning. It's really a strategy designed to work with our brain's natural learning process, not against it. It's essentially a blend of two key ideas. Okay. First is micro learning. So delivering information in really short, easily digestible bursts. Think seconds or a couple of minutes max.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Short and sweet. Makes sense. What's the second part?
SPEAKER_01:The second part is nudge learning. This involves using positive reinforcement and timely prompts or reminders to kind of gently push that micro lesson back into your awareness.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Ah, okay. So micro content plus kind reminders.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Precisely. The core goal is to help those little bursts of awareness gradually develop into long-term automatic behavioral change. It works with memory consolidation.
SPEAKER_00:That sounds like the dream, honestly. Getting knowledge to stick without feeling like you're drowning in information, it's like a shortcut for the learner.
SPEAKER_01:It is a shortcut, in a way, the scientifically validated one.
SPEAKER_00:Now this brings us to repetition. We often hear repetition is the mother of all learning. Let's get into the science here. Why does repeating something help us remember it?
SPEAKER_01:Right. So neurologically speaking, when you repeat information, you're strengthening the neural pathways associated with that memory. It's a process called long-term potentiation or LTP. Think of it like carving a path in your brain. Each repetition makes the path deeper, more permanent.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so LTP turns short-term recall into long-term knowledge storage.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. And that's how conscious knowledge, like say the steps for an operational safety check or how to make an ethical call, eventually becomes an automatic habit. You don't have to think about it actively anymore, it just becomes second nature.
SPEAKER_00:But there's a catch, right? The research you mentioned from Von Reed's team, it highlights something called message habituation. Why does just spamming the same email 17 times completely backfire?
SPEAKER_01:Ah, yes, habituation. It's crucial. Your brain is designed for efficiency, it filters out noise. If a message is too frequent, too predictable, or always comes through the same channel, like that annoying email. Yeah. The brain basically learns to ignore it. It flags it as unimportant background noise, even if the content itself is critical, it stops registering.
SPEAKER_00:So the repetition needs to be smarter than just hitting repeat. It's not just that you repeat, but how and when.
SPEAKER_01:Precisely. Symbol repetition leads to habituation. The sophisticated answer is spaced repetition.
SPEAKER_00:Space repetition. Okay, how does that work differently?
SPEAKER_01:Instead of bombarding you, it strategically revisits key information at increasing intervals over time. So maybe you see it after a day, then three days, then a week, then two weeks, and so on. The timing is designed to align with how your brain naturally consolidates memories.
SPEAKER_00:And what does that timing achieve?
SPEAKER_01:It triggers something called effortful recall. You're prompted to remember the information just as it's starting to fade when it takes a little bit of mental effort to retrieve it.
SPEAKER_00:Ah, so that little struggle to remember is actually a good thing.
SPEAKER_01:It's the key thing. That effort is what actually strengthens the long-term storage. It makes the memory more durable, more resistant to forgetting.
SPEAKER_00:That really flips the script on how we think about making things easy to remember. The effort helps.
SPEAKER_01:It absolutely does.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, this is fascinating. Let's make it practical now. Von Reed's team developed a framework based on this. How do we actually apply snackable learning effectively? What are the core elements?
SPEAKER_01:Right. So the Vibe team broke it down into five fundamentals. The underlying idea is that message retention is the vital bridge between just knowing something and actually doing it. You can't comply with what you can't recall, right?
SPEAKER_00:Makes perfect sense. Yeah. Employees need to remember the environmental compliance rule when they're making the decision, not just when they did the training module six months ago.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. So these five fundamentals are designed to make sure that recall happens.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, let's break them down. What's the first one?
SPEAKER_01:The first fundamental is vibrant. This leverages the power of visuals.
SPEAKER_00:Visuals? Why are they so important?
SPEAKER_01:Because our brains process images incredibly fast, something like 60,000 times faster than text. Using strong visuals, diagrams, even evocative images, just grabs attention and boosts comprehension almost instantly. Compare that to a dense page of text.
SPEAKER_00:No comparison. Okay, vibrant. What's next?
SPEAKER_01:Next is lively. Static messages tend to become invisible. Dynamic communication things with movement, animation, or even simple visual changes helps capture and hold attention, especially over multiple exposures. It fights that habituation we talked about.
SPEAKER_00:So keep it visually interesting and moving. Got it. Number three.
SPEAKER_01:Number three is the core idea itself, snackable. We talked about microlearning, but this puts a finer point on it.
SPEAKER_00:How fine? How short does it really need to be?
SPEAKER_01:Ideally, the key takeaway message should be really concise, often under 140 characters.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, like a tweet for compliance.
SPEAKER_01:Pretty much. It sounds extreme, but it aligns with how the brain best processes small, distinct chunks of information without getting overloaded. Think about one critical action for workplace safety, not the entire manual page, just the core nugget.
SPEAKER_00:Under 140 characters, that forces real clarity. Okay, that's a big one. What's number four?
SPEAKER_01:Number four is frequency. This one often raises eyebrows.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we talked about space repetition, but is there a magic number for how many times someone needs to see something?
SPEAKER_01:Based on Vive's research into memory embedding, the data suggests employees need to encounter a key message roughly 17 times.
SPEAKER_00:17 times.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, but crucially, spaced out intelligently over several months, not 17 times in one week. That slow spaced exposure is what seems to be needed to really embed it into long-term memory and drive reliable behavioral change.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, 17 times spaced out. But that still sounds like it could be annoying if not done right, which brings us to the how.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. Which leads perfectly to the fifth fundamental in your face. And this doesn't mean aggressive, it means visible in the natural workflow.
SPEAKER_00:How so?
SPEAKER_01:You absolutely cannot achieve that frequency with email or intranet posts. That just creates noise and frustration. Instead, you need to surface these concise, violent, lively reminders where people already look during their day without interrupting them.
SPEAKER_00:Like where?
SPEAKER_01:Think about digital signage in common areas, meeting room screens when they're idle, desktop screen savers, even login screens. These are spaces where a message can be seen passively, repeatedly, without disrupting workflow.
SPEAKER_00:Ah, so it's ambient reinforcement.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. It's perfect for those critical instant recall topics like data security protocols or operational safety checks. The message gets absorbed over time without conscious effort or interruption.
SPEAKER_00:That makes the 17 times seem much more achievable and less intrusive, using existing visual real estate smartly.
SPEAKER_01:That's the key. Intelligent channels for intelligent repetition.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so let's wrap this up. What's the big picture takeaway for everyone listening?
SPEAKER_01:The bottom line is that snackable learning isn't just another training fad. It's a methodology grounded in neuroscience, using concepts like LTP, spaced repetition, and designing against habituation to make risk and compliance knowledge actually stick.
SPEAKER_00:It redefines the goal, moving beyond just awareness.
SPEAKER_01:Right. The goal shifts from temporary knowledge to lasting compliance habits, things that feel natural and automatic, not forced or forgotten. It's about ensuring people do the right thing because it's embedded, not because they just read the policy yesterday.
SPEAKER_00:It makes the investment in training actually pay off in behavior.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, we've covered a lot, from ebbing house to LTP to snackable specifics. So here's a final thought for you, the listener. If 80% of what you learn can vanish in just seven days without reinforcement, what crucial piece of compliance knowledge, maybe related to healthcare rules or environmental compliance, are you relying on right now that might actually be fading as we speak? Something to think about.
SPEAKER_01:Definitely something to consider. Thank you for joining us for this exploration into making learning stick.
SPEAKER_00:And for more insights on boosting communication and learning in today's workplace, do check out the research and resources from Von Reed and his team at Vive FYI. Join us next time on the Cast of Good Vibes.