Mandatory corporate training can be a snoozer or you can enlist a clever storyteller to get the job done without pain.  According to an article in Fast Company one company came up with a fascinating and effective way to teach their ethics-and-compliance training to a geographically wide spread employee base.

Enter filmmaker March Havener.  He was hired to film a series of videos styled along the lines of The Office to deal with touchy ethical topics. You can watch some of these five-minute mockumentories about the fictional company Aggrieva HERE (tagline: Ethics and Compliance Training Movies that are actually supposed to make you laugh) and you’ll understand the power of this story versus reading a dry manuel.  The series was such a success that employees sought out the episodes even before they debuted.

Marc Havener is working as the Creative Director for a company he created called Resonate Pictures, “focusing on character driven documentaries following stories that resonate with the human spirit.”

He goes on to say:

For ages, story has been the preferred method for drawing
 people together, taking them to another place, sharing the human experience, and communicating  values.  Our award winning educational films connect imagination to information, much in the vein of Saint Augustine and Neil Young, Alfred Hitchcock and Ricky Gervais.

Without going all Bono on you, we feel that we have a responsibility to influence the culture around us.  We take that responsibility seriously, and will always look for projects that inspire rather than manipulate, that enlighten rather than inform, and that provoke rather than amuse.

And that philosophy of telling stories has led to a great success in the corporate world.