Ethics training goes interactive at Cisco

Cisco keeps employees engaged and educated with an American Idol-inspired training program

Many organizations hold ethics training for employees. Few make that training interesting. And almost none make it downright entertaining.

Cisco Systems wanted to be different. Company leaders hoped to re-energize employees and engage them into being good corporate citizens. The company researched several solutions, but wanted to do more than simply run articles in the internal publication—and off-the-shelf training programs didn’t fit with its unique work force.

“We were seeking a fun, engaging way to educate our employees on ethics-related topics, while producing quantitative results,” says Jeremy Wilson, manager of Cisco’s ethics office.

The goal, he says, was not only to draw attention to ethics within the company’s highly technical employee base, but to increase interaction between the ethics office and the work force.

Cisco eventually turned to The Network’s mPower Communications agency for help.