Clear Channel Outdoor

Remberto Rem Jimenez

Remberto “Rem” Jimenez is Director of Learning & Development at Clear Channel Outdoor, leading initiatives in sales enablement, operations, and e-learning. With 25+ years of experience, he holds an Ed.D. in Educational Technology Leadership and advanced degrees from NYU and NJCU.

Learning and development (L&D) professionals are being asked to do more. In addition to onboarding and upskilling employees, managing local and regional compliance and regulatory training, the role of AI for learning and skill development has also emerged as an area of responsibility. L&D professionals need to understand how these emerging tools and resources work. L&D Professionals must also understand how to use these tools with minimal risk to organizations, while also complying with organizational policies involving AI use and data privacy requirements. In short, how can we make sure that all employees are risk mitigators in the workplace?

Risk mitigation is both a cultural and mindset shift. It is not enough for it to be an operational piece of compliance, or regulatory annual check-ins. To help with this mindset and cultural shift, I propose the following “Risk Mitigation Framework” to help organizations embed these concepts and ideas into their workplace.

The first Risk Mitigation Key is: “Creating a Risk Averse Culture”

Risk is the responsibility of every employee regardless of title or role. Organizations should continue to conduct their annual compliance requirements as a normal course of how they operate. What needs to also happen is offering risk mitigation monthly sessions to help reinforce these ideas. The most obvious examples for such topics include proper AI usage and local/ federal regulatory changes. The training of these topics is one part of the equation. The second part is to have these training and communications added to front-line leader team meeting agendas as well. It isn’t enough for C-suite-level executives to communicate these ideas. Front-line leaders must also play a role in further reinforcing and coaching employees on the immediate day-to-day realities of how these concepts affect employee day-to-day activities. This will help create a culture where key risks are top of mind and how to address them within the workplace. L&D professionals can play a role in supporting the coaching of frontline leaders and providing them with the training resources available to support these initiatives.

The second Risk Mitigation Key is: “Enhanced Monitoring and Intervention”

The enhanced and additional risk mitigation interventions noted in the previous paragraph must also have proper tracking and intervention. Many organizations set up mock phishing emails to track and intervene with additional training when an employee fails a mock phishing attempt. The same approach must be applied to emerging topics, like AI usage, so that proper interventions are conducted. These interventions can be training, a policy document, or even a one-page summary that is given to employees that fail the mock testing. Front-line leaders should also be trained on how to present these interventions and support their employees to correct needed behaviors. This includes how leaders should coach their people on averting these risks. L&D professionals can play a role by providing materials and creating intervention kits for these leaders (i.e., a toolkit with all resources that can be used if an employee fails a mock-phishing attack).

The third Risk Mitigation Key is: “Create Risk Mitigation Champions”

Another way of getting risk mitigation strategies communicated to employees is with risk mitigation champions. These champions serve on a risk mitigation champion council to help bring the latest news and updates to their respective teams and divisions. L&D professionals can train these champions on the latest updates and provide communications that they can disseminate to each team. This creates a local and grassroots approach to information sharing. Instead of hearing the messages from a corporate figurehead, they are coming from their peers and colleagues. The local colleagues can simplify and customize communications to make them even more relatable and relevant to their local roles and functions.

In conclusion, L&D needs to work closely with their compliance, technology, and legal teams to support a dynamic curriculum that will support risk mitigation beyond the current traditional regulatory and compliance training initiatives. Risk management and empowering employees to be risk mitigators should also incorporated into the L&D strategy for all workplaces. By creating these programs, workplaces can minimize risk and reduce costly mistakes while also supporting a more positive culture among the employee base.