Using AI to Build Your Own Workplace Harassment Training? Here’s What Can Go Wrong
The Case Against (Solely) DIY and AI-Generated Compliance Training
The question HR and L&D leaders are asking: “Shouldn’t we just build our own workplace harassment training internally? We have smart people and decent resources – and AI can generate content in minutes!”
It’s a reasonable proposition. But when it comes to workplace harassment and discrimination compliance training, the answer is almost always “no.”
Top-notch workplace harassment training ensures your organization:
- meets its legal obligations under human rights laws and occupational health and safety legislation
- can prove due diligence if a harassment complaint is ever investigated or litigated
- reduces the likelihood of incidents and limits reputational risk, legal fees, and damages.
Here are three compelling reasons why (solely) DIY or AI-generated compliance eLearning comes with risks you must consider.
Reason 1: Compliance Training Demands Expertise
The Expertise Gap Is Real
Effective workplace harassment and discrimination training requires a combination of legal knowledge, subject matter expertise, and instructional design skills – all working together from the very first storyboard.
Ask yourself: does your organization have access to that calibre of legal and instructional expertise in-house? And if it does, are those people available for the long curriculum build – on top of their existing jobs?
Impartiality Matters
Another benefit from an external vendor? You may find that new perspectives (found outside your organization) are more successful in challenging your workplace culture’s “status quo.”
A third-party training vendor is free from the internal dynamics and possible conflicts of interest from internally produced content. Courts and regulators may take note.
You May Not Have Time to Build
Building quality harassment compliance eLearning can take months – even with AI speeding things up. In the meantime, your organization faces legal exposure.
Reason 2: AI-Generated Compliance Content Can Be a Legal Liability
All compliance content must be reviewed for accuracy, tone, and legal soundness by subject matter experts – not generalists editing AI output.
AI Doesn’t Know What It Doesn’t Know
AI tools have made it (deceptively) easy to generate anti-harassment training content quickly and relatively inexpensively. But using AI to produce compliance eLearning – without legal expertise guiding – is risky.
Harassment and discrimination training must be legally accurate. A subtle error in a harassment scenario – the wrong tone, the wrong law, or an absurd quiz answer – can confuse or mislead employees and expose your organization to liability.
Representation and Engagement Risks
AI may also not get the “vibe” right either – which can alienate and irritate learners.
For example, AI-generated scenarios and images can be embarrassingly “problematic.” We are talking about sensitive, emotional content (discrimination on the basis of sex, race, disability, workplace violence).
If learners notice something is “off” – a scenario that seems unrealistic, a character that feels like a stereotype – they will disengage – defeating the entire purpose of the training.
It goes without saying that disengaged (and offended) learners do not retain compliance training.
Reason 3: Other New Learning Tech Can Create Legal and Privacy Risks
Building workplace harassment training using AI tools and emerging learning technology can introduce other risks.
Privacy and Data Collection
Believe it or not, a post-training quiz or a chatbot can collect data that qualifies as personal health information. Does your team understand what data is being gathered by your chosen platform, how it is stored, and whether employee consent meets the requirements of applicable privacy legislation?
Employee Consent and Biometric Risk: AI Video and Coaching Tools
Some learning platforms capture employee images and voices. I have to say – some of these are super-cool! But I want to know where my image and voice is going and where it’s stored.
Your organization may have signed a broad licensing agreement – but whether individual employees also have to consent to biometric or voice data collection is a separate and legally significant issue.
Credibility and Psychological Safety: Immersive & VR Simulations
Is future of learning moving toward “immersive” behavioural change? Tools like VR and gamification allow us to place employees in realistic scenarios where they can practice responding to “off-side” conduct in a safe, simulated environment.
However, simulations on topics like workplace violence or sexual harassment could cause psychological harm to participants. “Realistic” is not appropriate for every type of learning.
The Ryley Learning Advantage
Lawyer-Led Expertise
Ryley Learning was founded by Bay Ryley, an employment and human rights lawyer with more than 20 years of experience litigating harassment and discrimination claims.
Every Ryley Learning course is designed by Bay Ryley alongside a panel of experts with direct professional and lived experience in the topics covered. (Not something AI can replicate!)
Animated & Engaging: Learning Actually Sticks
Ryley Learning courses use animation, storytelling, and scenario-based learning to tackle workplace harassment and discrimination in ways that promote empathy and engage learners.
Interactivities reinforce key compliance messages and ensure they stick. All courses are voiced by professional actors.
Simple to Deploy, Built for Compliance Reporting
Ryley Learning courses are SCORM-compliant and work with your existing LMS or ours. They are mobile-first, fully responsive, and SSO-ready.
Real-time reporting gives HR and compliance leaders instant access to completion data – exactly what you need to demonstrate due diligence to regulators, insurers, and legal counsel.
Customization: Training That Feels Like Yours
Choosing a proven workplace harassment training provider doesn’t mean settling for something generic. Add your leadership messaging, company branding, internal harassment policies, industry-specific scenarios, and supplementary modules.
You get the best of both worlds: expert-built, lawyer-reviewed, legally defensible compliance training – tailored to your workplace, your people, and your brand.
Explore Ryley Learning’s online harassment compliance courses:
• Workplace Harassment Training (Sexual Harassment Prevention)