Aptive Offers Efficient, Effective Ethics Training for 500+ Team Members with Articulate

The Challenge

Aptive’s explosive growth drove a need for efficient, effective training on its unique ethical needs for its entire workforce

Recently, Aptive has experienced explosive growth, with many new employees who had not previously worked in government contracting. When the organization expanded—from 280 to over 500 employees in just a three-year period—so did its learning and development needs.

“We needed to use e-learning to ensure that our entire workforce was up to speed on the unique ethical and conduct concerns that can come in this industry,” says Anna Kraemer, Senior Learning Experience Designer.

Before 2022, Aptive did not have a formal training compliance program. Instead, it used virtual, synchronous instruction to train the smaller organization on key topics and industry updates. But with its growth, Aptive needed an efficient, effective way to train the entire organization on the unique nuances of federal government ethics. That year, Aptive launched a new training team with Learning and Development Director Jennifer Farrell at its helm.

While all ethics training courses have real-world implications, the stakes are particularly high in government contracting. Farrell knew that Aptive’s compliance training needed to challenge learners to think critically and mindfully about the unique scenarios of their work.

“An off-the-shelf course could not meet our need for educating our workforce on key ethical lessons,” says Farrell. “There are unique and subtle ethical considerations in government contracting that our consultants need to be informed about. We needed the assurance that 100% of our workforce had that information—in an interactive and challenging way.”

The Answer

Aptive created interactive e-learning with Storyline, empowering learners to navigate common and complex ethical scenarios

Senior Learning and Development Director, Anna Kraemer, joined the team in 2023. She immediately went to work building Aptive’s first interactive e-learning course on ethics and compliance. The goal: to make the course truly challenging for learners. “We wanted this course to flick a switch of understanding in the minds of people all across the organization,” says Farrell.

In just three months, Kraemer used Storyline to build and launch the course, Ethics and Standards of Conduct in Government Contracting. The course begins with an overview of Aptive’s core values to set the tone.

“With Articulate, we are able to demonstrate who we are as a company: that ethics are embedded into our core values,” says Kraemer.

To address the unique ethical dilemmas that arise in government contracting, Kraemer relied not only on knowledge checks and interactive elements, but also on case studies and practice scenarios. She divided content into two categories—common concerns and complex concerns—to help learners think critically and develop a true understanding of how to tackle the nuanced gray areas that may come up in their daily work. The course ends with clear procedural steps on how to report ethical violations, followed by a 5-question knowledge check, which learners must score 80% or more to pass.

“Storyline gave me endless customization ability—I could create almost any type of interaction,” says Kraemer. “It allowed me to give learners a tool box to navigate ethical gray areas, think reflectively, and apply what they learned to new situations.”

Unlocking Human Potential

Aptive’s award-winning ethics course plays a key role in onboarding for more than 500 team members

Since its initial launch, Aptive’s Ethics and Standards of Conduct in Government Contracting course has received rave reviews both internally and externally. The course holds a 5-star average rating from learners in Aptive’s learning management system (LMS), and team members across the organization have expressed appreciation for its challenging, practical, and tailored content specific to successfully working as government contractors. 

The course’s success has paved the way for similar e-learning efforts at Aptive. “We needed this course to be outstanding because we needed 500 people to believe that e-learning is just as—if not more effective—than live, virtual training,” says Farrell. “The success of this ethics course led to another customized e-learning course in Rise.”

Recently, Kraemer converted the original course into a Rise course for Aptive’s protégé organization, Artemis ARC. To preserve the course’s unique interactivity while launching the course in just two weeks, Kraemer used Storyline blocks within a Rise course.

“Combining Rise and Storyline was a game-changer,” says Kraemer. “By pairing Storyline’s endless customization with Rise’s agility, we were able to play on the strengths of both authoring tools.” 

In 2024, the course earned a Brandon Hall Group Silver HCM Award in the custom content category. And today, the course has become an integral part of Aptive’s onboarding program for all new employees. “Our core values aren’t just listed on a slide during orientation,” says Kraemer. “They’re also woven throughout our Ethics and Standards of Conduct course that all new employees take in their first 10 days at the company.”

With Articulate 360, Aptive weaves its company values into its ethics training, challenging employees to think critically and demonstrating that ethics is at the heart of everything they do.