Fingers blurred across the keyboard, a rhythmic tap-tap-tap, but not on any meaningful project. No, this was the annual corporate cybersecurity training, a ritualistic digital genuflection to the gods of compliance. Click, next. Click, confirm. Scroll, next. My eyes scanned for the “quiz” button, already mentally calculating the 8 questions I’d need to guess correctly to hit the required 80% pass mark. It’s always 8 questions, or 18, or 28. Whatever the number, the goal wasn’t retention; it was completion. A fleeting thought, sharp and bitter, sliced through the mundane: *does anyone actually remember any of this?* The internal timer in my head ticked down, not to a deadline for a project, but to the moment I could finally close this tab and return to work that genuinely mattered.

We spend an astonishing amount of company time and resources on what amounts to digital busywork. Think about it: a company of 238 people, each spending 48 minutes on a module, all to check a box. The cumulative cost in lost productivity alone is staggering, easily reaching $878,000 for a medium-sized enterprise, if you factor in salary and overhead. And for what? To insulate the company against the next potential lawsuit, to prove that something was done. The goal isn’t safer employees, not really. It’s a paper trail, a digital alibi. It’s performative safety.

This isn’t an attack on safety itself. Real safety, the kind that saves lives or prevents catastrophic failure, is paramount. But we’ve conflated genuine preparedness with a bureaucratic obstacle course. When the mandated “training” consists of clicking through slides and guessing multiple-choice answers, we don’t build competence; we breed indifference. We teach people to devalue the very concept of learning to protect themselves and others.

The Abyss Between Knowing and Doing

I remember discussing this with Anna R.-M., my old driving instructor. A no-nonsense woman with hands that seemed permanently molded to a steering wheel. We were talking about the practical driving exam, the one where you actually drive, not just tick boxes on a theory test. She told me about a student, bright as a button, aced every single theoretical question – knew the precise stopping distance at 80 km/h, the exact meaning of every obscure road sign. Yet, put her behind the wheel, and she froze at the first unexpected curve. “The road doesn’t care about your theory score,” Anna had said, her voice gruff but laced with a quiet disappointment. “It cares if you can react, if you can feel the car, if you can do.”

She was right. The difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it, under pressure, is an abyss.

My own journey with this dichotomy hit me hard some years back. I’d always considered myself reasonably adept with basic first aid, having watched all the instructional videos and even passed a few online quizzes. I mean, how hard could it be to apply a bandage or recognize the signs of a stroke? It wasn’t until a close friend choked at a dinner party that the terrifying chasm between theoretical knowledge and practical application became glaringly apparent. My mind, usually quick and analytical, froze. Every single instruction from the video I’d breezed through vanished, replaced by a surge of pure panic. Someone else, calmer, more practiced, stepped in. I was ashamed, and yet, also, profoundly grateful. The certificate on my wall, earned in 8 minutes of clicking, was utterly useless. That experience taught me more than any online module ever could about the true value of hands-on, practical training. It humbled me, forcing me to acknowledge a dangerous overconfidence I hadn’t realized I harbored.

The very act of googling someone I’ve just met, a habit I picked up recently, offers a strange parallel. You get all the data points, the professional accolades, the public persona. But it’s only a shadow, a two-dimensional projection. The real person, their nuances, their reactions, their presence – that only emerges in real interaction. We become so accustomed to consuming information passively that we forget the visceral, active process of true understanding.

The Systemic Flaw

This isn’t about blaming individuals. It’s about questioning a system that incentivizes the wrong kind of learning. A system that prefers the easily auditable completion of a module over the messy, uncomfortable, but ultimately effective, acquisition of genuine skill.

Consider the implications. When an emergency strikes – be it a cybersecurity breach, a workplace accident, or a medical crisis – what truly matters? Is it that everyone completed their annual module on Incident Response Protocol 8, or that a few people possess the actual grit, the muscle memory, the intuitive understanding to act decisively and effectively?

This is where organizations like Hjärt-lungräddning.se stand in such stark contrast. Their mission isn’t to issue a certificate to someone who clicked through a presentation. It’s about instilling true confidence and competence in life-saving skills. They focus on practical, hands-on training, where mistakes are opportunities for learning, not just points deducted from a score. You don’t just know what CPR is; you do CPR, repeatedly, until the movements become automatic, until your fear is replaced by a sense of capability. This is the difference between performative safety and actual preparedness. One is about demonstrating compliance, the other is about truly empowering people.

We’ve become experts at measuring activity rather than impact. We track clicks, completions, time-on-page – metrics that tell us nothing about whether a person is actually safer, smarter, or more prepared. It’s like measuring the number of times a chef has looked at a cookbook, instead of tasting the meal. The irony is that by prioritizing performative safety, we might inadvertently be making ourselves less safe. We create a culture where the very concept of “safety training” is met with an eye-roll, a sigh, and a hurried click-through. This contempt, fostered by years of meaningless exercises, erodes trust in legitimate safety initiatives.

The True Cost of Cheap Compliance

What if we redirected even a fraction of those $878,000 corporate budgets from box-ticking exercises to truly immersive, hands-on experiences? What if instead of another annual module on “Privacy Policy Updates 2028,” employees spent an afternoon simulating a real-world phishing attack, or practiced crisis communication in a controlled environment? Or, for that matter, learned how to genuinely save a life?

The resistance often stems from the perceived scalability and low cost of online modules. But what is the true cost when someone freezes in a critical moment, when a preventable error occurs because the “training” was a joke? The initial investment in quality, practical training might seem higher, but the long-term benefits – reduced incidents, improved morale, and most importantly, truly capable individuals – far outweigh the illusion of cheap compliance. This isn’t just about saving money; it’s about valuing human capacity.

My driving instructor, Anna, didn’t just teach me how to operate a vehicle. She taught me how to anticipate, how to observe, how to react – skills that transcend the act of driving. These are the skills that emerge from genuine engagement, from making mistakes and correcting them in real time, from feeling the consequences of an action, even in a simulated environment. You don’t get that from a slide deck. You get it from repetition, from pressure, from a skilled mentor providing real-time feedback. You get it from learning the hard way, often, how much you don’t know, and then having someone patiently guide you through the process of knowing it better.

The Illusion of Preparation

We tell ourselves we’re preparing for the worst, but we’re often just preparing for the audit. We’re mistaking the map for the territory, the menu for the meal. The danger isn’t just that we’re wasting time; it’s that we’re actively eroding the very foundation of competence and resilience. We’re cultivating a population of certified non-performers, people who can point to a digital badge but cannot, when the moment demands it, actually perform the task. And that, in an increasingly complex and unpredictable world, is a luxury none of us can afford.

The true cost of performative safety isn’t measured in dollars alone, but in lost opportunities for genuine growth, in eroded trust, and ultimately, in moments of crisis where competence is desperately needed but tragically absent.