What happens if an employee fails a phishing test?
A failed phishing test should trigger coaching, not discipline. Best practice is a short lesson served immediately after the click, while the context is fresh, followed by inclusion in the next campaign to confirm the lesson landed. Punishing clickers reliably backfires: it drives down reporting of real incidents, because staff who fear consequences stop putting their hand up when they make a genuine mistake.
The moment after the click
Good platforms turn the click itself into the lesson. Instead of a scolding email a week later, the employee lands on a page explaining what they missed, followed by automatically assigned follow-up training, the pattern Microsoft builds into its own simulation tooling and the one dedicated platforms refine further.
Repeat clickers deserve support rather than escalation: harder-to-spot templates are simply beyond some roles' daily exposure, and a five-minute conversation about their actual inbox usually fixes what three generic modules cannot.
train2secure serves coaching at the moment of the click and tracks improvement per person across campaigns, without naming and shaming.
See train2secure's follow-up training