No matter what industry you operate in, there’ll be rules and regulations you need to comply with in order to stay above board. Not only are there financial risks for failing to meet these, but there are reputational ones too - especially when it comes to things like consumer data protection.
Having a dedicated compliance officer is great, but it shouldn’t be your only solution. Instead, take the time to craft a training plan for your entire workforce. Due to its somewhat complex nature, keeping employee involvement high when running these training sessions will require you to put a few strategies in place.
Want to find out the most effective ones? Keep reading.
Understanding compliance training
Before we jump into discussing how to deliver effective and engaging compliance training, it’s worth briefly introducing what these sessions are all about. When we talk about compliance training, we refer to a specific type of training that’s compulsory by either law or policy.
There are several different topics that companies can deal with when running compliance training sessions, depending on a range of factors such as company industry, size, location, and activities. Typically, some of the most common compliance training programs in the US cover:
- Data protection
- IT security
- Workplace safety
- HR law
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)
- Financial regulations
Before you jump in, make sure you have the right tools and people available to you. For instance, if you’re providing training to your internal recruitment team, you might want to introduce an ATS like Oleeo’s, as well as bring in an external expert on any legal regulations in your area.
The benefits of compliance training
Now that we have clarified what compliance training for employees is, and what some of the most popular types of training programs include, it’s worth looking at why compliance training is so crucial.
1. Lower risk of legal issues
Whether you’re looking to boost your enterprise architecture strategy through IT security training, or are currently focused on things like anti-harassment training and workplace safety, the common denominator is always this: a well-structured and comprehensive compliance training program will dramatically slash the risk of running into legal trouble.
Make sure you’re aware of any specific regulations that are unique to your industry - for instance, HIPAA for healthcare related businesses, or the Consumer Financial Protection Act if you handle finances. It’s also important to check how laws vary between countries - for instance, if you’re a US business looking to operate in the EU you’ll need to get up to speed with GDPR.
2. Better reputation
Sometimes, compliance isn’t about legal requirements. It can also be about meeting optional, but valuable, standards. The International Organization for Standardization is the go-to for this, covering things like:
- Quality management
- Environmental management
- Food safety
- Data security
- Health and safety
Meeting well-known ISO standards and demonstrating as such on your website or marketing materials helps potential customers and clients to be confident in your offerings. After all, it’s one thing to say you’re eco-friendly, and another to show that you meet the requirements for ISO 14001 and have a clear environmental management system in place.
3. Fairer and safer workplaces
There are internal benefits to compliance training too. A well thought out program can be instrumental in building a workplace that’s fairer, safer, and more inclusive toward all employees. This doesn’t just apply to diversity, equity, and inclusion training programs: it extends to all of them.
By teaching your employees, for example, about health and safety, important work instructions, and HR company policies, you instill in them a sense of trust and dependability that contributes to turning your company into a great place to work.
4. Happier and more productive workforces
Let’s imagine that you are conducting training in HR law. During the training sessions, you have taught your staff the pillars that sustain the policies and regulatory requirements of human resources, and you might have even showcased the benefits of leveraging HR tech tools such as Oleeo’s recruitment CRM.
Your employees will go away feeling confident in their understanding, and they’ll know who to approach if they have follow up questions. They’ll also see their own skills develop, which leads to an increase in productivity and employee retention. In fact, research from Gallup shows that organizations who invest in employee development are twice as likely to keep their employees!
Making compliance training for employees more engaging: 8 best practices
Now that you know more about compliance training and its benefits, it’s time to talk about how you can make any compliance training program more engaging and effective for your workforce.
1. Make your sessions as snappy and focused as possible
As you probably know, if you’ve already carried out any employee training before, people’s attention spans aren’t that long! Because of this, you’ll need to make your compliance training sessions as bite-sized, focused, and interesting as possible.
Keep all content short and to the point, cap each session’s duration so it doesn’t feel like it’s dragging on endlessly, and allow trainees to take regular breaks to clear their minds and take in what they’ve learned.
2. Incorporate gamification
If you thought that gamification was the exclusive remit of the education sector, you might need to think again. It’s a fantastic strategy that lends itself very well to professional settings, too.
Turning something that many people view as complex into more of a fun game brings out the engagement and playfulness that can be needed to make the training program to be a success.
When considering gamification, you can opt for anything from awarding digital badges, to turning the sessions into a team-based activities with real-world prizes. Unleash your creativity, and you’ll likely come up with some fantastic gamification ideas.
3. Always stay current
Compliance training for employees deals with what’s required in the workplace right now: talking at length about safety protocols and industry regulations from the past is not only unnecessary, but it can be confusing to trainees.
Therefore, ensure that all the content of your sessions is up-to-date with the most recent laws, and keep everything as relevant as possible to the specific job roles of the attendees.
4. Make it visually appealing
An image, as they say, speaks louder than words, and this holds true for pretty much any visual asset – be it a simple photo, a more structured infographic, or an animated video.
When it comes to putting together your training materials, be sure to incorporate plenty of visual aids. Not only will they likely make complicated concepts easier to understand and digest, but they will also boost the engagement and interest of your employees.
5. Test first, train second
One of the main reasons why many training courses don’t work as well as expected is because they can feel like you’re repeating what your staff already know. To avoid this, adopt a ‘test first’ approach. Start with quizzes that everyone can take. If they score well enough in a module to prove they know it, they’re excused from that chunk of training.
This ensures that people only take the training they need, making better use of their time (and yours).
6. Make it more compelling by leveraging real-life examples
Compliance training may sound like a difficult thing to truly grasp – but that’s only true if you’re exclusively talking about abstract ideas and concepts. If you, on the other hand, make a point of supporting your training with real-life situations and examples, things can suddenly become a lot more interesting – and simpler to understand. Let’s say your goal is to teach the importance of certificate monitoring in website security. Instead of just defining technical concepts, why not give them examples of companies that were negatively affected by certificate expirations?
The case studies you include in your training sessions can be varied – you can look for them online, or you can refer to something that really happened at your company. Rather than talking through what you did, make it open-ended and ask how your trainees would have dealt with it. This can ground the discussions, ensuring it feels applicable to your team’s day-to-day life.
7. Use quizzes and hands-on activities
We’ve mentioned using quizzes as part of the test first approach, and you can use them throughout the process. For example, if you run an HR law training session on RPO models that’s divided into three bite-sized parts, you could incorporate a short quiz at the end of each part.
You can select one specific format for your quizzes, such as multiple-choice or true/false kind of questions, or mix and match different types to keep your employees engaged and interested throughout. Make sure to use question pools rather than standard question sets, as this avoids the possibility of answers being shared or retakes being passed via rote learning over true understanding.
Don’t just rely on one format, however. We’ve already discussed the potential that gamification holds when it comes to keeping your employees engaged during a compulsory training session, and the same can be said about practical, hands-on activities.
Things like workshops, role play sessions, and focus groups can be extremely helpful, too, as they bring the training to life and get trainees to work on specific issues together.
8. Consider different training delivery methods
Everyone learns in different ways, at different paces, and with different degrees of success. For your compliance training program to be effective and engaging, you need to take all this in consideration.
So, ditch the one-size-fits-all model and embrace the opportunities offered by online or hybrid training delivered via cloud native platforms. This can benefit remote employees, those with busier schedules, or simply anyone who would appreciate the flexibility.
In a similar vein, remember to incorporate as many different content types as possible – from quizzes to infographics, from videos to games. All this will make your mandatory training that much more appealing.
As a final tip, document what you discuss during your training sessions and upload these resources to the company website (exclude all the sensitive information, of course). This way, your employees have something to refer to even after the training. You’ll also build a good reputation as an employer and a business, with potential employees and customers seeing you’re serious about meeting valuable standards at work. Just leverage good VPS hosting to ensure optimal website performance.
Wrapping up: Design better compliance training for employees
Ensuring that you provide a work environment naturally conducive to the safety, high performance, and happiness of both your employees and customers is paramount, for a business operating in our day and age.
In this comprehensive guide, we clarified the meaning – and listed some of the main types – of compliance training programs, looked at their benefits, and delved deeper into eight ways to make each session as engaging and effective as possible.
From dumping the one-size-fits-all approach to harnessing gamification, from using real-life examples and case studies to delivering bite-sized, relevant, and current content, there are many options you can consider.
So what are you waiting for? Put our tips into practice and get ready for your most successful compliance training yet!
Want to enable your employees to showcase their newly learned skills? Explore the benefits of issuing verifiable, shareable digital credentials in our downloadable Digital Credentials in Corporate Training guide or request a platform demo to see how Accredible can help your credentialing programs to succeed.
