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For every business to be able to operate legally, it needs to have some sort of compliance. This makes corporate compliance a must-have for all organizations.
Without a corporate or regulatory compliance framework in place, an organization is unprotected and in danger of getting a financial penalty, a lawsuit, or even a dissolution at any given time.
We have seen this happening with GDPR and the changing rules it brought on cybersecurity. Adapting to the new compliance meant accepting and following new regulations, but at the same time failing to do so meant, well…falling behind.
Just like in other types of compliance training, every employer and employee needs to be informed and well-educated about the new changes.
Human resource professionals and the higher management are the ones responsible for ensuring a company offers compliance training, and most preferably, online compliance training.
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But, how much do we know about it?
Compliance training is the process of informing and educating employees on the different laws, regulations and company policies that govern the workplace and have a direct impact on their daily responsibilities and behaviors.
Amongst the most popular topics, compliance training includes the following:
More specific examples of anti-harassment training and general compliance are the following topics:
Anti-harassment training:
General Compliance Training:
*Note that this is a sample on the compliance training types. To find out more, make sure to check the Center for Workplace Compliance.
Compliance training is about meeting key company requirements but it’s not all theory.
On the contrary, it offers a chance for employees to get to know the culture of the organization and how everything works in various ways.
For example, it tells employees what the company cares about and who it cares about and teaches you how to respond or behave in certain demanding real-life situations that they might find themselves in.
Compliance training sets the tone and gives answers to key questions that employees have. It’s there to help employees feel safe, and let them know what kind of conduct and behaviors are welcomed and which are not.
Why is Compliance Training Important?
Compliance training is mandated by law and both employees and employers need to keep track and meet the standards it indicates. It exists to impose a series of key laws and practices that ensure the working environment is a safe, productive and creative place to be.
In many cases, though it helps to accomplish so much more:
While every compliance training program may share similarities with others, it’s up to the company to tailor the training content.
The human resource management team is responsible to create materials and prioritize activities, tasks and evaluation methods that help strengthen job-specific skills and the knowledge employees need.
On the other side of the spectrum, through compliance training can help employees develop their soft skills including the following:
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All of these skills constitute what I would like to call a ‘responsible’ and ‘productive employee’ and can help employees adhere to a persona that is more considerate of their professional development and advancing their lifelong learning skills.
Effective compliance training allows employees to develop. It gives them a chance to take on more responsibilities, learn their boundaries and work more independently.
Compliance training differs from other types of training and it’s an ongoing process.
Such training needs to be completed periodically to ensure companies are up to date with changing regulations.
Some compliance training subjects require that employees take a compliance training course every year to refresh their skills or learn new practices under the new state or federal laws, while others that concern different industries don’t.
From this scope, compliance training can look boring and time-consuming – not to mention painfully repetitive. But this is why employers need to be quick enough to adhere to the new learning demands and make sure their training program is current, using modern and industry-relevant approaches.
The need for a revolutionary method that brings effective results, however, leads to online training, which offers a range of advantages in terms of training time flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and ease-of-use.
For a business to build an online corporate training program, it needs a learning management system (LMS) or an elearning platform, which can help to manage and distribute training content.
With an LMS, you can create a course library of online compliance training courses and help employees find the ones they need easily and quickly. Online learning is reliable. It offers accurate data on every employee and allows them to access training materials at their own pace, at any time and place, which is great, because it doesn’t require them to be at the office while doing so.
Also, it provides interactive learning that increases engagement and motivation, encouraging employees to go through and complete the mandatory compliance training program free of hassle and…boredom.
Compliance requirements vary from state to state which means that New York will have different compliance rules in contrast to California or Connecticut.
As an employer, you need to make sure that you know what your state, local and federal laws are and create training material that matches those requirements. The same works with countries outside the US.
Compliance training may also vary by industry and market where some course topics are compulsory and others not. For example, a construction company will have different mandatory safety training than a healthcare company. Likewise, a financial company would require different laws in place in contrast to an advertising company.
So, it’s important to check these first, before you are ready to provide training.
Despite the differences though, compliance training’s purpose remains the same and it’s to successfully train employees.
This is achieved through the induction of an online corporate training program that aims to:
Completion here means passing a test, an exam, or a course successfully and earning a certification. The content and the mode of examination is often determined by the governing body in each industry.
If you are not quite sure what your company needs to do to ensure compliance follow these steps:
STEP 1: Identify the regulations your company needs to meet
What are your company compliance requirements? Check what you need to meet the most recent regulations as set by your industry’s recognizing body and evaluate the criteria that you will need to assess your employees with.
STEP 2: Create or get the content from a reputable source
If you have an instructional designer at your premises or work with them in any way, ask them to create the training content for you.
If you are creating the content by yourself make sure you take the following into account:
- Keep it simple and concise: present information in simple and short sessions. Because of the nature of compliance training – rules and regulations, lessons can get boring and difficult to remember. With microlearning, though this is easily managed.
- Add real-life-examples: your employees are more likely to take compliance training seriously if you include real-life examples in your training. Real-life examples are more relatable, valuable and meaningful. They can also spark discussion and provide interactive and fun activities for employees to carry out.
- Use a range of learning methods: decide on whether you need offline or online content and how much of it you are going to need. An online course is the most effective and fastest way to deliver information and helps employees retain information. If you are creating an online course, choose the level of interactivity you want to use for your training material.
Otherwise, make sure that you acquire content that works along with the current regulations and policies of the governing body you need the certifications from.
Laws change over time so make sure you update your content to stay up-to-date every year. Keep the key themes unchanged, but come up with different individual and group activities or examples every time so that it never gets tiring.
STEP 3: Instruct employees to complete the courses
Once you choose the learning platform that works for you, allow employees access to the course. Using a unique username or password, direct them to the training materials – the learning base, and help them become familiar with the assessment tools.
STEP 4: Set up the completion deadline(s)
Give a timeframe that tells employees when the training needs to be completed. This could be a specific year, month, date and time. Make sure you inform employees well in advance so that they prepare adequately for it.
STEP 5: Keep your records safe
Once your employees go through the training circle once, keep your records of information and their performance results. These are going to tell you who is compliant or not and are going to be useful for future reference.
Currently, there are many organizations offering compliance training courses, some of which are already using the LearnWorlds platform.
To help you get an idea of what compliance training can look like and enable you to offer your courses to employees, we are sharing five notable examples through the websites of such organizations.
Example 1: Achieve Beyond USA
Achieve Beyond USA offers pediatric therapy and autism services through the provision of courses that carry CEU – continuing education units. Subjects include Ethical Parental Involvement in ABA, Mand Training and Behavioral skills. The organization states that courses are updated regularly and the courses are instructed by experienced professionals. Certifications are recognized by ACE.
Example 2: Safety First
Safety First is a team of safety consultants that offer courses on Health and Safety and Emergency Management. Specifically aimed at wardens – evacuation and fire wardens, these courses follow the New Zealand Legislation and Standards. At Safety First, compliance training it’s all about the people, and the company provides its services to many property owners and developers in New Zealand.
Example 3: Compliance Academy
Compliance Academy provides a compliance course on California Public Works and has another two that are currently in progress. The course outline is available for download and it specifies what the course is all about. From what it looks like, the course contains training material on PDF and video formats. In the end, it offers a final review and a course review to test the knowledge of participants and gives out free support guidelines.
Example 4: GCS2
GCS2 comes to offer gaming compliance to professionals who work in the Casino Operations and Gaming Manufacturing industry. The access to both courses it offers is limited to 8 weeks. The course is backed up with information and at the end of every section, it offers a quiz. On the second to last, there is a self-assessment and on the 8th it’s the final exam on the subject.
Example 5: Building Networks
At Building Network they offer courses to council staff members, new and existing IQPs – people who the local Council regards as qualified to undertake inspection, testing, and maintenance of particular specified systems. It also offers BWOF – a building warrant of fitness, that participants can become compliant with after successful completion of the course.
While the majority of employees don’t like the word ‘compliance’ – or anything that comes with it, it seems that this is just how the world of business works and organizations will need to keep up with the current law.
With these ever-changing regulations, business owners need to consider compliance training a crucial factor to business success and sustainability. An organization that wants to stay up-to-date with the compliant standards though, needs to offer its employees the best quality of corporate training it can find.
Are you willing to change that? Get started with LearnWorlds’s 30-day free trial today and find out where that can take you!
Kyriaki is a Content Creator for the LearnWorlds team writing about marketing and e-learning, helping course creators on their journey to create, market, and sell their online courses. Equipped with a degree in Career Guidance, she has a strong background in education management and career success. In her free time, she gets crafty and musical.
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