Compliance training has morphed from a “nice-to-have” element to a critical practice, as the regulatory and legal landscapes grow more complex. Organizations are under continued pressure to ensure their workforces are well-versed in the laws and regulations that impact their daily operations. The evolution beyond a traditional compliance mechanism is meant to enable organizations to create and maintain a participating and compliant workforce.
Consider the array of knowledge and skills training programs that make up a robust compliance training program: knowledge and application of ethical decision-making; understanding and prevention of discrimination and harassment; embracing and including diversity; understanding and application of setting professional boundaries; knowledge and application of protection of sensitive information (personally, competitively, etc.); knowledge and application of effective supplier management.
By adding these competencies to an existing program, you transform a requirement to educate (to forestall liability for unethical practices) into a series of life-learning courses to become skilled and compliant while helping an organization to maintain its credibility and compliance with reasonable rules and safety practices.
Moreover, compliance training aids in the prevention of costly legal and employment issues while supporting the development of a culture that espouses trust, transparency and ethical behavior.
Traditional Compliance Training Methods
Historically, traditional compliance training has been delivered via such prosaic methods as classroom sessions, printed materials, manuals and presentations, etc. The downside to these traditional approaches is that, once the employee walks out of the training, and because of the strength of the materials, nothing has changed. Employees become disengaged, tune out, and do not retain pertinent information critical to their job skills and decision makings. Few employees are able to remain engaged in an all-day learning environment and a fire hose of information comes at regulated employees during this day of extreme boredom, making application and retention of material less than one might hope. Further, the manual nature of traditional compliance training presents logistical problems in scheduling, tracking, and delivering training to large, geographically dispersed workforces, often costing organizations significant avoidable expenditures and lost time.
Advantages of Digital Compliance Training
The shift to digital compliance training offers numerous advantages over traditional methods. It greatly increases engagement levels and information retention by incorporating interactive elements to create a more engaging learning process. Digital mechanisms, such as videos, simulations, and quizzes, make training more immersive and help participants better understand compliance concepts, moving past memorizing facts to a more holistic understanding.
Digital compliance training offers scalability and flexibility in deploying learning programs. With web-based access, learners can complete training at their convenience, allowing organizations to train more employees at once, regardless of their location. This global reach is a key advantage of online training.
Finally, in terms of cost-effectiveness and efficiency, digital compliance training is hard to beat. It eliminates the need for physical training materials and dedicated trainers, resulting in significant time and cost savings. Digital training typically can be completed in a fraction of the time needed for traditional training methods, freeing employees to spend more time on high-value tasks.
Key Technologies Shaping the Future of Compliance Training
Recent technologies are defining the future of compliance training by boosting engagement and effectiveness. Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), for example, allow learners to immerse themselves in realistic compliance scenarios, making it easier for them to understand complex standards. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used to provide personalized training experiences by analyzing employee data in real time. And gamification elements, such as badges and leaderboards, add another layer of engagement, turning compliance training into an interactive and even enjoyable experience.
Steps to Implementing Digital Compliance Training Solutions
So, how do organizations transition to digital compliance training?
Digital dynamics are transforming the world of compliance training in ways that could never have been fairly described as glamorous. We’ll explore how digital transformation and new digital LMS platforms for compliance training by iTacit are enabling organizations to modernize it from “the mandatory ritual” to the “strategic imperative,” while accommodating the realities of an evolving workforce that demands flexibility, favorable user experiences, and the ongoing growth and development that contemporary digital experiences deliver.
Take Action to Clarify Compliance Training Goals
Before starting any digital transformation project, a company has to be clear on their objectives. In the case of compliance training, this means answering the following questions:
What are your compliance training objectives? What skill, knowledge, or attitude are you trying to impart to employees?
Who is your target audience? What are their needs? How do they work, and where do they work? Knowing your audience and use environment is key to developing a training system that is accessible and user-friendly.
Once compliance training goals are clear, the next step is to select the appropriate digital platforms and to concentrate these resources toward those that will be most effective. This will look different for every company, but good digital platforms will share the following basic qualities:
- They should align closely with compliance training objectives
- They should allow for flexibility. Employees should be able to work on training materials around their busy schedules, on the devices and from the locations of their choice.
- They should contain a branching scenario, which allows for a variety of possible results and learning paths.
- They should include a lot of multimedia. Multimedia helped drive double-digit improvements in retention of content.
- They should allow for regular progress checks and quizzes.
Develop Engaging and Interactive Content
Once a digital platform has been secured, the company should next move to the development of the training content. Again, this process will look different for every organization, but it will always require content that arrests and promotes interaction. Key components will be:
Video
Video was the most effective tool for driving double-digit improvements in retention.
Quizzes and other contrived games to break the modules into smaller, more manageable parts and test for recall of basic knowledge.
Ensure Accessibility and User-Friendliness
Finally, while training materials should always meet the legal minimums, they should also follow the basic precepts of digital design to ensure they are accessible across devices and delivered through an intuitive interface. Users should also be able to progress out of modules with which they are familiar without wasting their time, so the training system should also allow them the opportunity to “test out” of those areas of familiar content.
Best Practices for Successful Implementation of Digital Compliance Training
There’s still much to consider once the digital transformation of compliance training in a company begins in earnest. Leadership must be secured early to avoid bottlenecks in the process, and subject matter experts and IT departments need to be collaborating from the time of the highest-level conversations to the delivery of the final product. Training materials should also be regularly reviewed and updated as regulations and company needs change.
Challenges and Considerations in Digital Compliance Training
The move to digital compliance training is not without its challenges. Many employees, particularly older ones, need basic support on good digital habits, which can be supplied as an addendum to the popular onboarding period. Digital breaches are also a possibility, which can be addressed by standing the system in the triple triple – or by requiring employees to sit for a few basic counter-phishing videos before they have access to the rest of the training. Finally, employees will need help navigating the new systems, which can be provided easily by the company just being honest about the danger that non-compliance brings and what needs to be done to avoid it.
Conclusion
The digital transformation of compliance training is changing what has traditionally been a very stale part of business operations. Thanks to the flexibility, ability to scale, and low cost of most digital initiatives, the benefits of such a move are myriad. We no longer have to put employees to sleep in the name of good corporate governance; turning to digital solutions makes good on the promise to train better, more knowledgeable employees, gets us out of the legal penalty doghouse, and sets us down a course where compliance training is no longer a necessary evil but rather just an extension of what it truly means to be responsible.
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