10 Best Practices to Ensure Your Compliance Training Hits Different

Compliance training exists for a very real purpose — to ensure employees are kept up-to-date on what’s important. Specifically, learning about what’s legal, how they can be kept safe, and how to safeguard organizational assets and interest.

Unfortunately, employees often regard training as a ‘snooze fest.’ But the emergence of more engaging learning methods is “waking up the masses.” This article discusses ten best practices to ensure your training hits different.

A Brief Background: What Compliance Training Covers

According to Deloitte, companies are increasing their focus on compliance training. Training varies from industry to industry and employer to employer, but generally cover topics related to code of conduct and regulatory or legal requirements. Common subjects include anti-bribery and corruption; data protection; ethics and harassment-free workplace; health and safety; ADA or FTC compliance; and organization-specific policies.

10 Best Practices for Lasting Impact

Now, let’s explore how you can create more memorable training experiences for your employees!

1.Assess the Audience

A critical first step to take when designing training is to understand your audience. Reflecting on questions, such as “How many learners will there be?,” “What is their general experience with the subject matter?,” or “How does this topic tie in with the company’s culture or values?,” will enable you to design compliance training that is accessible to a more holistic audience.

2.Understand Intent

Identify what your company wants to achieve from training employees. What are the organization’s priorities? What topics need to be covered? What would be the risks of NOT administering training?

Spend time conducting a needs-analysis to piece together what a training program should focus on.

This does not have to be a closed-door experience — conduct user interviews to discover what employees want to learn as well!

Collated information becomes the basis of a relevant and highly effective compliance training strategy. After following this process, Darrel Byer from MTA ended up redesigning the organization’s compliance programming!

3.Bring People Together

Make compliance training more enjoyable by applying social learning principles to its delivery. If compliance training is being administered via video conferencing, consider leveraging breakout rooms or hosting group discussions after employees complete individual learning. This method not only encourages the sharing of perspectives, but also may strengthen team collaboration.

4.Design for Interactivity

Besides incorporating case studies and Q&A, there are other ways to drive employee participation.

Gamifying experiences through virtual reality (VR) can help learners better engage with subject matter.

Designing training that engages different senses, such as sight, touch, hearing, and even smell, can bolster attentiveness and participation from employees with different learning styles. Leveraging interactive multimedia can also bring notable benefits; Audi recently redesigned its e-learning platform to resemble “Sin City!” Special tip: Ensure to find a balance as too much interaction may distract from the learning experience.

5.Encourage Call to Action

When a training session concludes, ensure your attendees walk away with key takeaways and a call to action. For example, direct your learners to policies that can be accessed after the training. Encourage them to reflect on what they’ve learned, and instruct them to check-in with a peer or manager in a week’s time. Alternatively, arrange follow-up sessions or send an online questionnaire to sense-check knowledge. In fact, these methods have been pointed out as a success factor in Morgan Stanley’s robust compliance training processes.

6.Integrate Cause-and-Effect

Experiential learning is a powerful modality in adult learning. When developing training, ensure your audience can brainstorm outcomes if they make specific decisions within the experience.

Integrating realistic scenarios into the training can assist with this aspect.

Also, consider illustrating potential consequences if employees do not adhere to the learnings. For instance, BAE Systems provides learners with “the why,” reinforcing the reason compliance is important.

7.Enlist Leader Support

Compliance training works best when there is unwavering support from management. Communicate the importance of training to senior executives, and encourage them to emphasize its importance to employees. An encouraging message from management will go a long way to creating a culture of compliance. You can also invite leaders to be the first to undertake new training programs. It is important that management are role models that employees can look (and look up) to for guidance!

8.Link to Culture and Values

Compliance training works best when it resonates with your organization’s vision, mission, culture, and values.

Ensure training is branded to reflect your organization’s identity, and establish links between compliance and organizational purpose.

Doing this not only makes training relevant to acculturated employees, but it also shows that your organization takes training seriously.

9.Break It Down

Studies show employees will retain less information if they need to sit through long uninterrupted periods of learning. To prevent this, see if longer experiences can be broken up into shorter, 15 to 30-minute modules. If you are planning an in-person ‘compliance-a-thon,’ take breaks between sessions to reduce fatigue. Special tip: When breaking down the training experience, ensure it’s done in a way that you preserve its cadence and impact.

10.Measure Impact

Designing and implementing compliance training is a Sisyphean task; you can’t just roll it out and then leave it to dry. After deployment, measure results both qualitatively and quantitatively, and enact improvements as necessary.

Qualitative analysis may include surveying employees, getting detailed feedback on their experiences, and asking how training can be improved.

Quantitative analysis may involve understanding if training is decreasing the number of health and safety, workplace misconduct, or cyber-security-related incidents — or impacting other numerically-measurable datasets.

Final Thoughts

Many company players are involved in the launch a successful compliance training program. Learning and development teams need to assess the needs of both the company and its employees. Employees need to undergo training, and give feedback on how it can be improved. Senior leadership needs to communicate the importance of training. Having these forces working in harmony will ensure your training curriculum will have a lasting and positive impact. Encouraging employees to put their learning into practice will ultimately create a more robust culture.

Immersive learning through VR provides an engaging and cost-effective way for companies to train on topics, such as workplace violence prevention. Sisu VR offers VR-based workplace violence, DEI, ethics, and anti-harassment training focused on preparing employees for emergencies and cultivating empathy.

A safer and more engaged workplace benefits everyone. If you are interested in learning ways to integrate VR into your compliance training strategy, reach out to us. Let’s work together to foster a culture of safety, inclusivity, and respect in our workplaces 💎

PS What are some of YOUR best training development practices? Any favorite curriculum you’ve undertaken? We would love to hear your thoughts and questions! Leave us a comment below, and remember to share this article with a friend, neighbor, or colleague 👍