A quick guide to compliance training

Compliance is a significant challenge for training. Digital learning can improve its effectiveness and increase your chances of operating compliantly.

The challenge

Compliance is huge.  It not only applies to specific industries, like financial institutions and pharma, but affects most businesses: GDPR and data security, for example.  Then there are broad, legislative initiatives such as environmental targets and health and safety in the workplace to contend with.  To cover the vast scope of compliance requirements and keep up with changes you need training that is comprehensive and easy to update.

But compliance training is often a tick-the-box, attend-the-class, watch-the-video, passive affair that leaves learners disengaged and thinking that it doesn’t apply to them.  And, if the training isn’t up to the mark, it’ll leave the organization open to non-compliant behavior and the financial and reputational costs that go with it.

Poorly-delivered, uninspiring training results in ill-prepared employees who require more training.  Adopting digital compliance training can help you break this vicious circle and make compliance engaging, encouraging behavioral changes that keep employees working compliantly.

12 ways digital learning improves compliance training

1. Works for modern learners

A repository of learning resources for compliance managed by a learning platform gives learners easy access 24/7 on all their devices.  Digital learning mimics how we now get our information – on a need-to-know basis – leaving employees with a greater stake in compliance training.

2. Adds appeal

Digital learning swaps uninspiring, text-heavy, textbook-style learning for infographics, animations, and real-life videos that give learning more appeal and reflect the context in which learners apply their training.  Content can be captured from a variety of sources and even be created by employees themselves.

3. Puts the fun into learning

Introducing game elements helps overcome disengagement and lack of motivation.  Gamification uses interactive quizzes combined with video to present learning as a challenge.  Learners are encouraged to discover and apply learning for themselves and learn the consequences of compliance decisions in an engaging and fail-safe environment.

4. Offers goals and rewards

Digital badges and certificates recognize levels of achievement within the learning and can also have a currency outside the training program as part of employees’ regular performance reviews and career progression.  You can make getting badges a requirement for staying compliant.

5. Uses the power of stories

Stories and scenarios involving common compliance issues give real meaning to rules and regulations by showing how they’re applied in practice.  Interactive role plays using characters or avatars can be built into digital learning courses and used as a guide to what to do in real-life compliance situations and instilling best practices.

6. Personalizes learning

A searchable repository of digital assets can better organize information for specific tasks and job roles.  Personalization increases relevance and helps learners understand how compliance applies to their work.

7. Increases access

Digitization makes your training available on mobile devices across platforms.  This allows employees to check information on the job, wherever they are. Constant access to resources means that compliance training is not just an event that happens every year or six months but instead becomes an incremental and continuous process.  Accessing information on the job increases the sense of relevance and understanding, cementing the critical importance of being compliant.

8. Allows just-in-time microlearning

With digitization, you can create a bank of bite-size learning assets that can be accessed easily.  Small snippets of information are more digestible and aid retention through repetition and spaced practice making learning more likely to be recalled.  Their short duration means they can be reviewed at the learner’s convenience without an employee giving up working time to sit training.

9. Nudges learners

Automated alerts and notifications from your digital learning platform remind learners of what they need to do to stay compliant.  Recommendations based on learners’ training history offer up pieces of microlearning or online assessments that they have to complete to continue operating compliantly.

10. Tracks compliance

Using an LMS allows you to deliver learning content on mobile and networked devices and provides data on how those resources are used.  Dashboards display a summary of each employee’s status, history, and future compliance training tasks in real-time.

11. Easy to update

With digital learning, it’s easy to update content to respond to changes in compliance legislation.  You can also easily add new content to the LMS to fill knowledge gaps.

12. Provides continuous learning

Digital learning is always on, always accessible minimizing the need for costly, time-consuming classes and one-off events.  It ensures that knowledge of compliance issues can be easily refreshed and is more likely to be retained.

Digital learning makes compliance training more engaging, responsive, relevant, and effective.  It increases your organization’s chances of operating compliantly. Find out how is best to invigorate your compliance training now.