In-house vs. compliance training partners: what’s right for you?

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Chris Dunne, Digital Marketing Manager

Consider this statistic: 59 percent of people almost always reuse passwords, even though they know it’s not a best practice. The compliance risk of such behavior is enormous…

A strategy to address this and a host of other compliance concerns, from harassment to diversity to conflicts of interest, is online training. Companies believe their employees know better, but incidents still occur. Training can bridge this gap, but the learning must resonate; people must come away from training not just smarter but also equipped to make the right decision when compliance situations arise, whether they are treating others appropriately or typing in a new password.

Impactful compliance training can come from in-house efforts or a third party. The decision to build internally or outsource must be made carefully—the quality of your training can impact whether your employees make good or bad decisions when the situation arises.

Perceived benefits of staying in-house

Keeping compliance training close to home can hold a certain appeal for some organizations. After all, nobody—in theory—knows the priorities and nuances of your business better than your business. Designing and implementing training in-house allows you to eliminate the middleman and translate your compliance intentions directly. Other perceived benefits of an in-house approach include:

• It’s possibly less expensive: Organizations concerned with keeping training budgets in check may determine that staying in-house makes more fiscal sense. Outsourced expenses can be difficult to justify in a company employing large compliance and training teams.
• It’s customizable: A stock training course from a third party may perceived as inapplicable to the company’s needs (even though many vendors can customize content for their clients). ROI seemingly improves because customized training is designed with the organization’s employees specifically in mind.
• It’s convenient: With internally designed training, you don’t need to make outside phone calls or send external emails when there’s an issue with the program or content needs updating.

Benefits of outsourcing to a top-notch partner

Although the internal route may be attractive on the surface, many companies soon find out that developing in-house training actually requires more man-hours and a larger budget than their compliance departments have available. In that context, going with a third-party compliance training specialist to provide online courses becomes much more viable. Consider these benefits of outsourcing from a truly innovative training partner such as Learning Pool:

• Thorough courses that cover everything users need to know about the subject matter
• Courses designed by experts who are proponents of learning-by-doing strategies
• Advanced functionality that emphasizes adaptive learning in which every user receives the training most relevant to them in real time
• Continual, expert updates that incorporate new guidance and regulations (such as the GDPR or California’s sexual harassment training laws), as well as attitudes and best practices
• Refreshed, dynamic content so that users aren’t subjected to the exact same training year after year—and compliance personnel aren’t scrambling with implementation
• Off-the-shelf capabilities and versatility that enable organizations to easily add, subtract, or adjust courses as needed
• Data-driven engine to deliver advanced, predictive analytics and insights
• Advanced technology, leveraging the latest innovations in online training and removing the need for an in-house tech to maintain and troubleshoot a homegrown solution

The third-party advantage

Organizations that attempt to build their online compliance training in-house may go in with the best of intentions but often find that the obstacles are too great. A quality third-party specialist handles the overarching training as well as the little details to deliver courses that engage users and strengthen employee compliance knowledge. The advantages to choosing a great vendor over trying an in-house approach include:

• Better ROI: Online compliance training experts and their programs considerably reduce time and resources spent by internal staff. This creates better efficiency and results, which subsequently produces a better return on investment.
• The foundation of a training ecosystem: Comprehensive training should be more than a once-a-year online training session. Online compliance training vendors provide a base that is complemented and bolstered by other strategies, including microlearning, gamification, job aids, and short videos.
• Handling the latest developments: Revisiting the password statistic from the beginning of the article offers a great example of how experts are better suited to stay ahead of compliance developments and concerns. If a nation of workers is suddenly or continually struggling with certain compliance concepts, you can be sure scenarios addressing those struggles will find their way into your training. The best partners are keenly focused on the needs and timeliness of their content—and update their offerings to reflect new threats and best practices. In-house personnel often don’t have the time or resources to be this focused.

Compliance professionals and HR personnel deal with many other urgent and competing interests on top of training, yet an internal solution that doesn’t deliver can suck their time and energy away. Outstanding training from a trustworthy partner lets you devote more time to other important duties and provides the confidence the platform is doing its job—and doing it well.