Compliance training plays a crucial role for organizations in maintaining their ethical and legal standards. If you operate in a highly regulated sector, the reputation and success of your business depend a lot on how well your employees comply with the relevant laws, regulations, and policies. Even the smallest instance of non-compliance can lead to serious consequences for your business.
Like most businesses, you, too, can take advantage of a learning management system (LMS) to streamline your compliance training programs. In fact, the LMS for compliance training can help automate various aspects of the training process. But first, you need to learn about the common mistakes that can put your compliance training program in jeopardy.
1.  Following The Same Approach For All Learners
When it comes to compliance training, the one-size-fits-all approach does not work. As you may realize, the compliance requirements for each employee vary depending on their specific roles. For effective training, organizations need to tailor the approach to those particular roles, ensuring relevancy and engagement. When an employee receives relevant training, they display better retention of the information.
If you lack experience in managing a compliance training program, it may take you some time and resources to figure out which roles need which training. In certain cases, you can reduce the number of courses required. With an LMS solution at your disposal, it is possible to create a curriculum that includes all the necessary compliance training and regulatory training by role. So, when you hire new employees or require refreshed annual training, you can simply assign the curriculum.
2.  Excessive Usage Of Generic Content
Compliance training materials need to be specific to an organization and its policies and operations. You may want all your staff to take part in a specific diversity and inclusion course or training related to fire safety. Instead of providing generic training materials to all your employees, try to personalize the following aspects of your training as per organizational needs.
- Hiring practices
- Evaluation of compliance risk areas
- Professional courtesy discounts for services
- Business and medical records retention
- Billing compliance
- Confidentiality
- Client rights
- Employee safety, rights, and obligations
- Environmental concerns
While choosing an LMS for the compliance training program, make sure that it allows you to create and upload your own courses. This feature will allow you to deliver personalized compliance training to your employees based on their specific job roles. While uploading your tailored course to an LMS, you can also leverage the features, such as automated reminders, post-course assessment, completion certificates, tracking, and more.
3.  Ignoring Regular Updates
In highly regulated industries, such as healthcare, manufacturing, and food and beverages, compliance regulations evolve frequently. If an organization fails to update training content regularly, it can lead to outdated practices and potential violations. It is like going on a road trip without a roadmap. As mentioned, your compliance training courses require regular updates to stay relevant and compliant.
It can be quite stressful for the compliance team to create and deliver corporate compliance training for all employees while ensuring the courses and materials are updated on time. To make sure your training programs are always up to date with changing compliance requirements, your organization needs to invest in a quality LMS solution. The tool can make the necessary updates for you, ensuring your staff receives the right information during training.
4.  Not Tracking Learner’s Progress
Most companies forget to monitor the completion of training and knowledge retention of their employees after delivering compliance training. This is perhaps the biggest mistake organizations make while facilitating compliance training programs. Since most employees have a busy schedule, you cannot always expect them to complete their training with a clear understanding of the training materials. You need to use post-course assessments to get a better understanding of where your staff needs more training and where you can improve the training process.
Set up a tracking system and have all the documentation regarding training completion and understanding to present to your leadership team and surveyors. This will help you prove that all employees have completed their corporate compliance training during internal and external audits. Instead of relying on a spreadsheet or sign-in sheets to track the completion of training, it is better to offer real-time reporting through an LMS.
5.  Neglecting Cultural And Language Barriers
An organization consists of people from different cultural backgrounds who may have language preferences different from those of the majority of the staff. If you do not pay attention to the cultural and language barriers in corporate compliance training, it may hinder the effectiveness and inclusivity of the training process. As you may realize, employees who experience language barriers might fail to understand key concepts, leading to potential compliance issues.
Additionally, cultural differences often dictate how individuals perceive authority, responsibility, ethics, and risk. To avoid these issues, consider accommodating different languages and cultural nuances in your compliance training. Also, make sure that your training is ADA and WCAG-compliant. If you are using third-party services to take care of your compliance training needs, communicate these requirements to the vendor before the training program begins.
6.  Not Including Contractors And Temporary Staff In The Training Program
Excluding contractors and temporary staff from your compliance training program or offering inadequate training to them can be very risky for your organization. In fact, this practice can expose your business to unnecessary vulnerabilities. Even though it may seem that these groups do not require the same level of training as your permanent staff, their work is also directly linked to the company’s reputation and operational integrity.
In most sectors, regulatory compliance requires even the temporary staff and vendors to complete compliance training. If they do not receive the required training, the organizations are held fully accountable for the actions of their temporary employees and/or contractors. So, it is better to create a training course that offers relevant training to such people in your organization.
Conclusion
Compliance training is critical for an organization’s ethical and legal well-being. By consciously avoiding these aforementioned mistakes, your organization can optimize its compliance training while fostering a culture of ethics and responsibility. An LMS can be useful in streamlining your compliance training program and avoiding these common mistakes. However, human intervention is required to drive the training programs toward success.
