General and industry-specific regulatory compliance is critical to maintain a healthy business with empowered learners—employees, customers, and partners.
The right approach to compliance training can help prevent potentially serious risk and compliance issues and keep your operations consistently safe and productive.
Plus, with laws, rules, and regulations constantly evolving, maintaining compliance is an ongoing challenge—especially as cyberthreats continue to rise.
The Economist labeled 2023 as a 'record year for digital attacks' globally.
But thanks to compliance training, 73% of organizational leaders feel that cyber and privacy regulations have effectively reduced their risks this year.
This is why developing an effective compliance training program is not only essential but also a significant advantage for your business and employees.
3 in 4 companies which practice continuous compliance feel their compliance training program is a business driver.
In this guide, you'll learn about what it takes to create an effective compliance program based on your unique compliance requirements. But first, what’s a compliance training program?
What is a compliance training program?
Companies need to adhere to relevant policies, laws and regulations to their business.
So, a strong compliance training program is meant to cover various compliance topics or policies, laws and regulations to ensure its operations continue to run smoothly.
Knowing how to develop a compliance training program for your business will ultimately:
- Help boost workplace safety
- Mitigate potential legal issues
- Help keep your company up and running efficiently
Let’s go over the steps to develop a compliance training program.
How to develop a compliance training program
The type of compliance training program you develop will depend on many factors, including the local, state, and federal laws governing your business, along with any internal policies you integrate.
1. Determine what you want to achieve with your program
First things first, you'll want to have some clear goals in place for your compliance program.
Picture what a compliant workplace would look like for your company.
Consider what you want to achieve, including what kind of work environment you want to create and the long-term effects of consistent compliance.
Connect with different team members across departments to discuss specific training topics and training materials your organization will need based on your company's requirements.
You can also figure out whether your existing training program needs some updates or major changes to facilitate meaningful compliance.
2. Put a specific plan into place based on your compliance needs
With some direction for your program, it's time to begin developing a plan for your compliance training program that meets your organizational needs.
Some of the main topics you may want to explore with training content could include:
- Diversity
- Anti-harassment training, including sexual harassment
- Requirements in place for Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA)
- Corporate compliance
- Data protection and cybersecurity
- Safety training
- Your company's code of conduct
- Company policies
Only choose the subject matter that makes sense for your organization plus the local and national laws, rules, and regulations you’re meant to follow.
Also, ensure your program effectively relays the importance of compliance and encourages employees to do what they can to develop and maintain a healthy and safe environment in the workplace.
3. Gather the necessary resources
As you learn more about how to develop a compliance training program, you'll have plenty of materials to choose from that can contribute to your training.
Some of the materials you might use could include the following:
- Interactive media, including quizzes and mini "games" that make learning and development more engaging
- Manuals that give clear guidance on compliance
- Videos that further engage employees and convey compliance lessons
- Case studies that provide clear examples of how compliance has benefitted similar companies or even internal examples
- Visual media, including graphics, charts, and other images that complement text content
- Online compliance training modules that allow for real progress with the help of tools like a learning platform or learning management system (LMS)
4. Decide on the budget
To meet your training needs, you must also have plenty of funding in place for your training program. Try to allow for some flexibility in your budget, as your strategy could require some changes down the line.
An example of future changes could be as a result of a local law that demands some critical changes in the budget to cover more training sessions in relevant areas. You could also experience internal policy changes that require more funding for training.
5. Ensure everyone knows what compliance looks like
You and your employees should know what a compliant organization looks like at every level.
So it’s important to facilitate good communication across the company and show how compliance can benefit not just the organization as a whole but also each employee.
As you work to communicate what compliance should be, be sure to lift up your employees in the process. If they complete a training program or even a critical module, celebrate those advancements.
If employees go above and beyond in their training and individual progress, reward them.
This can also be easily done through tools like LMSs or learning platforms that have gamification features, making badges, points, and certifications easy to set up.
You can also further ensure good communication by having staff in place to discuss employee needs and request input from different teams.
6. Make changes when necessary
You never know what could happen to impact your compliance training. One of the key elements in learning how to develop a compliance training program will be flexibility.
If you observe any changes in local, state, or federal laws and regulations, you may need to make some quick changes to your training program to maintain compliance.
Scalable learning platforms can also help streamline compliance training, as regulations evolve, by offering AI authoring that make it easy to quickly create and update content, and even generate assessments.
7. Implement reliable technology for effective compliance training
Innovative training solutions allow for improved training programs with top-quality training materials. One such innovation is eLearning tech, which can take employee compliance training to the next level by allowing for convenient remote training from any location.
A learning platform or LMS can also digitize compliance training courses with personalized assessments, training modules, and more based on customized templates.
Together, an LMS and a personalized training program can positively impact your organization's compliance training plan.
With AI authoring, gamification, social learning, and deep analytics, an LMS can help you streamline content creation and learner engagement while measuring the impact of your training.
8. Measure your program's results and adjust as needed
Using analytics platforms and collecting valuable insights can help you determine how well your compliance program is working and also which issues need to be improved.
The way you measure the results will depend largely on your goals. What does a successful program look like for your company?
Based on these goals, you can select the right key performance indicators (KPIs) and other metrics to gauge success.
Some potential KPIs to measure in your efforts may include:
- Training reach
- The total number of non-compliance issues experienced
- Policy and code changes
- Surveys and knowledge assessments
- Training program completion rates
- Frequency of training program changes and updates
- Post-training exam results
Measuring these and other possible KPIs will help you decide whether to adjust your program based on performance.
You might also want to engage employees with interviews, surveys, and follow-ups to further confirm the effectiveness of your strategy. Qualitative data is just as important as quantitative data.
You might be surprised to find that what your employees experience via training is quite different from the raw data collected through analytics, giving you insights you could have otherwise overlooked.
Eventually, you can work to streamline the training process and get the results you want from your program in accordance with your compliance goals.
This kind of enhancement will be reflected in your business operations as you continually improve them.
9. Work to simplify the training process
Training should be comprehensive and thorough, but it should only take as long as employees need to get good training.
To avoid consuming too much of your employees' time with training while giving them the program they need to maintain a compliant company culture, try to consolidate training materials.
In the process, you could develop modules that cover an overarching topic and relevant subtopics under the same umbrella.
An example of this could be blending cybersecurity and other data protection topics, including privacy measures and data encryption.
You could also offer microlearning options, so your learners—employees, customers or partners—can consume the content while managing their time more effectively.
A dependable LMS or learning platform could help with these efforts, ensuring you get the best achievable results from your training program.
Now over to you: Setting up your compliance training program for success with the right LMS
With a better idea of how to develop a compliance training program for your company, you can maintain a consistently compliant work environment. The key is knowing what approach to take and which tools to implement to maximize success.
One reliable tool you can use to elevate compliance training is a robust LMS or learning platform that uses custom training modules and materials, AI-powered content creation, and more to assist with compliance training and other learning and development initiatives.
Recently, MidFirst Bank, one of the largest privately held financial institutions in the US, trusted Docebo’s AI-powered learning platform with their compliance targets.
Prior to Docebo, MidFirst bank conducted most of its reporting and notifications manually to over 3,500 employees. With Docebo, MidFirst Bank doubled its training content and streamline compliance, increasing completion rates by 10%.
Enhanced reporting capabilities also enabled faster, more detailed compliance tracking, allowing the team to focus on strategic improvements. MidFirst Bank estimates these measures are saving the company $11,000 annually.
Book a demo of the platform, and learn why Docebo is trusted by over 3,800 organizations worldwide.