If employees are really lucky, perhaps compliance training is a one-off necessity, rather than a yearly requirement.
Organisations often resort to bribery – if you complete your training, you’ll be entered into a prize draw! – or threats – if you do not complete your training, you will face disciplinary action. However, this approach rarely leads to behavioural change; the only advantage to this is being able to prove business compliance to cover themselves legally.
However, what if new joiners and seasoned employees didn’t dread their compulsory compliance training? What if compliance could be met with the help of an engaging learning piece, which could be enjoyed as a break from role responsibilities, and the learning be truly absorbed?
In recent times, the most successful compliance elearning courses are designed from the ground-up with its users at the forefront of development. Courses should be designed as more than a ‘box-ticking’ exercise – they should enhance employees’ experiences within the organisation and lead to lasting behavioural change.
If organisations make their compliance training believable and applicable to their specific business needs and culture, employees are more likely to pay attention to the training – and more importantly, talk about it later amongst their peers, aiding the information retention process. Employees will be more likely to use their initiative and seek out policy information themselves, leading to an increased likelihood of them following policies and procedures as prescribed.
So how can compliance training become more engaging and more successful – despite its lengthy legal content?
With bespoke course content made specifically for your organisation.
The following tips will guide your understanding of what your organisation may require:
Gamification
Using elements of gamification will encourage friendly competition. By contextualising the requirements of compliance, learners can be presented with digital rewards and on-screen leaderboards to evoke feelings of rivalry and competition. This makes the e-]
Scenario-Based
For your learners to fully immerse themselves in your elearning, considering engaging with a bespoke elearning content provider. Whilst this comes at an extra cost, having content that is familiar, not only in terms of colours and branding but also physical locations’ layout and culture, is invaluable. These familiar surroundings mean that users will recognise what is on screen and be a
Story-based
One of the more crucial aspects of compliance training is to ensure that the content is applicable to the organisation. Learners will very quickly become disinterested once they realise that the stories on screen are very unlikely to affect the organisation in question. Instead, the stories should be realistic – how likely is a data breach? A robbery? A machinery mishap? Bribery?
Guided Explorations
It has long been said that individuals learn best from their mistakes – so allow them to make their own mistakes in a safe environment. Compliance training should provide situations that could happen in the real-world and give users actionable options to decide on. Whichever option they decide on should follow through to the consequent outcome. This helps learners to understand how their actions will have consequences.
Microlearning
New joiners often have a week dedicated to inductions, to include any compulsory compliance course completion. However, employees that are required to complete refresher training on a regular basis often feel uncomfortable about doing so – they feel that time spent completing training is better spent on completing their role duties. Microlearning enables learners to complete training in short sessions of around five minutes, making balancing training time with job roles much more achievable.
By following our five top tips, organisations can adapt their compulsory compliance training to be engaging and memorable, leaving their learners wanting more!
Written by Mara Swann Mara has a passion for promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion across global workplaces and hopes to inspire learners to focus on their own careers with self-directed learning content.
