Tips for Building Your First Compliance Program

Compliance training is one of the most important and ubiquitous aspects of employee onboarding, as it allows the trainer to have direct influence over new employees’ expectations with the organization. Beyond steering the new talent, compliance can prevent and protect the organization from any illegal or immoral actions of individuals. You know, however, that compliance is worthwhile, so let’s move onto how to set-up your compliance training.

Where to Start with Compliance

Compliance, like any other training program, can be tricky in that there is no one-size-fits all answer for every organization. After all, the employee onboarding for a factory will look completely different than onboarding for an office, despite both using compliance training. Most compliance training, however, will see some broad trends in courses.

The absolute first step of building a compliance program is determine the topics that the training will cover. As mentioned above, some of these topics can range drastically in-between organizations but most compliance programs will share a base of universal courses. The universality comes from each organization being able to find some value by including them.

Examples of Universal Compliance Courses

Diversity and Inclusion

Fairly simple explanation for including this one—organizations are becoming more diverse. Unfortunately, however, this could cause friction and stop the organization from functioning smoothly. A diversity and inclusion course will not completely remedy this problem, but it does set a standard and allows for ramifications for those who ignore it.

Federal State Laws

A course like this affords the organization legal protections if an individual would violate any of these laws, as it proves that the organization was not negligent with training. However, this will only cover individual actions, as the organization can still promote, ignore, or implement punishable practices systemically.

Data Privacy and Security

Data privacy and security may have been for a specialized few organizations a couple decades ago; however, now it is the new norm for most (if not all organizations). This course will teach new onboards about the proper ways of protecting private digital information and preventing breaches, a necessity for any organization using a network of computers.

Sexual Harassment

Including sexual harassment training goes beyond stopping people from harassing, by including it, the organization is fostering a culture that promotes any victims or witnesses to speak out. On top of this, sexual harassment courses provide a basis of standards that help determine and punish any of these actions.

Code of Conduct

A code of conduct course allows an organization to set standards beyond legality for themselves. By including a course like this, organization can mold their culture by establishing unique expectations for onboards.

Build Up from the Bottom

The courses above give a broad overview of what many of the universal compliance courses will look like and, while these may look like enough, they most likely aren’t. Once you have established the fundamental courses build up from them, adding more detail where your organization needs it. For example, an organization that works with heavy machinery will need specific safety courses where a retail store wouldn’t.

Key Activities After Course Selection

Selecting and implementing the courses are only the beginning when it comes to training. Making a complete training experience includes things like certifications or analytics and these activities will be on-going with the training.

Collecting and Understanding Analytics

Training analytics are necessary to understand weaknesses, strengths, and the actions of learners. Data like how long a learner spends on a question, what percentage of learners got a question right, or how a learner scores overtime allows you to gleam insights into how effectively the courses are achieving your organization’s goals.  A LMS, like CoreAchieve, can collect data automatically and make templated reports, greatly reducing the barriers for analytics (more on that later).

Iterating With the Data

Collecting and understanding the data is only one part of process, the other half—implementing changes based on the data—is ultimately more important. This process of iteration will constantly push the training to be more efficient. Using the data as a guide not only ensures that every action is moving towards efficiency, but is also justifiable and premeditated.

Giving Out Certifications

With training, it is equally important to have proof of completion as delivering the training itself. Having records of completion allows for an examination of someone’s actions. For example, if someone does something against the organization’s code of conduct, part of their actions can be determined if they took the code of conduct course. If the records show they haven’t, maybe they can be enrolled in it and, if they have been certified, more serious repercussions might be in order. Certifications not only provide an easy way to keep records, they also may affect decisions down the line.

The Easiest Way to Deliver Compliance

 Compliance (and other, more general training) may be a bit overbearing on the administrative side at first, but it doesn’t have to. All the actions can be streamlined into a LMS, like CoreAchieve, which does key actions automatically and has over 6000 built-in courses for over 24 industries. While providing the courses and key activities, a LMS also gives opportunities for your training to be much more flexible.  

LMS, Training, and Flexibility

Using a system like a LMS affords much more flexibility for both learner and organization went it comes to delivering training. For a broad example, learners can access their training from anywhere, regardless of time while the organization can update content, inform learners, and collect data all in real time. Those abilities are just the surface of what a LMS like CoreAchieve affords an organization to do. Faster, more efficient training that can be directly molded to an organization’s needs.

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