Compliance Training: How to Make it Engaging?

In the early days, companies and organizations focused more on financial gains without prioritizing ethical concerns. This led to workplace safety hazards, financial fraud, discrimination, and data misuse. The increase in many such incidents and issues created an urgent need for regulatory intervention and compliance training. 

This led to governments and industry bodies introducing strict laws and standards to protect employees and consumers. Regulations like OSHA, HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI-DSS reshaped corporate responsibilities. Employees now had to learn about these standards, and not just this, the organization also felt the need to train employees about their policies and ethical decision-making. 

This is where Compliance Training emerged, helping to reduce risks and foster trust. In today’s fast-changing business environment, compliance training isn’t just a legal necessity, it’s a strategic advantage.

What is Compliance Training?

Companies use compliance training to educate their employees about their rules, legal requirements, workplace safety, data protection, and ethical behavior. This allows employees to understand what they can or cannot do at work to avoid legal trouble and create a safe, fair, and respectful workplace. 

Why is Compliance Training Important?

If your company operates in a highly regulated industry, compliance training is essential for ensuring employees understand legal requirements. Beyond legal obligations, compliance training offers several other benefits. Let’s look at them:

1. Prevents Legal Issues & Fines

Let’s look at some of the regulations:

• General Data Protection Regulation: This is a Europe-based regulation to protect the personal data of EU citizens. If a company doesn’t follow this regulation then they may have to face a penalty of up to 20 million euros or 4% of the global revenue.
• HIPAA: It stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This act was passed in 1996 for the purpose of keeping patient health data safe. If healthcare providers fail to prevent data breaches and don’t follow HIPAA guidelines they may be fined up to $1.5 million per violation per year. In one such incident, Anthem Inc. had to pay OCR $16M for HIPAA violations after a data breach exposed 79M patient records. Source: Anthem pays OCR $16 Million.

Other regulations, such as OSHA, SOX, and GLBA, serve different purposes. Failure to comply has cost companies millions in fines.

2. Creates a Safe and Ethical Workplace

Providing training on workplace harassment, discrimination, and safety procedures ensures building a positive work environment and ensures that the employees feel secure and respected. 

This may include:

• Workplace Behavior Training: Educating employees with company values and professionalism. This training may cover topics like a positive work environment, teamwork, respectful communication, conflict resolution, and appropriate use of company resources. Such training may help employees to recognize and prevent bullying, verbal abuse, or toxic workplace behavior. 
• Anti-Harassment & Discrimination Training: Such training educates employees about identifying and preventing workplace harassment, and discrimination based on race, gender, age, religion, disability, or other protected categories. 

There are more such training such as Ethical Decision-Making Training, Social Media & Workplace Communication Training, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training that create a safe and ethical Workplace.

3. Protects Company Reputation and risks

Training Employees in Cybersecurity and financial fraud prevention helps prevent costly mistakes that could lead to data breaches, financial losses, or regulatory fines.

Failing to comply with the regulations may harm the company’s reputation as companies may face lawsuits and fines. There have been many instances where companies had to see their brand image suffer due to their employee’s behavior. Ethically trained employees would ensure that they behave correctly with people and help to maintain a positive brand image.

I hope with the above piece of information you may have gotten an idea of why compliance training is needed for the safety and security of any business.

eLearning Compliance Training Creation Obstacles

We learned that companies have to train their employees with information about topics that include regulations, work ethics, safety, and security. That is a lot of topics an employee has to learn about. So designing compliance training will be challenging. If compliance training is not going to be created properly then it may fail to train employees due to a variety of reasons. 

Why Compliance Training may Fail

• Lack of Interactivity: Static, text-heavy training content often fails to capture learners’ attention. Modern learners often find text-based training unengaging.
• Same training content for everyone: Learners have different retention rates, comprehension levels, and interests. A one-size-fits-all approach is unlikely to be effective. 
• Information Overload: We already talked about how there is a lot of information required for training employees with all the compliances. So much of the learning content may overwhelm them which may lead to disengagement.  
• Lack of real-world application: If you don’t train learners with the real-world scenarios of the learning content then learners may not find the information useful leading to them not finding the learning content interesting. 
• Limited to no analysis and no content improvement: If you want good result from your content then you will have to keep improving the content according to the learner’s performance. You won’t be able to improve your content if you don’t analyse it properly and this may result in content not being able to serve its purpose. 

To fix all the above issues we will have to apply some strategies and improve the Compliance Training content to make it more effective.

eLearning Compliance Training Creation Strategies

We learned how incorrectly made compliance training may not be able to serve the purpose and there were many different reasons it could fail. We can apply many different strategies to solve these different issues. Let’s look at the strategies that we can follow. 

1. Make it Interactive 

Making learning content interactive is one of the best ways to engage the learner with the training. Authoring tools such as Articulate Storyline and Adobe Captivate can be used to make interactive training content. You can add drag-and-drop, matching, branching scenarios, hotspot reveals elements or interactive quizzes. 

2. Use real-world scenarios

Don’t just put all the rules and regulations as a static list for the learners rather provide them with interactive real-life scenarios. Create real-world scenarios that employees might face in their roles. 

Example: 

• For data security compliance training you can create a phishing attack simulation and train the employee on how to be careful against such attacks and prevent any data breach. 
• For workplace ethics training you can simulate branching scenarios or chain reactions of consequences of different decisions taken by the trainee employee.

3. Apply Microlearning

Microlearning is a strategy where you provide lessons in small chunks which you can call a module. Each module has just one responsibility, teaching the learners about a small single concept and providing only the information needed to understand that. 

Incorporating microlearning will ensure that learners aren’t overdosed on the information and it is not overwhelming them. It also Improves engagement as learners get quick results of knowledge gain which drives them to move to the next module. 

4. Use Gamification

Gamification in eLearning involves bringing game-like elements into the learning content. Sometimes even turning learning content into a game. A basic level of gamification includes adding points, badges, and leaderboards to your learning content. When you reward points to the learner for completing a module and badges for their achievements, it gives them a goal whereas the leaderboard creates competition among the learners. 

You can even use storytelling and Game-like levels and missions if you want to incorporate advanced gamification. This will also allow you to include strategies like using Real-World scenarios.

5.Use Video-Based Learning

Lengthy text documents are boring. Nowadays no one wants to read for long. Video is a savior, it takes the major obstacle away, and learners now don’t have to read a long text document. Additionally, having instructors appear in videos can create a stronger connection with learners and enhance understanding. With video, it is also easier to include a little bit of an animated diagram, infographic, or chart for explanation purposes. 

With the help of modern eLearning tools, you can also create interactive videos, you can knowledge check the learner right when the video is playing to ensure the learners remember important points. 

6. Adaptive learning and personalized learning

We already talked about how every learner is different. Every learner has a different set of prior knowledge and Understanding ability. So, creating learning content with a one-size-fits-all approach may not going to work. To fix these issues, an Adaptive Learning strategy can be used. 

Adaptive learning tailors content to each learner’s needs based on their prior knowledge and performance. In this strategy, a pre-assessment is taken to identify the knowledge gap of the learners and Adaptive Learning technology creates a different learning path for each of the learners based on their assessment data. 

Adaptive learning is a very advanced strategy, personalized learning can also be used if you don’t want to incorporate adaptive learning. You will have to personalize the training content and make it different versions for different roles.

7. Mobile Friendly

Making your content accessible on mobile with mobile responsiveness will allow learners to learn on the go. Keep lessons concise by incorporating microlearning. Microlearning is a must-have,  as mobile learners mostly have shorter sessions for study.  

8. Regular Assessment and Constructive feedback

You should regularly assess learners with interactive quizzes, periodic knowledge checks, and other interactive elements. Provide instant feedback to the learners with explanations for correct and incorrect answers. 

Modern-day learners are result-oriented, if they don’t get quick results they sometimes lose motivation to follow the course further. Regular assessment and feedback show them how they are progressing and when they find that they have learned something, this drives them to move further into the course with a motive. 

Compliance Training Creation Tools

If you are looking to create an effective and engaging eLearning compliance training then you may have to use some of the eLearning tools. Let’s look at the types of eLearning tools the you might going to need. 

1. Learning Management System (LMS)

LMS allows you to create an eLearning platform for learners where they can view courses, enroll them, navigate the curriculum, and interact with the lessons. It provides you with tools to create, manage, and structure courses with lessons, topics, sections, and quizzes. 

You can use SaaS LMS if you want to start quickly but opting for WordPress LMS would be a better option. Some of the popular WordPress LMSs are LearnDash LMS, Lifter LMS, Tutor LMS, MasterStudy LMS, etc. 

2. Authoring Tools

Authoring Tools allow you to create interactive eLearning content. It provides you with various interactive elements such as drag and drop, matching, and hotspot reveal, and allows you to create systems like branching scenarios. 

Some of the popular Authoring Tools are Articulate Storyline, Articulate Rise, Adobe Captivate, Ispring Suite, etc. 

3. Learning Record Store (LRS)

Learning Record Store allows you to store and analyze eLearning data. An LRS is a must-have application if you want to look at how learners are interacting and performing, and based on that you want to improve your learning content for better results. 

You can use GrassBlade LRS for analyzing and reporting. If you are using a WordPress LMS then you can pair GrassBlade LRS with the GrassBlade xAPI companion plugin to perform advance tracking. 

4. Other eLearning Tools

WordPress users can integrate GamiPress to add gamification elements to their learning content. For video editing Vyond, Camtasia and Animaker can be helpful. For mobile platforms, you can use EdApp and TalentCards. 

Conclusion

Compliance training should not be treated as a mere formality. Many companies implement it only to meet legal requirements, missing its true potential. Compliance training should be taken seriously as it protects your organization, employees, customers, and the brand image or trust. 

Compliance training includes lots of topics which range from laws, standards, professional ethics, workplace, and digital security so it may sometimes become overwhelming and boring. To fix this you can apply strategies like microlearning, adaptive learning, interactive content creation, mobile friendliness, etc. You can use tools like LMS, LRS, Authoring Tools, etc to apply those strategies. 

Companies that prioritize high-quality compliance training gain a competitive advantage by fostering a responsible and knowledgeable workforce.

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