Do you remember when you were a child? Sometimes you had to do things that you just didn't want to do, even if they were good for you. Eat your vegetables. Take your medicine. Clean your room. Hugging that great aunt who was always pinching your cheeks too hard.

As an adult, annual compliance training can sometimes feel the same way. You just want to get it over with and say goodbye until next year. Why can't compliance training be like the courses you enjoy taking? Why can't you have engaging content, engaging stories, and interactions to reinforce learning? Let's take a closer look at www.allegromediadesign.com.

Mandatory Training: Risk Reduction

During the crazy ride that was the year 2020, organizations learned many valuable lessons, one of which is that we must keep employees engaged. Mandatory compliance training must go beyond the once-a-year "check the box" requirement. Compliance must be integrated into the daily workflow to create a foundation of behavioral expectations that transform organizational culture.

And yet, a recent survey by Corporate Compliance Insights revealed that 73% of employees read/skip reading, don't listen to audio, and don't pay attention to detail. And 70% of respondents used the word "boring" to describe their company's compliance training.

The result? Lack of commitment and interest in compliance training creates significant risk for organizations. But what can be done?

5 ways to improve compliance training

1. Measure what really matters

Building a culture of compliance includes creating goals and KPIs that target the results and behaviors that organizations want to achieve through mandatory compliance training. Emphasizing behavior rather than "checking the box" results in moving from training to learning. L& teams should pay as much attention to creating relevant KPIs for compliance programs as they do for initiatives such as management and leadership development. Measurement shouldn't just focus on completion rate; it's about getting to the bottom of what making training mandatory actually solves and how it improved the culture.

➔ Do employees feel included?
➔ Do employees feel safer?
➔ Are employees more comfortable reporting when they witness noncompliant conduct?
➔ Do employees trust each other?
➔ Do employees know who to turn to when they need help?

2. Engage organizational leadership

Organizations implementing essential learning initiatives know from experience that programs are most successful when support comes from the top down. Compliance should not be an exception! Leaders can help connect the dots for employees by communicating why compliance learning is essential and how it will benefit the organization, thereby benefiting employees. And leaders can help crystallize the vision for the future of what a culturally compatible workforce looks like: an ethical, collaborative, inclusive, responsible, and overall safer and more fulfilling work environment for all!

3. The shorter the better

In today's busy work environment, where employees continually switch from one task to another, microlearning within the regular workflow is more effective. However, when it comes to compliance, this understanding is often lost, resulting in lengthy training leading to frustrated employees who just want to get it over with and get back to work. We get it... there's a lot of information to cover. However, breaking it all down and delivering it into manageable modules will help employees digest the information without feeling overwhelmed and pressured to click as fast as possible. Ultimately, this will help improve retention and reduce the eye-rolling and anxiety that normally results from mandatory workouts.

4. Make it more interesting

We can no longer afford to just upload documents and policy manuals on a slide deck and call it training. There should be as much investment and effort in developing compelling compliance content as any other topic. Post-pandemic traditional classroom learning has been significantly reduced, if not eliminated altogether. Digital compliance learning requires innovation to build connections between users to make it relevant and impactful. Modern and engaging compliance learning should leverage real scenarios, real people, and real images that align with your organization's workforce and workplace. To be truly effective, it must generate an emotional response.

Organizations can foster a strong, collaborative, and compliant culture by leveraging the talent they already have – employees! A key factor in creating more engaging compliance learning is employee involvement in the process. Solicit your feedback and stories about experiences with non-compliance behaviors and incidents. Ask them for their ideas on how to improve compliance learning. Recruit them to become course participants. Make them part of the cultural transformation!

5. Create a campaign

In corporate-sponsored eLearning solutions training initiatives, organizations often create a stir with glitzy and glamorous marketing campaigns. But when it comes to compliance training implementation, the shackles are heard. Come on, go and do a good compliance training campaign!

Here are some ideas to get started:

• Host a webinar with company leaders to promote training.
• Take advantage of social media forums
• Create a cool hashtag
• Share the personal stories of employees.
• Create fun contests to encourage completion, like scavenger hunts
• Solicit post-training feedback and share the results with employees.

Transparency is always critical to employee engagement. Make sure they know they are being heard by sharing their feedback, as well as the actions that will be taken as a result.

Conclusion

Your employees deserve more than compliance training – they deserve compliance learning. They deserve a compatible culture. Involve your employees in the process and demonstrate transparency. Create a strong culture of compliance, and reduce risk, by putting the same level of effort, innovation, and leadership involvement into eLearning compliance training as any other learning initiative.