If you are employed, you should know that there are certain rules and regulations governing both your workplace and the profession you are in. Some professions have more than others (financial institutions, for example, have stricter regulations due to their business of handling large sums of money), and sometimes these rules and regulations may be unclear or vague to the average worker.
This is why compliance training is necessary so that one doesn’t violate company policy (or even worse, the law). Compliance training also covers most liability of the employer; since the employee was trained on these responsibilities, it is part of his or her job to comply.
So how can one use e-learning so that compliance training can be fun and engaging instead of the rigid and uninteresting exercise that some employees make it out to be?
The Benefits of E-Learning
Getting everyone gathered into a classroom and hiring a trainer for your compliance training costs money—however, e-learning significantly reduces that cost. Since technology has made access to information a lot easier, you can put your compliance training materials online for any of your employees to access. There are several free programs such as Google Docs or Dropbox where you can place these materials.
You should also keep the lines of communication clear should any questions arise. Even after compliance training, some company policies and laws may still be unclear or vague to your employees, so you should constantly follow up to make sure your employees are sticking to your compliance training program.
Keep It Simple
One can look to Google for inspiration—their simple and clean layout makes it one of the most (if not the most) visited website in the world. Websites with tons of bells and whistles, flashy fonts, and other in-your-face gimmicks used in an attempt to capture your viewers’ attentions tend to turn off viewers because of the overwhelming number of stimuli that they subject the viewers to, making the e-learning experience difficult and confusing. Compliance training in some professions is already difficult to begin with, such as the case of financial institutions, so keeping it simple is key to an effective e-learning course.
“E-learning design should set out to highlight key concepts in an accessible and uncluttered way. Trainees are more likely to concentrate on what matters,” the article says. You don’t want to put your viewers to sleep, so some creativity is necessary, but not to the point where it looks like a Picasso painting. The content of your e-learning course should be engaging to the point where you capture the viewer’s interest. You don’t have much time to get to the point, and when it comes to compliance training, time is money more than anything—here’s why.
The Post Heard Around The World
Poor compliance training, in the case of social media, can cost you millions of dollars—for a single incident. Since companies are largely including social media in their efforts to reach out to customers, you’ll especially need to focus your compliance training on this concept. Telling your employees what is acceptable and unacceptable on social media is key, as anyone around the world can see what you post. You can take a look at some of these companies for examples on what not to do on social media and show this as an example to your employees when compliance training time comes around.
Cool Story, Bro
Another way to make compliance training engaging and fun is to tell a story. You can throw all the data in the world at your employees, but you don’t have a lot of time, so you might want to keep things brief. Telling a story makes compliance training more easy to digest and keeps them engaged. You can come up with success stories that arise from a result of following company policy and the law and, conversely, talk about consequences that arose when someone didn’t follow company policy and the law.
An example of a success story regarding compliance training? Tech giant Yahoo hired Marissa Mayer as CEO in 2012. She made a complete overhaul of company policy, including ending telecommuting as well as simplifying bureaucracy by launching an online program where employees can voice their complaints. Although her changes were met with both praise and criticism, numbers don’t lie—Yahoo’s stock price skyrocketed, going from a mere $15.92 per share in 2012 to $51.07 in 2014, making investors very happy with her performance.
Conclusion
An effective compliance training program through e-learning can be accomplished through making your materials available online for anyone to access at any time. Telling stories helps make the information (which can be overwhelming in some cases) easy to retain, and if you keep the materials simple and effective, you can give your business the boost it needs from within to engage with customers and helping establish your goods and services on a global scale.
