Compliance training is essential in today’s workplace. It helps build better and more ethical organizational cultures while keeping your firm on the right side of the law. Here, we’re taking a look at what compliance training is, why it’s important, and how you can consistently deliver the necessary training to employees.
What is compliance training?
Compliance training is a type of employee training that covers the laws, regulations, and company policies that apply to an employee’s job. It typically applies to day-to-day workplace activities and is often mandatory and time-sensitive. Companies have to conduct this type of training to meet legal requirements, and there’s usually a set time frame within which employees have to complete their courses.
While some compliance training is relevant to all jobs, some is only required for organizations in specific industries. The frequency of training also varies, with some state and federal regulations requiring employees to complete compliance training every year.
Why is compliance training important?
Compliance and training are essential to the workplace. Here’s why.
Ensures you adhere to laws
When employees understand the legal requirements of their roles, your company is much less likely to face potential lawsuits. When everyone understands the legal responsibilities associated with people, premises, and data management, your business can more easily stay within national, international, and industry regulations.
Protects your reputation
A strong business and employer reputation makes all the difference to your organization. Compliance training helps prevent damaging slip-ups because all employees understand best practices. It also improves stakeholder confidence in your business.
Promotes an ethical culture
Compliance training helps employees contribute to an ethical culture by better understanding how co-workers and customers should be treated. Of course, you may want to go beyond compliance when creating an ethical culture, but it provides a good starting point.
Improves workplace safety
Compliance and training help you maintain a safe workplace for all employees, where everyone understands what a safe workplace looks like and how they can contribute to workplace safety. This promotes a positive working environment where you minimize absences due to injury or health issues.
Allows you to focus on business goals
Harassment lawsuits, workplace safety incidents, and data breaches all take up company time and resources. When employees understand the law and their responsibilities in the workplace, they can avoid costly mistakes and, instead, focus on achieving business goals.
What are some common compliance courses?
The compliance courses your employees need to complete vary depending on your location, the size of your organization, and the industry you work in. Here are some examples of compliance courses that firms typically assign to their workers.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion training
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training aims to reduce workplace discrimination by helping employees understand the value of a diverse workforce. This type of compliance course highlights the risk of unconscious bias and teaches employees how to navigate co-worker differences, including gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, and age.
Data privacy and security training
Another critical business responsibility is handling sensitive data relating to your customers or employees. Data privacy and security training teaches employees how to handle this type of data. It usually covers confidentiality, the devices employees can use to access workplace data, and security processes.
Health and safety training
Health and safety training is all about creating and maintaining a safe working environment. It’s useful to all workplaces, whether that’s an office, a construction site, or the shop floor of a store. Training usually covers things like first aid procedures, reporting safety incidents, and the process for identifying hazards.
Anti-harassment training
Anti-harassment training helps employees better identify workplace harassment. It explains what they need to do if they experience or witness harassment and how to respond when someone reports that they have been harassed in the workplace.
Anti-harassment training helps make the workplace safe and welcoming for all employees. It’s also mandatory in some US states.
Using a learning management system to ace compliance and training
In many cases, compliance training is a legal box you have to tick, but, as we’ve discovered, it also brings clear benefits for your organization. It helps create a safe, inclusive, and ethical environment for employees:
- It contributes to psychological safety, creating a space where employees treat each other fairly and feel comfortable speaking up when they spot instances of poor practice.
- Training outlines the legal and regulatory responsibilities of all employees. That means fewer mistakes down the road, so your teams can focus on getting the job done.
- It also helps businesses maintain a strong reputation with customers, employees, and stakeholders.
So, how do you best deliver compliance training? How do you meet legal requirements and the needs of your workforce while cutting down on unnecessary processes and paperwork? A learning management system (LMS) can help. You can use a compliance LMS to allocate courses, deliver training to employees, and create a paper trail that shows which employees have completed which training modules.
Get a compliance LMS on your team, and you can:
- Streamline and better organize compliance training
- Tailor compliance content to the needs of your organization
- Track employee progress and completion
- Meet compliance deadlines
- Record and report on compliance training status
A compliance LMS like Moodle Workplace is customizable, allowing businesses to adapt it to their organization and training requirements. That means delivering personalized compliance training pathways, suited to every team member in every location. Plus, Moodle Workplace is secure and scalable. It integrates with your HR software and automatically enrolls employees on the required compliance courses, so you’re always up to date.
Take a look at Moodle Workplace’s key features to find out how our learning platform can support your organization with compliance training, or check out some of our other posts on compliance training.
