Your staff will know that much or all of such training is for the company’s own regulatory or legal compliance needs, and not something that is going to enhance their resumés or personal development. This in itself creates a barrier to engagement, but you need those staff to not only complete that course, but also absorb and act in accordance with the content to help prevent costly errors at work.
Having your employees undergo an extremely dull compliance training elearning course can put them off online learning forever, especially if it’s their first elearning experience.
To prevent this from happening, you can improve your compliance training program to make it shorter and less yawn-inducing. The faster employees get through the compliance training program, the sooner they can get started with the more fun and interesting stuff – being productive and enhancing their skills.
So how do you go about creating a better compliance training program?
Make it short, but sweet
Making all your employees take the same compliance program will mean they have to go through a ton of material that is irrelevant to their specific job roles. Not only will this bore them immensely, but it will also mean it will take them longer to finish the program. This wasted time could instead be spent on productive tasks that benefit your organization. Reduce, reduce, reduce!
You should create different (shorter) compliance training courses that focus on the issues that can arise in certain roles and at certain levels. If your organization is international, you should also localize the use of language and make sure that you only include material that is geographically relevant.
Make it fun, but not too much fun
Many compliance training topics are not very interesting – there is not much you can do about that. That doesn’t mean you can’t make compliance training a bit more fun though.
Including a touch of humor within content can go a long way to get learners more engaged during the more tedious parts of the training.
Make sure you don’t overdo it, however. You still need the learners to be focused on the actual subject matter, so you don’t want them to be distracted too much.
Make it effective – use relatable scenarios and debate gray areas
Compliance issues are not black and white. There is often a big gray area in between the regulations and laws, which make up the most interesting part of compliance training.
Don’t just teach the black and white rules, but also talk about the gray areas in your training, using real-world scenarios that your students can relate to.
This will make your training more interesting and much more useful to your employees. It will also help your organization better avoid compliance issues.
A social learning element delivered through elearning can facilitate discussion of the gray areas, and lively debate that can make the experience memorable.
Make it separate from other learning
If your compliance training does have a real limit to how interesting you can make it or how much budget you have to make the content more engaging, make it clear that it is distinct from your ongoing skills development opportunities. Don’t place regulatory and legal compliance in amongst your other training – even brand it differently. This way, when your staff won’t subconsciously engage with future training and elearning opportunities with less enthusiasm than they deserve.
Some compliance training will never be exciting, but using the tips outlined above, you can at least make it tolerable, and maybe even fun! Make sure that your employees are aware that there is a lot more interesting and career-enhancing content available on your LMS learning management system and create a culture of learning within your organization.
Can we help you?
Webanywhere have helped hundreds of organizations worldwide to implement elearning that delivers fast, engaging and highly effective compliance training. Why not contact us at Webanywhere for a no-obligations discussion of your needs?
Learn more about our online compliance training solutions within the Workplace Learning section of our website.