Getting employees to complete compliance training is the workplace equivalent of trying to give a dog a bath! You’ll get met with resistance, ignored altogether or have people just run away a lot of the time.
And in the same way that you can’t really blame a pooch for not wanting to get its paws wet, you can understand employee reluctance to mandatory training.
Too boring, too long, not relevant, too busy – building a word cloud of employee compliance perceptions would leave you needing a support dog to stroke away all the stress and negativity.
And that takes its toll on leaders too, especially the ones managing it manually! They’re chasing people up, firing out emails as deadlines approach and generally overwhelmed by the consequences of what might happen if they don’t hit the target.
So what if there was a better way? A world where engaging compliance training was the norm, and managers lives were made easier when it came to managing the process.
Good news, there is! HowNow, our modern learning experience platform, built for the way people learn today. We’ll explain how, but first, we need to explain the full scope of the problem.
For a lot of reasons! It’s too long, it’s not relevant, they’ve struggled through it before, it doesn’t feel related to their role, and there’s often a scaremongering of potential consequences.
And we’ll break all this down now, with some of the key numbers you should know.
Without labouring the point, current compliance training just doesn’t push the right buttons. Employees think it’s too long, they don’t exactly love the formats and often find it irrelevant. Research shows that:
When content is as counterintuitive as this, it’s no wonder we’re lacking engaging compliance training!
And L&D teams and managers are part of the problem. Whether it’s the content we’re creating or curating, compliance seems to miss out on the same microlearning approach we apply to other learning content.
That more is less mindset is probably why employees are so open about the struggles of engaging with the content, especially if L&D isn’t effectively segmenting people so that only relevant employees are completing compliance.
You have to feel sorry for leaders, L&D managers and anyone else responsible for compliance. They’re juggling quite a few balls, but they’re all on fire, and that poor soul is standing on a sheet of ice.
Non-compliance can have dire consequences, getting people to understand that value or importance is tricky, and the tools they’re using aren’t always making life easier.
At the most extreme end of the scale, GDPR errors can cost companies 10 million euros! Failure to maintain health and safety compliance could hit your pocket to the tune of £150,000, and even on an individual level, carers, drivers and those looking after children can all face fines when they’re not up to date with certain qualifications.
And that’s the worst case in 50 words. On top of that, you’ve got the top of the food chain expecting you to do it in a timely, accurate and potentially cost-effective fashion.
We’ll also keep this brief because we’re going to explain these problems and how you can tackle them in more detail very shortly, but…
L&D teams are normally limited when it comes to content. They’re picking out a course from one provider that needs to serve multiple people, and so there’s a pressure to play it safe. As we know, this actually means they end up playing it boring in a learner’s eyes
At the same time, they’re either using technology that’s a hindrance or facing the biggest hindrance of no supporting tech at all! Either way, they’re under a mountain of work. Updating spreadsheets, sending out reminders, trying to work out the overall progress at regular intervals. That’s how deadlines get missed, and employees who’ve completed training keep getting irrelevant emails.
Last of all, we’ve got the issues of reporting and visibility. When leaders ask for a real-time snapshot, legacy tech and manual management make that an arduous task. Not to mention the fact that not all compliance training needs to be completed at the same time. If health and safety is repeated on a yearly basis, that’s a year from the moment each employee last finished it – and that will be different for every employee.
Ultimately, this teaches us two things: Compliance needs to be easy to manage for managers and engaging for the end user.
From formats to length, we know that employees are frustrated with compliance content! And it’s tricky for L&D teams because they typically have to buy one course to cover everyone…
Not anymore! HowNow+ brings learning content for more than 10 business-critical topics into one single platform and subscription. All handpicked and from the best providers in the business.
This means you can offer varied and diverse content types without having multiple fees, invoices or platforms to manage! Everything’s delivered and reported through our learning experience platform.
Learn more about HowNow+ here.
Remember that less than half of employees feel their compliance content is relevant to them and their team! And that’s because it’s often rolled out to people who *might* be relevant, rather than everyone it *will* be relevant to.
Taking the time to segment your audience not only overcomes this obstacle but it’ll help you rebuild compliance’s reputation. You’ll soon have people saying, “This is something relevant to me, and it’ll probably help me perform my role better.”
HowNow helps forward-thinking companies achieve this in two simple ways:
Imagine everyone needs to complete the same course by the same date, seems an easy enough thing to manage. In practice, it’s typically more difficult, but the biggest challenge is when compliance needs to be met by multiple people on multiple dates.
Let’s say there’s a course each employee has to do on a yearly basis, with the new deadline determined by their last completion date. This is where legacy or lack of tech can make L&D a living hell – you’ve got to keep track of each date, chase each person up and get it all done by each individual deadline.
We’ve got the solution! A single toggle lets you set content with a renewal cycle, automating its delivery in the future and sending reminders via email, Slack and Microsoft Teams. You set that renewal cycle, we do the rest.
We mentioned managing stakeholders earlier, and that’s because it can be one of the most stressful parts of compliance. The CEO knocks on your door and asks how many employees have completed the required courses.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could answer in a matter of seconds?
HowNow provides real-time reports into compliance, helping you understand who’s compliant and who needs chasing up! Filter by course, job role, Users and other criteria to build even more relevant snapshots of your compliance picture.
Our latest update also adds a handy tab to all @Must Do content, allowing people to see what’s essential before focusing on the next steps of their learning journey.
If you’d like to chat compliance or see these features in action, book a demo today and we’ll be in touch!