“Compliance training is an important building block of wider initiatives to keep us all safe and healthy.”
Become a Compliance Training Provider Plus
There is a whole world to win when it comes to compliance training that makes sense. For many professionals, compliance training might not seem the most exciting area of learning and development. But if you take a closer look, you can find many opportunities to improve compliance training and get rid of the ‘nonsensical’ elements.
Training providers delivering compliance training can easily create a higher value for their customers if they move from ‘order taker’ to a more consultative approach. But how to do that? It’s about asking the right questions to facilitate a healthy conversation.
Questions, questions, more questions, and answers with evidence
A serious portion of compliance training is done because…
- It has always been done like this.
- The module is in the LMS.
- It is a mandatory requirement of a regulating body.
- If it doesn’t help, it doesn’t harm.
- A member of the board once said we should do it.
- It’s a fun training programme and always scores high on the smile sheet.
A lot of assumptions are always related to compliance training initiatives — assumptions that might be true, once might have been true (but not anymore) or never have been true. If you really want to help your client as a training provider, be sure to clarify these assumptions.
Be bold, be brave and tell your client you really want to help. But for the best help, you (both) need to be sure about the actual answers on the who, what, where, when, how and why. And you want evidence, the rationale, the story behind, which show an answer makes sense.
Who and What
For the ‘who’ — you really want to know who exactly the target audience is for the training topic. Who decided (internal/external) and based on what?
When
When was the decision made — is it still up to date? Does it make sense in the specific context (company, region, processes, risks) that we have this target group? Is it really one target group or should we specify sub-groups with different characteristics and needs? You have to drill down on the who, what, where, when, how and why to make it really sharp. You have to peel off the layers of nonsense so that you end up with the core issue to solve that makes sense.
To start, you have to ‘peel the compliance training onion’. And yes, sometimes you’ll end up with tears in your eyes — but so what? Are you a training provider that is bold and brave enough to take this approach?
Need some examples?
You can find more examples, stories and cases on ‘peeling the compliance training onion’ in our free e-book. It also includes a 20-step ‘Onion peeling’ checklist.
Knowledge, skills and the regulation of behaviour
Compliance training is about the regulation of behaviour. To comply is to show the ‘right’ or desired behaviour in a certain situation. For people to be able to show the right behavior in a certain situation, they need knowledge. Knowledge so they can recognise the specific situation and information to know how to act. But knowledge is not enough. In many situations, people also need the right skills to react in the proper way. So, knowledge and skills are important when it comes to compliance, but only for a rather small portion.
I hear you say: “Says who?”. Well, Geary and Alan do.
Mister Rummler and Brache researched factors that influence behaviour. They found that when people do not show the expected or desired behaviour (act not compliant), there are different reasons why that is the case. There are different kinds of causes and in their framework, they mention five categories.
Five categories:
- Quality of input
- Clarity of the desired output
- Consequences
- Feedback
- Knowledge and skills
The research findings of Rummler and Brache show that, in general, a lack of skills and knowledge (only) counts for 15% of the root causes why people don’t (can’t) act compliant. It’s only this part that you can directly influence as a training provider. The other elements are the responsibility of the organisation, the manager and the supervisor. Of course, you can influence them by consulting with them and create a partnership to work together for the best result. And I think you should do yourself a favour and do so.
The behaviour-regulating checklist.
In our free e-book, you can find a step-by-step explanation and an example of how to apply the ‘Rummler & Brache’ checklist on the regulation of behaviour.
Be smart with tech, buddy!
Let’s assume that in a concrete project with a client, you did a good analysis and found that a lack of certain knowledge and skills plays an important role in (not) being compliant. Or sometimes, it is just a requirement set by a regulating body. ‘You should train your people on topic X for minimal Y hours to be compliant’ (Period. No discussion). In both cases, some kind of learning or training is the way to go. Of course, you want your training to be effective (deliver results). That can be done in different ways. As a training provider, you not only want to delight your client by delivering the best results in the least amount of time needed, but you also want to be efficient (when you achieve this, your customer is content and will likely result in recurring training business).
The best way to reach both effectiveness and efficiency is by personalising the learning approach. If you could deliver a scalable ‘one-size-fits-one’ approach to create a personal learning path per participant, that would be great. That would be the way to go to create maximum effectivity and maximum efficiency based on each learner’s unique characteristics. Did you know you can? You can if you use the right technologies to do so. There are a few good ones out there today.
Are you concerned they are too new and not yet been proven? Fair point. Our platform, which personalised training content, has been available since 2009 — that’s 10+ years! I hope that gives you some peace of mind that it’s a proven technology. What really should give you peace of mind is the results that you can attain via the smart use of technology. In one of our well-documented client cases, a reduction of almost 60% of the time needed to complete compliance training was measured with the same effectiveness. That saves a lot of time and money, making your clients happy! So now it’s up to you, the value-creating training provider. When and how will you surprise your clients with these kinds of savings by the smart use of technology in compliance training?
Want to learn more?
In our free e-book, you can find an infographic and the story behind this case.
Solving the compliance training paradox: done!
Compliance training IS important. It’s an important building block of wider initiatives to keep us all safe and healthy. It’s relevant for each of us and our families to avoid risks in our daily lives that can be avoided. It’s important for people at work. We all want our loved ones to return home safe after a day at work and, in the long-term, during and even after a whole career.
So let’s stop ‘nonsensical’ compliance training and deliver relevant and effective compliance training that makes sense.
Do you feel the responsibility and see the opportunity as a compliance training provider to continuously add value and improve on this challenge?
Read the compliance e-book to get inspired. And please, share your stories and best practices with us so we can make a more complete and better version of the e-book.
