Jessica Donohue

Senior Specialist

6 best practices to enhance your corporate compliance training

Good corporate compliance training will educate employees about critical compliance information. Your training may cover various policies, procedures and expectations, but they should all empower your employees to act ethically and comply with relevant laws and regulations.

Creating and delivering effective compliance training can make the difference between building a culture of compliance and suffering the cost of non-compliance, like costly penalties and fines.

To help you build a corporate compliance training program that works, this blog dives into the following topics:

• What corporate compliance training is
• Corporate compliance training topics
• Important corporate compliance training best practices
• Steps to implement corporate compliance training

What is corporate compliance training?

Corporate compliance training helps employees understand the laws and regulations that govern their activities and gives them actionable ways to further compliance efforts.

To do so, compliance training may feature:

• Codes of conduct employees should follow
• The company’s standards and policies related to compliance
• How employees should act so that compliance becomes part of how they do business

Depending on the nature of their business, companies must follow different regulations, so the type of information employees need to know will vary. Healthcare workers, for example, will need to understand how to safeguard patient information with regard to HIPAA, while a software company that processes credit card transactions will need to teach its employees about PCI DSS.

Common corporate compliance training topics

Laws and regulations are unique from industry to industry. That said, many of those regulations are concerned with how companies treat people, handle data or impact the environment, among other key areas.

To effectively cover these impacts, corporate compliance training topics may include:

• Anti-bribery and corruption
• Anti-harassment
• Non-discrimination
• Internal policies and codes of conduct
• External rules and regulations
• Use and protection of data
• Consumer data privacy laws
• FTC regulations
• ADA compliance

Ultimately, the board and its counsel will need to identify which laws, rules and regulations employees should know, then lean on compliance officers to translate those frameworks into approachable, effective training for employees at all levels.

6 corporate compliance training best practices

Successful corporate compliance training will be unique to each business. But there are certain characteristics all effective training has in common.

Using these best practices will ensure your training gives employees the tools they need to not only adhere to compliance initiatives but champion them:

1. Select relevant topics: Your employees’ time is valuable. Identify topics your employees need to know, then craft training worthy of their attention. Cutting out what they don’t need will shine a light on what they do, making it easier for them to engage with and, ultimately, retain critical compliance information.
2. Communicate the cost of noncompliance: Compliance is your job, so you know exactly what’s at stake. But your employees may not. Use corporate compliance training to help them understand what they — and the company — stand to lose if they don’t follow regulations. This helps employees give training the respect it deserves.
3. Make culture part of the conversation: Compliance isn’t just about do’s and don’ts. It’s about making compliance part of the fabric of your company’s culture. Is your internal message about how your employees are family? If so, your corporate compliance training should show them how complying protects that family.
4. Empower employees to participate: Compliance officers aren’t the only ones who can discuss compliance. Show employees how to hold each other accountable by calling out less ideal practices and encouraging better ones.
5. Implement ongoing education: Training can’t just be a one-off, mainly because your employees will need new information if and when laws and regulations change. Devise a way to deliver ongoing updates, even if only to remind employees of different policies and procedures.
6. Improve your training over time: Most corporate compliance training solutions have built-in analytics. It can tell you how engaged your employees are, if they’re completing training and so on. Use that information to fix what’s not working and enhance what is.

Steps to implement your own corporate compliance training

Creating and delivering corporate compliance training can seem daunting. But it pays off when you see your employees putting your training into action — for your reputation and bottom line.

Here’s how you can start integrating corporate compliance training into your workplace:

1. Identify what your company needs: This lays the groundwork for what your training will cover. Ask yourself: What laws and regulations do employees need to know? Are there policies or frameworks they should follow? Do employees need a reminder about certain practices? This becomes the content of your corporate compliance training.
2. Talk to your employees: Corporate compliance officers have a great birds-eye view of all compliance activities. But they might not be tapped into how those activities play out in the day-to-day. Ask your employees what is or isn’t working, what they need to know to do their jobs with confidence, and even what format they’re most interested in.
3. Choose a training solution: Use your employees’ feedback to pick a compliance and ethics training platform to meet your needs and theirs. Make sure your chosen solution has robust analytics and accommodates different training formats.
4. Set measures of success: How will you know whether your corporate compliance training works? Define how you’ll measure success at the start so you can evaluate whether your training is effective and pivot if it’s not. This also makes your program more defensible. Your training solution’s analytics can help, but so can working with team leads to gauge changes in your employees’ compliance practices.
5. Monitor and make changes: Even the best training has a shelf life, largely because laws and regulations change over time. Be ready to pivot as your landscape evolves, whether updating existing modules, creating new ones or delivering the same training in better, more engaging formats, like microlearning.

TOP TIP: Say “goodbye” to boring corporate compliance training

Compliance matters. Noncompliance has serious ramifications, of which fines and penalties are just the beginning. Yet, too many companies deliver training that employees can’t actually act on.

Following the best practices and implementation steps listed above will help, but so will furthering your understanding of the compliance and ethics practices that work.

Our guide shows you how to say no to boring corporate compliance training and yes to what it should be: interesting, engaging and capable of driving real change for your employees.

Download our white paper How to Stop Delivering Boring Compliace Training to learn more.