With 2018 coming to a close, we have compiled a list of the new necessities for compliance training, the top compliance training trends, as such. It would be ill-advised to make your business’s next move without a plan based on what is offered, as well as what is needed. Businesses must supply employees with compliance training that prepares learners for their day-to-day roles, and not just training for the sake of training. It is important to step into the new year fully prepared to meet your employees best compliance training needs by knowing the top six compliance training trends for 2019:
1. Device Agnostic Compliance Training
With so many operating systems available, it is important that compliance training transitions seamlessly across all platforms. Susan in Human Resources may have the new iPhone, but Tim in marketing has last year’s Android. Device Agnostic compliance training allows both of these learners to be engaged in the training anytime, anywhere and saves the company money by not offering staff a different training for every operating system.
While most people are not taking training on their phones, it is inevitable, in our almost entirely mobile society, that one day soon this will be the only way training is offered. Tony Bingham, author of The New Social Learning, says,
“Technology is enabling our need to be mobile. We want to ensure that learning matches our lifestyle.”
The world is becoming mobile, and compliance training is moving with it.
2. 508/WCAG 2.0
On par with being prepared, it is necessary that compliance training be compatible with every learner. Compliance training that does not comply with 508/WCAG 2.0 is not preparing for the future. These standards and guidelines ensure that people with disabilities receive the same training as the rest of your team.
Courses that fall under 508/WCAG 2.0 standards and guidelines will benefit members of your staff who have disabilities and make it possible to seamlessly offer employment to people with disabilities. Compliance training that offers the option for audible assistance, keyboard shortcuts, and many other helpful tools are a must moving forward into the new year.
3. Adaptive Role
Training should be specific to each learner. It is unnecessary to have every employee taking the same hour-long training. Modern compliance training should be asking each learner questions; getting to know who it is they are about to train.
Offering adaptive role training will make for more productive employees. They will no longer feel as if they’re participating in mandatory courses, instead, they will recognize that these training programs are here to benefit them. Role-specific training will be acknowledged as helpful and engaging among coworkers.
4. Localization/Regionalization
It is easy for a learner to feel disengaged when participating in a course that does not apply to them. Translating content for different locations is important in keeping learners engaged in the training, which is the goal. If an employee is taking a course on how to properly handle fireworks, and fireworks are not legal in their region, they will find themselves discouraged from participating in future courses.
Since it is expensive to constantly alter compliance pieces of training by region, more companies are allowing regional markets to create their own compliance training content, ensuring effective use of learners’ time and attention.
5. Self-editing
Companies benefit fiscally from using compliance training that offers internal editing. Technology, business, and social change at such a rapid rate that it would not be cost-efficient to hire someone to edit their courses to stay relevant. It is important that in 2019, your compliance training is offered with an option to edit in-house by a trusted member of your IT department. Editing courses internally will prevent your company from shelling out money every time an update is needed, which could prove to be a pricey recurring cost.
6. Test Out/Test Down
Training in areas that learners have already mastered is a waste of both the learner’s time and the company’s money. A test out/test down function will offer a test before the course, gauging the learner’s knowledge in areas offered in that particular training. If a learner has proven expertise in an area, the test out/test down function will alter the course so as not to include these areas of training. When the learner finishes the pre-course test, they will be presented with a course that only includes information on the questions they had answered incorrectly.
Test out/test down allows for ideal opportunity cost. A simple test before a course can turn an hour-long training, which disengages the learner because it is filled with information they are already privy to, into a ten-minute course that completely grasps the learner’s attention with fresh information.
The less time employees spend away from their desk doing compliance training, the more time they will have to fulfill their role in the company.
See details on the new features of our 2019 Integrity and Compliance Training program.
See our 2019 Compliance Training Bench Mark Study.