Whether you are developing a compliance training for an online audience or one you’ll eventually give to a live audience, the considerations are the same: How to make it realistic and relevant to your viewers. By taking time to create a good presentation, your training can keep them interested and relay the essential points in a streamlined package.
- Explain the need for the course. Whether online or in person, experts recommend a short video, explaining the reason for the course. The NAVEX Global’s 2015 Ethics & Compliance Training Benchmark Report cited employee cynicism and fear of retaliation as the two leading factors undermining compliance training effectiveness. A short video describing the need for the class can overcome some of these concerns.
- Use scenario-based training. Rules, regulations, laws, and codes are at best dull, and at worst, sleep-inducing. More than that, it is difficult to relate them to experience without visual aids. Scenarios, both written and visual, can help employees understand what it is they’re supposed to be learning and why it is important.
- Assure completion of the course. Online courses can be designed with limiters or restrictors that prevent skipping through the module until it has been viewed in its entirety. Some experts recommend including short quizzes or assessments to keep viewers interested and ensure they are following the course.
- Make the focus of the course learning the material. Since compliance is the desired result, smart managers should not be satisfied with a mere “passing” score. Regulatory compliance is not only about knowing enough to get through a test, but about understanding why things need to be done a certain way for safety or liability. Online tests can be designed so failing a question can redirect the tester back to that section of the course for review.
Finally, getting and implementing feedback from your employees is essential for the next round of compliance tests. If all the employees consistently fail the same module, that should be a red flag to you that that module needs reworking. Compliance is just as critical for you as it is for your employees, and needs to be a work in progress for you as well as for them.