5 Ways Compliance Policy Training Can Protect Your Organization

The value of developing, putting into practice, and administering the appropriate policies is a topic we write about often. However, implementation is just half of the struggle. You won't get the type of compliance outcomes you need until you provide your personnel extensive, effective, and consistent training.

The stakes are really high.

When the Department of Justice chose not to pursue Morgan Stanley after an employee violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, good compliance training made all the difference. The DOJ discovered that Morgan Stanley "often lectured its workers on its internal procedures, the FCPA, and other anti-corruption legislation" throughout its investigation. In seven years, the corporation had conducted anti-corruption policy training to workers in Asia, where the guilty employee was stationed, 54 times. The firm instructed the accused on the FCPA seven times and reminded him 35 times to follow the law.

This is why having an effective, continuing process for training staff about rules and procedures is critical for any firm. The structure of education will be heavily influenced by your business and its culture. However, reading regulations aloud during onboarding and giving out employee handbooks is just ineffective.

There are five essential phases to policy training:

Employees should be regularly educated.

There are several methods to re-communicate rules to workers after the first instruction to ensure they remain front of mind. Microlearning and quizzes are effective methods for determining how effectively workers recall policy knowledge. (See more suggestions here.)

Send gentle reminders to stay on top of compliance training.

Online compliance training may also be quite beneficial if your firm has the means to spend in it since it enables workers to educate themselves at their leisure. With insight into workers' training activities, compliance officers and HR managers can keep track of who is falling behind on training and push them to catch up. Online training also offers the advantage of enabling compliance and HR to monitor the courses an employee has completed.

When policies are abused, take action.

If or when rules are disregarded or abused, you must be prepared to enforce them or retrain staff. This not only ensures a solid company reputation, but it also motivates people across your business to stay compliant if they witness the penalties of disobeying the rules.

Explain the measures taken and why they were taken.

Being as open as possible about the "whys" of policy training and policy management develops employee trust. Although training is critical, knowledge may fade fast if it is infrequent or if the employee is unable to readily locate and go back to the original policy or process.

When policy changes occur, re-educate personnel.

The training process does not cease when a new policy is implemented, any more than it does after first-day orientation. Overnight, policies may become obsolete or irrelevant. Risks may also alter, necessitating revisions or new regulations (e.g. social media). Not only do laws, regulations, and organizational risks change, but technological and competitive forces can also necessitate the need to reassess and rewrite policies, as can entry into new markets or industries, which may have different rules governing your business or the behavior of your employees.

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