The top 5 tips for conquering compliance training

Sophie Doust /

Compliance Training. Two words often dreaded amongst businesses and their employees, due to its stigma as boring and tedious.

So, what is compliance training?

It is simply educating staff on company policies, laws and regulations. 

Therefore, it is essential training as it prevents companies from facing any legal consequences or loss of business caused by staff misconduct. As a result, the content tends to be very serious, presenting L&D Departments with the all mighty challenge of motivating learners with imaginative content, whilst including all the required information. 

Here at Digits, we recognise the challenges associated with compliance training, so our team of experts have compiled the following 5 solutions to help you tackle any compliance-based woes.

1) Relevant learning

Frequently, compliance content isn’t tailored to the individual, which leaves them asking “why do I need to know this?” Giving learners an abundance of material that has no relevance to their job is extremely unlikely to motivate or engage them. Therefore, it’s crucial you understand your audience!

Showing them why the training is applicable to their job role, and if possible, avoiding any unnecessary information should cause your users to respond better to the course.

Evidence-based Activities are great for demonstrating the significance of the training to the individual’s position. For instance, by delivering health and safety training via a mobile device, you could incorporate a task where learners are required to explore their working environment, by taking and uploading photos of potential safety risks. This clearly highlights the benefits of their learning.

2) What are you trying to achieve?

Identify what you want users to gain from their compliance training and form your strategy based on this answer. Knowing your desired outcome means you can take the best approach and create the most effective training.

If you’re aiming to teach staff new information, you can focus your attention on creating dynamic and relevant content to spark their interest.

But, if you’re wishing to demonstrate competency, you may want to create a pre-assessment quiz displaying topics that need developing and then inform users on areas of improvement if they fail.

Forcing people to do the same test repeatedly only causes frustration, rather than helping individuals improve!

3) Interactive learning

How do you make compliance training interesting, when most people do it because they have to, not want to? Typically, compliance training is a requirement, which is why it tends to be met with a lack of interest. Leaving companies stuck for ways to engage their employees.

We suggest steering clear of just presenting masses of content to users, as this doesn’t really teach them a great deal… besides how dull the training is.

Who really wants to sit through pages and pages of static text, when you could produce a gamified, interactive learning experience?

Learners are increasingly likely to engage with the subject if they’re actively involved. 

Workplace Scenarios are an excellent way to motivate users, as they can acknowledge what their learning, alongside being shown the value of the training by applying it to their day-to-day life. Not only that, but it gives learners the freedom to practice their newly acquired skills in a safe environment where they can make mistakes, before putting them into action at work.

Mixed Media-There’s nothing worse than having to complete a training program where every page has an identical format. Keep it varied with a range of interactive content such as videos, scenarios and mini quizzes. As compliance is a lengthy topic, this should break up the material and make it easier to digest.

4) Less is more

When composing compliance training, there is a tendency to create an extortionate amount of content to cover every possible eventuality. Whilst this appears to be an excellent idea, it’s important to remember that although you want to incorporate all the necessary information, individuals need to retain this knowledge. Bombarding them with endless facts only results in a ‘cognitive overload’, where the user has such an enormity of new information to grasp, they are unable to process it all.

The solution: Narrow down your content.

The key is giving information in short and simple bursts. Concentrate on 5 or 6 desired learning outcomes, form small modules of approximately 20 minutes and break it down even further into bite-sized topic areas.

This technique informs learners precisely the skill or topic they are developing, helping them comprehend the material by reducing its focus.

5) Collaborative learning

Don’t be afraid to make it a social activity. Isolating users to their screens is likely to make their minds wander, so get the whole team involved! Use small groups of employees to complete training sessions together, hopefully triggering interaction and feedback about what they’ve learnt.

Why not add a bit of friendly competition too?

Introduce a quiz at the end of the module and reward the users who gained the best score with a prize. Not only will it captivate your learners, but a prize incentive should inspire users to retain the information in order to win.

If you like this post and want to see more exciting content from us, follow us on Twitter @digits_ltd  or like us on Facebook @DigitsLtd.

About Us:

Digits are an eLearning company, delivering ‘brilliantly simple’ digital and mobile learning solutions tailored to suit your audience. With years of expertise in learning development, Digits help companies create personalised learning content across a variety of subjects.

Our Learning Management System (LMS), glo™ learn, gives businesses the tool to deliver all aspects of training, from onboarding to refresher training. Motivate learners with engaging content using our Visual Learning Journeys and gamified features such as leader boards, badges and widgets.

With the ability to support 100 to 1,000, 000 users, Digits’ LMS is suitable for a range of business sizes.

To find out how Digits can help you deliver effective compliance training, please get in touch by filling in the form below. 

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