Creating a Culture of Compliance
By Rick Nigol
 Our webinar on compliance training
yesterday attracted 50 participants, including a good representation
from financial and pharmaceutical companies (not surprising, given
the degree of regulatory oversight in these sectors). We did a
critique of some typical compliance training, discussed some of the
possible legal repercussions of poor training, and presented a demo
of some best practices in compliance training. The upshot of the
webinar was that it is not enough to merely
require that employees participate in training. Rather, the goal
should be to create a culture of compliance to ensure that the goals
of compliance (whether improved safety, zero environmental
infractions, proper accounting procedures, etc.) are realized.
When we asked participants about their
experiences with compliance training, the results were decidedly
mixed. Although some had success with blended approaches, many
thought that their compliance training efforts, especially those
conducted online, left a lot to be desired. Comments about
compliance training included:
"Dry and boring..."
"Boring PowerPoints handed down by
corporate..."
"'Just the facts ma'am' style - not
engaging..."
"Staff just click through it yearly..."
"End users not really happy when it is time to
complete the annual training..."
This is unfortunate, because eLearning holds out
the possibility of reaching employees across the organization with a
consistent message and approach. It allows learners to proceed
through the learning at their own pace when it is most convenient to
them. Documentation of who completed the training can be automated
and the organization can have real-time completion stats at its
fingertips. And eLearning can be a more cost-effective approach than
in-class, especially with large numbers of learners and over
time.
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However, for compliance eLearning to be
effective, it has to be good. We were lucky to be joined on our
webinar by Michael Korcuska, the VP of Operations for ELT Inc., a San Francisco-based
producer of online compliance programs. We took a tour of their new
Workplace Harassment program. ELT takes an innovative story-based
approach to such training. The scenarios they create are realistic
(based on actual cases), present sympathetic characters, focus on
workplace behaviour, raise pertinent and challenging questions, and
compel the learner to focus on their own attitudes, preconceptions
and behaviours. This is definitely not a dry and boring
click-through approach.
Our other special guest was Bruce McMeekin, a
partner with Miller
Thomson law firm in Toronto. He impressed upon participants that
if something does go wrong (e.g. someone gets hurt or is killed on
the job, chemicals are released into environment, customers are
injured because someone did not follow proper procedures, etc.) your
training efforts could come under scrutiny. Reasonable care must be
taken to ensure that your compliance training is thorough and of
good quality.
One participant brought up the point that it is
not enough to have good training, you must also have systems in
place to ensure that the desired behaviours are actually occurring
in the workplace. Bruce agreed entirely, stating that there should
be periodic audits to ensure proper behaviour, and that the
importance of this message be clear from the very top on down in the
organization. In the end, proper approaches to training are
important, but it is a "culture of compliance" that ulimately
ensures compliant behaviour.
Rick
Nigol is Co-Founder and Director
of Education for eLearn Campus.
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