How to ensure your business is covered
It is a fact of business life that companies and their employees are subject to compliance legislation from a range of government and non-government bodies. Ensuring that your company is compliant with training for employees should be a key priority as the consequences can be devastating.
However, a recent report by Brandon Hall Group: 2014 Compliance Training Study suggests that over half, 52% of companies are Not Prepared or Somewhat Prepared for a compliance audit.
Engaging in ongoing training for employees is made easier with the advance of online training technologies and it is critical that companies engage in a proactive rather than a reactive way to this imperative. The report had a number of findings:
- Proving compliance training to an external agency is deemed to be either Very or Critically Important to a majority of companies
- Compliance training tends to affect the majority of employees rather than just a select few
- Regulatory compliance training comes in second only to product training in importance and is the most important training in highly regulated industries such as finance and health.
Companies were asked to value the importance of their learning programs to their overall business strategy. Overall, companies rank Regulatory Compliance as the second most important learning programme (21%) behind Products and Services (25%). In highly regulated industries though it becomes the most important by some distance (34%).
External Audit
Most companies have compliance training forced on them from an external source, such as a government regulatory body. Being unable to prove that compliance training has taken place can have severe consequences for businesses, in some cases, immediate shut down.
The report indicates that 90% of companies felt demonstrating compliance was important. For those in highly regulated industries including finance, manufacturing and construction 95% of respondents felt they were answerable to an outside agency.
Compliance affects everyone
Compliance training usually needs to be conducted company-wide or somewhere close to it. 70% of companies say at least half of the workforce need to be trained. The lack of control in the banking sector which led to the global recession in the past number of years has certainly led to greater compliance legislation controlling financial institutions, a situation that looks likely to persist into the future.
Preparation
So are companies ready with their training?
In the general business environment the answer is definitely no. It is a 50/50 split between prepared and not prepared which clearly leaves a lot of companies in a very precarious situation. In regulated industries the situation is that 94% of companies are Somewhat Prepared or better. Clearly, these industries have been made to understand the critical nature of this training. What can be difficult is to have clear proof that the training has taken place. In the case of face-to-face training it is very easy to miss attendees or incorrectly record attendances.
Still companies seem to place a great emphasis on the quality of a classroom style of training (64%) with online (52%) and video (47%) versions coming in in second and third place. The advantages of being able to record definitively that an employee has taken a training module is pushing many companies to online training platforms.
If you would like assistance with your compliance training system do request a demo and we will walk you through a solution that can safeguard your business against failing a compliance test.
