Some companies must abide by more restrictions than others, and by extension, their training must also. That means it’s essential to align custom training with industry compliance and standards. Sometimes those regulations create a more complex process for reviews and extends the time it takes to develop training.
One of the most heavily regulated industries is healthcare, but as with all regulations, training must accommodate the needs. Training has additional requirements beyond just complying with industry regulations; it must also train employees on these regulations.
Training isn’t just for increasing employee productivity; it often also needs to help a company meet industry compliance requirements. When building custom training, aligning your content with relevant industry standards and regulations is critical. Failure to do so can lead to legal issues, fines, and damage to your company’s reputation.
Most training must balance performance in addition to compliance.
This post will help you align custom training with industry compliance and standards. Ready to jump into some ways you can ensure not just compliance training adheres to applicable regulations and standards, but rather all training?
Understand Applicable Regulations and Standards
The first step in adhering to regulations and standards is to understand them. That which you do not understand will surely cause issues when trying to apply it to training. I got a bit philosophical on you, but you get it, right?
Whatever method you use to build training, the first step is always planning. You can move fast and break stuff, but then you’ll likely be solving for the wrong problem. That’s why we think there’s still an important place for ADDIE and the planning that goes into the Analysis and Design phases.
Yes, before you start designing, identify the regulations and standards that apply to your industry and business operations. Those will vary by industry, but here are a few regulations that you may need to account for.
- Government regulations (e.g., OSHA, GDPR, HIPAA)
- Industry-specific standards (e.g., ISO certifications, PCI-DSS)
- Internal company policies and ethical guidelines
The most powerful resource you have when you need to understand applicable regulations and standards is your subject matter expert (SME). They should be well-versed in the industry’s requirements. Just don’t rely on them to bring up the fact that these things need to be considered in training.
You can do some research to guide your questioning with your SME, but they will know and provide you with the bulk of the information. It’s your job to streamline that information and ensure it’s easy to digest in the training, though.
Collaborate with Compliance Experts
The experts you work with for your industry and organization will vary, but there’s always someone you must collaborate with. As mentioned in the previous section, you will work with the SME, but you may need to go further.
Sometimes the SME is also the compliance expert, but sometimes they must work with others who are familiar with the compliance aspects that affect the training. It truly takes a village to build good training. There are knowledge experts for the performance elements of the training, but if compliance is important, there are also experts in that area.
Working with the right experts is essential for integrating compliance issues effectively into training.
Regardless of who you must work with, there’s always someone. The job of a custom training designer is to align the training with the desired impact and ensure the right questions are asked to meet compliance requirements.
It also might be necessary to hire external consultants who specialize in your industry’s regulatory landscape. They can help you interpret complex rules and ensure that training content covers all the required areas.
Define Clear Objectives That Account For Compliance Needs
Learning objectives for compliance needs? No. There’s no way someone can remember all the compliance requirements for any training. Trying to make people remember them is asking for trouble.
However, performance objectives that take compliance needs into account are important. That means creating clear performance objectives rather than learning objectives and ensuring they set realistic expectations for compliance.
The more actionable the objectives are, the better. It could even help employees find where to reference important compliance rules. Telling the tale of non-compliance or what happens when compliance is not followed is more effective than simply spouting off rules and requirements.
These are some good examples of objectives that are made from a performance perspective that takes into account compliance requirements:
- “Employees know what to do with uncompliant emails under GDPR.”
- “Technicians will demonstrate safe handling procedures according to OSHA standards.”
These objectives guide the content creation process and help evaluate employee success. They’re more actionable than being asked to remember something, too. Remembering or knowing is never a good objective because it automatically leads to tuning out for those who don’t believe they can or will remember. So, everybody.
Design Training Content that Is Accurate and Up-to-Date
What if your training covers compliance topics that aren’t even accurate? Rules and regulations change almost yearly, so it’s practically a requirement that courses with compliance topics are reviewed annually.
Training people with inaccurate information is never a good idea, but compliance risks add another level of risk to it. Even if there are no compliance topics, we think it’s essential to keep workplace training up-to-date and review it regularly.
Sometimes, it may be necessary for the subject matter expert and any compliance experts to re-review the course annually once it’s built. There’s nothing worse than sharing outdated information. This will ensure the training constantly aligns with industry compliance and standards.
Incorporate Documentation & Resources
While it’s always unreasonable to ask employees to remember books of information, it’s never unreasonable to ask them to know where to access compliance information and whom to ask when they’re unsure.
The best way to ensure employees know how to comply is to make it easy for them to access compliance information. Perhaps make it searchable in your company’s knowledge base, and always ensure there’s a place where they can ask if they’re unsure.
Make it easy for employees to reference important compliace information, don’t expect them to remember it.
Not sure if you can give that patient a gift card? It’s likely not okay, but still give them the compliance hotline where they can ask.
Having compliance information easily accessible and ensuring that employees know where to find it is essential. It’s also necessary to give them a place to ask questions if they’re unsure.
Collect Feedback and Continuously Improve
Are employees complaining that compliance training is boring and they don’t get anything out of it? That’s not good.
It’s not just a requirement to ensure that employees are given the necessary information about complying. No, it likely goes a bit further than that, and your company is responsible for ensuring employees comply.
Boring compliance information added into a course as an afterthought isn’t going to make employees want to comply, either. It feels like the company is including the information because they have to, not because they care about compliance.
Making compliance actionable and effectively presenting it can be improved with feedback.
So, make sure you’re not just building the training to meet requirements, but to help employees comply. Part of doing that means collecting feedback from employees.
Every custom training, whether eLearning or a virtual instructor-led course, should strive to improve. There’s no better way to improve training than to ask for feedback from employees. That will help identify any gaps in employees’ understanding of how to comply, as well as how to make the training more memorable and effective.
Wrap Up
Aligning custom training with industry (and company) compliance and standards is important. Yes, it can be boring and a difficult topic to make interesting, but it’s not impossible. Even if a topic isn’t directly compliance-related, for many industries, any training can include compliance topics.
That’s why it’s important to understand applicable regulations and standards, collaborate with the experts, define clear objectives, keep content up-to-date, incorporate outside resources, collect feedback, and continuously improve.
It’s not just about ticking boxes; it’s about impacting behavior and ensuring employees know what to do on the job, rather than just having vague rules without guidance on how to apply them to their work. When the training treats compliance with respect and necessity rather than just as requirements, then employees are more likely to do the same.
Company technology is important for getting work done, but it also often has compliance elements that are crucial for protecting the business. We build custom digital technical training for companies that often must account for compliance requirements. That’s part of our process! Schedule a free consultation to discuss your next company technology initiative. We’d love to discuss your needs and help your employees work better, while also ensuring compliance within your company and industry.