Compliance Training: 3 Things Your Solution Needs

The role of the compliance officer is rapidly changing as organizational and societal norms shift HR and Compliance folks align their strategies and work closely together to build healthier workplace cultures, a priority that was previously only for HR and culture leaders. 

Last year, the DOJ updated its guidance document to reflect “additions based on our own experience and important feedback from the business and compliance communities.”

The updated guidance includes a statement noting that companies have “invested in shorter, more targeted training sessions to enable employees to timely identify and raise issues to appropriate compliance, internal audit or other risk management function.” You can read more about the guidance here. 

You have the opportunity to improve your compliance training programs so it provides real impact and reduces enterprise risk.

Shorter Lessons to Keep the Conversation Going

Gone are the days of long, outdated compliance training courses that don’t have a real impact. Organizations today cannot afford to lose their business reputation and employee trust over mundane storylines and hours of inadequate training. 

To continue the conversation on Harassment Prevention or Diversity and Inclusion, shorter yet more frequent lessons should be conducted. This is an excellent way for compliance officers and HR leaders to mix things up in their training programs. Lessons can be as short as one minute to 10 minutes long. More concise lessons, or microlearning, is also inclusive of all types of backgrounds and experiences. For example, one employee might not fully understand what harassment means or how harassment looks. By breaking down the definition and providing examples on that topic in increments, the employee can grasp that information more easily. It’s about creating a shared language and common knowledge that everyone understands, relative to how they should behave in the workplace.

Microlearning is especially perfect for fast-paced work environments and fully remote organizations. A continuous microlearning approach makes it easy for employees to stay engaged and effectively practice what they’ve learned throughout their workdays. 

To learn more about incorporating microlearning lessons into your compliance training solution, check out Emtrain’s microlessons library.

In-Depth Insights Report to Drive Behavior Change

Data is still arguably HR’s most valuable asset. Kristi Grant Hart, Compliance and Emtrain Expert, says that “Data collection and review merited an entirely new paragraph within the [DOJ] guidance. Data and analytics that prove effectiveness rather than simply activity, is the most potent theme of the update.”

Data is more than just a completion report of your compliance and harassment training. Workplace culture analytics should focus on measuring opinion, behavior, belonging, and sentiment. While we did say insights reports were a 2020 trend to watch in a previous blog post, it’s critical to measure behavior and improve culture.

Compliance Training Graphics

We are still seeing companies gather employee feedback from formal and informal annual engagement surveys or shorter pulse surveys per quarter. In How to Read People Analytics to Measure Workplace Belonging, Laraine McKinnon explains the different methods of measurement that organizations can apply to their existing workplace strategy, which compliance officers can benefit:

  • Measure in the right way: formal and informal surveys
  • Measure at the right time: embedding culture questions in a broader learning package
  • Measure with a 360-degree view: ask about a range of viewpoints – about their own experience, their team, their manager, company, etc
  • Measure with the right intentions: be authentic 

Without adequate data, organizations can experience some challenges trying to identify culture issues and perspectives.

Built-in Feedback Loop to Keep Employees Engaged and Included

How will you know if employees are learning from your compliance training? Are they asking you questions about harassment, compliance, bias, or diversity and inclusion? Employees want to be heard and feel safe in their workplaces. Still, even in modern workplaces and with encouragement, employees are hesitant to reach out to their HR teams about potential issues or questions. 

There are many different tools that you can integrate into your compliance training solution that allows employees to submit questions to key experts in their respective spaces anonymously. Tools such as AllVoices and Expert Answers, enable employees to ask a question anonymously and receive feedback promptly.

It’s time to give your compliance training solution a facelift for your new modern, remote workforce. If you’d like to learn more about compliance training, contact us, or check out our list of compliance and harassment training courses.


Hassina Obaidy
Product Marketing Manager | Emtrain

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