From being a mandatory exercise of putting a tick mark and declaring “we are compliant”, there are considerable changes underway in the domain of corporate compliance as the whole system is now becoming increasingly strict and vigil in view of the need for greater transparency as well as corporate governance.
The statistics tell you that during 2017, Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence captured 56,321 regulatory alerts from more than 900 regulatory bodies worldwide, averaging 216 updates a day. This compares with an average of 201 alerts for the previous year
With all these changes, what are the defining trends that are likely to shape the future of corporate compliance e-learning? Let’s explore a few of them here.
1. It’s all about engagement and interactivity
In the past, compliance training lacked a level of engagement and interactivity that was absolutely necessary for the learning process. With the employees undergoing classroom training with the Do’s and Don’t for a lengthy 4-5 hours, it was simply not the way compliance training was meant to be. This gave every compliance training the tag of being too boring and dry.
There were many organizations which recognized this problem and who took the initiative to try implementing compliance e-learning initiatives, For example, a simple powerpoint presentation and a pdf document was shared to all the employees via an email or was made easily downloadable. ‘Read it as many times as you want, from anywhere and anytime’ These were the big statements that you could hear from the L&D team of various big organizations. But it was realized later that the new learning interventions(traditional click next style of compliance e-learning) couldn’t engage the learners nor motivate them as the learners had no motivation to read a hundred pages of a pdf document.
But I feel that it was simply a right move, as the technology grew rapidly and there were new learning interventions like e-learning gamification, game-based e-learning and e-learning games, simulations, scenarios and much more.
If you are still training your employees on fire safety with traditional classroom training, believe me, we just delivered another gamified fire safety compliance e-learning for a leading manufacturing company today. The scenario-based gamified compliance e-learning, tests the learners live on various virtual scenarios which can never be done through a classroom training. Hence the future of corporate compliance e-learning is definitely about the revival of the old boring and dry compliance e-learning to engaging and interactive modules to motivate the learners and welcome them to the new styles of compliance e-learning.
2.Absorb compliance learning as a culture
With the increasing complexities in the regulations and compliance policies, compliance learning is not the sole responsibility of the compliance department and the whole organization now becomes responsible for it. With the frequent breaches reported and the regulations become more strict, I feel that the corporate compliance scenario is becoming more complex. The recent implementation of GDPR is the sign of an increasingly interdependent and a complex compliance framework. A simple compliance training program may not be an effective solution as the problem lies deep inside within the company in maintaining a culture of compliance adherence.
This calls for the creation and establishment of a compliance culture in the organization where the employees understand the value of the compliance policies and the need for implementation in the organization. To create a compliance learning culture, I feel that compliance e-learning is an ideal way where the organizations can focus on building a strong base of compliance culture. Let me substantiate this with the help of an example.
Before the new joiner is on boarded, the pre-induction can include the compliance policies of the organisation. This prepares the new joiner towards the organization’s requirement of adhering to the culture of compliance. Inside the organisation too when a new compliance policy is implemented, make the learners aware of it through mailers, fliers and posters as well as compliance e-learning and explain to them what is their relevance.
Apart from training own employees of the organization, there is an increasing third-party risk of compliance breach where the organisation is also required to train the third party vendors.
For example, we developed a compliance e-learning for a leading retail fashion chain (clothing brand). Apart from training their regular employees, the organisation made the compliance policy mandated for all the retail shops under their brand including the third party logistics and warehouses.
3.Accessibility of the learning content
The traditional style of classroom training for compliance programs is becoming less popular within the organisations. The rapid growth of technology, increased penetration of the mobile devices and organisations promoting the policies like BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), the future of compliance training is ready to expand its reach and accessibility.
With the capabilities of the modern authoring tools to design and develop the e-learning modules with the responsive design approach, the organisation can now make the compliance e-learning accessible from any device.
For example, the learning content hosted on a Learning Management System can be now accessed from anywhere, any device and anytime. To make the things easier, the modern LMSes have own mobile apps that enable the easy downloading of the learning content to enable offline viewing.
Here are the statistics:
1.Gartner predicts that 45% of businesses will have a BYOD policy by 2020.
2.Mobile eLearners typically study for 40 minutes longer than students using a desktop or tablet.
3.Smartphone learners complete course material 45% faster than those using a computer.
These statistics give a clear picture of what the future hold for corporate compliance training in terms of making the learning content accessible.
4.The rise in demand for e-learning gamification
While there are various new e-learning strategies, I feel that gamification of compliance e-learning is on an uptrend. Here at XLPro e-learning, we receive many requests from clients who are interested to gamify their existing compliance e-learning
I suggest you find it out yourself as a quick search on Google with the keyword ‘How to create engaging compliance course?’ can show you numerous article and most of them talk in-depth about using e-learning gamification to make the compliance courses engaging and interactive.
This tells us a trend where e-learning gamification has established as a future of learning strategy especially compliance e-learning.
5.On demand learning
The modern learners comprising of the millennials and Gen Z are increasingly tech-savvy. They are born in an environment where they are connected to the technology and to the world of internet of things 24/7. Popularly called as modern learners, they are used to getting the information at their fingertips. With the technology looking to offer more benefits and advantages to both the organization and learners, the future of compliance training will be more about on-demand learning. The learners would want to access the content as and when they require. The arrival of mobile learning further substantiates this trend, as the learners are able to access the content on their favorite mobile device anytime and from anywhere.
For example, recently we developed a compliance e-learning only for mobile devices on KYC norms for a leading small finance bank. The target learners being the sales and customer service personnel on the field, the adoption of mobile learning approach was well received by the audiences.
So what do you think about these defining trends that are likely to shape the future of corporate compliance e-learning?
