How Digital LMS Platform Solves the Top 5 Compliance Training Problems

By Mohana Radhakrishnan, COO, ExpertusONE

Compliance training helps organizations stay in compliance with the laws, rules, and regulations related to their industry. It also helps employees understand company-specific standards related to important issues like safe digital habits, workplace conduct and safety, and more administration-focused courses. For those in highly specialized fields, compliance training and certifications can be the determining factor in whether or not employees will be able to perform a job effectively.

Many companies, however, struggle to make compliance training effective. Whether it’s a problem with the technology they use or a problem with the overall strategy, poor, ineffective compliance training initiatives can result in frustrated team members, overextended training managers, and inadequately educated departments. Some of the most common compliance issues are also the most costly.

The transition from in-office to hybrid and remote work styles impacted compliance training significantly. Companies that were not prepared for or participating in digital transformation had to change their strategies rapidly. Now, nearly two years after many companies moved to more digitally dependent workplace structures, leaders are realizing that the same strategies they used for in-office training are not effective in digital workplaces.

Here are five reasons why your compliance training is falling flat and what you can do to fix the problem.

1. Your courses are too broad.

No one wants to waste time, and no one wants to take a course on a subject that does not apply to their daily work. Too many compliance courses are developed as all-encompassing educational tools with an extensive amount of information. Many of these courses are developed to reach a wide range of learners with a topic that is broadly applicable. This might have been the standard in an office setting, but it cannot be the standard for the digital workforce. Learners have shorter attention spans, and it’s more difficult to filter out necessary information when a course is long, broad, and covers a range of topics.

For every course you create, consider how you can make it more specific to your learners’ needs. Create microlearning courses that target specific topics that are critical for your team to understand instead of broader courses that may apply to more people but are less effective.

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2. Learners are bored because the content is not applicable or engaging.

Boredom is one of the biggest hindrances to a successful compliance training program. When learners are not engaged with the content, or when they don’t find it applicable to their unique work situation, they disengage and do not get the benefit of learning. Targeted courses, as mentioned before, will help learners hone in on the information they need (and filter out the courses they don’t need).

The biggest challenge with creating shorter, more targeted courses is the practical side of development. More courses mean a larger library and greater storage needs. More courses also mean that development strategies need to shift.

We are no longer in a time where instructional designers and developers need to spend months on end developing massive multi-hour courses before deployment. In this new work environment, multiple highly targeted microlearning courses that are deployed as soon as they are created will enable employees to take training little by little. This makes it easier to fit compliance training into their day-to-day schedule, and it prevents them from tuning out important details due to information overload and boredom.

When you choose the right technology to support your employee training needs, these pivots in strategy and training infrastructure will simplify the lives of learning and delivery managers. A digital LMS platform can support a library of smaller, targeted courses. With the ExpertusONE LMS platform, learners are automatically served with a personalized set of course recommendations based on their job titles, interests, and the courses their peers are taking.

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3. It’s difficult to find information when you need it.

With an extensive course library and a large number of users, it’s easy for learners to get lost in a sea of information while trying to find the resources they need to do their jobs. This is especially problematic for employees, sales team members, partners, and customers who may need to access training information while they are away from their desks or out on the job. A digital LMS platform is an incredible tool for our mobile, desk-less workforce because users can access training no matter their location or their connection to a network.

The best way to remedy this compliance training issue is to find a digital LMS platform that offers search capabilities. This way, learners can access the information they need after a few keystrokes. Additionally, when users are served courses that pertain to their unique roles (and not more generalized courses), they have less unnecessary information to filter through while they are on a job site or in the field. ExpertusONE’s artificial intelligence feature uses machine learning to determine which courses and topics are most relevant to a user’s needs and interests. From there, the platform automatically makes those courses available and places them at the top of the user’s course list—so they’re easy to access and at the top of the learner’s mind.

4. A lack of interactivity makes it difficult to retain information.

Experience is the best teacher. This statement may seem a little out of place—we are talking about educational, virtual courses—but it’s true that experience has been shown to boost retention. So how do you create an experience-driven learning experience when your team members are working from various locations, on a variety of devices, with a broad range of training needs?

You create interactive, virtual courses.

If your compliance efforts are falling flat, it’s time to think about how you can make your courses more engaging. Consider a hands-on approach when it comes to your training. With an enterprise LMS platform like ExpertusONE, you can add interactive elements to existing courses so that learners can test their knowledge each step of the way. From videos and audio-based courses to video conferencing, a digital LMS platform supports a variety of learning styles. Even further, with the ExpertusONE platform, you can easily add interactive elements—like quizzes, polls, and multiple-choice questions—to any course. The platform’s straightforward, accessible Interaction Studio feature makes it easy for training managers to add an interactive element to a course.

When learners are required to engage with the content during the learning process, they are more likely to retain the information they were taught.

5. You aren’t tracking compliance metrics.

Finally, one of the most critical problems with compliance training is that—despite the company’s best efforts—learners are not reaching training goals. Whether your team members are not completing their courses or you are running into the same set of problems a course was meant to dispel, compliance metrics are essential to the success of any training course.

A digital LMS platform should be data-driven. Your training team needs access to valuable insights about your users’ learning experiences. With the ExpertusONE LMS platform, data is automatically available to training managers and organizational leaders. The platform collects vital information about training and whether or not learners are successfully completing courses. For example, if users are failing most of the skills assessments associated with a course, managers can go in and look at the metrics related to training and reevaluate the course itself so that learners are more successful.

Compliance training doesn’t have to be difficult. With the right tools in hand and a strategy targeted to digital learners, compliance training can help your team succeed in the most important parts of their jobs. If you’re facing one of these five issues, look at your technology and evaluate whether or not it meets the needs of your learners. If it’s time for an update, or you want to give LMS a try for the first time, contact us for a demo.