How can we simplify administration of compliance training?

BLUF: When it comes to online training, the delivery and tracking platform you use to administer your online courses is an important consideration.

This is a question we get quite often:

“We often conduct live harassment awareness training with our people, but the administrative burden of ensuring that hundreds (or thousands) of people across the firm actually complete the required training each year is becoming increasingly challenging and time-consuming – particularly with the different training requirements across different states and cities.

Will moving to an on-demand training solution help simplify the administration of our compliance programs – and help us ensure that everyone who needs to complete the training actually does?”

The short answer: Yes, online training can definitely help. But simply putting your training online isn’t the complete solution. Where you host your online courses makes a significant difference as well.

For example, if you host the training on your standard Learning Management System (LMS), for example, you may still end up doing quite a bit of manual work to assign courses and reconcile course completion data. We’ve seen many organizations hosting an online course on their existing LMS but still tracking user compliance data in spreadsheets(!).

However, if you host on a platform designed with compliance administration in mind, you’ll be able to automate and streamline your processes and greatly reduce your administrative burden.

When it comes to online training, the delivery and tracking platform you use to administer your courses is an important consideration.

What to look for in a compliance tracking platform?

To automate and simplify the process as much as possible, look for the following features in your learning platform:

• Ability to import all learner records to the system at once via a bulk upload/import process.

• Ability to assign specific courses by role and/or location.

  • For example, for sexual harassment training, most states require that supervisors take one course, while non-supervisors take another. And some states, like California, mandate a two-hour course for supervisors, while others do not. Ensuring that everyone takes the right course is critical if your organization is to be compliant.

• Ability to assign follow-on compliance courses once a user successfully completes their currently-assigned course.

  • For example, if a user completes an annual compliance course today, the system should automatically determine when they will be required to go through additional training (perhaps the same course or similar) next - and then record that information for future assignment.

• Ability to craft and send assignment emails to each group directly through the system.

• Ability to schedule automated email reminders to those who haven’t completed their assigned courses, reminding them of their pending deadline.

• Ability to generate periodic automated reports – at intervals of your choosing – to identify who is not yet compliant.

• Ability to generate – and retain – automated Certificates of Completion.

• Ability to designate a “Local Administrator” for each office or practice group, so that administration and tracking can be handled at the appropriate levels within the organization.

All subscribers to our Respectful Workplace on-demand harassment awareness training have the option to host on our proprietary delivery, tracking, and reporting platform that offers all of these features and many more. Our clients have told us that it has significantly streamlined the administration of their compliance programs - and has even led to improved compliance numbers.

Interested in learning more? Learn more about our platform or contact us to learn more.