Regularly measuring the effectiveness of compliance training is an important step to gaining valuable insights into the efficacy of an organization’s compliance program.

A survey conducted by Deloitte and Compliance Week found that 50% of companies use the completion rate of compliance training courses as the primary measurement of training effectiveness. Unfortunately, that metric doesn’t reflect how much employees learn and put into practice. 

A more accurate barometer of compliance training effectiveness comes from post-training surveys that collect information about what employees learned and if they are applying the knowledge and taught behaviors in their workplace.

When building a compliance training culture of learning, organizations should ask themselves 4 questions:

  1. Are employees engaged with the training?
    Asking employees for feedback on compliance training can often reveal their level of course engagement. People learn best when they are interested and immersed in an activity. When presented with relatable and interactive content, employees are more invested in learning.
  2. Did employees learn anything during training?
    Surveying employees after training reveals what individuals took away from the experience. For example, did employees learn how to recognize misconduct and handle ethical issues from reading your Code of Conduct policies and procedures? A static review of compliance rules and definitions may be forgotten as soon as training ends, whereas behavior-based training that brings your Code to life with real-world work scenarios, engaging questions and interactive challenges can significantly increase comprehension and retention
  3. Has employee behavior changed because of training?
    To find out if employees are applying behaviors learned in compliance training to the workplace situations, ask them how training has changed the way they do their jobs or what actions they would take when presented with a given scenario. It can, for example, help an organization understand if training to prevent discrimination and harassment can be attributed to a reduction in sexual harassment incidents, or if it is instead due to employee hesitancy to report incidents for fear of retaliation – in which case additional training may be needed.
  4. What effect does training have on the business?
    To understand training’s impact on the business, you need to set clear objectives before the training takes place. This should include the risks you want employees to avoid and the actions you want them to take. Maybe you want to increase workforce diversity and inclusion or reduce the number of employee-enabled phishing attacks to strengthen data privacy and information security. These things, and more, can be measured to see if compliance training is having the desired effect on business outcomes and goals.

Traliant Insight

Training plays a key role in compliance program success by raising employee awareness of compliance objectives and teaching the behaviors to achieve them. Regularly measuring the effectiveness of compliance training enables organizations to make real-time adjustments to compliance initiatives to reach business goals and maximize the return on investment.