“Not everything that can be counted counts,
and not everything that counts can becounted.”
—Albert Einstein
Compliance training, as popular and attractive as it is, can bedangerous—for the enterprise and for L&D.
In many organizations, compliance training abounds. Programs ondiversity, sexual harassment, insider trading, ethics, and similar topics areoften required for all employees. In government-regulated industries like banks,pharmaceuticals, and energy, large groups of employees must complete numerousadditional training programs. Even less regulated companies often mandate sometraining for everyone.
The allure
Assuring that everyone is trained is important, especially in areas withsevere legal, public health, safety, or other consequences. For L&D,compliance training brings entry into a variety of business activities andcertainly generates lots of activity for trainers.
The allure only grows when eLearning is thrown into the mix, and it’snot just about cost savings. Learning management systems make it easy to trackwho has taken training, and who hasn’t, and can generate documentationprecisely tuned to the client’s compliance reporting requirements. An entireindustry has grown up around providing turnkey, easily reportable onlinecompliance training programs, including content.
Being able to deliver training to lots of people and track theirprogress can be very helpful in building confidence that those who have beentrained know what they are doing. This is always good, right? Not so fast.
The danger
While some compliance training programs work well, many expose foursignificant shortcomings:
- Compliance vs. certification
One big falseassumption is that compliance is the same as certification. Certification isbased (hopefully) on a solid assessment of performance, resulting in a highlikelihood that the individuals can actually do the job in ways that meetdefinable standards (competencies). This requires a long-term developmentprogram that transcends the classroom and moves to the workplace, coupled witha performance measurement scheme that is well thought out and well executed.
Compliance trainingfrequently focuses just on measuring attendance rather than performance. “Whoshowed up” and “who completed the course” are examples of compliancerequirements that say little about what people can do, let alone what theylearned. Even with an assessment, if it isn’t well designed, measuring actualperformance can be problematical, to say the least.
- Legal risk
The assumption thatif employees complete compliance training the organization is shielded fromlegal risk, is risky itself. Is a company protected from damages brought byother employees, regulators, or customers simply by saying its people receivedthe appropriate and required training? When it can be shown that even ifemployees had the required training, if they ultimately didn’t learn much, orcouldn’t do the job, the shield develops holes and all bets are off.
In the fictional HBO TV series The Newsroom (S3/E2, “Run,” 08:00mark), a broadcast newsroom staffer is accused of stealing government documents.At a meeting, the corporate lawyer asks, “I know these guys get legal training,how did this happen? Isn’t this the very first thing they’re taught not to do?”To which the senior anchorman responds, “Once a year for an hour. It’s not likethey take a semester in criminal law.” The network was in training compliance,but it didn’t matter; they weren’t in performance compliance. The damage wasdone.
- LMS limitations
Many compliancetraining programs are driven by the capabilities of the LMS. Like the tailwagging the dog, some managers see what types of reports the LMS can generateand then design the compliance programs to take advantage of those reports. Tobe fair, LMSs are great at managing and tracking training delivery, among otherthings. Without them, we’d have no clue who was taking what training, and thatcould make things even worse. But remember, they track good training and badtraining equally well. Many LMSs (and especially LCMSs) provide test-developmentcapabilities, but they can’t discern good tests from bad or verify theexpertise of those observing performance or evaluating work outputs (assumingthat’s even done). Interestingly, the advent of the xAPI,if used well, may help rectify this.
- Refresher training
Many compliancetraining programs get repeated every year or so. Often referred to as“recertification” or “refresher” programs, they aim to assure that peoplemaintain their skill and knowledge over time. But if this is just repeating theoriginal compliance program, which wasn’t of much value in the first place,what’s the point? Sure, some workers will benefit from the refresher training,but how will you know who they are, and what will you do about those who don’t?This may be good business for L&D, but is it really good business?
Are you concerned?
If you are concerned about your compliance programs, there are thingsyou can do. Here are three suggestions:
- Keepin mind that compliance training does notequal certification. Build up your certification capabilities. In many cases,being able to certify performance is much more a function of the assessmentthan the course. For more on this, check out this article.
- Getsome testing and measurement experts in your organization and listen to them. Ensurethat your assessment strategy is valid (it measures what it’s supposed tomeasure) and reliable (it does so consistently). A few multiple-choicequestions at the end of a course will likely not cut it.
- Workto change the culture. The embrace of current compliance training practices willnot end overnight; it will take years to move this paradigm that has become soconvenient and accepted into our practice, and even codified into law. This maybe the toughest hill to climb. So remember: little victories now mean biggervictories later. Start small—but start.
