Compliance training is more than a legal requirement: it’s a crucial aspect of running a successful and ethical organization. With training, employees are expected to understand and adhere to industry-specific regulations, legal requirements, and internal policies.
But compliance training is often seen as a chore, and employees may find it boring and unengaging. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how and why you should consider making compliance training fun and engaging.
Understanding compliance training
What is compliance training?
Compliance training is a structured educational program designed to teach employees about the laws, regulations, and internal policies that apply to their job roles. It’s a critical component of risk management and helps organizations avoid legal issues, financial penalties, and reputational damage. Compliance training can cover a wide range of topics, including data privacy, workplace safety, ethics, and more.
Why compliance training is important
Compliance training is not just a checkbox to be ticked; it’s an investment in an organization’s future. Here are some reasons why compliance training is important:
- Legal compliance: Compliance training ensures that your organization complies with all relevant laws and regulations, reducing the risk of legal disputes and fines.
- Ethical conduct: It promotes a culture of ethical behavior, reducing the likelihood of misconduct and scandals.
- Risk mitigation: Compliance training helps identify and mitigate risks, protecting your organization from potential harm. Take for example one company’s 2017 data breach, when their failure to implement security updates to their systems and databases compromised their customer data and cost them a minimum of $575 million in fines and settlements.
- Reputation management: It safeguards your organization’s reputation by demonstrating a commitment to responsible business practices.
Examples of compliance training
Cybersecurity training
This video on information security awareness aims to ensure that employees at all levels understand their role in maintaining data and cybersecurity compliance.
Finance training
Animated videos can make financial compliance training topics like money laundering fun and engaging, increasing employees’ awareness and deterring illegal practices from taking place.
Workplace training
The goal of workplace compliance training is to create a work environment that is legal, ethical, safe, and respectful for all employees. Besides instructing about laws and rules, compliance training can be beneficial in helping employees understand the resources available to them.
Effective compliance training: why the stakes are getting higher
Recent developments have highlighted the need for effective compliance training that goes beyond the bare minimum. Headline-making fraud cases serve as reminders of the legal and reputational risks associated with noncompliance. And while many companies meet legal standards for training, employees often fail to apply what they learn.
The compliance training landscape is evolving to keep pace with strict data protection regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the drumbeat of new laws worldwide. These regulations, on top of the hefty fines for noncompliance, have fundamentally changed the way organizations handle and safeguard sensitive data, making compliance training a staple of modern business operations.
Moreover, compliance training programs are shifting from mere “check the box” exercises to comprehensive educational initiatives. In the case of information security, more robust training modules not only inform employees about the intricacies of data protection but also instill a culture of data privacy throughout the organization that emphasizes that being vigilant is everyone’s job.
How to create more effective compliance training
The compliance landscape is changing while technology’s influence on the learning process grows. To make their training faster, more engaging, and more effective, companies are increasingly using eLearning platforms, gamification, and training-at-scale technologies.
Agility is also key in this space: the frequent updates and amendments to privacy laws demand a dynamic approach to compliance training. Organizations must be agile and continually update their training materials to ensure that employees are well-versed in the latest legal requirements.
To boost employees’ engagement with and understanding of your compliance training, here are a few tips:
Tell stories and use scenarios
Incorporating storytelling into compliance training by showing employees real-life scenarios they may encounter can capture employees’ attention and increase retention rates.
Video, and particularly animated video, is great for storytelling and scenario-based learning. Video helps simplify complex ideas and makes them easy to understand. It’s versatile and captivating, making it ideal for presenting abstract or complicated compliance messages effectively.
And unlike traditional methods of teaching and training, video provides a reference that employees can revisit as needed.
Keep it short — and make it interactive
Instead of lengthy training sessions, think about delivering compliance training in bite-sized videos. Microlearning with video accommodates learners who might forget compliance lessons quickly, allowing them to pause and replay content anytime for better understanding.
Consider enhancing your training with interactive eLearning platforms, videos, and webinars. Focus on easy-to-deliver formats, like video, which make the training content accessible on different devices for remote and on-the-go learning.
Lastly, try gamifying your training. Gamification turns your learning modules into a game with rewards and challenges.
Check for understanding
Include tests or quizzes to measure participants’ understanding and make sure they’ve retained important information.
Seek employee feedback
Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback on how to improve employee learning experiences. Ultimately, listening to employees will foster a positive environment that can allow compliance principles to become a part of the organizational culture.
Update regularly
Refresh your content whenever regulations change to ensure ongoing compliance. You might also change up the characters and scenarios or add references to current events.
Creating effective compliance training videos with Vyond
Vyond is a versatile tool that can be used for various types of compliance training. Its user-friendly interface and customizable templates make it an ideal choice for organizations looking to enhance their communication and L&D goals.
The benefits of compliance training with Vyond
Vyond offers several benefits when used for compliance training:
- Helps you explain complex concepts: Vyond’s animation capabilities make it easy to explain complex compliance topics visually. And with Vyond Go, the AI-powered script and video generator, you can create rough-cut explainer videos in seconds.
- Increases retention: Vyond videos are inherently more engaging than text-based content, helping learners better retain and apply information. When Shelter Insurance started using Vyond videos for cybersecurity training, they saw employee clicks on email phishing links drop by 50%.
- Makes revisions painless: It’s easy to revise or refresh your videos as regulations change. Features like global editing let you make edits in one place and carry them throughout your video in a click.
- Standardizes training: Vyond allows you to create standardized branded training videos that can be easily distributed and edited, ensuring consistency in messaging.
- Saves money: Creating custom training videos with Vyond is more cost-effective than hiring a production team.
- Makes your content more accessible: Training videos can be accessed anytime, anywhere, making it convenient for employees. Features like closed and open captioning help make the content accessible for all learners. And AI-powered features like instant translation let you reach learners in more languages and dialects.
- Keeps viewers engaged: The visual and interactive elements in Vyond videos make compliance training more engaging. (One of our customers in financial services saw employee views on Vyond videos increase 73-fold compared to their previous PDF-newsletter format!)
- Helps you scale training programs: Vyond allows you to scale your training efforts as your organization grows. And because Vyond is so easy to use, organizations like American Express say it has helped their teams overcome designer bandwidth constraints and get training content backlogs moving.
Start creating
Making compliance effectiveness a priority with Vyond videos
Good compliance training is critical for good business. It’s not just about following the law; compliance training is about fostering a culture of integrity and responsibility across your organization.
Vyond videos can help you take your compliance training from dull necessity to memorable learning experience. By understanding the importance of compliance training, exploring various types of compliance training, and leveraging Vyond’s features, you can create a compliance training program that not only meets legal requirements but also contributes to your organization’s success, strong reputation, and risk readiness.
See for yourself how Vyond can help take your compliance training from weak to wow! Let’s do a quick experiment:
- Think about text-based training content you currently have— slides, a PDF — that could be more engaging as a video.
- Start your Vyond free trial — you’ll be into the platform in a few clicks.
- Once you’re in, select “Vyond Go” from the home screen.
- In the topic box, copy and paste text from those materials, and choose your options on vibe/format/layout. Here are some Vyond Go tips and a “getting started” video.
- Click “Create a video” and let Vyond Go create a custom script and rough cut video based on your existing content.
- Make small changes right in Vyond Go with Quick Edit or bring your video into Vyond Studio to go deeper with your edits. (It really is this easy.)
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