Less engaging and mandatory compliance training programs amid the pandemic force nearly half of the employees to skip reading or listening to the training sessions. Let’s examine where fintech companies are going wrong when it comes to compliance trainings.Â
As the pandemic and remote working arrangements continue, employee training programs, internal investigations, and risk management meetings that were mostly in-person are now remote. Amid the hardship and disruption of the pandemic, face-to-face opportunities to train and upskill the corporate employees have taken a backseat.
ElucidatOpens a new window , an e-learning authoring platform for big employers, recently conducted a survey Opens a new window focused on understanding what finance and insurance employees think about their compliance training in the time of COVID-19. The survey was conducted between October 27, 2020, and November 5, 2020. The responses were collected from 400 professionals aged 18+ working in finance and insurance organizations with about 1,000+ employees in the U.S.
Lack of Employee Engagement in Compliance Trainings
Source: ElucidatOpens a new window
The findings of the research are quite startling. They showed a lack of employee engagement in compliance training, with 15% of respondents admitting to clicking through mandatory compliance training without reading or listening. 34% of the respondents accepted that they only glanced or overlooked the content or tuned in or out to audio. This implies that nearly half of the respondents (49%) skipped reading or listening to their mandatory compliance training in detail. The research also highlighted that men are 2x more likely than women to click through mandatory compliance training without reading or listening.Â
The compliance training programs do not seem engaging enough as most employees associate the word “boring†with it. According to the survey research, about 70% of the compliance training is over 30 minutes long, and 18% is about an hour long. This brought to the fore another subject matter of respecting employees’ time during compliance training. In the current setup, an employee’s time is not given due-importance when it comes to mandatory compliance training.
Compliance Trainings Fail To Bring Personalization
Source: ElucidatOpens a new window
The research showed that the three most common mandatory compliance topics taken up by the employees in the last six months were information security, data protection, and code of conduct. However, the compliance training program failed to bring about employee-level personalization into its framework.Â
About 77% of people admit that their mandatory compliance training is specific to their organization, but when it comes to departmental-level specifics, that number dropped to 45%. This could be why about 44% of financial services employees accept that they do not feel very well equipped to safeguard themselves or their company by completing or attending the mandatory compliance training programs.
According to Simon GreanyOpens a new window , the founder and chief product officer at Elucidat, “This survey should be an eye-opener for L&D teams in the finance and insurance sectors, particularly when it comes to how engaged employees are when it comes to compliance training.
“Ultimately, a failure to engage employees in mandatory compliance training puts an entire organization at risk, particularly with regulators who seek training that’s targeted and effective. A more people-centered approach to e-learning ensures that your training lands in a targeted and more relevant and impactful way. L&D that focuses on delivering more engaging experiences while using less employee time is far more successful. Short, bite-sized e-learning modules that are personalized to be relevant to people’s roles and context is a great starting point.â€
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What Do Employees Expect From Compliance Training Programs?
During the research, employees were asked how the compliance trainings could be improved. The common response iterated by most respondents was including more engaging content, which is brief and has more role-driven value.
Respondents requested trainings with more real-life examples that are role-specific, more interactive, and provide opportunities to test what they have learned via an upfront quiz after completing training modules.
What Employees Want From Compliance Training Programs
Source: ElucidatOpens a new window
Financial services employees said they were better off if compliance training is made more business-specific and relevant to their position rather than just a cheap training package chosen by organizations. The employees added that the examples quoted in compliance training were silly, and it felt as if they were being treated like mindless idiots.Â
To realistically interpret what they can do to ensure better compliance, employees said they required compliance training with more real-life situations or actual examples, where less time is spent on explaining things. This can be achieved by summing up the content on one slide rather than multiple time-consuming slides.
The employees also seemed inclined towards answering a general quiz in the beginning of the compliance training to ensure that only concerned professionals are made to go through the training process rather than forcefully pushing everyone into it. Adding to this, the employees zeroed-in on the need for access to better study materials along with more interactive and dynamic training sessions for delivering effective compliance training programs.
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Financial Services L&D and Compliance Training Teams at Crossroads
Businesses are at risk with mandatory compliance trainings continually failing to keep the employees engaged. The regulators want the compliance to be visible, targeted, and effective at the same time so that the employees are better placed while handling compliance-related matters in real-life scenarios.
One way of approaching this current ‘not so effective’ compliance plot can be by providing more people-centered trainingOpens a new window , which reduces business risk and has an immense impact on business productivity.Â
The financial services L&D and compliance training teams, thus face the heat of providing compliance training that improves employee engagement and is effective enough to equip employees to protect themselves and their organization.Â
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Can Compliance Trainings Have a Lasting Impact on the Employees?
A better and effective compliance training gives an employee a greater understanding of their responsibilities within their role and helps build self-confidence. Here are two recommendations for stronger compliance training impact on the employees.
1. Value time
Compliance training programs need to ensure that an employee’s time is well spent. One way of achieving this could be by reducing the time that employees spend on compliance trainings. The training modules can adopt micro-learning, which is short and concise. As most employees stay homebound amid the COVID-19 pandemic, online trainings can be reduced to 20-minute sessionOpens a new window s to have a lasting impact on the employees.
2. Personalize compliance training modules
Robust and effective compliance training is specific to departments, roles, and contexts. This role driven personalization approach can be enabled by:
- Employing imagery in e-learning sessions that actually look like an employee’s workplace.
- Providing compliance trainings with a role selection tab where employees can access content relevant to their specific role.Â
In Conclusion
As the pandemic and remote working arrangements continue to linger, compliance training programs must address two fundamental questions. First is whether compliance training programs empower employees to prevent, detect, and remediate intentional misconduct considering the changed landscape post-pandemic. And second, whether the compliance program’s protocols, goals, and initiatives align with the expectations of regulators, where employees are well and truly engaged with the training programs.
Where do you think employers are going wrong with mandatory compliance trainings? Comment below or let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!