Compliance training objectives and why they are important

Compliance training can help employees to follow both a company’s rules as well as UK law. These rules might already be written into company policy, but employees might need training in order to better follow them.

This is useful to businesses as it means their employees can help maintain a safe and respectful working environment. A comfortable working environment may help to improve employee retention and reduce turnover .

It also means that employees are more likely to be able to complete their daily responsibilities without feeling the need for supervision. This can lead to the smoother running of a business with employees having a greater understanding of the rules that they need to follow.

What is more, compliance training for employees can help a business to avoid claims of malpractice which may lead to prosecution or other legal consequences. This might include firings, fines and/or long-term damage to a business’s reputation. Therefore, it is important that businesses aim to complete any required compliance training within the given timeframes provided by the UK government. 

Not completing compliance training might make a company’s employees and stakeholders liable for malpractice. It is therefore a good idea to keep a record of any completed compliance training in case it needs to be proved in court that a company’s employees and stakeholders have completed it. 

How is compliance training different to other kinds of training?

Unlike onboarding and other skills training, compliance training is often compulsory. This type of training is not only important to new employees that companies are looking to onboard. It is also important to provide ongoing compliance training to all employees.

This is so they can keep up to date with changes to company policy or UK government legislation. It also means that employees might better remember important training that they need to apply in real-world situations. 

When starting a business, it is a good idea to refer to the UK law surrounding business compliance, particularly the Companies Act 2006. It is also worth familiarising yourself with the employment law surrounding compliance.

This can involve making sure that you hold on to important documents such as employment contracts and disciplinary procedures to prove that you are staying compliant. 

What types of compliance training are there?

Some compliance training is focused on following government rules as well as company policy. The kinds of government rules that a workplace must follow will depend on the nature of the work as well as the kinds of equipment and environment that employees will be working in.

Compliance training might follow a risk assessment. A risk assessment might be conducted prior to compliance training so that employers know what to include in the training itself. Some forms of compliance training include:

Corruption and money laundering training

Compliance training can help employees recognise instances of corruption and money laundering. This might involve going into some detail about how the company handles finances and what to look out for. Businesses might offer this training specifically to employees that handle company finances. This might be especially useful if your employees are involved in transferring large sums of money. 

Information security training

Compliance training might include information security training. This might involve training employees about company security policy as well as how employees can protect themselves against cyber attacks like phishing or social media scams. This might also include the handling and sharing of data outside of the workplace. Each business might have its own rules around how its data can be used in and out of the workplace. 

Workplace safety training

Workplace health and safety training is important across all types of business; however, this training will vary depending on each business’s own safety requirements as well as UK law. An office’s workplace safety training might include fire safety or first aid training. Workplaces that use heavy machinery, such as building sites, will most likely require compliance training for safety regulations. This might involve looking at what information is laid out in the UK’s Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998.

GDPR and data protection compliance training

The UK government has introduced the Data Protection Act 2018, which now means that everyone has to follow strict data protection principles. It is the UK government’s own implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) following Brexit. This means that a business has to use personal information in a way which is:

• lawful, fair and transparent;
• used for explicit purposes outlined by the business;
• not kept longer than is necessary;
• accurate and up to date;
• handled securely.

For more information about what the Data Protection Act 2018 means for your business, you can read the government website’s page on data protection.

Data protection training and data protection compliance training helps employees to understand the UK government legislation surrounding data privacy. This might include their own data privacy as well as how to securely store and access data while staying compliant with the Data Protection Act 2018. 

This makes it especially important to educate employees about the possibility of their accidental non-compliance. This is because some ways of storing data might seem common sense to employees but may not be currently compliant. For some, this might involve updating their pre-existing systems. 

Harassment and anti-discrimination training in the workplace

Diversity in the workplace and harassment training can help employees stay compliant with the Equality Act 2010. All employees have the right to feel safe from discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics. Therefore, it is useful for employers to include this in their compliance training so that employees understand the law surrounding discrimination in the workplace. It can also help them to identify and report discrimination, bullying and harassment in their workplace. 

Strategies for creating an effective compliance training programme

Businesses might look at using an online compliance training programme that provides its employees with courses and exams to complete. They might provide a certification at the end of their training to prove that their employees have completed it successfully. 

Making compliance training relevant and interesting to employees

One benefit of using an online compliance training programme is that this can make the process more enjoyable for employees. Some compliance training programmes online might involve some degree of gamification, during which they have to answer questions that are based on real-world scenarios. They might include a combination of video and audio resources to make the process more interactive and therefore potentially more easily retainable for learners. 

This can be especially important to employees who find compliance training dry. If they understand why the training is meaningful, they are more likely to remember it when it is most crucial. If an employee sees the compliance training as relevant to their own day-to-day role, they might be able to better imagine how it is applicable in real-life situations.

Making compliance instructions clear

If a company chooses to make their own compliance training programme, it is good to make the instructions, as well as the rules that they want the employee to follow, as clear as possible. It is useful to explain why compliance training is important and which situations they will need to be able to remember it in — for instance the correct steps to take when there is a fire in the workplace. 

How to communicate a compliance training programme

You might choose to delegate a compliance training programme to particular members of your team. This might be to members of staff who have had previous experience in delivering compliance training programmes. They might have fire safety and first aid knowledge.

To delegate this task effectively, you might involve your HR team in communicating the organisation of compliance training sessions clearly so that employees know why it is important for them to attend the sessions.