From Box-Ticking To Buy-In: Compliance Training People Care About

Overcoming 6 Common Compliance Training Challenges

You put time and money into developing your training strategy, polishing it to help you reach company objectives. After all that careful planning, mandatory compliance training can feel like an unrelated add-on. Treating compliance training as a “box to tick” or an afterthought undermines its importance—and its impact. It leads to poor learner engagement and low knowledge retention and, ultimately, could result in serious compliance risks. The good news? Learning to spot and overcome 6 common compliance training challenges can shift mandatory training from a chore to a valuable, engaging experience with lasting benefits.

Below, we look at the obstacles to watch out for and solutions for each. But first, let’s review what compliance training is and why it matters to your organization.

What Is Compliance Training, And Why Does It Matter?

Compliance training educates employees on the laws, regulations, policies, and procedures your company must follow. It keeps your workforce up to date on rules and ethical standards required by your industry or government.

Training on these topics is often mandatory and is intended to protect your company, your employees, and your customers.

Common compliance training topics include:

1. Cybersecurity
2. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I)
3. Ethics
4. Workplace harassment
5. Data security
6. Health and safety
7. Industry processes and procedures
8. Environmental protection
9. Ethics
10. HR law

Failing to educate your team on these topics can result in harmful violations.

So how do you ensure your training is engaging and gets results? Here are 6 common compliance training challenges to watch out for and solutions to overcoming each.

1. Challenge: Seeing Compliance As A “Check-The-Box” Task

Compliance training is often viewed as a formality, holding little interest for either your L&D team or your employees.

Your training strategy generally focuses on helping employees and leaders meet company objectives and grow your business. Throwing courses on government regulations or health and safety into the mix can feel like a disconnect.

It’s hard for learners to engage if they don’t see the link to financial and career aspirations. And when they’re just going through the motions, they’ll struggle to retain and apply what they learn.

Failure to apply can leave your company open to hefty fines, data breaches, and a dangerous or toxic work environment.

Solution: Communicate Real-World Relevance For Employees

Help get learners invested by emphasizing how the training applies to their work. Show them how being informed and compliant will positively impact their careers and company goals.

For instance:

• Communicate the consequences of compliance violations in the training invitation.
• Share client success stories where a security breach was avoided or addressed quickly.
• Include role-plays set in your company and involving employees’ actual roles.

Be transparent about the training’s objectives up front. And tailor the training to your audience so they see its relevance. For instance, use training exercises as a chance to share case studies and scenarios that illustrate compliance as a daily responsibility, not a formality.

2. Challenge: Content Overload And Complexity

Compliance training can involve a lot of rules and regulations, and it can be tempting to get them all into one lesson and move on. However, trying to cover the content all at once makes for some dry courses. Dense, overwhelming content leads to cognitive overload.

Long lists of legal requirements or possible violations can cause learners to lose focus. Most employees will likely glance over them or stop absorbing the information before the course is over.

Solution: Stick To Short, Powerful Lessons

Make the content “digestible” by breaking it down into microlearning modules. Focus on one compliance concept at a time to give people time to grasp one concept before adding the next.

Short, focused training modules can be completed in smaller time frames and are less intimidating, so learners are more likely to complete them.

For even more effectiveness, add interactive quizzes and checkpoints to each lesson. For instance:

• Multiple-choice questions that test knowledge.
• Fill-in-the-blank questions that encourage active recall and application.
• Drag-and-drop exercises that are visually engaging.
• True/false questions that offer quick assessments to gauge understanding.

Opportunities for hands-on learning will increase engagement but also give learners practice to help cement the ideas. It’ll also help you gauge understanding so you know whether the training is working and can see where it might need improvement.

3. Challenge: Lack Of Relevance To Individual Roles

Generic, one-size-fits-all training won’t engage employees whose roles vary widely. A general approach can make it hard for learners to connect what they’re learning to their daily experiences. Which means they won’t always apply their knowledge and skills back on the job.

If employees see content as irrelevant, they’re less likely to buy into its value. Instead, they’ll check out or avoid training altogether.

Solution: Use Personalized Learning Paths

Make the training relevant by tailoring it to your team’s actual jobs. Develop learning paths based on job functions, highlighting the specific compliance scenarios they might encounter.

For instance:

• Center an ethics training path for a sales rep around anti-bribery and corruption laws.
• Include training on discrimination and harassment prevention for an HR manager.
• Add modules on data privacy for an employee who works with sensitive customer data.
• Build in a short training module on international compliance requirements for an employee who is about to start a new project with a foreign partner.

There are often multiple ways to present the information you need to teach in compliance training. Help people engage by making the content relevant to their professional experience or needs.

4. Challenge: Passive Learning Experiences

When compliance training is seen as a formality, there’s a tendency to present the information and move on. Lessons end up in passive formats like slideshows or videos that don’t actively engage learners.

Without interactive elements, training leaves readers sitting and staring at the screen. It’s easier to “zone out” or get distracted with other priorities instead of absorbing information.

Solution: Make It Interactive

Make the training experience more hands-on to keep people’s attention and help them remember what they learn. Consider these approaches:

• Introduce gamification techniques like point systems, badges, and leaderboards to prompt some motivating competition.
• Use role-playing to inspire hands-on application.
• Include interactive quizzes to get learners to think more deeply about what they’re learning.

Getting people to engage physically and mentally with the content helps keep their attention. It also makes the learning more memorable, helping the content stick even after training.

5. Challenge: Low Retention Over Time

Compliance training shouldn’t be a one-time event but a regular part of how you do business. One-and-done learning is easier to forget about, so it increases the risks of noncompliance in daily operations.

It’s easy to see an annual compliance training event as a chore—something to be completed and set aside till next year.

Solution: Integrate Compliance Into The Employee Experience

To keep the learning top of mind, transform compliance training from a chore into a valuable learning experience. Make compliance a part of the daily work experience.

Give employees frequent, shorter interactions with the concepts in addition to the main training event. Here are some suggestions for more regular exposure to the content:

• Consider ongoing micro-assessments and refresher courses to reinforce learning.
• Ensure senior leaders model compliance behaviors and regularly communicate the importance of compliance.
• Periodically recognize and reward employees who demonstrate exemplary compliance behavior.

Frequent reminders boost retention and help people see where the concepts apply in their day-to-day work.

6. Challenge: Skepticism And Low Perceived Value

Because it’s a requirement from outside your company, employees may see compliance training as bureaucratic. Government or industry entities that set compliance standards are a step removed from the work that happens inside your organization.

An outside requirement doesn’t immediately communicate internal value. And a low perceived value leads to disengagement.

Solution: Be Clear About The Organizational Benefits Of Regulation

Help bridge the gap between compliance and value by ensuring employees understand how it impacts the company. Just as employees need to see how the training benefits them specifically, they benefit from seeing how it helps your organization.

Improve buy-in by explaining why compliance is necessary for company success—and how employees can help. For instance:

• Use the training objectives to communicate how compliance training can foster a positive work culture—one where everyone feels respected and safe.
• Use real-life scenarios and role-plays to illustrate how compliance guidelines help employees make good decisions, cut down on mistakes, and streamline processes.
• Share case studies and success stories to show how compliance boosts customer trust and satisfaction by helping the organization maintain a positive reputation, avoid legal issues, and attract investors.

Transforming Compliance From Task To Tool

Compliance training is an investment in organizational health and employee safety. ​​Keeping it engaging, relevant, and consistent promotes a culture that values those things.

Use the tips above to transform your training into a tool for proactive risk management. Engage learners and keep your efforts going by using an LMS to centralize all your compliance training efforts.

With the right strategy (and the right software), you can reshape your approach to create a valuable learning experience. One that empowers employees to make informed decisions and uphold ethical standards.