The Basics of Compliance
Training for Employers

In the world of regulation, there are certain things that are required of employers and employees alike by law. Though these things can be fairly straightforward, other specific edge cases and scenarios that are often discussed may happen only once or twice in an entire career. One of the edge cases in the workplace isn’t so uncommon, and that is workplace harassment.

We hear about workplace harassment all the time in advertisements, social media posts, and through word of mouth, but is it common enough that we need to regulate training? Well, like it or not the law says yes, and there are penalties for failing to instill proper workplace behavior conduct in employees. This most often takes the form of compliance training, which is a scary term for something very mundane: making sure employees know the rules they must comply to.

Why Train?

This is a decent question other than simply “because the law requires it” since you can do the bare minimum to satisfy the government and then move on to the job you hired someone for. But taking it a little bit further accomplishes a lot. For harassment specifically, you should know the standards for work provided by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, so click here to find specifics of those rules.

Making sure that everyone gets the standards for work is an essential part of making people watch what they say. Code-switching is a valuable tool and is best summarized as simply knowing who to talk to about what. This isn’t to say that terrible behavior won’t go down as a result of proper training, but the fact is that even in the best workplaces the things said outside of work influence behavior on many levels.

When people talk to their coworkers or boss, everything they say should be intentional to avoid incidents that can lead to tangible harm. No one cares what you say behind closed doors, but for a professional setting, compliance training is important to put people into the mindset of care regarding conversation. Once someone gets this, they can usually go back to not thinking that much while talking, but until they do active effort is required for good habits to form.

Specific Topics

Training isn’t just for morality. A lot of training modules, including examples like Trailant compliance training, go over more specific issues like OSHA violations, ethics, and fraud detection. Though the high-profile stuff goes over workplace behavior, there are a lot of things passed off as training of this type that really doesn’t fit this label. This kind of program can have a nasty connotation to it, but safety is a real thing, especially for industrial applications.

Safety can be more than a hard hat though, including modules about password protection and data privacy. These modules can make sure employees know what they have to and do not have to say in the case of a real emergency or even just day-to-day activity. Laws concerning substance abuse and violence may sound scary, but with these types of videos you can make sure people know what to say were they to be faced with this.

Does it Work?

This is a big, intimidating question for anyone considering going all-out on this type of training. The short answer is that it does. Research.com has in-depth statistics covering this kind of training program and includes types of modules, efficacy of training, and relationship between the two: research.com/careers/training-industry-statistics.

This makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Though bombarding employees with rules all at once may seem to be antithetical to on-the-job training, it is much appreciated by those who live based on rules. Employees love rules that they know to follow, which just means clarity in how you approach telling them things. Don’t leave any room for interpretation and people are more likely to take things seriously.

That is the major takeaway from any compliance program, and for employees and employers, communication is key. If someone is confused, they should never feel bad about asking. It can avoid making a wrong move which can have consequences. These can range from a minor error to a dangerous accident, but regardless of the effect, it’s easy to put people in a safety-first communication-first mindset using compliance training. If you can avoid a situation like an accident, shouldn’t you?

Employees with drive will follow to the letter but use their heads. But not all people can deal with that level of ambiguity, and for you to have both coexisting and performing tasks that you need at once, the rules must be clear. Keep those rules clear when they change too, and you will have a safe productive workplace!