Corporate Compliance

Corporate compliance is the practice of developing a system with informative policies and procedures within a company to mitigate risks. Great corporate compliance programs recognize legal risks and avoid them with stable defenses.

When looking for a good corporate compliance definition, it usually includes specific training that’s mandated by legislation or policy. It’s also important to understand it from the perspective of an individual company. Compliance training helps employees understand and implement regulations that are critical to their job responsibilities and tasks. A good compliance training program helps a company avoid penalties and even potential lawsuits. It can also improve productivity and employee satisfaction on the job. Training that is geared toward the needs of each individual company will help employees better understand what they are expected to do on a daily basis. This includes both specific duties as well as general standards. An organization that has employees who understand and adhere to corporate compliance standards will have a more productive workforce, easily reach their business goals, and ultimately achieve higher profits. Since standards and laws regarding corporate compliance are always evolving, it’s important to realize that corporate compliance is ongoing for every company.

Compliance Training

Industry compliance training consists of educating employees on laws, regulations, and policies pertaining to the company. Effective compliance training creates a fluid work environment and helps recognize and avoid any efforts that may serve as a liability to the company.

Each onboarded employee should be aware of the company’s stance on certain issues and how to handle them. Whether it’s ethical or legal matters, having a corporate compliance training system with officers in place will serve as guidance to all employees when it comes to solving disputes or dilemmas.

Types of compliance training

There are several specific types and areas of compliance training that a company can use to get their employees properly trained. There are also different industries or fields, such as medical and financial. Additionally, there are particular types of compliance training topics. A few of these might include ethics and compliance training, harassment and discrimination training, and healthcare compliance training. Finally, there are a variety of training methods. Each method involves different ways in which employees receive their specific training.

• Fields – Healthcare and finance are two fields that normally require a lot of compliance training. There are dozens of regulations at the federal and state level that employees need to understand and strictly follow. There are also HIPPA regulations to follow in healthcare while manufacturing and construction fields require extensive compliance training. Almost every industry requires at least some sort of compliance training to make sure employees follow guidelines, laws, and regulations that are associated with their particular company.
• Types – The types of compliance training topics that may need to be covered are almost endless. An example of compliance training includes an online training course for employees in the human resources department about new state or federal HR regulations. Harassment and discrimination online training are other types that nearly every organization likely needs while healthcare compliance training is extensive and involves several specific categories. More compliance training examples include workplace safety (OSHA), workplace substance abuse, workplace violence, and diversity training.
• Methods – There are a variety of training methods that can be implemented, depending on the field, the type of training needed, and the individual needs of the company. An organization may use video, PowerPoint presentations, or computer-based training. Some types of training may use written or self-study methods. Online training may be the most efficient method of offering training to employees as it offers a great amount of flexibility so employees can either learn in groups or individually according to their own schedule. It’s often a good idea to use a mix of training methods in order to meet the needs of all learners. This also enables companies to present material in fresh and unique ways.

Compliance Training Best Practices

Compliance training best practices start and end with Federal Sentencing Guidelines Organization’s (FSGO) seven steps, written to encompass and better frame an organization’s compliance program. They are as follows:

Training Material

Compliance learning content covering standards and procedures that are reasonably capable of reducing the risk of criminal conduct from employees. Compliance officers should always pursue ongoing training and complete certification programs. Lessonly provides a platform for easy content creation to educate officers on general compliance standards as well as company-specific standards. Lessonly is also a great platform for preparing officers for certification programs.

Compliance Officer(s)

The assignment of someone or someones to monitor and ensure the following of all standards and procedures (located in HR). A compliance officer or team should complete corporate compliance officer training and go through a compliance certification program and compliance officer duties should include pursuing best practices in company compliance training by reading up-to-date articles, studying other organizations’ practices, and attending compliance seminars. Finding compliance officer training can be time-consuming and costly. We suggest building internal training and then putting financial efforts towards certification programs.

Assigning Authority

Before giving employees copious amounts of responsibilities and access to certain company information, take into account any illegal history or ethical wrongdoings. A properly trained compliance officer will know when to avoid delegating authority to someone who has the potential to cause legal damage to the company. The first step to doing so is constructing background checks.

Communication

It’s necessary for compliance teams to construct thorough content to train employees on a business’s regulations and standards. Lessonly can serve as a regulatory compliance software comprised of compliance courses accessible to employees and administrators from anywhere, at any time.

Compliance courses can range from “Proper Use of the Company Kitchen” to ethics training. When onboarding new employees, it’s important to monitor initial learning of compliance material and to reference it in times of debate. Lessonly lets administrators track the learning progress of employees, so you know what they learned, when they learned it, and how well they learned it.

Having a System for Reporting

Employees should know exactly what to do when they encounter a legal or ethical dispute. Compliance officers help by making clear what problems should be reported and how they should be reported.

Enforcement

Recognizing violations or ignorance of compliance protocol and knowing how to discipline accordingly. If a compliance officer knows of a situation that has yet to be reported, it is that compliance officer’s duty to approach, clarify, and inform both parties of the policies and procedures.

Development

Always improving the compliance learning program, taking into account industry laws and cultural shifts. Especially within growing businesses, compliance development will always need additions. Lessonly makes this easy with feedback features as options within each lesson.

Benefits of compliance training

Many companies view employee compliance training as simply another box to check on an endless to-do list. The importance of compliance training, however, can’t be overstated. It has a far-reaching impact that goes beyond what is learned in the actual training. It affects an organization at a variety of levels including how well individual employees function on the job, how well they work together as a team, and ultimately how successful and productive the company becomes. According to Ethical Boardroom, there are several benefits of providing corporate compliance training courses.

• Employee Level – When employees understand compliance issues and regulatory expectations they are better informed and more engaged in the workplace. Employees are less likely to engage in substance abuse or be the victim of workplace violence. They are also less likely to suffer on the job injuries or illnesses. Chron states that compliance training also helps employees understand issues regarding confidentiality, conflicts of interest, and codes of conduct. Employee compliance training programs should always include laws and regulations pertaining to their industry as well as specific positions in the company.
• Team Level – A team that is on the same page regarding policy and regulations works together more efficiently and smoothly. There is also greater unity among employees, more respect, and less conflict. A team that is able to work more effectively together will accomplish more goals in a quick manner. It’s also important that employees receive corporate compliance law training that is geared toward both individuals and those working in groups.
• Company Level – Effective legal compliance training can reduce the number of potential lawsuits that are filed against an organization. A company can save money due to less absenteeism because of fewer injuries and illnesses. A company will not only be financially more secure, but with fewer lawsuits and work incidents, their reputation will be protected. Good compliance training enables a company to operate efficiently and safely while following all current regulations and laws.

Compliance Certification

Compliance certification is more than just taking a test. In fact, in order to become certifiable by the Compliance Certification Board, immersive experience as a compliance ally or active compliance professional is required. Additionally, before scheduling and taking the exam, you must earn twenty continuing education units (CEUs) that are completed a year prior to taking the test. These units can consist of conferences, seminars, and in-person training events. More information can be found on the CCB website.

Though seemingly tedious, compliance certification creates a standard for businesses, and compliance officers with certifications are more highly credible, therefore making their internal structure more credible.

Employee Compliance Courses

Compliance training courses can cover a myriad of topics. Distinguishing between what practices are general to your industry and what are business-specific will help you with content-creation.

For general industry material, like covering the Fair Labor Standards Act or Safety Training Materials you don’t have to build your own content, because there are plenty of online resources to pull from. However, we suggest simplifying the legal jargon and then linking to official documents. For business-specific procedures like codes of conduct or social media use, build out detailed lessons with examples.

Implementing and Maintaining Compliance Programs

If your company is still fresh off the block and has yet to firmly implement a compliance training program or corporate compliance tools, there is some awareness to gain before diving in. Firstly, know that all employees are onboard to adhere to ethics and compliance training and information within. Secondly, emphasize the importance of feedback. Whether it’s in initial training or ongoing training, open-ended feedback, surveys, and polls are great ways to accumulate qualitative and quantitative data to report and improve upon.

Maintaining a corporate compliance program requires constant updating, testing, and reporting. Compliance needs to be considered with every industry change and cultural shift. When content is updated, you should inform people accordingly.

After training has taken place it’s crucial to review and report on training progress to ensure that every employee remains up to date. In order to do this effectively, a company needs to be specific regarding what guidelines and standards are used to review and evaluate corporate compliance training. Providing training for employees to learn various procedures and policies might not prove effective if there isn’t a system in place to record and monitor progress. Harvard Business Review reports that simply providing corporate compliance training isn’t enough. There are countless examples of organizations that provided compliance training, but their employees still failed to follow through. This often resulted in devastating legal issues and enormous fines.

The right types of measures to evaluate the effectiveness of training must be in place so an organization knows exactly what works and what doesn’t. A company should have a software system in place to accurately review and report on training progress. The right system will work for their industry and specific company and can generate reports related to specific metrics on a regular basis. With the click of a button, management should be able to evaluate the status of training for employees and highlight an ongoing record of compliance in specific areas.

Lessonly allows you to share lessons with the entirety of a company or certain individuals with the click of a button. There’s no longer need for email attachments or untrackable progress. You don’t have to export compliance manual, but you can with the PDF download feature. Compliance staff will know who has seen what, when they looked at it, and how well they tested with it. Lessonly provides a platform for training compliance officers as well as training employees on compliance learning. The platform is intuitive to navigate and makes content easy to build and learn.

With Lessonly, administrators can update lessons anytime. All content is automatically saved. Learners can learn, take quizzes, and give feedback at their convenience on smartphone or tablet before an assigned deadline. If you’d like to learn more about Lessonly, just check out a few of our videos or free resources on our Resources page.