13 tips to help employees learn, retain and apply training knowledge

We help employees learn. Getting employees to pay attention in compliance training – and then use their skills at work – is a huge challenge for every organization. While compliance training is a necessity for most businesses, it can be hard for HR managers and their teams to get employees engaged with the subject matter or understand its importance, which could ultimately put the business at risk.

In this article, Fit2Trade experts discuss 13 ways to help you create a compliance program that employees look forward to, and helps them learn, retain and apply the skills they’ll use every day. Here’s how you can ensure your compliance training works like it should.

1. Help employees understand the importance of compliance

Before starting your compliance program, make sure your team understands the benefits of complying with regulations, and the risks that come from non-compliance, so you can help build a culture that looks out for the business and one another.

2. Tailor your training content your team’s needs

A training program can lose its effectiveness if it doesn’t account for an employee’s specific workplace concerns and learning needs. Rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach for the whole organization, tailor your compliance training content to meet the unique needs of each department or role.

3. Make compliance training more interactive

When employees enjoy compliance training, they’re more likely to remember and apply their skills at work. If your training program isn’t keeping your team’s attention, adding interactive training modules that require your people to engage with the content can help them learn the content better so it’s ready to use at the right time.

4. Keep compliance lessons short

Research shows that people learn best in short bursts, with the ideal learning window being 5-15 minutes to enhance skills retention and application. Referred to as microlearning, this strategy teaches compliance principles in bite-sized pieces, focusing on one topic at a time, so your team can understand and remember the information better.

5. Use a variety of training (and learning) methods

The best training programs not only provide employees with information that is relevant to their job, but also presents compliance concepts in different formats (e.g. videos, games, quizzes, simulations, and interactive tools) to help people from all backgrounds stay engaged with the content throughout the training process.

6. Offer incentives for completing training

If your business struggles with high completion rates in compliance training, you might consider rewarding employees who finish all their courses. Offering employees incentives for completing compliance training is a great way to ensure they’re more engaged and motivated during training, increasing the chance they’ll make the right decision when it’s time to apply their skills.

7. Get employee feedback

Want to know if your training program is teaching compliance knowledge effectively? Follow up with those who have already completed training to find out what they enjoyed or disliked about training, and how the courses can be improved for the future. A quick post-training discovery session can go along way toward developing better courses tailored specifically around your staff’s individual needs.

8. Make refresher training part of your program

One of the best ways to make sure compliance knowledge stays top of mind for your team is by having refresher training become a key part of your compliance program. Refresher training not only enables you to reinforce learning throughout the year, it also allows you to update your training content so it follows the latest regulations or company policies.

9. Tell stories and use humor to make courses interesting

A great strategy to keep your audience engaged and help courses become more memorable is through storytelling. Stories help people feel like they are personally invested in what’s being taught, which makes knowledge transfer much easier. Humor has also been shown to increase engagement and make people happier at work, so it only makes sense to include it in your compliance training strategy.

10. Make learning flexible and convenient

Giving your employees more ways to complete their training can give your company a big boost in compliance! Since people learn in different ways and at different times, it’s always good to deliver a compliance training program that can be accessed almost anywhere, whether they’re at work, at home, on a personal device or on the work computer. The more flexible your training is, the easier it is for employees to fit it into their busy schedules.

11. Unify training with your company culture

In addition to promoting safety and accountability for employees through training, you can also develop a culture of compliance by making sure these principles become part of your company’s DNA. The best way to achieve this is to integrate key concepts into everyday business practices, so compliance becomes part of an employee’s daily routine and stays top of mind.

12. Measure program results

In order to get an accurate picture of how well your compliance training program is performing, it’s important that you dig into the training data for insights on learner engagement and completions. Doing so, you can discover which lessons, topics or content modules can be improved to transfer knowledge more effectively, so you can focus on making them more engaging in the next training session.

13. Advocate for training at the highest levels

Leadership buy-in is one of the most critical factors in creating a training program that helps employees feel empowered. When leadership supports compliance initiatives, it helps drive home the importance compliance in the workplace, and can inspire your staff to make the right decisions before, during and after training.

Written by Christian Willis from Fit2Trade