5 key employee compliance training topics for corporates

Have your employees comprehended all the regulations that ensure them a safe workplace? Or do your employees know how to formally and effectively deal with unethical actions in the office? If the answer is no, your compliance training seems to be ineffectual. Unfortunately, many companies, as well as employees, still devote little time to dig deep into employee compliance training topics. According to a study, only 47% believe that they are fully prepared for a compliance audit. 

However, compliance training is supposed to be a compulsory and high-prioritized one in corporate training. 

For any Training Departments that are still unfamiliar with compliance training, this article is a must-read.  It explains why it is indeed important and provides you with a list of must-have corporate compliance training topics to get you started. So let’s find out.

What is corporate compliance training?

Compliance training program delivers internal courses in order to educate employees about procedures, policies, and laws relating to their responsibilities. The primary aim is to create a safe, professional, and legitimate workplace for employees. The training program then provides the required actions to prevent any serious problems and law violations throughout business operation.

Most policies and procedures compliance training are often specific to a position or an industry. At the same time, there are some general regulatory compliance training topics across all industries that are mandated by the government. Safety and health, or personal privacy, are some typical examples.

Why is compliance training all-important? 

In terms of corporate management, compliance training is among the critical actions in risk management strategy. Think about what can happen in situations of a safety incident, a confidential data breach, or discrimination in the workplace. These can severely damage the company’s reputation and cost a lot of money in settlements.

On the contrary, the more the employees understand all regulations and follow them properly, the more secure their workplace is—that aids in minimizing the risk of your business’s legal actions and protecting its reputation. 

Otherwise, investing in high-qualified employee compliance training not only supports your business operations but also leverages your employee engagement. It shows that you are dedicated to building a respectful culture and environment where you encourage your employees to do their best. As a result, productivity increases, and your business can achieve sustainable development.  

5 main employee compliance training topics to focus

The variety of corporate compliance training topics is enormous. The training department needs to define what employees should be compliant with and how to deliver the training suitably. They will depend on your industry, activities, and based location. 

Here are the key employee compliance training topics that every business should cover.

1. Company regulations and regulatory compliance training topics 
2. HR compliance training topic
3. OSHA compliance training topics for safety and health
4. Cybersecurity and Privacy compliance 
5. Business Ethics

#1 Company regulations and regulatory compliance training topics 

Both company regulations and regulatory compliance training are a must for companies of all scales. It’s the right and obligation of employees to comprehend all those regulations so that they can work professionally and legitimately. 

Company regulations basically provide guidelines for employment relationships between the company and the employees to get a smooth working environment. A primary company regulations compliance training needs to include modules of all policies that both sides must follow. Its topics can be attendance and paid-time-off policies, disciplinary action policies, complaint policies, etc.  

Company regulations compliance involves internal requirements within a company. In contrast, regulatory compliance relates to the external legal commission set forth by the federal or state. 

Regulatory compliance training topics will depend on what kind of industry you’re in. Healthcare businesses running in the US market are required to follow the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). Other federal laws of the Dodd-Frank Act mandate certain practices in financial and banking services. 

In case you target the international market in the future, your employees should comply with the foreign regulations as well. You need to follow the General Data Protection Regulation on data protection and privacy if running businesses in the EEA. 

TIPS: 

Company rules and regulatory compliance training topics seem to be an initial training of every employee in their first days. Actually, they’re not only a part of onboarding training. We need to update and repeat it regularly following any changes in the company and industry. 

We recommend developing the training as a series of content and storing them in a shared cloud. It helps employees to quickly search for exact references without asking around. And training executives can easily adjust only the required pieces of content when necessary. 

For example, the video below is about a company’s service structure that comes from its onboarding series for newcomers. 

#2 HR compliance training topic

HR employment laws have been established to protect employees’ rights and standardize the company’s responsibility as an employer. There are several major concerned areas such as Equal Employment Opportunity, Workplace Safety, Fair Labor Standards Act, or Employee Benefit. 

Not only human resources professionals but also department managers need to receive the HR compliance training topic. It’s because both make decisions about their employees every day regarding these laws. Managers and supervisors share responsibilities with the HR department to ensure that employees work in compliance with the government’s employment laws.

TIPS:

HR compliance training topic is definitely all about laws and, thus, content-heavy. Your employees do not want to read a lot of papers, which demotivates them and causes them to put off learning.

So, how about delivering training content in the form of a video? Especially, animation videos can help to visualize things. With visual in motion, employees will find the topics less boring and monotonous while more memorable and engaging.

To give you an idea, the concept definitions of laws in this video are visualized with 2D motion graphics. They become more real-life and understandable rather than when they’re in the form of the text. 

#3  OSHA compliance training topics for safety and health

All employees deserve to be safe and healthy in their work environment. That’s why OSHA standards (The Occupational Safety and Health Administration) are here to protect workers from any injuries and illnesses. It’s one of the most popular safety and healthcare compliance training topics worldwide. 

According to OSHA, “Safety starts with training.” The agency thus requires an adequate employee training program so that employees understand and know how to apply the regulations. OSHA compliance training topics have specific requirements and frequency for different sectors of General Industry, Construction, Maritime, and Agriculture.

In particular, safety responses and behaviors for common emergencies, from armed intruders to fire or earthquakes, are across the board. However, personal protective equipment (PPE) standards are quite different in types between construction and general industry. 

Safety and health improvements in the workplace following OSHA compliance training topics will help to improve morale organization-wide. It demonstrates to employees that the business owner truly cares about their wellness.

TIPS:

To make safety instructions more real-life and engaging, you should utilize the scenario-based animation video to illustrate the situations. They require fewer resources than live-action videos, which saves costs for production.

See how 2D animation can bring text-based fire safety instruction to life in this video.  

#4  Cybersecurity and privacy compliance 

Cybersecurity and privacy compliance training topics are about data protection, including confidential information, people’s identities, and personal data. The training guides the employees on efficiently managing and protecting sensitive data for themselves and their clients. 

For the sake of the employees, you can include topics such as what to do when mobile devices are stolen. Other helpful sessions can be on how to store emails safely or detect and avoid phishing scams.

On the client side, the regulatory compliance training topics vary depending on the industry in which your business operates. Regarding healthcare fields, for instance, we have HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance for securing people’s health information. Among bank compliance training topics, you should include training on GDPR for general data protection or PCI-DSS for payment security. 

TIPS:

As there are a large number of modules relating to the topics, do not deliver them in just one time. Make use of microlearning, especially in eLearning, by providing video series as bite-sized sections. Employees focus on only one key issue at a time. In this way, they can target specific areas of improvement instead of having to sit through a lengthy training session. 

Recommended reading: 

• Microlearning For Employee: Definition, Benefits, Challenges, And Best Practices

• How To Repurpose Training Materials For Microlearning Courses?

#5  Business Ethics

Every business has detailed guidelines for disciplinary action with its own code of ethics. It describes how employees and managers should behave or what is considered an unethical practice in your line of work? 

Educating your employees on these issues helps promote your ethical work practices and protect your company’s reputation. That shows dedication to creating an inclusive workplace and boosts talent retention.  

Ethics training programs are multi-faceted, which should cover the following typical modules:

• Diversity and Inclusion: emphasizing how to work with colleagues of different ages, genders, mental or physical abilities, ethnicities, or even sexual orientations, etc. 
• Anti-harassment and violence: advising on how to deal with incidents of bullying, from verbal abuse to physical assaults, and harassment of all types
• Corruption: introducing state-mandated guidelines for employees of accepting gifts of a certain value. It’s an important one of trade compliance training topics. 

TIPS:

Interactive training, using simulations and gamification techniques, can be the best option to deliver business ethics compliance training topics. Employees can learn by trial and error without the cost of reputation loss. Besides, an active process of interactive training allows employees to explore and learn at their own pace.

Recommended reading: 

• Planning An Interactive Online Training: An In-depth Guide

To sum up

We hope you now know precisely which compliance training topics to begin with. Each company will have different prioritized compliance concerns. Ensure that your employee compliance training topics will be helpful and delivered in a way that makes employees enjoy them. 

Have any problems in developing materials for the corporate compliance training programs? Feel free to call F.Learning Studio as we know that we can help. 

Read more: 

• 4 Critical Compliance Training Requirements You Have To Address

• How To Make Training Videos For Employees (2023 Updated)

• 8 Best Animated Training Video Production Companies (2023 updated)