Every organization’s learning and development team is tasked with the same crucial responsibility: creating and implementing highly effective workforce training programs. You need to ensure your employees have the most up-to-date knowledge to perform their jobs safely and effectively. Additionally, ongoing skills training is vital to your organization’s success—and it’s entirely possible to design learning programs that your employees want to complete.

Today’s technology gives us the power to develop engaging professional learning experiences that take compliance courses beyond checking a box off of a to-do list. With a modern learning strategy, you can elevate your mandatory professional development courses, strengthen your workforce, and make compliance training feel like less of a hassle for your employees. Read on to learn how.

What Is Compliance Training?

Compliance training is the process of educating employees on laws, regulations, and company policies that apply to their day-to-day job duties. This type of professional education is particularly important for companies in healthcare, aviation, manufacturing, and other highly-regulated industries. When employees in these industries aren’t trained adequately, their clients' and customers' health and safety are put at risk.

While safety training is arguably the most important aspect of compliance, organizations often have several additional goals for this kind of learning. These include:

• Creating a more hospitable and respectful work environment
• Adding business value and a competitive advantage
• Avoiding—and in some cases, detecting—compliance violations that could lead to legal liability
• Mitigating risk associated with adverse incidents

In the unfortunate event that an employee doesn’t follow safety procedures and a customer is adversely affected, organizations need to demonstrate that they’ve taken every appropriate action to avoid the incident. Your compliance training efforts also lay the groundwork for your organization’s partial or complete defense should the worst occur. These courses aren’t just your employees’ safety nets—they’re yours, too!

How Is Workplace Training Evolving?

Employees are hungry for knowledge when it matters to them, and companies are responding in kind. Organizations are devoting more of their budgets to professional development initiatives. According to LinkedIn’s 2022 Workplace Learning Report, the amount of planned learning and development content increased in every category tracked by LinkedIn between 2021 and 2022. Below are three notable statistics from the report:

• Large-scale upskilling or reskilling programs increased from 31% in 2021 to 41% in 2022.
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs increased from 34% in 2021 to 45% in 2022.
• In-person training programs increased from 25% in 2021 to 41% in 2022.

Workforce learning is becoming more skills-focused and relevant to employees’ lives. When your organization makes learning more personal to your workforce, it helps them see the value in the content being taught. Learning pathways and personalized course recommendations help further develop your employees’ skills, and learning analytics show you how effective your training programs are. Additionally, your employees can see which skills they’ll need to master to succeed in their current position—and potential future roles.

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What Will Skills Training Look Like in the Future?

Workforce training and skills development will continue to focus on learners first. A more personalized approach to training will help organizations facilitate growth and retain their employees. This means allowing your workforce to complete learning tasks in the flow of their work day. According to the Josh Bersin Company, organizations that encourage learning in this way are 7.2 times more likely to engage and retain their employees.

Organizations can accomplish this by embedding or linking training content in other software that employees already use. This makes it easier for them to access learning material without disrupting their normal work activities. Organizations can also provide learning activities that occur away from a desk, especially for employees who aren’t typically computer- or desk-bound.

This approach can work exceptionally well with compliance training courses because the content feels less like a chore and more like a relevant, essential aspect of the employees’ career growth. By aligning compliance with other skills development initiatives, your workforce can see the value in the training and will likely be more engaged with the material.

As technology continues to develop, so too will corporate learning strategies. It’s likely that we’ll encounter more virtual, mixed, and augmented reality in our workforce training. It’s also possible that we’ll see blockchain technology used to issue credentials, potentially making employee certifications more secure.

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How Can You Create a Modern Learning Strategy?

As corporate training continues to progress, click-through learning content won’t cut it anymore. You need a modern learning strategy to equip your employees with the skills they need to grow as professionals.

If you don’t have one already, it’s time to invest in a modern learning platform that’s capable of integrating with other systems. This way, you’ll be able to provide your employees with a seamless learning experience that doesn’t disrupt their workflow. Automated notifications and reminders in these modern systems will encourage your employees to engage with learning materials and keep everyone on track.

A modern learning management platform should also include built-in assessment tools and flexible scheduling functionalities that streamline your L&D processes. Additionally, detailed reporting and analytics are necessary components for creating an effective training strategy that aligns with your organizational goals.

Your learning strategy should also be about more than just the tools you use to deliver and track training. You need to foster a culture of learning in your organization that encourages growth and exploration. Ensuring that your training content meets your employees’ needs—as well as the needs of your organization—is paramount to a successful strategy.

Effective Training Starts With Intentional Strategies

As you develop and refine your learning strategies, you’ll need to consider the purpose of your training initiatives. For many organizations, compliance training will be as important as other areas of skills development.

Regardless, you’ll still need to find an effective way to implement your training strategy. That means securing the necessary resources and tools to provide learning that’s meaningful to your employees. Having a modern learning management system is the first step to achieving your organization’s training goals and preparing your employees for the future.

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