What is Online Compliance Training?
Compliance training is a common requirement in regulated professions and often involves lengthy in-person examinations in which subjects are required to travel long distances. The realities of traditional compliance testing can be time consuming, costly and inefficient in a world gone digital. By moving to online compliance training and employing an eLearning solution, companies and organizations can revolutionize dated procedures and effectively streamline impactful, purpose-driven learning. This way, students can partake in compliance training anywhere, anytime – while administrators can be confident that online testing ensures the same credibility as any in-person test available today.
Online compliance training is defined as digitally delivered education for employees and members of regulated professions on laws, regulations and company policies that apply to their day-to-day job responsibilities. A vital part of any onboarding, awarding of professional designations or government mandated training, compliance training requires a thorough commitment by both educator and student. These days, in-person tests are taxing and online solutions are becoming the norm.
By employing online compliance training, educators are empowered through AI-delivered learning that can track, report and inform on subject progress, success and struggles. Many platforms also provide advanced tools to identify plagiarism.
How can eLearning help with online compliance training and who is it for?
Harnessing LMS and other digitally delivered solutions for compliance training gives employers the freedom to create, implement and track tests for onboarding, educating and testing in innumerable industries. The benefits to online compliance training and, more broadly, eLearning in general are endless and can be tailored to accommodate every student’s needs.
Lectures can be taken any number of times and the proper platform will offer rapid access to regularly updated content and catalogues of vital, easily delivered lessons.
What’s more, eLearning reduces costs of traditional compliance training and offers scalability, consistency and trackable effectiveness. Any industry or profession can employ online compliance training. Using eLearning solutions can solve all compliance training challenges without any in-person intervention. Best of all, it can be delivered anywhere, anytime with the sophistication and specificity expected of a regulated program.
What should you look for in online compliance training software?
The eLearning market is saturated so knowing what to look for in prospective software is important. Online compliance training software should be interactive, engaging and comprehensive, featuring media-rich content that is deliverable through multiple mediums (eg. video, animation, charts, electronic and hard-copy course materials).
Today’s best online training solutions offer things like customizable platforms, intuitive authoring tools and app integration for online testing.
Key features to look for include
Web-based support
Customizable reporting tools
Responsive design features (ie. Content can scale to a mobile device)
Ability to impose time limits
Flexibility to link resouces to questions
Ability to randomly select question by shuffling from a set pool
Hinting features
Ability to reviews results in raw numbers, percentage summaries, pass/fail indicators
Ability to adapt course platform into multiple languages (multi-lingual capability)
Brand integration
A good eLearning platform should turn education into a pleasant, immersive experience the subject enjoys and clearly sees the benefit of. Be sure to learn which other organizations are using a platform. If it works for them, there is a good chance it will work for you.
Digital compliance training is not just intended for regulatory bodies responsible for administering professional certifications. Below are other examples of how eLearning is being used across several key sectors.
NASBA is the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy: a forum for 55 State Boards of Accountancy, which are responsible for regulation the practice of public accountancy in the United States. The State Boards are administer the examination and certification for the Certified Public Accountant (CPA). Over 650,000 CPAs are licenced annually.
It is NASBA’s role to set uniform standards for examination and certification programs. NASBA offers member boards a variety of products and services to aid Boards of Accountancy in their mission of ensuring public protection.
One of their key support services is to ensure courses, and the Learning Management Systems (LMS) used to create them adhere uniform standards and best practices for continuing professional education (CPE).
NASBA has a National Registry of CPE sponsors. CPE sponsors are responsible for ensuring any courses created on their platform meet NASBA requirements. For example:
- Course authoring and rapid deployment of Group-Internet Based to QAS Self-Study
- CPE tracking
- A course evaluation tool
- Complete reporting on learners, courses, and CPE data
The medical field is one area where compliance training is vital – not just for imparting medical knowledge – but increasingly to deal with security and privacy issues.
For example, HIPAA training is an educational program that teaches medical professionals how to recognize protected health information (PHI), proper uses and disclosures of PHI, how to keep PHI secure, and how to report a breach of PHI.
HIPAA online compliance training provides employees with an introduction to all these topics and more through a digitally delivered format that is safe, secure and succinct. Through an eLearning vertical, professionals in the health sector and related industries can offer crucial training of new or existing employees that will ensure the safety and security of clients, patients and other professionals.
Use of eLearning in safety training (eg. OSHA compliance training)
The OSHA training program educates workers and employers on the recognition, avoidance, abatement, and prevention of safety and health hazards in workplaces in general industry. This training program is of the upmost importance, particularly to the trades and manufacturing industries, and serves to save lives.
By using eLearning solutions, program administrators can make compliance training and certification more accessible For employers, the ability to complete training online is easier, more efficient and causes less disruption by allowing employees to take courses and testing on-site. This saves time and expenses for hotels and flights.
Use of eLearning in transportation compliance (eg. DOT compliance training)
DOT compliance training educates workers on the basics of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. As mandated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), DOT training covers a broad spectrum of motor carrier related training such as compliance and safety, hours and service regulations and controlled substances and alcohol mandatory training.
For those in heavy industry, automotive, transportation, mining and other related sectors, online DOT compliance training can educate employees worldwide on federally mandated training requirements and learning in order to prepare workers for any motor carrier-related situation in their respective fields. As with the examples above, eLearning platforms make training easier and more efficient for corporations, employers and regulatory administrators alike.
Use of eLearning in disability compliance (eg. 508 compliance training)
508 compliance is a federal law requiring that all electronic and information technology development, maintained or used by federal government, be accessible to people with disabilities.
This means that government agencies, federal-funded nonprofits, public higher education institutions, and public K-12 schools must use software and web tools (including eLearning) that are accessible to people who have disabilities and might use supporting tools such as screen readers.
For organization looking to deliver training through eLearning platforms, this will be of particular interest. Course creation and education outline and will ensure your organization is up-to-date with the most current 508 compliance guidelines available.