When it comes to laying the foundation for your business’s culture of compliance, a great way to start would be to put your company’s values in the spotlight. These values lay the groundwork for establishing your company’s ideals, culture, and goals. Attempting to build a culture of compliance without identifying these values would be like building a house without a floor map.
Once you begin to build your compliance culture, however, you’re met with another colossal challenge: how to motivate your team to adhere to the policies and procedures? After all, each employee acts as a brick in your company’s monument for your compliance.
A few of the best ways to instill motivation in your workforce would be to lead by example, document policies, craft strategies to gain your staff’s attention, incentivize good behavior, use technology to offer engaging compliance training, and schedule regular audits.
Compliance Works When it is Top Down (Not Bottom Up)
Simply put, compliance starts at the top. Your company policies and procedures must be followed from the top down. When the top leadership is consistent in following these policies, it naturally sets the tone for what is expected of everyone in the company.
Managers must ensure that these rules apply to everyone on the team. For instance, it is impossible to get buy-in from your entire workforce if the same rules don’t apply to those who are doing the day in, day out labor which keeps profits rolling in.
To maintain consistency, make sure you conduct regular policy reviews with your employees. This can be done by inserting it in your company’s standing events, and recurring meetings. This process can even be further enhanced with employee roundtable discussions in which everyone is free to propose corrections to policies or request policies reworded to make them understandable and relevant to your average employee.
Document Policies & Make it Easily Accessible to Everyone
What is something vital for the growth of your company?
Identify any elements that can prove valuable for your business’s success and document them in your employee handbook. The process of documenting policies or crafting them from scratch may seem daunting – especially when you’re trying to attain impeccable policy language on the very first draft.
Fortunately, however, your employee policies don’t need to be so complex. If you are in or came from the legal field, remember that you are not writing a legal brief. Simple language is understandable language. The important thing here is documenting policies and consistently updating them over time.
Do not forget to get input from all levels when writing policies, either from employee roundtables or company-wide surveys. Keep in mind that whatever you’re documenting needs regular maintenance. Think of this process as a way of creating a living document. It must be updated regularly, given how laws and regulations around compliance are in constant flux.
Find Ways to Gain Your Staff’s Attention
“What’s in it for me?”
This is the frame of mind most adults have when they embark on a new learning journey. While compliance may not be the most fun subject for them to learn, it is nevertheless extremely valuable. Help your staff understand how compliance training will make them perform better in their roles. Incorporate real-world scenarios, offer incentives, and make your training sessions highly engaging.
Incentivize Good Conduct
Incentives are a great way to encourage employees to embrace ethical behavior. These rewards for compliance could range from tangible items to monetary incentives to extra vacation time.
Ask yourself: what do your employees live for on weekends? What is important for them? What is something they would do their best to achieve? When it comes to rewarding good behavior, something as simple as a public acknowledgment can work wonders!
Deploy Technology for Effective Training
Imagine investing countless hours into compiling detailed training modules only to have your employees try to avoid it.
Sure, compliance isn’t the subject employees are too eager to learn. But what if you could transform a monotonous set of modules into something your staff would truly engage with?
This is where technology swoops in to save the day. By utilizing modern features like experiential video learning, gamification, and micro-learning, you can not only keep your employees engaged throughout the training but also ensure they absorb every element of the training.
From compiling and customizing to monitoring and reinforcing, you can now offer a truly productive compliance training with the help of platforms like Ethico.
Incorporate Real-World Examples to Teach Compliance
Start by sparking the learners’ curiosity by asking a powerful question. Next, give it more credibility by presenting a relevant scenario or example. This example could be a real-life incident and the repercussion that comes attached to it – especially on the subject of non-compliance.
Make sure your staff can fully relate to these scenarios and deeply understand the outcomes of non-compliance.
For instance, if you’re offering health and safety training to employees in a company that follows a hybrid work culture, it’s important to consider the differences in their workplace environments and the kind of ethical issues they might bump into.
Remember: Training is Always Ongoing
Compliance training is never a one-and-done task. To ensure your staff absorbs every bit of training and pay attention to their action and behavior, it is vital to make it ongoing. For this, you can:
- Add visual cues – such as flyers and posters in common areas around the workplace – that act as reminders.
- Drop reminder quizzes to reinforce the training via email.
- Offer self-directed learning so your staff can always re-navigate training courses whenever they need.
- Managers can also talk about key topics during team meetings to reinforce important messages.
Schedule Audits on a Regular Basis
You may have solid policies and procedures in place. Your training plan is almost impeccable. But how can you be sure what you’re doing really is working?
Enter compliance audits.
Regular audits put your processes and systems to the test to not only ensure the smooth functioning of your processes but also spot any defects that may be hiding in your compliance plan. In addition, scheduling audits also ensures all your procedures remain current and compliant. Deploy both announced and unannounced audits quarterly (or more frequently if your company needs them) for new processes.
Making Way for a Compliant Culture
Regardless of which path you take, it is more than possible to keep your team motivated to be compliant. Ethico offers high-quality compliance training that not only keeps your team motivated toward compliance but ensures they retain most of the compliance-related information they receive.
