We recently hosted a webinar, “Priorities, Practices and Trends in Training” to discuss the findings from our NAVEX Global 2014 Ethics and Compliance Training Benchmark Report.
Some of the key findings from the report were:
- The top three objectives of an ethics and compliance training program were creating a culture of ethics and respect (90 percent); legal defensibility (89 percent) and preventing future issues or misconduct (82 percent)
- Fifty-four percent of respondents are concerned that their supervisors are not receiving adequate training to avoid missteps
- Short-form training is on the rise: 44 percent of organizations are using short-form courses (3-to-8 minutes in length) to cover more training topics while controlling budget spend
We fielded a number of questions during the webinar and—knowing many of these questions are common—wanted to provide our responses and insights here.
Q. How do I measure training effectiveness? What are the best tools to use?
Training effectiveness measures depend on the way you define “effectiveness.” Typically, training effectiveness is defined as one or more of the following: increased knowledge or skills, or adjusted attitudes. These are the training goals. Some tools to measure achievement of these goals include: post-training feedback sheets, surveys/quizzes, focus groups, helpline data, HR issues/actions and legal issues. Because many influences can impact individual measures, you will likely need to combine the results from several tools to determine whether you have achieved training effectiveness.
Q. How do I convince managers they are a partner in the training process?
You cannot convince them alone. Your most senior leader (e.g. CEO) must establish the right “tone at the top” and explain why managers are important partners in the training process. They must also make it clear that managers’ active participation is crucial. You may need to ghost-write this message for your leader, but if it comes from the top—and the message is supported by actions—it is most likely to have the desired effect.
Q. You mentioned growing risks related to third parties, and the need for increased third party training. What is the burning platform?
A third party is a business partner such as a vendor, supplier, distributor, agent or anyone else that you have hired to work or perform services on your behalf. Some of your third parties present greater legal and reputational risk than others. However, in every FCPA-related DOJ/SEC enforcement action from 2013, third parties had been used to disguise or facilitate bribes. That’s a big part of the burning platform—and the reason for concern that 57 percent of respondents to our survey provide no training at all to third parties.
Q. What is short-form training?
Short-form training is a term that describes a training experience that is between 3-8 minutes in length. Beyond simply reinforcing full-length training, short-form training (also known as “burst learning”) enables your organization to cover additional risk areas, address secondary risks, shorten seat time, emphasize key risk areas and respond quickly to incidents or trending topics.
Q. Are most organizations tracking the short-form training they deploy?
Whether or not organizations are tracking short-form training generally depends on the subject matter of the training, the tracking abilities of the organization and the need for the evidentiary record. Right now there is a healthy mix of organizations that track and don't track the training.
Q. What is “curriculum mapping”?
Curriculum mapping is the process of aligning training with audience roles and organizational risks. Curriculum mapping will become increasingly important to help organizations plan their programs, ensure a proper rotation of training content to all learners over a multi-year period, and enable them to more effectively allocate training funds.
Q. How often should I train my stakeholders?
A typical training cadence is once every 18-24 months. You will find organizations that will train less frequently—especially for topics that create less risk. There are organizations that do annual training for the highest risk topics and many more are utilizing short-form training to ensure some coverage of a topic during a year when full topic training is not deployed.
