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Digital Learning

5 Business Compliance training challenges - How to solve them with Compliance eLearning

There are a number of vital compliance requirements for businesses spanning a range of areas. We have identified 5 top compliance challenges and how these can be overcome with digital learning solutions and online compliance training. As experts in the field of business compliance and training, we understand the challenges faced by businesses and the critical role that digital learning plays in building a robust compliance regime.

Here we explore the 5 top compliance challenges we’ve seen our customers facing and demonstrate how effective digital learning solutions can empower businesses to navigate compliance effectively.

8 minutes

Written by Richard Whittington.

Updated 17/09/2023

In this article we are going to explore:

What is Business Compliance?
Compliance challenges in 2023
5 Compliance challenges you can overcome with Digital Learning Solutions
The cost of non-compliance
Effective Digital Learning Solutions for Compliance

What is Business Compliance?

Compliance is not just about ticking boxes, it ensures safety for individuals, businesses, and customers. It's the evidence-backed precautions taken to protect stakeholders from compliance-related issues.

In essence, business compliance involves adhering to:

guidelines
regulations
best practices for legal and ethical operations

The key areas that fall under business compliance are:

Regulatory Adherence: Complying with industry-specific laws and regulations.
Ethical Standards: Upholding high moral practices.
Data Privacy: Safeguarding sensitive information in line with privacy laws.
Financial Integrity: Managing finances according to accounting and tax standards.
Safety Measures: Implementing protocols for workplace well-being.

Keep in mind that specific compliance challenges can differ by industry, as well as business size and maturity. For example, in small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), compliance efforts can be more resource-sensitive. For large corporations, their main compliance challenges may be related to differing international regulations.

Compliance challenges in 2023

Global events, new laws, and emerging regulations continually shape compliance requirements, and in 2023, several factors are significantly impacting the compliance landscape.

3 key areas of business compliance challenges for 2023

Environmental Social Governance (ESG): With outputs from COP27, an increase in regulations, and more government targets like achieving net zero emissions, businesses are navigating a rapidly evolving ESG landscape.

Affected areas of compliance include Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) for Financial Services.
Board and Senior Management Importance: Regulators are placing greater emphasis on evidence of credible challenge, robust governance, risk assessment and management, and effective decision-making from both board members and senior management.

This expectation requires increased and formalised documentation, mapping, ownership, and ongoing testing and monitoring of controls. Additionally, regulators are conducting more supervisory visits and evolving regulatory reporting requirements. To address this, businesses need to have even more robust systems for regulatory visits and audits.
Conduct & Culture: Prioritising customer treatment—especially for vulnerable individuals affected by issues like the cost-of-living crisis is another key area of compliance consideration. Employee health and wellbeing, and a 'people-first' approach in light of trends like the 'great resignation', are critical in 2023. We are also seeing impacts in this area from the rapid evolution of AI, in terms of ensuring ethical use. In the Financial Services sector, there's a strong focus on embedding the new consumer duty principle.

Staying compliant in this rapidly changing landscape poses a real challenge for businesses. Reacting promptly and ensuring that compliance training is updated allows businesses to maintain compliance even in the face of evolving regulatory requirements.

Ensure compliance across your organisation with our accredited eLearning training catalogue.

Financial Services training Essential Compliance training

5 Compliance Challenges You Can Overcome with Digital Learning Solutions

1. Lengthy Onboarding – getting new starters compliant more quickly and efficiently

2. Managing evolving compliance – keeping training up-to-date with changing compliance regulations

3. Administration and engagement of compliance training – struggling with manual or inefficient systems to manage training and with poor employee engagement

4. Inaccurate Reporting and Data Analysis – unable to access relevant, timely data they can trust

5. Building a Culture of Compliance – challenges in motivating employees to assume personal accountability for maintaining a safe and compliant environment.

1. Challenges in Onboarding New Starters

Getting new hires up to speed and compliant quickly is a priority for businesses, and one of the top compliance challenges. Onboarding can be time-consuming and costly, but it's essential to have employees adding value from day one.

Training pathways within a Learning Management System (LMS) provide a centralised platform for all necessary training, reducing the time to competence and allowing new starters to hit the ground running.

Automation through an LMS:

streamlines the onboarding process
ensures allocation of the right training to the right people
provides training at the right time

2. Managing Evolving Compliance

Keeping on top of business compliance is not a one-time task but an ongoing effort.

As regulations evolve and employees gain new qualifications, managing ongoing compliance requirements for your business gets more challenging. Digital learning solutions, like a Learning Management System with eLearning courses, enable an efficient distribution of vital, up-to-date information..

It’s vital to look for the breadth and depth of compliance eLearning you need, as well as the credibility of the provider's content. For example, Access eLearning courses are all certified by the CPD Association and in addition, compliance related training content is industry recognised.

3. Administration and engagement of Compliance training

To promote engagement in business compliance, employees need to have access to training and easy methods to complete and log their compliance.

Providing a static bank of training resources and expecting employees to access this as and when required, and maintain their own training records is not efficient or sustainable.

Equally, contacting individuals with their training content manually, sending reminders and logging their training completions is also not viable. This can become a full-time administration job, vulnerable to oversights and errors and therefore leaving the business vulnerable to non-compliance.

A good LMS should have a user-friendly interface and visual dashboards to make compliance training:

accessible
engaging
easy to interpret

Utilising mobile learning technology such as with an LMS mobile app is a key method to help employees access and engage with compliance learning content in a format that feels easy and intuitive.

4. Inaccurate Reporting and Data Analysis

Accurate reporting and management information are crucial for compliance. Businesses need a top-down view of compliance to ensure adherence to regulations and provide stakeholders with reliable data.

A clear audit trail must be maintained, proactively to cover training, and also reactively, whenever a problem arises. Businesses that can’t point back to effective mandatory training programmes leave themselves open to far more severe financial penalties and reputational damage in the long run.

Look for analytics tools that offer real-time, customisable dashboards which enable users to monitor compliance scores and drill down into specific areas. The data should also be exportable to Excel, allowing further analysis and reporting flexibility.

5. Building a Culture of Compliance

Moving beyond a tick-box mentality and providing the tools for employees to maintain their training, businesses need to get their people to take personal responsibility. To do this, it is important to cultivate a culture of compliance.

By emphasising the "why" behind compliance and its benefits, businesses can encourage employees to understand the importance of their role in keeping the organisation safe. Support employees further learning content that is relevant to them, and accessible.

By making compliance training an easy and seamless experience, you can integrate compliance into daily workflows and reinforce the collective responsibility for a safe and compliant environment.

The cost of non-compliance

The cost of non-compliance can be great, both in terms of financial penalties and the potential damage to a company's reputation. Investing in a comprehensive compliance regime, including learning and development tools, is far more cost-effective than dealing with the cost of non-compliance.

Whether you’re a large enterprise bringing your entire workforce in line with GDPR or a financial services company adhering to strict anti-money laundering (AML) regulations, the risk of not covering all bases isn’t worth taking.

Here are a few specific examples of the cost of non-compliance in just some areas:

The cost of non-compliance in Cybersecurity

Human error accounts for a large proportion of vulnerabilities and entry points for hackers, often stemming from a lack of knowledge or caution. Remember that employees are your first line of defense against cybersecurity threats.

The average annual cost of cybersecurity breaches for mid-to-large UK businesses currently totals £8,0406 – and that figure is rising quickly year on year. (Cybercrime and Security Survey, Statista)
In October 2022, the ICO issued a fine of £4,400,000 to Interserve Group Limited, a Berkshire-based construction company, after an employee forwarded a phishing email containing malware to a colleague. The attacker compromised 283 systems, 16 accounts and over 113,000 instances of personal data. (source: Biggest Cybersecurity Risk is Complacency, ICO)
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is cracking down on cybercrime by issuing stark warnings and penalties for businesses that don’t offer sufficient preventative measures and training. In fact, a new law was passed in 2022 which states that certain organisations can be fined as much as £17 million for non-compliance. (Source: Cyber Laws Updated to Boost UK Resilience, GOV.UK)

The cost of Regulatory non-compliance

In January 2023, the FCA issued two fines to Guaranty Trust Bank and Al Rayan Bank, which together totaled £11.5m. Their report cited ‘inadequate training of staff on financial crime and AML requirements, in particular, inadequacies in terms of operational staff understanding of the AML regime and enhanced due diligence requirements.

The cost of non-compliance in Health and Safety

Staying compliant with health and safety protocol is a basic expectation for any employer aiming to protect the health and performance of its people.

UK employers pay roughly £1.4bn every year as a result of work-related injuries. (source Health and Safety at Work 2022, HSE)
Technology firm Dyson was recently fined £1.2m by HSE after an accident in the workplace was found to be caused by a failure to provide adequate training and instruction to employees. (source Dyson fined £1.2m after worker injured, HSE)
Sainsbury’s, Network Rail, Carlsberg and Yorkshire Water were all fined seven figure sums in 2022 for incidents related to training in H&S.

Effective Digital Learning Solutions for Compliance

Digital learning solutions play a vital role in helping to navigate businesses compliance challenges and build a culture of compliance.

By investing in comprehensive training and tracking tools, businesses can ensure employees are well-informed, compliant, and able to prove their compliance.

Find out more about the Access LMS and Access eLearning for compliance such as Finance and Information Security.

Our Learning Management System (LMS) is designed to help keep your business compliant.

View our LMS

Richard is a learning & compliance product professional in the Access Learning team. He is a Senior Product Manager, leading a team of Product Managers within the Managed, Personalised and Self-directed Learning space. He is dedicated to establishing the needs of customers and developing the Access Learning content catalogues to meet the ever changing business and learner needs.