As we discussed on Tuesday, many companies have turned to online training for compliance. Distributed work forces and the rise of mobility and telecommuting, have made online learning an attractive alternative to costly face to-face sessions. In addition to cost reduction, online learning can improve course consistency, which for compliance training is very important. An online system can also track who has taken which courses toward certifications and provides a built-in audit trail.
The ideal system combines online learning with talent management so that compliance training can be linked directly to employee performance. A good talent management system will have features that allow you to monitor and assess each individual’s existing credentials and any progress towards new ones. This reduces the risk of non-compliance by monitoring training levels and maintaining accurate records as evidence of compliance. Alerts can let training managers or human resource professionals (as well as workers) know when credentials require renewal. The talent management system will show the worker exactly which course they need to take in order to keep their status, allowing them to obtain permission and register in the course they need all from one interface.
If your organization has an accrediting body, they will want to see proof that your staff maintained credentials in order to be able to perform their job. The appropriate learning management system can help you produce the necessary reports without laborious manual processes or spreadsheet manipulations. For mid-size organizations, the decision about whether to adopt a learning management system for compliance has become financially viable with the advent of hosted, open source solutions. As an added bonus, if you are going to use eLearning for compliance reasons you can use it for training of all kinds, and you can also get talent management functionality to integrate training with employee performance.
Next week in our Turning Compliance into a Competitive Advantage series we discuss how aligning performance with corporate strategy will ensure that all employees have skills and competencies that are on par for an acceptable level of compliance. In order to achieve this we will introduce a few tips and tricks such as ensuring career paths are clearly defined, performance measures are unified and individual goals contribute directly to corporate goals.