Businesses are failing to benefit from technology-enabled ethics and compliance training

Towards Maturity has announced the findings of a new study sponsored by SAI Global, which found that despite an environment of record regulatory enforcements and personal liability for senior executives, most organisations are still applying a check-box approach to ethics and compliance training and failing to achieve the business goals they set out.

 

The study revealed that two in ten companies are achieving their goals to protect and elevate their businesses, raising serious questions for companies as they implement their programmes with ethics and compliance failures continuing to dominate headlines. 

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To act as a catalyst for improvement, the study, Excellence in Compliance Training: Creating a Culture of Compliance, investigated what Higher Achievers – the organisations largely achieving their goals – do differently to Lower Achievers, providing learnings for the industry about what approaches are delivering the best business results.

Peter Mullins, CEO, SAI Global, commented on the findings: “With personal liability at stake, senior management need to get behind compliance and ethics training and recognise that a check-box approach is unlikely to protect them and their business, or drive wider organisational cultural benefits. We are pleased to help provide this valuable insight into what high-achieving companies are doing, to act as a blueprint for compliance teams looking to raise their game and demonstrate better value to the business.”

The research found nine in ten compliance professionals are looking to improve business impact, get the right people in place and improve the processes of talent and performance management, but only two in ten are largely achieving these goals;

Top barriers to success include the time to deliver and build quality, relevant and global learning content;

Across a sample of over 5,000 learners, 26 per cent reported that uninspiring learning content was a major barrier to their learning online; 38 per cent of organisations have an internal communications plan to engage stakeholders (compared to 36 per cent in 2013), and 34 per cent send regular reminders to remind staff to apply learning in context.

The study found that Higher Achievers (those largely achieving 9 or more of 17 identified business drivers), are consistently taking different approaches to their training than Lower Achievers (those largely achieving 0-1 drivers). They also focus on aligning their training programmes more closely with their business objectives from the outset and were more than twice as likely to ensure that learning was closely aligned to performance and business objectives.

Technology was a key enabler for Higher Achievers who were 26 times more likely to have improved the effectiveness of the learning experience through better application of technology than Lower Achievers.

The study also revealed that approaches to technology to support compliance and ethics training are evolving, with a shift in thinking away from the traditional e-learning course approach. Now, 13 per cent of organisations are moving to more innovative learning approaches, including gamification and mobile delivery, rising to 24 per cent in APAC countries.

Laura Overton, Managing Director at Towards Maturity added: “High achieving organisations are collectively thinking about compliance and ethics training differently. Rather than tick-box exercises where success in measured by completion, these companies are aligning their training with business goals and objectives, designing training to be engaging and rooted in real world examples, then bringing it all together and enlivening the experience through the use of technology that supports innovative and varied delivery.”

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