Compliance requires a strong learning and development program.
Compliance requires a strong learning and development program.
While the consequences of noncompliance for your business may vary, they’ll typically amount to a serious problem. One study found that organizations lose an average of $4 million from a single noncompliance event, while another revealed that the cost of noncompliance increased 45% between 2011 and 2020.
An airtight learning program will ensure that employees have the specific knowledge they need to perform their duties in accordance with every relevant regulation, meaning useful content is shared, consumed, and documented appropriately.
Delivering targeted learning at scale requires the help of a robust learning management solution (LMS) that gives employees the ability to learn quickly and provides a clear audit trail to help regulatory bodies determine compliance. In this blog, we’ll take a deeper look at five critical ways an LMS can drive stronger compliance outcomes.
1. Course Management
The ideal LMS allows you to create assessments, surveys, curricula, and certifications, as well as upload documents, videos, and online eLearning courses in formats like SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, AICC, xAPI, and CMI5. The ability to adhere to different standards allows you to ensure your course material is developed, delivered, and evaluated in the correct manner for your industry.
Your learning platform should also provide open activity architecture that gives you the freedom to create your own activity type — a critical function if you’re planning to curate content in a dynamic environment where regulations are in a constant state of flux.
2. Training and Compliance Certification
The benefits of certification include better-trained employees, increased company credibility, a documented commitment to safety, and third-party endorsement of employees’ skills and knowledge. Earning certifications also tends to motivate employees to actively pursue ongoing training, which may lead to higher salaries and better career opportunities.
It’s also important to note that compliance certification is mandatory in some cases. For example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires the pharmaceutical industry to implement processes that follow Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) part 11
3. Compliance Reporting and Tracking
Reporting and tracking are of particular importance for heavily regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals, life sciences, and aviation.
For a company with a multinational footprint, meeting all relevant audit requirements in different jurisdictions can be a headache. Continuing with the pharmaceutical industry example, U.S. operations will need to comply with the aforementioned Title 21 CFR Part 11, while operations in the European Union should follow the EU Annex 11.
A good LMS makes this easy by delivering automated audit report logs for users, learner activity, and roster changes.
4. Off-the-Shelf Learning Compliance Content
Ease of use is a key LMS feature, but it’s also important that LMS content delivers the outcomes you need.
As such, having an LMS that delivers off-the-shelf compliance content natively (i.e., within your system) is a significant advantage. Procuring material that blends naturally into your organization’s learning ecosystem with pre-curated learning channels, videos, books, and audio books will facilitate not only “classroom-style” learning but also just-in-time learning for employees to quickly reference as needed.
5. Security
- Roles and responsibilities
- Auditing and compliance
- Web server security
- Database security
- Antivirus
- Firewalls
- Encryption
- Remote access
- Passwords
- Intrusion detection
- Physical access
The Bottom Line: An LMS Is Indispensable for Compliance
Not every well-trained employee will be compliant, but every compliant employee will be well-trained. With an LMS, you’ll have the tools you need to get learning content into your employees’ hands while helping them adapt swiftly to new rules and regulations.
Rather than put off thinking about improving learning until you’re in the midst of a compliance nightmare, why not be proactive and work to prevent issues before they arise?
Find out how LMS can boost your Compliance with SumTotal.
SumTotal Editor’s Note:
‘The This article was originally published in April 2019 and has recently been updated for accuracy and claritywidening digital divide: How leading companies are thriving in the new reality’, KPMG, 2021, p3
