2018 COMPLIANCE BENCHMARKING SURVEY How does your compliance training program compare with other companies in your industry? Is your company leading the way in compliance training best practice, or are you following the direction of your peers, competitors, and other thought leaders?
The Survey Interactive Services completed an extensive survey of 88 senior compliance learning leaders at global “Fortune 2000� companies, with the goal of finding out:
? ? ?
Is there an optimal duration for ethics and compliance eLearning courses?
To what extent are companies tailoring ethics and compliance eLearning to different roles and levels of expertise How effective are ethics and compliance training programs?
Companies that participated in the survey include global industry leaders located in Europe and North America, in the areas of Finance & Insurance, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Retail, and Technology. To use this report effectively, we recommend comparing your program to others in your industry as well as other industries and finding the most important data points to back up implementing best practices at your organization.
Insights THE END OF THE ONE-HOUR COMPLIANCE COURSE IS NIGH! In recent years, there has been a noticeable shift away from policy dumping, which acts as compliance training to shorter, more effective eLearning that is often taken on mobile devices. Seventy-seven percent of survey respondents indicated that the average duration of a single course in their organization was 45 minutes or less.
The message is clear – all organizations, regardless of industry, should implement shorter, more targeted compliance training for the benefit of their employees.
TAKE-UP OF TEST OUT/TEST DOWN INCREASING Allowing learners to test down, or even test out, of compliance training is an opportunity to save thousands of hours of training time per year, and employees will thank you for it. Companies are increasingly seeing a comprehensive diagnostic or pre-assessment as a viable solution to the point where...
30%
of all respondents confirmed that they now allow employees to test out/test down compliance courses.
The main industries that show take-up of this option are in:
38%
FINANCE & INSURANCE
50%
TECHNOLOGY
24%
HEALTHCARE
Almost half of the respondents revealed that employees spend one to two hours on average in compliance courses each year.
An Effective Compliance Program in Under Two Hours? Yes, It’s Possible!
This means that for most organizations, less than two hours is adequate time to help build a culture of compliance. This shorter timeframe is also important in maintaining learner engagement – an important consideration when implementing or updating your own compliance program.
The results also show that significantly more companies are offering a test out or test down.
52% in Europe
22%
22% in North America
Although many companies are still hesitant about introducing this option for their compliance programs, test out/down is one of the best ways of making this training even more efficient, so it's worthwhile seeing how it can benefit your organization.
Role-based Training Programs Ever More Popular Companies are increasingly rejecting 'one-size-fits-all' solutions in favor of courses that meet the particular needs of certain job functions and tasks. Over 82% of all respondents stated that they currently offer role-based compliance training. Compliance training should steer clear of gimmicks to get employees’ attention and instead rely on 3 R's:
Relevant Content Rich Media Realistic Scenarios
By Profiling learners according to their roles, ...we can provide them with content that’s relevant to that role, and we can better understand what’s realistic for them. Couple this with easy navigation, support for local markets, and a broader communication campaign, to create an impactful compliance and ethics training program.
HAPPY MEDIUM BETWEEN CUSTOM AND OFF-THE-SHELF According to the survey:
31%
65%
4%
of all respondents use 100% custom courses
of all respondents use a mix of custom and off-the-shelf courses
of all respondents companies, who were in the Financial & Insurance and Technology industries use 100% off-theshelves courses
Companies in the Healthcare industry showed the greatest reliance upon 100% custom courses with 52%.
0%
Retail is the industry that relied the least upon 100% custom courses.
One important takeaway from these results is that while it’s sometimes important to find a bespoke tool to fit a specific compliance training need, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time when it comes to finding the right compliance program. Custom courses are usually the best fit when the content is very specific to your company or you have a specific way of doing business. When it comes to the common topics like Anti-Bribery & Corruption, Anti-Trust, Data Privacy, or Anti-Harassment & Discrimination, an off the shelf solution that you can customize is typically the most effective and efficient solution.
TRAINING EFFECTIVE IN HELPING TO CREATE COMPLIANCE CULTURE
84% of companies across all industries rated their compliance program’s ability to deliver a culture of compliance as “Good” or better. This is an encouraging statistic but shows there is still room for improvement.
92% Companies in the Healthcare industry gave this the highest approval, with a 92% of respondents saying that compliance courses were “Good” or better at delivering a culture of compliance.
MATCH LEARNER NEEDS TO CONTENT OR LOSE ENGAGEMENT
80%
of all survey participants gave a “Good” or better rating.
This clearly highlights how capitalizing on role-based tools within courses and integrating user-centric Learning Management Systems can keep your learners engaged and motivated.
The results also indicate that North America is leading Europe in terms of efficacy in delivering the right content to the right people.
In Europe, only 71% of European companies rated compliance courses as “Good” or better in this area, compared to 88% for North American organizations.
FIRMS FINALLY MEASURING ROI OF COMPLIANCE TRAINING
74% 80%
of total respondents described their current compliance program as being “Good” or better at delivering a return on the annual investment made
The highest rated industry was Healthcare
This indicates that measurement has moved beyond simple completion rates to look at the broader impact of compliance training on a business and its culture – a shift that is being backed by progressive regulators. It’s crucial that your business views compliance training not as a boxticking exercise but as one that brings about a real culture of compliance.
For European and North American companies, the figures are:
81%
66%
TOP THREE COMPLIANCE SUBJECTS CONSISTENT ACROSS INDUSTRIES Survey participants were asked to name their top three compliance training subjects for 2018, with Data Privacy consistently appearing in the top three in most companies’ polls. Anti-bribery appeared as a concern for at-risk industries such as Finance & Insurance and Code of Conduct was a key subject for the Healthcare and Manufacturing industries. There were also some key differences in terms of the geographic regions. Anti-bribery & Corruption appeared as the top subject for European countries, whereas in North America it was Code of Conduct.
Summary This survey has provided a lot of insightful and useful findings, but the following are five key results that you should bear in mind when planning a compliance program:
1
Individual courses are getting shorter (59% of courses are 30 minutes and under)
Majority of training programs are two hours or shorter (51%)
3
Test down and role-based training have finally come of age (30% adopted test down; 62.5% adopted role-based training)
Custom and off-the-shelf are both critical (65.5% use some combination of both)
5
2
4
Compliance programs are performing well (80% said their program was “Good� or better at delivering the right content to the right people; 84% that it helped deliver a culture of compliance)
Finally, this report would not have been possible without the input from our partners and contacts. Interactive Services would like to thank you for reading, participating, and helping to shape our industry. This research is ongoing, however, so we encourage you to provide feedback on these findings, so we can continue the dialog around what makes great compliance training.
For more information, please contact: Mark Dorosz, Head of ICT Interactive Services 110 West 40th Street, 6th Floor, NYC, NY 10018 +1 (917) 634-5469 mdorosz@interactiveservices.com www.interactiveservices.com/compliance