With its emphasis on risk management, compliance training is pivotal in protecting both employees and organizations from legal and ethical pitfalls. By having a good understanding of compliance, employees help safeguard the company against lawsuits and reputational damage.
In this practical blog, two experts – one in education and one in compliance – offer advice and analogies to improve your compliance education practices.
Compliance orientation educates new staff members about company policies, procedures, and various regulations that govern their specific roles. Ongoing compliance training ensures that as regulations evolve, all employees are appropriately educated on implications and requirements. Read on to learn what it takes to consistently hit the mark with all your compliance education.
Make Employees Fit to Perform with Training and Orientation
Training and orientation requirements are very much like starting an exercise program. All too often, people want to try the double-split; train twice a day; and eat nothing but cucumbers, fish and broccoli for months on end, when you haven’t worked out since high school. Yo, since high school, bro – and you want to jump into the bodybuilding lifestyle like it’s the deep end of the pool?
The most important thing really is to not think too hard on any of it because the basic point remains the same: Eat a lot of healthy food and train everything really hard. Eat more and do recovery stuff if you are under-recovering and eat less if you are getting fluffier than you would like. Then do it for years and years and years.
What Compliance Training and Physical Training Have in Common
A full employee training program should promote a comprehensive understanding of regulatory compliance and safety, along with continuing education and professional development. Then do it for years and years and years – just like physical training.
Initial training is the introduction to an employee’s duties, with some sort of competency assessment, if needed. Ongoing courses are typically basic information that employees must complete to finish any job-related training.
Why Do Orientation Programs Fail? Isn’t it Obvious?
We’ve explained why training and education for new employees are similar to phys ed programs. So, much like your exercise program, why doesn’t your compliance orientation strategy always work? There are multiple reasons why programs fail. Do any of these sound similar?
1. Too Much, Too Fast
Your orientation plan gets done because you have to do one. As we’ve talked about before, these sessions are often “death by PowerPoint” and didactic lectures, and newcomers have no idea what’s going on. There’s so much information being thrown at them rather than interacting that after several days in a classroom, new employees feel like they’re drinking from a fire hose instead of being onboarded appropriately.
2. Where’s My Stuff?
We shouldn’t have to say this reason, but it’s true. Sometimes the employee doesn’t even have a defined workspace or workstation when they arrive. Once, when we got to work, the laptop we were supposed to have was still in use by the person we were replacing. We were like, well, how am I supposed to learn then if they’re still working on the computer that I’m going to use? HR was like, just watch them over their shoulder and do that they do.
All of that left us feeling extremely disillusioned. If you didn’t even plan for us to be there, not to mention, if you can’t provide the basic work equipment, we’ll spend more time trying to find it than actually being productive.
3. Poor Coordination
Lastly, a lot of great ideas exist only on paper but are never fully implemented effectively on the ground. For example, you want all the leadership team to present during orientation, but you didn’t really check everyone’s schedule for orientation week.
Now you have a huge gap in the day when the Director of Healthcare Informatics is supposed to teach, but they’re meeting with the VP of Corporate Compliance regarding consenting best practices. You didn’t know that because you didn’t check, and now you have a lull in the agenda, or you scramble to have other presenters move up, giving them very little time in their work schedule to be ready to present.
Don’t do this. It’s a knee-jerk reaction that makes you look horribly disorganized, to the point where the employee says, “Why do I want to work here again?”
What to Do Instead for Strong Compliance Training: Three Tips
1. Concretely define responsibilities.
In other words, who is doing what. These duties have to be set in stone. For example, the hiring manager will be responsible for ensuring appropriate training and competency assessments of staff; ensuring all essential staff are trained on appropriate Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) before performing any work; providing notifications to appropriate departments that a new employee is starting; creating and maintaining job descriptions and ensuring all direct reports are current on all training requirements. We’ve actually seen some hiring managers become responsible for identifying and conducting appropriate competency testing for their employees.
Yes, you need to get this specific. Otherwise, this won’t work.
2. Have the organization prepared for their arrival.
We can’t stress this one enough. For example, before a new employee starts, HR should work with all relevant departments to make sure they’re set up on all applicable electronic systems, such as an Outlook e-mail set up. IT or a reasonable designee needs to be responsible for ensuring the computer set-up is completed; an ID badge is already created, and all applicable accounts are accessible and ready before the employee starts.
It’s a little thing but it goes a long way.
3. Make sure the training program is ready.
Ensure all required training is sent to applicable systems for the new employee, so they don’t have to fumble around for it. Ensure all your presenters are ready, and the orientation schedule is adhered to. If it can’t be for whatever reason, think of additional training tasks you can add, such as a facility tour, Q&A with new employees, department-specific training, or shadowing opportunities.
This keeps new employees eager to learn, while your experienced employees are still involved in onboarding.
Don’t Take Shortcuts with Compliance Education
Many people take shortcuts with their exercise programs such as doing half-reps or taking fancy, expensive fat burners. Don’t do the same with your compliance training program, such as giving a few presentations and having them sign off on some SOPs and then tossing them into the fire of a busy shift.
During the first week of employment, your job is to build comfort and confidence within your employees so they can perform the job. Always remember that some things can be covered in a manual, but it takes time on the floors or at your desk for new employees to pick up the ins and outs.
Develop the Muscle of Knowledge: Optimize Compliance Training
By actively committing to effective compliance training, health systems mitigate risks and protect their reputation while empowering employees to uphold the highest standards of conduct.
Reach out for ideas on how to standardize, track and measure compliance education for your organization.
And in the meantime, if you’d like to learn a little more on your own, we recommend these resources:
John R. Nocero, Ph.D., and Andrea L. Bordonaro, MAT, blog on LinkedIn as “The Q-Kids,” discussing everything related to clinical research education, inspiration, and professional connection.
John is the Director of Quality at River Vista in Columbus, Ohio. He has worked in clinical research since 2003 and is inspired by the Irish professional wrestler Becky Lynch, whose personal and professional story centers on achievement, tenacity, grit, and overcoming adversity.
Andrea has taught first grade in Willoughby, Ohio for 25 years. She earned a Bachelor of Science in elementary education from John Carroll University and a Master’s Degree in the Art of Teaching and Education from Marygrove College.
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