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Compliance training is the foundation for succeeding in today’s competitive workforce.

elearning solutions

A workplace is a diverse place where you will encounter many different people from different cultural and societal backgrounds. Each employee has a unique background, but they all come together to create something they are proud of and want to share with the world. A diverse environment like a hybrid workplace needs rules and regulations for functioning smoothly. Organizations need to ensure that every employee, no matter where they come from is aware of an organization’s goals, and the SOPs for proper functioning. Rules, regulations, and laws are important, as these contribute to a disciplined work environment. For this very reason, compliance training is a common ritual followed by organizations across the world. Compliance training is the training of employees to carry out their duties as required by relevant laws, industry regulations, and organizational policies. It is an ongoing process of monitoring and updating a company’s policies and procedures. By providing employees periodic compliance training, you create an element of internal control – meaning that all the employees of a company have access to the same instructions and are in agreement about how to be a responsible employee. In addition, compliance training can help you address issues before they happen, rather than waiting for a problem to occur and then attempting to solve it.

70% of compliance training is over 30 minutes long, contributing to the boredom factor.
                                        – Elucidat Survey 

Now, we do see that many organizations understand the importance of compliance training and have a strategy in place, however, compliance training can be a boring topic, without a doubt. Employees often end up neglecting such sessions as they feel it doesn’t matter when it comes to career progression, or also because they find it quite boring to read through a rule book or watch a boring video telling them what to or what not to do. Compliance training is a matter of huge importance and needs to be handled carefully by businesses in every industry. Organizations have to develop compliance training modules which should not just be a set of videos/articles. It has to be flexible enough that learners can access the training anytime, anywhere and the content can always be revised as per any new requirement. It’s about creating a culture of accountability and responsibility. Designing and building a compliance training module for any organization is not an easy job. While creating such a module, organizations need to consider many factors such as learner’s background, sections of the training program, do’s and don’ts, classification of the rules, regulations, the severity of punishment in case of a breach, etc. in order to design a detailed compliance training course. Partnering or taking the help of an eLearning solutions provider is one way of tackling such challenges, because of the expertise available to design solutions for all sorts of learning and development needs.

In a blog by Lorman, it is stated that – The average annual cost from companies that experience non-compliance issues is about $14.82 million.

Engaged learners are happy learners, and it makes a world of difference to the level of professionalism it can bring to your organization. However, the potential of building immersive learning experiences is often wasted on poor training delivery. In the world of learning and development, there are several key challenges, including how to increase engagement, how to train large numbers of people in new skills, and how to address cost concerns, while keeping it exciting and interesting for the learners. An eLearning organization can make courses more interesting through micro-learning, gamification, and scenario-based content delivery. In a world that’s becoming increasingly busy and time-pressured, learners are less inclined to spend time and money on learning a course when they don’t have any real motivation to do it. Corporate learning and development professionals focus on creating interesting eLearning courses with great quality content and the use of gamification to increase engagement with new learners. Microlearning is one such method that leverages the power of video and combines it with bite-sized content that can be delivered quickly and easily. It is an effective way to deliver targeted training to employees, and also a cost-effective approach that can provide instant results. As a result, learners can incorporate new learnings into their busy lives, increasing their engagement with the course material. This helps learners stick to the learning process and participate in a course over time instead of receiving it as a batch once or twice a year. This segmented learning technique also provides on-demand, bite-sized learning across the entire organization, whenever and wherever it is needed, while demanding very little time, and yet can cover a plethora of essential topics in a smart and effective way. Being easy to consume, even during downtime, Microlearning is fast becoming the choice for corporations needing to improve employee training and competency. This approach is most positively beneficial when creating courses on topics like Compliance. Organizations are leveraging on established L&D partners’ expertise to develop engaging scenario-based courses using gamification, interactive stories, and more. These can be conveniently created for consumption on any device or platform. Compliance training should be a fun experience for the learners, something that makes them want to learn more about the subject, and more organizations making an effort to do just that, is indeed commendable.

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The impact of Social or Collaborative Learning in today’s hybrid workplace

social or collaborative learning

Social learning has been around for all of time. Basically, it is the continuous process of learning from other people. Social learning takes place through observing coworkers, asking questions, and sharing expertise. However, the definition of social learning has begun to reshape itself in recent years when used in the world of business. When it comes to Learning & Development, social learning is how we learn from our coworkers, particularly through social platforms like blogs, forums, videos, and social websites such as LinkedIn. Organizations are realizing that supporting social learning throughout their teams has not only fostered more conversations but also increased collaboration between departments. This increased collaboration has contributed to a newer term for social learning in the workplace these days – collaborative learning. Global events in recent years have demonstrated that an organization’s priorities, goals, and infrastructure can change suddenly. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic in March and April 2020 drove people to shift abruptly to remote employment. Employees were required to learn new workflows and embrace new technology with no planning or preparation time. Fortunately for the businesses that had their Learning and Development divisions up to the task, with the use of modern eLearning solutions like scenario-based learning, gamification, simulations, etc. they were able to tackle the situation in a much better way than others who were lagging in their L&D game.

Collaborative learning solutions are one of the most effective ways to improve workplace communication and interpersonal skills. It brings your distributed teams together and keeps everyone in the loop. Today’s hybrid workplace demands innovative ways of imparting knowledge and skills for individual development, team development through improved team coordination and collaboration. eLearning modules are used heavily for overcoming the new challenges of today’s hybrid work culture. Scenario-based learning and simulations are used to create courses that put the learner in real-world situations that are faced in this modern work environment. Micro-learning is effectively used too, where learners engage in short doses of information or knowledge that keeps them up-to-date. Gamified assessments are integral to eLearning as they ensure that learners can track their progress as they move forward. All of this and yet there seems to be one thing missing – where’s all the collaboration happening? As mentioned earlier, Collaborative Learning emphasizes peer engagement and interaction at all stages of the learning process. Every team member can state their own learning needs, which helps to promote individual accountability for training outcomes and ensures that training is directly helpful for every learner. This helps to ensure that important information is collected and made available for the benefit of all learners.

86% of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures.

Source: Salesforce

The emphasis on collaborative learning is beneficial not only for learning but also for giving businesses a competitive advantage. Collaborative learning allows employees to connect with content on an emotional level rather than simply reading about it. They can assign meaning, discuss it with their colleagues, and experiment with different problem-solving strategies. In summary, because it is an emotional experience, learners are able to dive into the subject matter and internalize crucial information more effectively. Even brief conversations with remote coworkers allow them to share ideas and evaluate the topic from a different perspective. Online learners no longer have to wait until the next formal training session to ask questions or receive remote assistance. Collaborative learning enables users to reach out to their network for immediate assistance or ideas. Learners know they can rely on their coworkers, and that collaborative learning solutions help one build a more cohesive remote workforce. Learners also have access to resources that help them bridge skill, performance, and knowledge gaps, allowing them to offer even more to the team. As a result, organizations are making efforts to step up their L&D game and incorporate more collaborative learning solutions to prepare for unusual scenarios due to any reason. Employees are more likely to stay with an organization if they receive specialized, wholehearted support, and as a result, by retaining high performers, organizations save money that ends up being spent on new hire recruiting and training.