Compliance Training for a Disconnected Government Workforce

Seamless Compliance Training for Disconnected Government Workforces

Regardless of individual role, geographic location, and job duties, every government worker must complete necessary training to operate safely and efficiently. This can be challenging with a disconnected workforce. For these workgroups, there often is no central conference room, or even a common building, in which to gather. These workgroups can even lack the ability to collectively and physically meet at a single time. Making adaptations to serve these workers can be a challenge, as training can lack consistency, accessibility, and cohesiveness.

Yet mandatory training, such as for compliance issues, is important. Rules, regulations, and policies can change from year to year. Well-designed compliance training thoughtfully delivered is more important than ever before.

What is compliance training?

Federal legislation, regulations, and policies mandate government compliance training. On a very basic level, this training educates employees on the subject matter, legal requirements, and applicable regulations related to their job duty or area of focus. Some compliance training is also focused on human resources issues, from harassment and discrimination to the use of government resources and ethics. Still, other compliance requirements are highly specialized to job duty or work area.

Regardless of the subject matter, successful compliance training results in providing basic knowledge to the government workforce. This ensures that their work, conduct, and output are to set standards and helps workers understand why they need to adhere to the guidelines.

Challenges of compliance training with disconnected workers

Government workers are often in diverse work environments: some workers are in forests, others in national museums, some are in research labs, yet others are in a traditional office.

Some spend their workdays at a desk while others use mobile technologies to work from a remote location. Still, others have “deskless” jobs in the field. Their offices could be a truck cab, cell phone, and tablet. Some government workers are heavily reliant on technology, while others are more focused on the tools required to complete their tasks. With no baseline expectation to draw from, it can be challenging to find a platform to reach disconnected workforce sectors.

This workforce reports sometimes feeling disconnected or disengaged due to these work differences, and many welcome efforts that provide them with the same level and quality of training that would be found in a traditional organizational setting.  Without the right platform, workers may also encounter inconsistencies in compliance training regarding assignments, assessments, and scheduling.

These types of learning platforms can be quite flat. While recorded webinars, PowerPoint presentations, and other delivery methods are great ways to provide information for self-paced learners, true effectiveness requires interaction. Self-paced learning should include assessments, exercises and other dynamic means for displaced learners to engage with the new information and retain it. Learning can still remain flexible and self-directed, but without

these signposts to keep learning on track, workers can fumble, lose interest, or complete training without retaining important information.

Assessing compliance retention can also be difficult with a disconnected workforce. Some employees are accustomed to information presented in a lecture-style format, while others retain and understand the information presented in a more hands-on, interactive manner. Studies show that learners who can practice what they’ve learned and achieve real learning objectives, typically through assessment feedback, have better outcomes. The more engaged a learner is, the higher the rate of retention.

Solutions are available

One great way to ensure that a workforce is achieving compliance goals is to take employees out of their respective work environments for training and testing. For example, weekly training sessions, such as a “Live Lunch and Learn Session” with training displayed on a big screen with a proctor as a moderator, is a valuable approach for training deskless government workers. It makes learning an event that can be attended without the need for individual, desk-based technology.

When a workforce is disconnected this way, creating a single online resource for compliance training provides a critical path to success. Enterprise Training Solutions offers a comprehensive suite of more than 85 online courses on compliance and risk management issues, including:

• Human Resource issues: interviewing, FMLA leave, wages and hours, respect promotion, HIPAA, harassment, Affirmative Action, Americans with Disabilities Act, promoting a substance-free workplace, I-9 awareness, independent contractors/temporary employees, human trafficking awareness, discipline and documentation, union awareness, EEO and lawful hiring
• Global issues: Exporting, importing, gifting, corruption, harassment prevention, cybersecurity, fraud, and antitrust compliance, social media, and electronic communication
• Safety and Security: cybersecurity, active shooter, data and device security, business travel, identity theft, campus safety
• Specialized issues: supply chain, PCI DSS, conflict minerals, California Consumer Privacy Act, record retention

Each subject area is presented by professional instructors with experience in teaching and engaging with government employees.

Integrating compliance with actions

Compliance training provides employees with the tools to ensure that their work activities are not only in compliance, but also exceed the baseline floor that these parameters require. The right learning environment encourages employees to see that their behaviors, attitude, and effort are in alignment with these requirements. It’s human nature to want to comply and do well – providing employees with the best compliance education possible allows them to do that.

Enterprise Training Solutions specializes in government training programs by helping government organizations reach their goals by focusing on their most important asset: their people. Trusted by the U.S. government for more than 25 years, ETS creates online learning programs that maximize effectiveness, minimize cost, and fulfill regulatory requirements. For more information, log on to enterprisetraining.com, call 1-800-887-8244, or email info@enterprisetraining.com.