Compliance training remains tied to completion and testing
Most compliance programmes still prioritise completion and knowledge testing over evidence that employees can apply learning at work.
Organisations have developed strong systems for assigning and tracking compliance training but have less visibility into whether employees can apply what they have learned once training ends, according to research from Go1.
The US study points to a gap in what happens between completing mandatory learning and dealing with compliance issues at work. Most organisations still centre their approach on recording completion or testing knowledge, while reinforcement, workplace practice and early identification of risk play a smaller role.
Employees were less successful when compliance questions required judgement rather than knowledge of a clear rule. A separate assessment of 320 US employees produced an average score of about 65% across workplace scenarios covering harassment prevention, conflicts of interest, codes of conduct and whistleblower protection.
Employees had particular difficulty with situations involving context, competing considerations and uncertainty about how a policy should be applied.
The results raise a wider question for L&D about what completion and conventional assessments demonstrate. Completion records provide evidence that mandatory training took place, while quizzes can test knowledge at a particular point in time. Neither necessarily establishes whether an employee can recognise a problem and respond appropriately when circumstances are less clear.
Post-training reinforcement is common but rarely central to compliance learning: 85% of HR leaders said reinforcement happens always or often, but only 18% described it as their organisation's primary compliance approach.
Manager involvement after training also varies. Interviews conducted for the report found their involvement after training varied, with some reinforcing policies and helping employees interpret them while others concentrated on ensuring courses had been completed.
An L&D specialist in financial services told Go1: 'After completion, it can become checkbox and move on.'
The research covered three separate US samples: 312 HR, people and L&D leaders, 313 compliance, legal and risk professionals and 320 employees who had completed employer-provided compliance training during the previous 12 months. The three samples were not matched by organisation, so differences between leader perceptions and employee assessment scores cannot be treated as direct comparisons within individual employers.
Go1 published the research alongside the launch of Immersive Simulations, which uses AI-powered avatars to put employees through workplace compliance scenarios.
Kristina Ryan, vice-president of product and design at Go1, said: 'Real-world compliance decisions rarely arrive as simple test questions. The harder challenge is preparing people for situations where context matters and giving employees opportunities to practice those decisions before they happen.'