E-learning and LMS blog articles

LMS compliance features that also save you money

Using a Learning Management System (LMS) can help organisations save money by reducing the costs associated with staying compliant. Here's how an LMS can help cut those expenses:

1. Reduction in administrative workloads

• Automating tasks like course enrolment, sending deadline reminders, generating reports
• Reducing manual chasing using automated notifications and reminders
• Streamlining reporting and auditing using robust tracking and reporting features 

2. Minimised risk and associated costs

• Automated enrolment and role-based training paths ensure every employee receives the necessary compliance training for their specific needs, reducing the risk of non-compliance penalties
• Automation in areas such as certification management and content updates minimises the likelihood of human errors
• By ensuring that compliance requirements are consistently met, an LMS can help organisations avoid costly fines, legal actions and reputational damage

3. Improved efficiency

• An LMS can easily scale customised learning paths and content delivery  to account for large numbers of learners without a proportional increase in admin costs
• Automation means that administrative staff can focus on more strategic initiatives rather than manual compliance tasks

4. Enhanced learning and retention

• LMS platforms enable the creation, delivery, and management of interactive and engaging training materials
• LMS platforms ensure consistent training across the whole organisation, including in multiple languages and cultures, reducing training discrepencies
• LMS platforms allow for real-time feedback and assessment allowing for better targeted interventions if needed

In this blog, we’ll run through the key LMS features that can help organisations maximise their compliance training to achieve full compliance and to realise the maximum value from their compliance LMS.

Compliance refers to the act of adhering to legal, ethical, and regulatory rules and requirements as dictated by governing bodies. Failure to comply with these regulations can result in costly fines and penalties, along with damaging the reputation and success of a business or worse risking the safety and well-being of employees and customers. To prevent this from happening, businesses must take preventative measures by monitoring compliance and delivering comprehensive compliance training programmes. However, 40% of companies rate their compliance training programmes as basic or reactive, making training less effective and significantly reducing their chances of mitigating risk and avoiding penalisation. The best way to avoid this is to use powerful e-learning technology.

Reports and analytics

Research has found that 15% of employees do not read or listen to their compliance training. When it comes to achieving regulatory compliance, anything less than 100% can put companies at risk so companies must find a way to identify this 15% and ensure they engage with their training programmes. When carried out offline, this presents a number of challenges, particularly when relying on unreliable and time-consuming manual reporting and data-gathering practices.

With an LMS, compliance reporting capabilities in the form of reporting tools and analytics provide companies with reliable and timely evidence of compliance training completion. An LMS such as Totara Learn allows admins to create custom-built reports that gather data from across the entire platform. These reports display real-time completion and competency information, allowing managers and compliance teams to identify which employees have yet to complete training.

LMS Reports: 5 essential reports you should include in your L&D strategy

Automation

Many compliance training programmes are dictated by strict deadlines, often determined by considerations such as upcoming audits or updated regulations. When managed manually, human error can leave companies at risk of missing important compliance deadlines or allowing an employee’s compliance certification to expire. To prevent this, LMS features such as powerful automation tools can help companies stay on track.

With LMS automation such as dynamic rules, admins can automatically enrol individual users on mandatory compliance courses, ensuring no one misses out on essential training. Users will receive a notification that they have been enrolled on a course and admins can set deadlines to ensure training is complete within the required timeframe.

Make the most of automation technology in your LMS with hierarchies

Assessments

For many companies, compliance training is an essential step in preparing for regulatory audits. Part of the auditing process may involve gathering evidence that employees are well-versed in policies and procedures by conducting interviews and carrying out assessments. To effectively prepare for audits, employers will need to ensure that employees have retained information obtained from compliance training and gather evidence of compliance. The most effective way to achieve this is to use LMS assessments.

Admins can create assessments that are designed to effectively prepare them for audits by including questions they are likely to be asked and ensuring their knowledge is effectively tested. With an LMS, assessments can be made up of a variety of content types such as multiple-choice quizzes or interactive content such as matching the word to the definition – all of which are designed to keep learners engaged and motivated.

Assessments can be configured so that users must meet certain criteria in order to pass, such as achieving 80% accuracy, and with automation technology results are collated instantly, providing managers and employees with evidence of progress and compliance.

With digital documentation serving as evidence of compliance, admins can easily identify when employees were last assessed and administer refresher courses or updated assessments to identify whether compliance knowledge has been retained since initial training was carried out.

Discover 5 ways to get the best out of e-learning assessments

Certifications

Regulatory bodies may ask for evidence of compliance and when this happens it can be difficult to demonstrate without the help of data-driven insights or proof of training. However, when using an LMS to deliver compliance training, certifications can be used to provide evidence that a learner has completed e-learning courses or assessments. What’s more, certifications can be created so that they are only valid for a set amount of time; after this time has expired users will be prompted to re-certify by completing a refresher course or assessment. Once a learner has obtained a certification, their status will be updated in their learning record and managers or admins will be notified of this achievement.

Looking for more info about LMS compliance training? Visit our use case page

Content creation tools

As compliance regulations are constantly evolving and updating, compliance training programmes must be regularly reviewed to ensure they comply with the latest rules and laws. When compliance training is delivered offline or without the help of content management functionality, it can be difficult to consistently update documents and as a result training can easily become outdated, or employees are at risk of accessing old, incorrect documents. However, with an LMS, admins can utilise content creation tools to easily amend and update compliance training content.

LMS content creation tools also play a vital role in ensuring that compliance training is engaging – an essential driver in boosting motivation and knowledge retention rates. With an LMS, compliance training programmes can include content such as gamified lessons, interactive training, and situation training to deliver role-playing exercises that will demonstrate the consequences of non-compliance.

Most compliance training sessions are over thirty minutes long, resulting in 50% of employees regarding them as boring. With LMS content, companies can take advantage of autonomous training practices and training methods such as microlearning, meaning compliance training can be broken down into bitesize chunks that can be completed by employees in their own time rather than asking employees to complete it in one go - resulting in information overload.

What is microlearning? Read our ultimate guide here

Deliver effective compliance training with a Hubken solution

Using a powerful e-learning platform to manage compliance and effectively deliver and monitor training brings a number of benefits, along with offering peace of mind. To experience these benefits, it's essential to find a platform that offers the above features. Our Totara and Moodle solutions offer everything you need to deliver effective compliance training programmes. In fact, Hubken client Arriva recently won a Totara Award for Best Compliance Experience 2023, find out more about their story here.

Find out more about what our platforms can do for you by getting in touch with one of our e-learning experts today.