HR and Administrative Considerations

In evaluating online compliance and ethics training, you should consider the following HR and administrative questions:

1. Will your online courses be easier to deliver and administer than classroom training?
2. How do we track employee completion?
3. Can we train new employees as soon as they are hired?
4. How do we train employees who do not work on computers?
5. How do we ensure that employees actually take the course?
   
   

1. Will your online courses be easier to deliver and administer than classroom training?
   
   One reason that most employers fail to provide their employees required compliance and ethics training is that organizations frequently fail to give their legal, compliance, human resources and training departments adequate resources to ensure that everyone is trained. To deliver effective classroom training on compliance and ethics topics, the employer has to do at least the following:
   
   
   1. Develop accurate, practical, and engaging course content
   2. Get the legal, human resources, compliance, and training departments to agree upon the content
   3. Keep the content up-to-date with new laws, regulations, and court decisions in all locations where you have employees
   4. Select legal experts who are also engaging trainers to deliver the training
   5. Secure classroom space for the training, often in multiple locations
   6. Schedule employees to attend the training at a convenient time for each employee
   7. Deliver the training
   8. Have employees sign in at the training
   9. Input the sign-in sheets into a database
   10. Compare the sign-in database with the database of all employees to ensure that everyone attended the training
   11. Identify those employees who missed the training and reschedule training for them
   12. Frequently schedule training in multiple locations to accommodate new employees
   
   When you consider the daunting list of tasks above and consider everything else that the legal, compliance, HR, and training departments are responsible for, it is easy to understand why some organizations avoid providing compliance and ethics training at all. This omission, of course, comes back to haunt these organizations when they are sued or prosecuted.
   
   Brightline Compliance's online training is designed to greatly reduce the costs and logistical difficulties inherent in delivering and recording attendance at classroom training. Brightline makes it easy for you to ensure that all current employees and new employees receive the training. All you have to do is email or otherwise notify employees that they need to complete the training by a certain deadline (e.g. 60 days). Brightline's learning management system automatically records course completion.
   
   
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2. How do you track employee completion?
   
   Employees use a username/password combination to log into Brightline's learning management system (LMS), after which the course or courses are presented as options. First name, Last name, and if desired, other identifying information (employee ID number, region, etc.) are associated with each employee's account in the Brightline LMS. Once an employee enters a course, the course database records that the person has entered and tracks the employee's progress. When the employee completes the course, the database records the date of completion. At any time, you can run a report to see who has started the course, who has started but not yet completed the course, and who has completed the course. You are able to sort this information in a variety of ways, including by region, department, or type of employee (supervisor or non-supervisor). If you are running the course on your own LMS, tracking of course completion is likely very similar.
   
   You no longer have to worry about collecting sign-in sheets from in-person training sessions and then entering those sign-in sheets into a database to see who took the course and who did not.
   
   
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3. Can we train new employees as soon as they are hired?
   
   With Brightline's online courses, you can provide new employees the compliance and ethics training they need as soon as they are hired. In this way, you never run the risk that a new employee will commit or become the victim of a legal or ethical violation before being trained.
   
   
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4. How do we train employees who do not work on computers?
   
   Brightline's clients have handled this in a variety of ways. One option is to set up a few computers in the HR department or a computer lab that employees who do not have a computer at their workstation can use to take the course. Alternatively, Brightline has provided a solution that combines both online and in-person training for many employers. Specifically, those employees who have access to computers can take the course individually online. For other employees, such as employees who may work in a factory, Brightline's attorney-trainers can provide in-person training on-site for the employer, or they can train the client's internal trainers to provide legally accurate and engaging training on this topic. During the in-person training, interactive scenarios and exercises from the online course are projected onto a screen and used to facilitate class discussion. This ensures not only that the in-person training is interactive and engaging, but also that all employees in the organization receive the same instruction.
   
   
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5. How do we ensure that employees actually take the course?
   
   Because of the legal liability that an organization can face by failing to provide appropriate training to all employees, you must require employees to take online compliance and ethics courses in the same way you would require them to attend an in-person training on these topics.
   
   Brightline's clients generally have not had a hard time getting employees to take the courses. First, contrary to popular opinion, employees actually want to learn how to avoid legal and ethical violations. By providing them practical and engaging instruction on the nuances of complex, real-world scenarios, employees actually enjoy taking the course and are thankful that their employer has provided them the training. Indeed, over 90 percent of participants in Brightline's online compliance and ethics courses have indicated that the instruction provided was worth the time it took to take the training.
   
   Furthermore, employees especially appreciate that Brightline's online training is respectful of their time and other commitments. Instead of forcing an employee to show up at a particular time and location for in-person training, the employee can take our online courses whenever is convenient for him or her. Indeed, over 90 percent of employees who have taken one of Brightline's online courses have indicated that they would prefer to take future compliance and ethics courses online instead of in a classroom.