Article highlights
- What is compliance training management software?
- Benefits of compliance training management software
- Key features of compliance training management software
We don't often talk about it in training and development circles, but compliance training and regulatory training are not the same as other kinds of training. While other training may be helpful and beneficial to a company and its employees, compliance training is necessary to ensure that your workplace is following the laws and regulations that govern its operations. It may also be required for liability insurance and accreditation purposes.
For example, hospitals and healthcare organizations are required to follow federal HIPAA laws, which have several specific requirements and a long list of "Thou shalt not" rules. The only reliable way to make sure their staff understands those rules is through compliance training.
And the only way to ensure that everyone has completed the necessary training is with compliance training management software.
As the Association of Corporate Counsel said, for every dollar an organization spends on its compliance budget, it can save an average of $1.37 on damages, settlements, and fines. In other words, it (figuratively) pays to provide compliance training for your staff.
But compliance training isn't just limited to regulations. There are also ethical lessons and policies to cover. You can teach new employees about your organizational principles, as well as the professional ethics that guide your industry or your job. People who handle finances may have their own ethics training, as would policymakers or executives.
Compliance training should be required and done regularly, especially if you want to build a foundation for a healthy workplace culture. And the best way to track whether you're being successful is with compliance training management software.
What is compliance training management software?
Compliance training management software is not necessarily what it sounds like. (Or it is, depending on how you read the phrase.)
It is software that manages compliance training. It is not software that manages "compliance and training." That is, you're not managing compliance. You're managing whether people have been trained in compliance.
So why would you need software that manages compliance training?
Remember, we said it's to protect your organization from damages, settlements, and fines. If someone were to violate a policy or break a regulation, and they blamed the organization for not providing the proper training, how do you defend yourself?
Case in point: A police officer in York, Canada is facing charges of corruption and criminal behavior, partly because of how he handled some reporting and paying of confidential informants (CIs). His defense was that he was not properly trained in some procedures, which affected how he filled out the reports and what he did with the funds he was supposed to pay a CI with.
If the York Regional Police had used a compliance training management software solution, they could have immediately looked up whether the officer had actually taken the training or not. If he hadn't, they could have sent automated email reminders that he needed to take the training by a certain deadline. (And with the right kind of software, he could have reviewed the training materials and watched any of the videos on his mobile phone while he was parked in his patrol car.)
Twenty years ago, most training management was done with sign-in sheets and files. You had to track the attendance of your employees by hand, including whether they were going to miss or meet the necessary deadlines. And if you had regulatory or accreditation requirements, that training had to be completed – you could spend days trying to track down everyone who needed to take the training before their certifications expired.
Are there different types of compliance training software?
Technically, there are different types of compliance training software.
That is, there's corporate compliance training software which may seem completely different from healthcare compliance training software. But there's nothing magical or wildly different between those two uses. Yes, they are different industries, but ultimately, they both do the same thing: They track compliance training for an organization, whether it's a healthcare facility or hospital, police department, fire department, large corporation, factory, or even a bank or financial institution.
The difference is, there are some software companies that choose to specialize in one particular field, while others serve multiple industries. In some cases, these latter companies deliver more robust features and functionality.
PowerDMS is an example of a company that serves multiple industries with compliance training software. They’ve learned the compliance training needs for each industry, including best practices, educational techniques, and new technology. And they’ve helped each industry tailor it to their own usage through third-party training content providers, policy and procedure content providers, and providing accreditation guidance from 60+ accrediting bodies like Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC), The Joint Commission (TJC), CALEA, and CAPRA, to name a few
So rather than having a singular, more limited type of compliance training software, it's easier to use a more powerful version of that software. You can then upload all of your specialized content and turn it into your own healthcare compliance training software or corporate compliance training software.
By doing this, you can see major improvements that benefit all users and organizations. Your software is not limited by specialized companies that don't have the same breadth of knowledge, resources, or customer service that a company like PowerDMS has.
Corporate compliance training
Corporate compliance means your company is meeting the rules and standards, as well as any state and federal regulations, that govern your business and your industry. So corporate compliance training is the way you teach your employees to follow those rules and regulations in the way they do their work.
For example, there are certain regulations your finance department must follow, so their corporate compliance training will focus on the things they have to do in order to comply with all of those regulations.
In a manufacturing facility, there are certain OSHA and EPA standards that factories must meet in terms of air quality and water quality. There may even be some state and local regulations that affect toxic byproducts, gases, and liquid discharge. Once again, training will teach your manufacturing managers and associates how those byproducts should be stored or disposed of.
A failure to follow these rules or meet these standards can result in hefty fines and possible jail time for upper management, including the CEO and other executives.
Corporate compliance training software can benefit your company by keeping track of all the different training programs and content your employees have participated in. Showing all the completed training can not only help reduce any liability insurance and business insurance rates, but you can also supply that information to the different regulatory agencies that monitor your company for full compliance.
Healthcare compliance training
In the highly regulated world of healthcare, a healthcare compliance program isn't optional, it's a requirement, especially if you want those critical accreditations and reductions in liability insurance. Healthcare compliance also protects your organization from all the lawsuits that can arise as a result of preventable errors.
It's vital for healthcare facilities and hospitals to follow the latest in accepted medical techniques, best practices, and the latest technology to improve patient outcomes and reduce the number of preventable deaths. For example, The Joint Commission has its 2021 National Patient Safety Goals for hospitals, including processes for administering medication, caring for newborn babies, and reducing the risk of healthcare-associated infections.
If hospitals want to be accredited by The Joint Commission, then they need to follow those steps laid out in the Safety Goals documentation. And one of the best ways to ensure that those steps are met is by using specific healthcare compliance training content to teach people the different steps in things like washing hands, proper medication labeling, and using patient identifiers when administering medication.
Healthcare compliance training software can help you manage the critical training content, but also keep track of which staff members have completed the appropriate training, watched or read all of the relevant content, and have passed any testing to determine compliance and retention.
With healthcare compliance training software, you can then pull up a dashboard that shows completed training for each employee and prove that you have met all required training modules. This software can help you pull together all the results in a few minutes, not a matter of days spent poring over training records and sign-in sheets.
Benefits of compliance training management software
There are several benefits of using software to manage your healthcare and corporate compliance training.
For one thing, it makes the actual management part that much easier. You can set deadlines for completing training sessions, and then be notified when employees have completed the training or when they're in danger of bumping up against deadlines.
You can also set up the system so it sends frequent reminder emails to your employees until they actually complete the training. And because this is an online automated system, the software will automatically track when the training is done. You don't have to go into the platform and mark it as completed – that's done for you.
The training management software can also save time and money. Rather than trying to get everyone into the same training room at the same time, you can share the training modules online so people can learn at their own pace and convenience. Good corporate and healthcare compliance training management software also lets you host people in a virtual classroom for synchronous (simultaneous) training, but it works with asynchronous (on your own time) training as well.
You can also save time and money by not having your onsite trainers repeat their content several times just to accommodate everyone's different schedules. Rather than doubling or tripling a trainer's costs just to repeat the training, you can use third-party training videos that can be played as many times as needed. That's often a problem if meeting space is limited in smaller corporations and hospitals.
You can save money on overtime and facilities management by not having people come into the office for the training sessions. If they can watch videos and take the tests during their downtime during their regular schedule, that saves your overtime budget.
Good compliance training management software can handle the larger training management component of your learning and development efforts. So you can track all the training sessions and classes your employees take, which means you can keep track of online and real-world training sessions, conferences, continuing education (CEU) credits, and even higher education.
That same software can deliver your training content on a variety of devices and platforms. Since it's web-based and browser-based, anyone with a phone, tablet, or laptop and a wifi or cellular signal can view the training materials. This is how your employees can do their training during downtimes without needing a classroom setting or using overtime for scheduling conflicts.
And if there's ever a correction or update to the training content or accreditation requirements, you can push out notifications to your employees so they can watch the new materials. You can also update the new training requirements in the software.
Once your employees have completed their compliance training, the software can automatically update your accreditation management software as well. This helps you track the progress of your accreditation efforts and ensures you're meeting all your milestones.
Finally, as we discussed earlier, compliance training helps employees avoid mistakes that can cost you millions of dollars. Because this training management software keeps track of all training sessions and communication, if an employee ever files a lawsuit or grievance, or uses the "they never trained me" defense, you have immediate access to all the training videos and materials they reviewed, their signatures that they completed the sessions, or barring any of that, the number of notifications they received reminding them to complete the training. (At least that way, they can't say no one told them.)
Key features of compliance training management software
Compliance training management software needs to have several key features in order to be effective. Consider these your non-negotiables:
- Mobile-ready: Your employees should be able to review all training materials on any kind of device, whether it's their laptop/desktop computer, or their mobile phone or tablet. This is especially important in hospitals, where many staffers don't have desks or workstations.
- Centralized storage: You want to be able to upload and store all of your training content in one location. This way, everyone has shared access to it, rather than trying to track down who has seen the correct versions.
- Version history: Your policies and regulations need to be up-to-date, and you want to be able to see at a glance whether everyone has received the latest version of the information. By updating policies on the centralized repository, you never have to worry about whether people are looking at a policy that's two versions out of date. You can update the policy, push out the new version to everyone, and then ask them to read it and sign that they have done so. That means you also want.
- Signature capture and tracking: Once everyone has read their new policy updates, or they've completed their training, you can have them sign an online form showing that they've actually completed it. Your compliance training management software should be able to track all of that.
- Attaching policies to training courses: When your compliance policies are updated, you can set them to automatically update the training courses as well.
- Attach custom tests to policies: You can also assess employees' knowledge of your compliance training content and require them to pass those tests before they can sign off on the policy. This gives you an additional leg in your defense, and can also help you meet accreditation and regulatory requirements.
Compliance training management software you can trust
With compliance training management software, you can protect your employees and your company by ensuring that everyone understands the same ethics and policies that guide your workers, your company, and your industry.
You can share your policies and training content from a central repository, ensure that everyone has received it, track their completion and assessment scores, and then send notifications to people who have not completed their necessary sessions.
PowerDMS has the compliance training management software to help any kind of highly regulated industry or organization, whether it's law enforcement agencies, healthcare facilities, financial services, law firms, telecommunications, or transportation.
PowerDMS has the compliance training management software to help any kind of highly regulated industry or organization, whether it's law enforcement agencies, healthcare facilities, financial services, law firms, telecommunications, or transportation.
If you would like to learn more about how PowerDMS can help manage your corporate and healthcare compliance training, please visit our website for more information.