Keeping employees compliant with regulations is a huge challenge for many of our customers. Every time they turn around it seems there is a new law or new regulation they have to implement and get their workforce trained on. And the compliance problem is only going to get worse with all the pressure now for increased regulation from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other agencies.
In our work with companies across all industries, we’ve had a chance to review hundreds of policies and procedures. What we’ve found is that most policies and procedures guides (conservative estimate 95%) aren’t even getting to first base when it comes to supporting compliance. In one case, the policy and procedure manual itself was the non-compliance culprit. Although it was probably unintentional, we see many instances of CONFLICTING policies and procedures! No wonder employees are non-compliant and corporate training departments face a daunting challenge.
It’s also no wonder companies tell us they have trouble getting their board members, management, and employees to use their official policies and procedures. Many times they find themselves signing-off on policy and procedure information they don’t even understand.
Employees simply don’t have the time or the inclination to sort through massive quantities of confusing text and try to figure out what it means and what you want them to do.
Many companies think just throwing better search or content management technology at the problem will make it go away. Others think testing is the answer. But neither of those things will fix the core problem–bad content.
If you want to reduce non-compliance risk once and for all, do yourself a favor and provide everyone with clear boundaries and good directions. Start applying best practices for writing policies and procedures that get results.