Popular compliance training software in 2021
The strongest way to start your compliance training journey is by choosing the best training software to support you. Creating learning materials to demonstrate your organization’s compliance with regulations can seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t need to be this way.
With the right tools, you can create training that engages your learners and checks all the boxes. In this article, we take a look at Learning Management Systems (LMSs) as one of the must-have platforms for compliance training. Let’s help you decide which is right for you.
How do you choose the best LMS for your compliance training?
The criteria you use to decide which is the best LMS for your compliance course will depend on what’s most important to your organization. Here are a few factors you will probably want to take into account.
What features does it offer that will help you demonstrate compliance?
This will often be your starting point when choosing an LMS for this specific type of training. Think about what it must do and what features are just nice extras.
For compliance training, reporting capabilities will be key so you can demonstrate who has completed which training. Consider exactly what you need to be able to report on. Do you need to show that specific audiences have completed certain sections of the training? Do you need certification functionality to help you prove this?
What about subjects that change quickly or that require regular refreshers? Do employees need to re-do the compliance course each year? Are regulations in your space moving fast, always needing tweaks and new bits? And if so, does the LMS allow you to do this easily?
If your uptake of training is good but you have trouble getting employees to remember what they’ve learned, some of the features that include engagement features, like gamification or social learning, may be good for you to explore.
How much does it cost?
Different LMSs have different pricing structures and pricing models. Many will offer an expanded list of features for a premium price, so consider your maximum budget and what you expect to get for it. How quickly you need to be able to deliver your learning may affect the price you need to pay. For example, if you need to get training to your audience before certain legislation comes into effect, you might need to pay more to ensure you can meet the deadline.
Remember, the costs to your organization if you’re found not to be compliant can be huge – both financially and in terms of reputation – so it’s worth considering the budget you have available to make sure that doesn’t happen.
What kind of customer support is offered?
Most compliance training software offers a free trial period, so use this time to test the support available. What is the mechanism for accessing support? How quickly and effectively are your queries dealt with? Are there user guides or other documented resources available?
The completion of compliance training is often time-bound, so you will need to make sure that learners are able to get any issues with accessing the training resolved quickly and efficiently. You also need to make sure your LMS functionality is reliable and that if bugs do arise, someone is on hand to rectify them quickly. This is especially important for compliance training where reporting issues could impact your ability to demonstrate your compliance.
How easy is it to use?
Investigate how easy the process of publishing training is. If you have a lot of training to get to a lot of people, you want to make sure your LMS doesn’t hold you up. Consider the usability from your team’s perspective. Depending on the nature of your organization, they may have a lot of training to complete, so make the experience as easy and pleasant as possible for them. With compliance, especially in highly regulated industries, this is often the case. Regulations come in thick and fast, and having an easy to use LMS can save your team a lot of heartache.
10 best compliance training software to consider
Here are a few LMSs you should consider. In the review, we noted why we feel they are a good choice for compliance training in particular.
SAP Litmos
SAP Litmos is a cloud-based learning platform. It allows learning managers to import content or build courses in the application itself. SAP Litmos allows you to set due dates for each piece of training, which is useful if compliance relies on a specific training window.
iHASCO eLearning
As well as supplying Health & Safety and HR Compliance eLearning to a range of businesses, iHASCO offers its own user-friendly LMS, so it is a good one-stop-shop for learning managers looking for everything in one place.
TalentLMS
TalentLMS is aimed at small- to mid-sized businesses whose priorities are getting set up quickly. It offers an intuitive interface for administrators and a distraction-free learning environment for learners.
With compliance training in mind, it lets learning managers certify learners on completion of certain courses and set expiry dates on those certificates, so you can easily tell who needs to complete which training and when.
Axonify
Axonify LMS will appeal to learning managers whose main hurdle is reminding learners they need to complete the course and tracking engagement. Built-in reporting makes it easy to see who’s completed the compliance training, who’s overdue and who needs a reminder.
SAI360
SAI360 is a risk management platform with a Learning Management System included, but whose remit extends beyond learning alone. It provides preloaded libraries of regulatory, ethics and compliance learning content as well as workflow software to let organizations manage other aspects of their compliance, such as policy sharing.
Inspired eLearning
As well as their own off-the-shelf elearning, Inspired provide hosting and tracking via their own iLMS (Inspired Learning Management System). Inspired’s offerings are all centered around security and HR training, so compliance is their focus.
NAVEX Global Compliance Management Platform
NAVEX Global provides integrated risk and compliance management software and services. It aims to help organizations manage risk and meet regulatory compliance requirements. Their own Learning Management System is especially designed to help organizations meet the training elements of their compliance responsibilities. It provides a range of reporting and notification features to help you keep on top of which audiences need to complete which training, and its focus is on stability, so it can be an LMS you can rely on.
ThinkHR Learn
ThinkHR offers a full-service compliance solution: an LMS together with off-the-shelf training courses on a range of popular compliance subjects like customer services, cybersecurity and workplace safety. The LMS administrator dashboard is designed to make it easier for learning managers to monitor compliance. Branded certificates mean businesses can easily demonstrate their compliance with training regulations if called upon to do so.
Skillcast
Skillcast built its LMS offering specifically with compliance in mind to help organizations deliver and manage their mandatory training. It includes features like automatic follow-ups, data feeds for synchronizing employee records with an HR system and in-depth reporting tools. They also offer an ethics and compliance management platform which hosts elearning but also allows administrators to manage internal policy documents and compliance submissions.
Docebo
Docebo is an LMS with a user-friendly interface to make managing learning easier.
Docebo aimed to help organizations manage their compliance training with their Certifications and Retraining app that allows admin to easily create training certifications that validate skill levels for different topics. Delivery and expiration policies that need to be applied to the certifications can be configured according to the specific needs of the organization.
How do I create compliance training?
By its very nature, compliance training needs to include specific elements and fulfill certain criteria to allow organizations to meet their regulatory obligations. But that doesn’t mean it has to be dull or there’s no room for creativity.
Authoring tools like Elucidat have been designed to make the process of delivering the content needed to ensure compliance with training regulations as hassle-free as possible. Using these tools, you can keep meeting your obligations while keeping your training costs down. They’re also geared towards learner engagement, so you don’t need to sacrifice quality in your pursuit of compliance.
Techniques like a “test it first” approach or interactive scenarios immediately grab learners’ attention and show them how compliance content is relevant to them.
Have a look at these engaging compliance training examples to see what can be done with the right tool, and read more here on how to take your compliance training strategy from tick-box to transformational.
You can also check out Elucidat’s Learning Accelerator add-on. This set of ready-to-go blueprints includes templates for compliance courses to help you get your mandatory training out there as quickly as possible while ensuring the learning experience is a great one.
Final thoughts
Having compliance training for employees in place is a legal obligation for many subjects across a wide range of organizations. This means it needs to be done right, and specific regulatory obligations met, but it doesn’t mean there is no freedom for creativity.
By choosing tools like Elucidat and combining them with an LMS that has all the features needed for compliance training, it’s possible to offer the best of both worlds – learning that checks all the compliance boxes but is a pleasure for learners to complete.
Have a look at this strategy guide for compliance training if you want to find out more about meeting your compliance training obligations in an effective way.
