Many businesses view compliance training as a tick-box exercise but it's a mistake to underestimate it's importance, says one industry expert.
If we are totally honest, many New Zealand businesses view a compliance training programme simply as a ‘tick box’ exercise. In fact, for many it goes further than this, it actually gets in the way of day to day operations. Yet, the regulatory landscape has changed significantly in the last few years and so it really has become something that can no longer be simply ignored. Beyond this need, as organisational reputation is of more and more importance in the informed business age, being an employer who does the right thing by their employees is arguably more critical than it has ever been.
The Impact of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015
HR professionals will be more than aware of the new Health and Safety legislation that came into place in April 2016, and the need to make the whole organisation understand their responsibilities. This theme is discussed by John O’Rourke, Health and Safety Consultant at MinterEllisonRuddWatts. John observes that, “Since the harmonisation of Health & Safety regulations, safety is given much higher priority in Australia than in New Zealand, and the fines associated with incidents have been increasing significantly. Of course, in New Zealand you will find that most, if not all, large organisations take their Health & Safety responsibilities very seriously.
However, it can be difficult to put those systems in place and be systematic in the approach for smaller SMEs.”
Making Compliance Training and Reporting Simple
Since a compliance programme should be a key priority for all New Zealand businesses, regardless of size, can this be established without costing too much time or money? The simple answer to this is ‘yes’! The best way to achieve compliance, whatever the size or complexity of your business, be it big or small, is through an online program. Taking your compliance program online has real benefits to your business. Let’s have a quick look at a couple:
Firstly, it saves you, that is the business owner, HR, Learning and Development or Training department time. The beauty of online learning is that once it is setup, the system can run and manage your roll-out as if by magic. Automatic scheduling facilitates welcome and reminder emails, significantly reducing the time required to administer your compliance program.
Secondly, you can prove that learning has taken place. This is vital to any compliance program. Keeping records and tracking that everyone in your organisation knows their responsibilities can seem onerous, especially when using traditional classroom training and paper records. Moving it online means you can accurately report that the training was completed, and when coupled with online testing can confirm that an acceptable level of knowledge transfer took place.
The Full Advantages of an Online Program
The great news of course is that once your online training program is up and running the annual programme practically takes care of itself, meaning you can focus your attention where your business or organisation needs it most.
The above just gives two of the reasons why you and your organisation can benefit from an online compliance program. To find out more, read this article which discussed the ‘Top 10 Reasons for an Online Compliance Program’.
