Online Compliance Training Needs More Engagement
Web-based courses are “not enough” to get the compliance training job done — that was the resounding similar outlook on compliance training among speakers at the Auto Finance Risk & Compliance Summit last month.
“It’s a good starting point, but you’ve got to build the other pieces” to be able to train employees to effectively handle compliance issues, Geniece Yelder, Nissan Motor Acceptance Corp.’s senior manager of compliance, told attendees at AFRCS.
In response, NMAC developed a two-hour live training session with “mini activities” between lessons and a question-and-answer session at the end — in an effort to keep employees engaged, Yelder said. “It wasn’t just somebody standing in front of them for two hours, we had points built in to engage them in conversation.”
NMAC’s live training also helped employees understand the importance of tracking complaints, she said. “We were able to give them that, ‘How does this apply to me?’ scenario, so they were thinking about themselves as a consumer, and if they had a complaint, how would they handle it?”
Watching online training videos without a supplemental assessment or live training “will only give you an introduction,” added Paige Barrie, senior manager of VCI Academy at VW Credit Inc. Quizzing employees on the content after the video can be more helpful, but it still “doesn’t get the job done, so we follow that up with individual counseling,” she said.
Ultimately, the key to keeping employees engaged is not just by making the training more interactive, but by making sure employees understand the importance of training, NMAC’s Yelder added.
“It would be easier to get employees to complete the training if we could make that strong linkage between what they are learning or being forced to be tested on every year and what they do, and just exactly why it’s so important,” Barrie said. “Once they understand the importance, it’s easy to get them to do it.” However, once the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau comes knocking on your door, “everybody gets it.”
Getting employees to understand that compliance “is everybody’s responsibility” is one of the toughest jobs, Yelder said. “It has to be a part of who you are as a company.” –> Continued on Page 2
