Effective Compliance Communication, Part 4: Current Training And HR Initiatives

In Part 3 of this series, the importance of aligning your compliance messaging with that of other departments within your organization was touched upon. To dive a little deeper into this concept, one should focus on alignment with HR and current training initiatives.  Aligning with current training schedules will help determine the optimal release timing for any additional communications, and ultimately help prevent overwhelming your audience. Consider the following questions:

1. Who is responsible for training? Seek out and meet with the person or persons who are responsible for training at your organization. S/he (or the team) can offer up valuable insight to the current schedule and provide guidance on the most effective ways to communicate with the internal audience.
2. How much training are employees already receiving? Understand how much training is already occurring and get a feel for your audience’s current schedule. Training fatigue can occur and can hinder employee engagement and effectiveness. Are there opportunities to break up lengthy training sessions into multiple short meetings? Can you encourage middle-management to relay compliance and ethics messages into staff meetings to keep the content top of mind? Finding the right balance will keep your employees from feeling overwhelmed.
3. Are there any shared resources? To save time and energy, investigate opportunities for overlap between HR, compliance, and other internal communications groups. Some compliance and ethics departments can work messaging into pre-existing training or content without creating something from scratch. If there is an internal newsletter, for example, see if you can include a compliance-related article or blog piece. No newsletter? Consider creating one, and inviting the other communications groups to share content.

Communication Tip: Don’t recreate the wheel! Use pre-existing training and messaging efforts to incorporate your messages seamlessly. Use this opportunity to find gaps in communication, and offer suggestions to work together with other internal departments.