Dive Brief:
- Harassment and discrimination education is employers' top compliance training priority, according to a survey by EVERFI, Inc. emailed to HR Dive. Eighty-three percent of respondents identified that topic as topping their list; 37% said it was diversity and inclusion, and 29% pointed to privacy and data protection.
- The survey respondents also identified challenges in carrying out their compliance education programs. Only 7% believed their program's initiatives were effective; a third were neither tracking their program's effectiveness nor its completion; and 64% said they need help setting up assessments.
- EVERFI, Inc., a corporate compliance education provider, polled 2,000 compliance customers in technology, financial services, manufacturing, healthcare and other industries. "The insights drawn from this survey reveal first hand compliance challenges pervasive across industries," said Preston Clark, EVERFI’s president of corporate compliance.
Dive Insight:
Given the number of sexual harassment and discrimination allegations plaguing the country's high-profile businesses, it's little surprise that these issue top employers' list of compliance training priorities.
Compliance education is critical especially for front-line mangers, who experts say frequently cause violations when they haven't been trained on legal requirements. On the other hand, properly trained managers can be your first line of defense, ensuring that issues affecting compliance are elevated to HR.
But despite employers' focus on compliance training, the EVERFI report shows that there's still work to be done in implementation. Adopting programs of any kind without knowing whether they're effective can be a drain on resources. Employers need to engage in assessment, which requires careful data collection, as well as analysis.
