Do you know how effective is your compliance online training? Is the program well-integrated into the company?  Are employees completing the courses on time?  Are they really learning the safety parameters or regulatory laws you are teaching? You won't have the answer to this if you aren't leveraging the power of Learning Analytics.

Having the right data is key to understanding if your compliance online training is making an impact. Simply tracking completion rates and passing grades is not enough. Monitoring deep-level insights like engagement, behavior, and struggles are also important to analyze to make well-informed business decisions and provide actionable insights to your team.

You can set the X passing score for successful completion, but in compliance and safety issues, if employees aren't really learning the information it could represent a huge cost in the long run. So, leveraging online platforms and learning analytics becomes essential for companies to supports students throughout their journey. For instance, if an employee does not get a question right, they can be redirected to revisit a specific module and come back to take the test. 

Improve the impact of online compliance training: Use data to your advantage!

So what type of data and analysis do you need to generate in order to make decisions that improve compliance eLearning programs? And how can you boost results by using the information at your fingertips?

Here are some ideas: 

1) Compare relevant data to understand employee performance

When collecting data, instead of having all the information under one umbrella, it's a good practice to segment and compare key information. Unlike ungrouped data that doesn't have much meaning on its own, grouped data always helps to bring to light trends or patterns that are relevant to each group of users.

Here are some ways in which you can compare user data:

• Top Performing Segments: If you're using a platform with advanced analytics like SHIFT, you can easily compare your compliance training progress across different segments (for example, across different offices, locations, or departments). This will allow you to see if there are any segments that have anomalies in their completion rates. Compare the learning experiences of users with common roles to a department, division, or geographic location, and study them to determine what elements are missing from the learning program.
• Compare the data with previous results. This way you can see if there has been an improvement over time.
• Compare not only user data, but also content types: Take a close look at the metrics provided by training content. Top-performing content can be recognized by the number of views, average views per student, or student ratings. If there are certain courses or modules that score extremely high on these metrics, check to see what they have in common. For example, is there a topic more desired than others? Is there a preference for a specific format?

Also read: Learning Analytics: 5 Mistakes to Avoid in eLearning

2) Schedule the right amount and frequency of compliance training

Compliance programs are usually based on extensive rules or legislation and not all of that information is relevant to everyone. Therefore, you don't want to train people more than they actually require or more often than necessary; you know it's a waste of time and money! So when scheduling mandatory compliance training for your employees, finding the right balance is key. This will not only minimize costs but also reduce disruptions to workforce productivity.

To determine the ideal schedule, use learning analytics to make better decisions.

This way you will be able to see how many employees are compliant and non-compliant over time, as well as what proportion of employee training is devoted to compliance training versus skills training.

With this information, you will be able to map the ideal sequence and scheduling of mandatory training that each employee must take through their career. In other words, create a personalized training path so that each of your employees stays up to date.

Make sure the learning platform you are using allows you to automate key tasks.  Especially if you’re a big company. Here are some tasks that your platform should let you automate:

• Notify students they have been enrolled 
• Letting learners know if they are behind on training
• Send a reminder to employees about the course deadline 
• For managers its also key to easily download and share reports with managers so they can check who is meeting/non-compliant with required compliance training

3) Focus on Increasing Knowledge Retention and Completion rates

Completion rates are the simplest and most commonly used KPI to measure the effectiveness of online compliance training. They provide a quick overview of training progress and are essential to any audit process your company undergoes. This is the case when the training or certification is part of an international law, common in highly regulated industries such as banking, medical, and insurance.

Because compliance training is mandatory, the goal for this KPI is to be as close to 100% as possible. However, this is often easier said than done, as there are a large number of people to manage to ensure this KPI is achieved.

So if your goal is to get your employees successfully certified, maximizing your ROI depends on them not only participating in online training but completing it.

While completion rates will be a key indicator, going beyond these metrics is highly recommended in order to get a full scope of the level of knowledge retention. 

Here are other key metrics to analyze to assess the overall compliance training success:

• Time: Analyze how long did it take to complete the course?
  Here you will need to check if students have completed the course within the allotted time or if they are taking longer than expected. If, on the other hand, it detects that most students take longer to complete the course, it may be indicative of a course not being effective. On the other hand, if the majority of the students take less than estimated to complete the course, this may mean that the majority of the workers are already familiar with the subject.
• Number of users: How many unique users started a course and did not finish it? and How many unique users completed a course? For example, by looking at how many started the training but never finished, look at where you're losing the most of your audience. There may be a particular point in the training or content where significantly more students drop out.
• Interaction: Did users open media files where they were supposed to? Or do they skip them entirely?
• Assessments: Assessment results are the most common way to assess your employees' learning performance. This can be monitored using metrics such as pass/fail rate, average test score, how many attempts it took to get the correct result, and how many employees got the answer right the first time.
• Frequency: How many users visited a course more than once?
  Start by looking for information on employee attributes that lead to higher certification success rates. High post-certification employee retention rates are a clear sign that the investment in compliance training was sound.

Tip: Completion rates for online compliance training typically increase significantly when a mobile or blended learning approach is used.

4) Personalize your students' experience

Personalized learning is an approach where the content, format, and delivery method are tailored to the specific needs of each contributor. This method provides individuals with individual learning paths, which helps to increase both their level of engagement/motivation and knowledge retention.

Artificial intelligence and learning analytics are used together to create these personalized learning paths to ensure that workers receive the content that is most relevant to them, when and where they need it.

For example, all employees must receive compliance training; however, one employee may only need a refresher course and another employee may need content delivered in a different language. The content can also be adapted to help people with learning disabilities. For example, an employee with dyslexia may find video content more helpful than written content. Personalized learning takes these factors into account when creating learning paths.

Analytics are also critical to understanding where each student is struggling or thriving. With this information, you will have the opportunity to offer different material for each student depending on their level of experience and their role. This will enhance students' interest in the topic and indicate to whom and when specific learning content should be delivered.

For example, a company focused on learning analytics is not satisfied with just seeing a student get a passing grade on a compliance course test. Rather, they focus on where the students are struggling to ensure that the student can master that material and earn higher grades in compliance programs.

Also read: How to Make Your eLearning Courses More Personalized

How do you evaluate the performance of your virtual compliance training programs? Do you use the data to make well-informed decisions?

Now, with real-time, big data, you can speed up the information-gathering process, easily tailor your approach, and respond to the individual needs of your students. You could even predict outcomes to help decide where, when, and to whom you should allocate more time and resources.

Thanks to the data, you can determine the appropriate speed to cover each topic, the appropriate volume of information to provide, and the variety of related concepts within an amount of time. All in a way that is most convenient for both your students and your company. In short, with proper data analysis, you can optimize your compliance training programs to unprecedented levels.