Bullying, harassment, discrimination and injury all pose a significant risk to your organisation. And yet, you might be surprised to hear that many businesses don't have adequate HR and IR compliance training in place for their employees. Compliance training helps employees understand their rights and responsibilities as well as explaining relevant laws and regulations. Under the Australian regulatory framework, employers have a legal obligation to take all ‘reasonably practicable’ steps to ensure the health and safety of their employees. Tailored HR and IR compliance training is the most practical and effective way for your business to meet such obligations. In this week's HR Blog, we explore the importance of keeping compliance training up to date for your employees by following HR best practice..
Your Board, Leadership, Managers and team leaders all bear a collective responsibility as the custodians of your organisation’s workplace culture. Those in leadership positions play a key role in preventing and effectively managing workplace bullying, harassment, discrimination and work place health and safety issues. They are also responsible for knowing how to approach and conduct conversations to address inappropriate workplace behaviour. Conversely, your employee cohort need to understand their responsibilities and know how to behave accordingly in the workplace.
The reality is that if you employee people, incidents of discrimination, harassment and workplace injury are likely to disrupt your company culture at some point in the journey. It is virtually impossible for us not to bring our biases into the workplace – sometimes by accident, sometimes by choice. However, today it is easy to access compliance training that has been specifically designed to mitigate your HR and IR compliance risks across all the different locations where your employees conduct their work. That means if harassment, discrimination or injury does occur within your business, appropriate compliance training will help you meet your legal and cultural responsibilities as well as managing your liability as an employer.
Let's dive a little deeper into why compliance training should form the foundation of your organisational culture.
Why do you need HR and IR compliance training?
The main driver for conducting compliance training within your business is the prevention of harmful, disruptive and potentially costly behaviours like harassment, discrimination and physical or psychological injury. Compliance training can also help you defend your business against charges employees file with Fair Work (or a similar state or local regulatory agency). Most regulatory bodies have a formal charge handling and investigation process you must follow as the employer. Being able to demonstrate through employee training records that you have actively worked to prevent harassment, discrimination and injury within your organisation may reduce your chances of going to court.
Company specific compliance training also serves to promote consistency in how issues are reported, documented and investigated throughout your business. Training with an authorised provider also ensures that your employees won't make mistakes if a complaint is made, because they will understand the process they need to follow to record and manage the issue.
What should your HR and IR compliance training cover?
According to GO1, Subscribe-HR's e-Learning partner (and the world’s largest aggregator of training), many organisations have compliance training gaps in the following areas:
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Bullying and harassment.
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Sexual harassment.
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Discrimination.
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Equity and equal opportunity.
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Diversity.
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Work health and safety.
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General IR and HR compliance.
It’s also a good idea to provide additional, more specialised HR compliance training (than the above list) to your leaders, including the Board and managers. Training your managerial employees on interviewing and selection skills is of particular importance, as discrimination and other pitfalls can often show up in the hiring process.
For example, some new managers don’t know the legal pitfalls of interviewing, like not asking questions designed to discover someone’s age (which could lead to an allegation of age discrimination, according to Fair Work).
How should your HR and IR compliance training be delivered?
There are two basic options for delivering compliance training to your employees:
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Instructor-led (a face-to-face option where a trainer delivers the course to a group of your employees).
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Virtual (for example using Subscribe-HR"s integration with GO1's suite of 65,000+ courses).
Instructor-led compliance training is ideal for groups of employees without computer access. It’s also beneficial when you want to have a better feel for your employees’ participation and engagement with the material. Face-to-face instruction will facilitate questions to ensure comprehension.
GO1’s verified virtual e-learning courses, offered by trusted providers, are designed to meet all your different regional compliance needs. Content is grouped on a regional basis, so wherever your learners are located they will have access to training that's right for them. The content is always updated when any aspect of it becomes obsolete, ensuring your organisation is always protected.
Does your compliance training need to be tracked?
Absolutely. Keeping accurate records of the training your employees undertake is almost as important as the training itself. A lack of documentation (no paper trail) regarding the contents of your training or who attended could lead to problems when trying to prove you were proactive in preventing issues should a charge of breach of legislation / regulation arise. You also need to keep an employee’s compliance training attendance history on file as long as you keep his or her employment record.
How often should your employees undertake compliance training?
It depends on the training. However, many states have laws or recommendations about how often you should require your employees and supervisors to go through training like harassment, discrimination and safe work prevention. Research the laws in your state, consult your legal counsel or refer to your training provider.
How can you ensure employee engagement in HR & IR compliance training?
Compliance training needs to form an intrinsic part of your company culture. That means your organisation’s leadership must be visibly and actively involved in participating in and promoting such training. As mentioned at the start of this blog, everyone from the Board, Leadership, Managers and all the way through to team leaders bear a collective responsibility as the custodians of your organisation’s workplace culture.
If your CEO says that compliance training is 'how we do things around here' and role models the fact that completion of compliance training is something employees should 'take seriously,' your employees will likely be more willing to take part.
How current is the knowledge and training of your employees:
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Do they understand their responsibilities under the law?
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Do they have the hard and soft skills to manage issues as they arise?
If you’ve got compliance training gaps in any of the following areas, we’re here to help. Simply download the White Paper to discover how Subscribe-HR and GO1's unified e-Learning and Cloud HR Software can help you to mitigate your HR and IR compliance risks.
