Clicking Towards Compliance

By Margaret Driscoll

As the government pays closer attention to the way America does business, corporations are being held more accountable for the accessibility of their organizations' information. Increasing amounts of new regulations and federal mandates, such as HIPAA and the USA Patriot Act, are demanding that companies revamp their current processes and systems to address escalating concern over national security. Failure to meet the deadlines for compliance may lead to severe penalties, such as heavy fines and even the suspension of practice licenses.

Coupled with this increase in legislation is the growing complexity and girth of the global organization. These organizations not only have to adapt current systems and processes to meet these new regulations, but they face a challenge in having to quickly educate their often large and geographically dispersed workforce on the complex changes as well.

Training is a top priority

Without a doubt, training is essential in meeting compliance--it can even help a company achieve compliance more quickly. But for organizations with a widespread workforce, the costs incurred in flying employees to a traditional classroom-based training session become a difficult budgetary burden. Furthermore, pulling employees from current job responsibilities can hugely interfere with the everyday business of the company.

So how can a growing enterprise respond quickly and effectively to shifts in the regulatory landscape? 

Companies are increasingly turning to e-learning as a viable solution to meet industry compliance standards. For example, the healthcare industry faces a fast-approaching deadline (April 14, 2003) for compliance with the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)--a set of federal mandates designed to protect the security of insurance transactions and individual medical data. Duke University Health System is one example of a healthcare company using e-learning to train its employees on HIPAA.

E-learning on call

Before developing an e-learning solution, Duke University Health System trained employees using either traditional classroom environments or off-site events such as healthcare conferences. However, when faced with having to rapidly train all of its employees in meeting HIPAA regulations, Duke realized that traditional methods would be both expensive and time-consuming.  

Duke University Health System chose instead to use an integrated approach of classroom-based training and e-learning to consistently deliver content, monitor progress and ensure timely compliance to the new HIPAA regulations. With this e-learning system, employees at Duke complete HIPAA courses at their convenience. By allowing users to train directly from their desktops, Duke University Health System has eliminated travel expenses and scheduling hassles while staying on track to meet the federally mandated deadline.

Patriot Act accountability

The financial services sector also has identified opportunities where an effective e-learning strategy can be used to achieve compliance. The USA Patriot Act--a body of new federal security and surveillance regulations passed on Oct. 26, 2001--holds financial institutions more accountable for the tracking of large deposits and international transfers. With new provisions to this act scheduled for release, financial institutions can expect to have only six to eight months to educate their workforce and ensure employee competency.

The Credit Union National Association (CUNA)--a Wisconsin-based not-for-profit trade association serving America's credit unions--is planning to use e-learning to train approximately 10,000 credit unions on these new revisions. CUNA already utilizes e-learning to offer virtual classroom training on a wide variety of topics such as lending and collections, and finance and management.

CUNA's compliance strategy includes conducting a Webinar to train all participating credit unions across the United States on the USA Patriot Act revisions. The Webinar will allow CUNA to develop and change content on extremely short notice and provide participants with access to the experts--discussing legislation and asking questions both verbally and online to representatives from the Department of Treasury and National Credit Union Association (NCUA).

Like Duke University Health System and CUNA, organizations across all industries continue to rapidly adopt e-learning strategies to meet compliance with increased speed and efficiency. By streamlining educational content, reducing travel costs and allowing organizations to more quickly implement training programs, e-learning is emerging as the most effective solution to educate employees in meeting regulatory compliance.

Reprinted from: Learning & Training Innovations (formerly eLearning Magazine)

Margaret Driscoll is director of strategy & ventures for IBM Lotus Software