How to deliver effective compliance training in 2025
- Dan Hawtrey
Mandatory compliance training is critical in most businesses, particularly in regulated industries. It reduces risk, supports regulatory commitments, underpins compliance reporting and maintains certification from external bodies. Strict compliance in areas such as health and safety also has important real-world benefits in reducing accidents at work.
But here’s the problem. Most mandatory training is dreary and unengaging. It’s regarded by employees as a tick box exercise and if there are any ways to cut corners to complete it, they will. It’s also often carried out annually which in the fast and complex regulatory environment means it is often out of date. Compliance training can also be high-level, generic and not relevant to a highly diverse workforce. It might even be inconvenient to access and hosted on a platform with a poor user experience.
In short, compliance training is often not fit for purpose for a modern work environment. By the time employees need to apply what they have learnt, employees simply will not recall what they should know.
In this article we’re going to explore how compliance training needs to evolve, what effective compliance should look like, and how to deliver a more holistic and targeted approach to compliance training.
Why compliance training in 2025 must evolve
Compliance training and related education remains a challenge for many compliance teams. For example, list “training employees” as one of their main challenges when it comes to policy management.
The reasons why compliance training is so challenging and needs to evolve varies from organisation to organisation:
Agility
Regulations change rapidly but e-learning tends to be static and simply cannot keep up with all the changes
Ownership
There can is sometimes a disconnect between the compliance teams who in tune with the regulatory changes and the learning teams who are responsible for e-learning, leading to delays or even misunderstandings.
Policy alignment
The combination of rapidly evolving regulatory regimes and different stakeholders involved in compliance often means that at any point of time there is likely to be a lack of alignment between an organisations compliance-related policies and any compliance e-learning.
Granularity
Most global businesses are complex and conduct business across multiple jurisdictions – when it comes to compliance one size does not fit all, but the related training is simply not granular enough to reflect a diverse and distributed workforce.
Remote and hybrid work
The rise of remote work means we can no longer ask our colleagues so easily about compliance-related questions, but compliance learning resources are often not easily accessible at the point of need to answer critical questions or provide guidance.
Low engagement
Compliance training tends to be dreary and dull and is often outside the daily flow of work which leads to poor engagement and therefore low awareness.
No reinforcement
Compliance training is often a one-off, tick-box exercise that employees rush through as quickly as possible with no follow-up or reinforcement to actually embed the learning.
Not AI-ready
AI is going to change a lot of what we do, but e-learning is often designed in a way that means it is not ready to take advantage of the AI revolution.
What does effective compliance training look like today?
Effective compliance training in 2025 and deals directly with many of the challenges listed above so that it is:
- Relevant: It is hyper-personalised to each individual relating to their role, location, level on the hierarchy and so on.
- Current: Compliance training is up to date ensuring people are aware of the fast-moving regulatory landscape.
- Audit-ready: Compliance training is audit-ready so that the system and process ticks all the right boxes and the reporting can also support a regulatory audit or an external certification process.
- Always available: Compliance learning resources and related policies are always available as an essential reference point so an employee can get guidance relating to compliance when they actually need it.
- Integrated: Compliance learning is available directly in the flow of work by being integrated with the rest of the digital workplace, helping to drive adoption and saving precious time.
- Digestible: Compliance learning is digestible and bite-sized, so it fits effortlessly into the working day.
- Continuous improvement: It’s easy to measure and track success and also get feedback in order to drive improvement.
- Engaging and useful: Compliance learning is engaging and actually useful, helping to drive better engagement with learners and avoiding it just being a “tick box” exercise.
- Embedded: There are mechanisms in place to embed compliance learning, so it is properly understood and not instantly forgotten.
Six common compliance training mistakes
Many of the challenges relating to compliance training are exacerbated by common mistakes.
Content is generic and lacks context
Sometimes compliance teams lean on third-party providers to provide compliance learning content, but this can be generic. When content is too generic and lacks organisational context, it can be less effective and sometimes not even relevant.
Learning platforms are siloed and a barrier to usage
Often compliance learning may be siloed in a system that is outside the rest of the digital ecosystem. A user may need to enter a different username and password that they can’t remember or have to access an unfamiliar third-party site. When learning is siloed in this way it will be a real barrier to adoption and usage.
The learning provided will go out of date
Some organisations provide annual compliance training. However, when compliance requirements move at pace the compliance learning provided simply goes out of date.
Compliance learning and compliance documentation are not aligned
As already noted, regulatory and compliance requirements move quickly. These are often reflected up to date in controlled documents such as policies which the compliance team manage, but not always in e-learning courses which might be provided in conjunction with a third-party content provider. When compliance learning and compliance documentation are not aligned then there is a clear risk issue because the course content is effectively out of date.
Reporting is not really audit-ready or geared towards compliance needs
Regulatory or certification audits can be stressful and time-consuming. Having reporting which demonstrates what you need to show such as the percentage of employees acknowledging they have read a particular compliance policy can save a lot of time. A system also may need to provide an audit trail of changes. Not having this in place relating to compliance learning can lead to a lot of additional hassle and time-consuming manual effort.
A lack of measurement leads to a lack of improvement
Sometimes a key issue with compliance learning is that there aren’t adequate analytics in place or an easy way to bring metrics together from related areas in order to drive improvement.
What are the future trends relating to compliance training?
The world of workplace learning is constantly changing. There are number of wider trends which are already impacting compliance-based learning and will accelerate change in the future.
- Artificial intelligence
- AI is bringing sweeping changes to the way we work and interact with technology. AI will bring a range of improvements to compliance-based training from delivering hyper-personalised learning at scale and speed, to generating new compliance learning content even on the fly. It could also bring deeper analytics and insights for learning admins, managers and even learners themselves.
- Integrated experiences
- Compliance training has sat outside the daily flow of work in a system or site that is siloed and standalone for far too long. Solutions like Xoralia are already helping to bring compliance learning right into the way we work by integrating with Microsoft 365. We can expect there to be more integration so learning becomes far more embedded into our daily work and accessible from wherever we happen to be working.
- Skills management
- The need to upskill employees and better manage skills is important to maintain a competitive edge but also get the best out of the coming wave of AI-powered tools. Currently most compliance-based learning sits apart from the way organisations manage skills, but we can expect there to be a closer coupling with the skills are managed and mapped and any related compliance-based training.
- Adaptive and hyper-personalised learning
- The age of AI brings exciting opportunities to transform the learning experience, so it is not only hyper-personalised but even adapt to people’s emerging needs and preferred styles. Adaptive learning as a concept has been around for some time, but up to now it has been difficult to execute. AI-powered adaptive learning has the potential to be a game changer for compliance training.
- Microlearning
- The idea of bite-sized or microlearning is now new. There are obvious benefits making learning more digestible, engaging and practical in a busy working day. There’s definitely more room for bringing more microlearning to compliance-based training which can often be complex and turgid.
How Xoralia enhances compliance training delivery and tracking
Some of the challenges we have covered in this post are being met by future-focused enterprise solutions. For example, Xoralia is not specifically a learning platform, but it actually complements compliance training that is delivered in your Learning Management System (LMS). It enables a smarter approach that overcomes many of the barriers associated with compliance training, particularly relating to delivery and tracking. It achieves this through a number of features:
Linking to policies
Xoralia is a compliance and policy management tool that enables you to deliver compliance learning that alerts employees to policies they must acknowledge and digest, as well as any changes to these policies. With policies more likely to be updated in response to regulatory changes than traditional compliance training, Xoralia can solve some of the problems around compliance learning not being up to date.
Integration with Microsoft 365
Xoralia is completely integrated with SharePoint, Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams so it brings compliance training relating to your policies directly into the flow of work. Everything is accessed through Single Sign-On and from all the systems where employees spend their time. This powerful integration also means there are opportunities to leverage Power BI for reporting, Power Automate for customer workflows and Copilot for AI.
Highly personalised
Xoralia is built to meet the complexity of large enterprises, delivering highly personalised experiences and notifications to every individual, leveraging the targeting and groups you’ve set up in Microsoft 365. It’s a solution that works well across highly diverse workforces.
Compliance support at the point of need
Xoralia enables all your employees to find any compliance-related policies at the point of need so they can actually get the answers to compliance questions at the right time.
Employee attestation
One of the most powerful features of Xoralia is the employee attestation feature where employees must acknowledge they have read and understood a policy. Personalised notifications and granular reporting mean you can also get very high attestation rates and then present this data within your compliance reporting, auditing and certification processes.
Reinforce learning with custom quizzes
Xoralia also includes an additional custom quiz feature that enables you add an additional layer of specific questions about the contents of a policy. This helps to embed and reinforce learning, for example relating to particular change. This feature helps tackle challenges relating to employees forgetting what they have actually been trained on.
Powerful analytics
Xoralia includes all a powerful suite of analytics and appropriate role-based views that can supports both compliance-based reporting but also tracking to support overall improvement of your compliance training approach. The ability to integrate with Power BI also means you can create compliance-based dashboards that bring in a range of complementary numbers.
Audit-ready
Xoralia is audit-ready in terms of analytics and having a comprehensive audit trail of changes in the system.
Why you need a better approach to compliance learning
In a challenging regulatory environment, the need for compliance training is not going away. It’s critical to have a modern approach that is smarter, more flexible and agile, audit-ready and better integrated into everyday work. Solutions like Xoralia can help improve and even transform compliance learning so it is no longer the tedious tick-the-box exercise that everyone wants to avoid. Why not book a free demo?
The story behind Xoralia
Xoralia was built by the team at Content Formula, an intranet and digital workplace consultancy that has built SharePoint intranets for some of the world’s most famous companies. Now, most companies want their policies and procedures on the intranet but they don’t just want to store them there, they also want tools to help better manage them. Over the years we came across just about every single requirement for a policy management system. As this article above explains, there are gaps in SharePoint and so we never built what in our mind was the perfect policy management system.
However, one of our clients challenged us to build something for them that filled all the gaps but still used SharePoint at the back end. We had a great relationship with them and agreed to share the budget to do this, provided we could then market the solution to others. That was in 2019. We’re now on version 3 of Xoralia and the product has grown and evolved a lot.
3 benefits you can expect from Xoralia
Make it easy to find policies
Centralised policy library with powerful search and filtering.
Reduce administrative burden
Automations and notifications so that all policy tasks are carried out on time
Demonstrate compliance and best practice
Sophisticated tracking and dashboards to drive and measure compliance.
And lots more!
What our clients say
AppSource review
A great time saver and tool for document management
Tim Galer
IT Coordinator
Hughes
Ideal partner for our regulated environment
Adam Lythgoe
IT Manager
LifeArc
How to get started with Xoralia
Step 1: request a demo
Fill out our form and we will be in touch to arrange a time. You can even book a time yourself.
Step 2: get a price proposal
If you think Xoralia is for you ask us for a quote. This will set out any options you may have.
Step 3: install and launch
We’ll install Xoralia in your environment (or you can do it yourself). We’ll provide training and support to get you up and running quickly.
Here's what you'll get
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Central policy library
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Search and filter tools
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Mandatory read policies with attestations
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Quizzes
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Notifications and alerts
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Employee dashboard
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Line manager dashboard
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Works on mobile, in Teams and SharePoint
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New policy creation workflows
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Policy update workflows
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Review and approval gates
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Policy version history
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Compliance dashboard
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Audit trail
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Full reporting
And last but not least:
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Professional implementation service and support
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Evergreen software – frequent updates and improvements
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Comes with our "it just works" support warranty – we’ll fix any bugs, often before you even notice
Ready to get started?
Connect with us to streamline your policy management and ensure effortless compliance.
AppSource review
Uniting excellence in integration and features for seamless policy management
Rian Stuart
IT Manager
TwinStream
