True Office Learning Blog

At what point did we enter the big box warehouse store model of compliance training?

It’s a Saturday morning and you’re off to run your errands. On your list? A marinated tri-tip from that warehouse discount store up the road. It’s a crowd pleaser. Except you don’t leave said big box store with just the tri-tip. Rather, your cart is filled to the brim with a thirty pound bag of Twizzlers, a 6-pack of folding chairs in case you have an influx of relatives with nowhere to sit, and a 96-count of paper towels. As the fog wears off and the dust settles, you only realize the extent of your “one item trip” when you get home and have a “what just happened” moment.

Despite all the negative headlines about bad behavior at work, most employees in 2020 understand the importance of respect in their day-to-day jobs, as well as what defines respectful behavior. True Office Learning data confirms this.

When presented with scenarios about workplace safety and violence, employees who have taken our courses made the right decision 95 percent of the time. The same percentage was achieved for scenarios about reporting and non-retaliation.

Intellectual property (IP) theft is expensive for American companies—as much as $600 billion is lost yearly. Although much of this loss can be attributed to foreign counterfeiters and cheap knockoffs, it’s not just fake handbags; some theft involves deep proprietary information, such as trade secrets, non-retail patents, and commercial processes.

And though the bad guys are out there trying to steal this info, some of it isn’t being stolen—it’s being accidentally exposed by rank-and-file employees.

In July 2019, Google agreed to pay $11 million to end a class action lawsuit brought on by 227 individuals who accused the company of age discrimination against job applicants who were over the age of 40. The settlement also requires parent company Alphabet Inc. to train employees and managers about age bias, create a committee on age diversity in recruiting, and ensure that age-related complaints are adequately investigated.

On July 3, 2019, California became the first state to ban discrimination against hairstyles associated with a person’s race. Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Senate Bill No. 188, the Create a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair (CROWN) Act, which amends the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) and the California Education Code. The CROWN Act is effective January 1, 2020, joining similar laws recently passed in New York and New Jersey, and represents a developing trend in preventing workplace discrimination and harassment.

The new decade promises to connect people to the digital world—and each other—more than ever. If 2019 was any indication, those connections will also be more fraught with risk.

Halfway through July 2019, last year was on track to be the worst for data breaches. The numbers for the rest of the year aren’t in yet, but even based on six months of incidents, the reality is daunting: Data privacy is under siege. Compared to the same time period in 2018, the amount of reported breaches had already increased by 54 percent.

A compliance training program can achieve all its goals and meet the standards set forth by various regulatory agencies and industry best practices … but be far from effective. And that seemingly minor gap can lead to major consequences when employees who went through “sufficient” training make the wrong decision in a compliance situation.