Background Employees and volunteers did not understand the importance and necessity of mandatory training, resulting in a lack of knowledge to support a safe and secure working environment. ‘Good compliance training should help people understand why it’s so important.’ (Scott, Mannion, Davies et al., 2003).

As an organisation we care about the wellbeing of our staff and volunteers, we recognised that the risk of non-compliance left our employees and volunteers exposed to possible harm and danger. The Learning and Development Team analysed why the completion of mandatory training was failing. The results directed us to change working practices and create a culture where mandatory training is recognised as a benefit and not a negative.

Aims

• Understand why compliance was low

• Learning from previous failures

• Discussion of incidents

• Make mandatory training relevant to role

• Inform the benefits of mandatory training

• Overcome barriers

• Create and maintain a culture change

• Uphold compliance figures.

Methods

• Created policy

• Introduced mandatory training on induction

• Line manager support during induction period

• Line managers supporting annual updates

• Scheduling within rotas for clinical staff

• Learning and Development one–to–one support.

Results June 2015 – demonstrated 30% average compliance rate. June 2018 – demonstrated 92% average compliance rate (this will increase with planned scheduling).

Conclusion As an organisation our goal is to achieve and maintain an average of 95% compliance rate for all mandatory training. The senior management understand the rationale and have endorsed the culture change. This helped with motivating teams, and individuals realising the benefits of mandatory training. With processes that have been implemented, the new scheduling, and continuing to embed the culture of embracing mandatory training, we expect high compliance to become common practice.