6 July 2022

What should be in your mandatory training?

Jonny McAlister

Jonny McAlister

Head of Customer Experience

How to plan a comprehensive mandatory training programme for your organisation.

There is almost unlimited potential for learning and development opportunities across your organisation via a learning management system. But for most organisations, the first priority is to plan and deliver a comprehensive mandatory training programme as the foundation of their LMS content.

This training will be delivered to all of your employees. Sometimes it will be life-saving, sometimes it will be box-ticking. In either scenario, or any point in between, it will probably be the most accessed of all the courses on your LMS.

The purpose of mandatory training can be broadly grouped into:

  • Training that ensures the safety of your employees, visitors and the public.
  • Training that ensures the standard or quality of the work.
  • Training that ensures you meet legal requirements.
  • Training that ensures you maintain compliance levels.

So, what should be in your mandatory training?

Health and safety training

Health and safety training is probably the most important aspect of any training. Whatever line of work you’re in, avoiding unnecessary injury has to be the highest priority. The nature of this training will vary dramatically between different roles and organisations, but the overriding consideration has to be that all employees can perform their duties without endangering themselves or others.

Data protection training

With GDPR and other data protection legislation requiring all of your employees to handle data correctly and legally, it is important that data protection training forms part of your mandatory learning.

Equality and diversity training

With equal opportunity rights enshrined in law in The Equality Act 2010, your employees need to be trained to ensure they handle equality and diversity issues in the correct way and, from a mandatory training standpoint, a legal way.

Fire safety training

You might have considered this within health and safety training, but fire safety has its own legislation and usually its own mandatory training module too. It is a legal requirement that your employees know what to do in the event of a fire at their place of work.

Anti-bribery training

Since the Bribery Act 2010 came into law, anti-bribery training has been another standard feature of mandatory training programmes. Training employees in issues arising from bribery or attempted bribery will help to protect them and your organisation legally and reputationally.

Information security training

While there may be some overlap with data protection training, many organisations also include information security training within their mandatory training, which will normally incorporate cyber security training and training in other ways of protecting the organisation’s data, systems and intellectual property.

Industry-specific mandatory training

It is likely that you will need to deliver training that is specific to your industry. That might be some role-based training that your employees need to complete in order to perform their duties, or it could be training that is needed to meet the requirements of a trade body or industry regulator. It would be impossible to list all the possibilities in this article but a few examples include:

  • Food safety training for the food industry.
  • Child protection and safeguarding training for the education and healthcare industries.
  • Personal safety training for police officers.

Are you planning your mandatory training programme?

We can help with both the sourcing of cost-effective training content and the delivery of your mandatory training. Fill in the form below for a chat about your plans.

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