Mandatory learning plays an important role within organisations when it comes to managing regulatory, compliance and organisational risk. But there’s a problem with treating completion as proof that learning has worked.
Someone can complete a course, pass a test and appear fully compliant, while still struggling to remember what they learned, apply it correctly or make the right decision when it matters.
So, how do you know whether your mandatory learning is actually working?
That was the question at the heart of our recent webinar, which brought together perspectives from applied neuroscience, compliance and workplace learning. Here are the key takeaways.
1. Completion doesn’t prove competence
A 100% completion rate gives you evidence that people completed the training. It doesn’t necessarily tell you whether they retained the information or can apply it in their role.
The same applies to end-of-course assessments. Passing a test demonstrates that someone could recall enough information at that moment. However, it doesn’t prove they’ll remember it six months later or know what to do when faced with a real-world situation. The real test of learning is what happens afterwards.
Are people making better decisions? Are avoidable mistakes reducing? Are employees applying policies and processes correctly? Are you seeing improvements in the outcomes the training was intended to influence?
These are much more meaningful indicators of whether learning is working.
2. Learning needs to continue beyond the course
Our brains are designed to forget information that isn’t reinforced or used. That means even well-designed mandatory learning can lose its impact if employees are expected to remember everything from a single annual training session.
Reinforcement doesn’t have to mean repeating the entire course. Short questions, scenarios, reminders, discussions and opportunities to practise – these are all tactics that can help reactivate important knowledge and strengthen the connection between learning and day-to-day work.
3. Relevance makes learning more likely to stick
People are more likely to engage with learning when they understand why it matters to them and the organisation.
Abstract rules can be difficult to translate into action. Real examples, realistic scenarios and stories about what can happen when something goes wrong make the consequences more tangible. This is particularly important for compliance and risk-related learning.
Instead of simply telling people what they should or shouldn’t do, organisations can help employees understand the situation they might encounter, why the right response matters and what good behaviour looks like in practice.
As Professor Tricia Riddell put it in the webinar: “Tell me why I’m doing it, don’t just tell me to do it.”
4. Practice turns knowledge into behaviour
Knowing something and being able to use it are different things. For complex or infrequent situations, people may need repeated opportunities to practise making the right decision before the response becomes more automatic.
That might involve realistic scenarios, peer discussion, reflection or short opportunities to apply knowledge in the flow of work. This also means giving people the time and space to think about what they’ve learned.
5. Mistakes can tell you more than a green dashboard
Completion rates and test scores can make a learning dashboard look reassuringly green. But what happens when the same mistakes keep appearing?
Repeated errors, complaints, incidents or gaps in competence can provide valuable evidence that something needs to change.
That doesn’t automatically mean the training itself is the problem. The root cause could be unclear processes, workload, management behaviours, team culture, a lack of opportunity to practise or conflicting information.
The important thing is to investigate what’s happening rather than assuming that completed training means the problem has been solved. Mistakes and near misses can actually become useful learning data if people feel safe enough to surface them.
6. Managers have an important role in sustaining learning
Despite what the name might suggest, learning doesn’t belong to L&D alone.
Managers are often closest to the point where learning either becomes behaviour or disappears. They can spot where employees are struggling, share examples from day-to-day work, encourage discussion and reinforce the behaviours the organisation needs.
This is something Dr Nigel Paine brought up during the webinar. “I think it takes a village to help someone learn. It’s not down to the individual. Managers play a much bigger role.”
They can also provide a valuable temperature check. As Nigel explained: “I always brought the managers in play and said, you are the critical people here. You’ve got to help this. This is what you can do to make this successful.
“Tell [your employees] what you think is rumbling around, what’s working, what isn’t and share insights because real-world examples are very helpful.”
This creates a feedback loop between learning and work, rather than treating training as something that happens separately from it.
7. Culture can make or break competence
Even effective training can struggle to create lasting behaviour change if the surrounding culture doesn’t support it. A culture of continuous learning makes it easier to surface problems, share experiences and learn from what happens in real work.
That means compliance and L&D need to work alongside the wider organisation (including managers and operational teams) rather than treating learning as something that sits within one function.
It’s time to move beyond the annual training cycle
None of this means mandatory learning is no longer necessary. For many organisations, particularly those operating in regulated environments, formal mandatory training will and should continue to play an important role.
The opportunity is to build on it. Instead of viewing mandatory learning as a once-a-year event, organisations can treat it as the starting point for continuous competence.
So instead of asking Have our employees completed their training?, you can start questioning:
- Do they remember it?
- Can they apply it?
- Are they making the right decisions when it matters?
- What are mistakes and gaps telling us?
- And how do we know whether the learning is still working months later?
Ultimately, the goal of mandatory learning isn’t simply to demonstrate that training happened. It’s to help people consistently do the right thing when it matters and give organisations better evidence that they can.
Ready to move beyond completion rates and build lasting employee competence? Download our practical guide to redesigning mandatory learning for the modern workforce. You’ll discover how to personalise learning, reinforce knowledge and evidence competence throughout the year – without compromising compliance or adding unnecessary training burden.