Top tips to rethink your employee AML training 📚
Staff AML training is often remembered for one thing: being boring. Here at Alpha AML, we think that’s a big problem.
After all, if employees are not engaged with their part to play in AML processes, then the effectiveness of the organisation’s whole AML programme is called into question.
If your team would literally rather do anything else than AML training, don’t worry, you’re not alone. “I can’t wait to do AML training!” said no-one, ever.
Whether you’re training in-person or online, here are 4 top tips you can use to make training more effective and leave employees feeling good about the experience.
What we’ll cover:
- Key benefits of effective training
- Tip 1: Let employees choose when to train
- Tip 2: Clearly defined learning objectives
- Tip 3: Bring more storytelling to training
- Tip 4: Design training for different learning styles
- Where to get help with staff AML training
Key benefits of effective training
Staff AML training sessions are important for managing risks and for preventing breaches of laws and regulations. Some of the key benefits of delivering effective compliance training sessions include:
- Making sure that employees understand their day-to-day duties
- Protecting your organisation from various operational, legal and reputational risks
- Promoting good compliance culture and a productive work environment
Tip 1: Let employees choose when to train
If you can, give employees the opportunity to choose when and where they complete training. After all, we all have different times of the day when we like to focus and absorb information. Urgent deadlines or work priorities can also impact our ability to focus and lead to rushing or to minds wandering off elsewhere.
One of the inherent benefits of using online training is that by design, it gives employees the freedom to train when and where it suits – be that at work, at home or on a daily commute. An additional benefit is that the content can be referred back to and reviewed again later, if there is any confusion when applying new skills.
If you are delivering training in-person, improve information retention by running training at optimal times of the day. You’re likely to be better at keeping distractions at bay in the morning. You could also consider running multiple sessions over different days and times and allowing employees to pick the session that works best for them.
Tip 2: Clearly defined learning objectives
Don’t underestimate the importance of learning outcomes. Just because you know what your training will teach employees doesn’t mean they will know. If your team don’t know how the training is going to help them, they’re unlikely to engage in it.
Learning outcomes clearly explain what the employee will be able to do or know by the end of the session. What new skills will they have? What new knowledge will they have? As an example, complete this sentence: “By the end of this training session, you will be able to…”
Attention spans are short. So make sure your content is grouped in a progressive and logical manner and is focussed only on your learning outcomes. The ideal length of a training session is the shortest amount of time to get employees from A to B and ensure they comprehend the learning outcomes you have set for the session.
Tip 3: Bring more storytelling to training
When it comes to training, motivation matters. Learning about AML policies and processes on their own can quickly become tedious and overwhelming for employees. The use of case scenarios and real life examples can keep employees very interested in what would usually be considered a pretty boring topic.
Spend a little time recapping why you need to do these AML processes and the role your organisation has in the overall fight against money laundering and financial crime. This helps to build an emotional connection to the topic and motivates employees to do their part.
Tip 4: Design training for different learning styles
Design training with different learning styles and abilities in mind. Consider having a mixture of content styles. For example, incorporating text, pictures or diagrams, videos and interactive elements. It’s not that any one content type is better than the others. The key is to give some thought to how you can use a mixture of content types to keep up engagement, manage any accessibility issues and ensure there is something for everyone.
There are some great free software tools available today such as Canva that allows you to create beautiful presentations and visual content to use in training.
Where to get help with staff AML training
Maybe you’re unsure about who needs training and how to write an AML training plan for your organisation. Or perhaps you’re finding that all the time and energy creating, delivering and recording – not to mention regularly updating training – is just not worth it.
If so, you could always look to find a provider to take the hassle out of AML training, and use the reclaimed time for something else. Here at Alpha AML, we’ve unlocked the formula for engaging employee AML training – that’s why our training is rated average of 4.7/5 from independent end-user review scores. Get in touch with our friendly team to find out more about how we can help you to roll out effective, efficient training to your team instantly.
Thanks for reading! See you next time 😃
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