How to boost compliance training completion rates

Compliance training is one of the fundamental planks for building an ethical and compliant organization. If employees don’t understand what's expected of them in today’s increasingly risk-filled business world, they can put the entire company in jeopardy — even without intending to do so. Worldwide regulations frequently overlap, and are getting more and more complex.

Training is the front line of defense to ensure that employees can recognize ethics and compliance risks and know how to handle them properly. An effective compliance training program requires significant effort, often involving the following workflows:

Implementing an LMS or provider platform
Developing content relevant to company operations
Setting up training schedules
Identifying who should be trained on what
Customizing content
Rolling out courses

Despite the efforts by corporate teams responsible for ethics and compliance training, persuading employees to take and complete the training is a recurring pain point: many employees fail to take their assigned courses on time — or at all. It can be a bit like cooking a large dinner for guests that don’t bother to show up.

Teams faced with completion rates often resort to nagging employees repeatedly to take the assigned training. This doesn't work. Aside from reminding employees of their parents, it puts the burden of driving completions on the compliance team, rather than where it belongs: on the employees and their managers. Compliance is everyone’s responsibility, and learning to identify and avoid risks is just par for the course.

So what are some creative (and effective) ways to improve training completion rates and enforce consequences? Let's examine three of my favorite tried-and-true methods.

1. Create some healthy competition

Nobody likes being in last place, especially when everyone can see it. One of the simplest ways to drive training completions is to make it a competition between business units, teams, or even locations.

Try this:

Leaderboards & scorecards: Share monthly completion rates on your company’s internal site or newsletter. Make it visual, too: charts showing how different teams stack up can light a fire under the laggards.
Manager nudges: Give managers a pre-written email they can send to their teams encouraging them to improve their scores. People are more likely to take action when their boss is paying attention.
Recognition & rewards: Even a small reward, like a shoutout in a company-wide meeting or a “Training Champion” badge, can be enough to motivate teams to take action.

A major financial company takes this approach to the next level by providing a monthly scorecard to its business unit leaders. These scorecards show training completions, along with other culture-related metrics, making it clear who’s ahead and who needs to catch up. The result? Higher completion rates across the board.

2. Link training completion to performance and bonuses

If you want people to take compliance training seriously, tie it to something they care about: their performance evaluations and bonuses.

The Department of Justice’s Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs (ECCP) suggests incorporating ethics and compliance into performance reviews and bonus criteria. The DOJ isn’t just looking at whether companies offer compliance training, but rather how well companies integrate compliance into performance management.

How companies can implement DOJ guidance

Make training completion a performance metric: Some companies have structured their performance reviews in a way that makes compliance training a non-negotiable. If an employee hasn’t completed their training, they cannot receive a fully satisfactory performance rating — meaning no bonus, no raise, no promotion.
Require proof of completion for bonuses: Many organizations, especially in the government contracting sector, require employees to attach proof of training completion (like a certificate) to their signed performance review. If they don’t? Their bonus or salary increase won’t be processed.
Hold managers accountable, too: It’s not just about individual employees. Managers should be responsible for ensuring their teams complete training. If a leader fails to get their team to 100% completion, that should be reflected in their own performance review.

One Midwestern infrastructure supplier has implemented a system where failure to complete compliance training disqualifies employees from receiving performance-based bonuses. The policy is straightforward: no training, no bonus. As a result, compliance training rates in their organization consistently hover around 98-100%.

While this approach may seem strict, it’s effective. When there are tangible consequences, employees take compliance training seriously.

3. Involve the C-suite

Tone at the top matters. If leadership treats compliance training as a box-checking exercise, employees will too. But when the CEO and senior leadership actively encourage training completion, it sends a powerful message to your workforce: "This is important."

How leadership can drive training completion rates

Internal communication: A simple message from the CEO on internal communication channels (email, Slack, MS Teams, ZoomChat, or all-hands) urging employees to complete their training by a specific deadline can make a huge difference. Employees take compliance more seriously when they know leadership is paying attention.
Board and executive buy-in: The ethics and compliance team should regularly brief the Board and C-suite on training completion stats. Highlight which teams are leading and which are falling behind. When executives see this data, they can apply pressure where it’s needed.
Follow-up: If all else fails, a direct nudge from the top to those falling behind can work wonders. No one wants to be on the receiving end of that email.

Bonus tip: make training less painful with Ethena

While these strategies can drive training completions, there's no ignoring the elephant in the room: if compliance training is boring, employees will keep putting it off.

So, take a critical look at your training. Is it engaging? Interactive? Relevant?

What makes good compliance training?

No lengthy PowerPoints: No one wants to sit through another 90-minute slide deck. Instead, look for training that includes short, digestible microlearning modules. Check out Ethena's modular training library of over 150 courses!
Scenario-based: The training should include real-world case studies and interactive decision-making exercises that make it more engaging. Ethena's in-house production team can build custom videos that perfectly align your training with your unique work environment.
Humor and storytelling: Who says compliance has to be dry? Adding relatable scenarios and a touch of humor can make training more memorable.

Companies that invest in better compliance training content often see higher engagement — and, in turn, higher completion rates.

The bottom line

By incorporating friendly competition, aligning incentives with training completion, and leveraging leadership influence, companies can shift the burden away from compliance teams and onto employees and their managers, where it belongs. A well-executed compliance training program doesn’t just protect the company; it helps build a stronger, more ethical workplace where employees understand the risks they face and how to navigate them.