Compliance Training For Companies in Germany

1. The first step for successful compliance training is accurate preparation and planning. This not only determines the content, but also, primarily, the target group for the training. This can be defined, for example, according to the respective risk group to which the individual employees are to be assigned.
    
2. In order to determine the content of the compliance training, the target group previously determined on the basis of the specific risk situation must be created. A distinction must be made on an individual basis: Sales staff, for example, should - among other things - regularly receive intensive training on the topics of corruption prevention and antitrust law. On the other hand, anti-discrimination training is of particular importance for the Human Resources (HR) staff and data protection training for the marketing department.
    
3. In this respect, those responsible must be trained gradually and repeatedly on all compliance-relevant topics that have been identified as posing increased risk in the respective individual case. It is not possible to provide a general list of trainings to be carried out in this sense; it depends on the respective company structure and the individual risks.

The execution of compliance training plays an essential role within the framework of the implementation and further development of compliance management systems. A responsibility to (regularly) train employees can primarily be derived from the existing supervisory duties, compliance with which is part of the legal obligation. Adherence to compliance regulations requires an understanding of the relevant regulations by all employees involved in the respective area and thus illustrates the importance of compliance training.

Compliance training must not only be designed for the specific target group, but the content must also consistently be communicated in an appropriate manner. Effective training must be as interactive as it is informative. If the employees to be trained are involved in the training, they can contribute personally - for instance, through examples from their practice -, and if the training content is presented in an exciting way with concrete examples, the training will be a much greater success in the end than an exclusively theoretical seminar.

In addition to conveying and explaining basic information on the relevant topics, concrete questions or cases must be incorporated, which are then worked on interactively.