I came to our our London office by bicycle, as all our eLearning team members (!). The buses and delivery lorries safely passed me without knowing it I was in the hands of their employers compliance; many of which specifically cover bike awareness training.

At lunch most of us like to buy something prepared freshly and locally - our basic expectations are that staff receive on going food handling and environmental health training.

This evening, we may respond to a letter from our bank, our insurers or pension providers; we need to know that the person dealing with these vital matters are trained and approved to give their advice.

What happens if this breaks down, and if so just how far do the implications reach?

For example the missold Payment Protection Insurance issue has cost (so far!) over £9 billion, to put some of that into context here, are some reported figures from one of the largest high street banks; they have had to put aside £6.7bn so far to compensate customers.

By the end of 2012 £4.3bn has been spent on settling claims; in the last quarter of 2012, £200m a month was spent settling complaints; more than 6,000 employees are allocated to processing PPI claims; in February the bank was fined £4.3 million for delaying payments to 140,000 customers(!).

As you can see the consequences are real; they are costly and can be very, very serious; not only in terms of costs, lengthy legal claims, demotivated staff but ultimately your company being shut and your management team potentially being held legally accountable for the actions of your company.

To improve your organisation's compliance make sure the you are partnering with a company which is working with a wide range of customers to provide statutory, mandatory and compliance training, assessment and tracking.The company which is able to work with your Subject Matter Experts or draw on international network of market leading SME's to devise your compliance programme that will fulfil the requirements of even the most rigorous assessors.

Using integrated LMS and multiple learning objects which can be hosted and made available to all areas of your organisation, together with assessments, guidance notes, communities of good practice and virtual learning.

Finally the company which works with you to ensure that your reporting outlines all the KPI's you need both internally and externally to demonstrate skills, knowledge and expertise in multiple areas across your organisation.

Compliance and measuring the skills of staff is vital; for your teams confidence, your customers experience and, in turn the success or failure of your company. More importantly hard factual evidence that training has been completed and benchmarks have been reached gives the organisation, management and customers confidence in the ability to do the job, be it driving a bus, serving fast food or.... selling financial products.

Duncan Brown, Director at training, technology and resourcing companies iTrain, Stratus and Kukhule, Duncan has worked in L&D for 18 years in the US and UK

First published on Stratus Blog