Why Is Compliance Training Important

Compliance training is important in an Australian workplace because it is what makes a rule enforceable. An employer that has never told its people where the line sits, and cannot show that it did, is on weak ground when someone crosses it. Training is what turns a written policy into a standard a worker has genuinely been held to.

That gap shows up sharply when an employer needs to act on misconduct. In an unfair dismissal claim the Fair Work Commission weighs whether there was a valid reason relating to the person’s conduct and whether the process that followed was fair. An employer arguing that a worker breached the code of conduct stands in a much better position when it can produce a completion record dated before the incident. Without one, the case rests on the worker having somehow known already, which is far weaker ground to argue from.

The exposure is largest in the areas people assume are common sense:

• Workplace bullying, where what one manager calls robust feedback another calls a pattern of intimidation
• Internet and social media use, where an out of hours post can still land back on the employer
• Alcohol and other drugs, where the rule on a site is nothing like the rule in an office

In each of those, the standard comes from the organisation rather than from instinct, so the course and the policy have to say the same thing. When they contradict each other, the employer has handed the other side its argument.

The Fair Work Commission’s guidance on valid reason relating to capacity or conduct sets out how these matters are weighed. Obligations differ across states and territories and change over time, so treat this as general information rather than legal advice and take proper advice before acting on any individual case. Posts tagged here look at where compliance training earns its keep and what separates training that changes behaviour from training that only fills a spreadsheet. See Sentrient’s compliance training courses for the full library.