I need to be clear from the get-go – I’m not talking about sashaying down the runway at Paris Fashion Week, I’m talking about compliance training. Please, hear me out; this isn’t as tenuous as it sounds. In much the same way as catwalks influence what we wear, the behaviours modelled by leadership teams affect the culture of an entire organisation. And when it comes to compliance training, you really don’t want to get it wrong.
Every leader has a choice: ‘do as I say’ or ‘do as I do’. If leaders complete their mandatory training quickly, talk about it openly, and are seen to act on what they’ve learned, it sends a clear message to their people: this matters. In much the same way, if they skip, delay, or belittle it, the message is just as clear: don’t bother.
What happens when leaders fail to practise what they preach
Most people in leadership find themselves increasingly time-poor, so it’s easy to see why compliance training gets put on the back burner. The good intentions are there but there aren’t enough hours in the day. However, it’s a risky strategy. Here’s what tends to happen:
Training loses credibility. When senior managers miss deadlines but still chase their teams to complete their own GDPR or anti-bribery training, the message is clear: the rules don’t apply equally. This feels like hypocrisy – and once that happens, engagement drops. Fast.
Mandatory becomes optional. If the rules don’t apply to everyone, they stop applying at all. People stop reporting issues, start taking shortcuts, and tune out of policies that aren’t seen as a priority.
Every time a leader ignores a policy, it chips away at organisational credibility. Consider the thorny issue of sexual harassment in the workplace. If employees see senior figures dismissing inappropriate behaviour or protecting high performers, it’ll impact psychological safety and your people will likely stop reporting issues entirely.
Likewise, if leaders ignore health and safety procedures, teams will assume shortcuts are acceptable: if they’re not doing it, why should anyone else bother? That’s not a failure of training; it’s a failure of example. It only takes one case of “the rules don’t apply to me” for doubt and apathy to set in, leaving the company at risk of anything from accidents and injuries to reputational damage and financial penalties.
All this only adds to HR’s already heavy workload. If you’re seeing these behaviours in your business, maybe it’s time to nip things in the bud?
Why a ‘do as I do’ approach is much better
Now, let’s paint a very different picture. Imagine your leadership team isn’t just completing compliance training ahead of time, they’re also sharing their learnings with the wider company and having conversations about why all this matters. When this happens:
The message hits differently. When leaders complete their training before anyone else, or share key takeaways from courses, employees notice. Compliance stops feeling so much like a hierarchical imposition – it becomes normal practice.
Employee behaviour changes. When people see the commitment senior colleagues are making to the business, they’re more likely to match it.
All this means the HR team can finally focus on doing its job – not spending its time policing compliance programmes.
How to build a credible compliance culture within your organisation
Everything starts with the leadership team: small acts of visibility can have a profound difference.
Make leaders go first. Set a new standard: ensure all senior staff complete any mandatory compliance training before a wider rollout. This sends a signal of priority and accountability.
Keep leaders’ achievements visible. Use your LMS, company communications channels (Slack, Teams, email – whatever you use) to share updates on leadership course completions. You could even add their names to your LMS leaderboard for increased credibility!
Build compliance into leadership KPIs. Tying compliance completion into leadership objectives will help make it part of what ‘good leadership’ looks like in your organisation.
Use training as an opportunity for storytelling. Ask leaders to share one reflection after completing their training – just a couple of sentences about what they’ve learned or changed as a result. This helps root it in reality.
When leaders model the behaviours they want to see in their workforce, it drives engagement. In turn, this helps protect the company’s reputation, resulting in a safer, more compliant and ethical workplace, where everyone knows what’s tolerated and – perhaps more importantly – what’s not.
Not such a tenuous link after all: good models make great compliance
In the end, every leader has a modelling career – whether they like it or not.
Those who do their compliance training demonstrate integrity, accountability and fairness. Those who don’t send out a message that it’s not worth the bother. And that’s a risk no organisation can afford.
Making training simpler
Staff Skills academy+ is an online training platform containing 700+ CPD-certified courses. Alongside compliance and mandatory training, you’ll find a wide range of professional development, wellbeing and fitness resources – all on a single LMS. There’s also single sign-on, comprehensive tracking, reporting and analytics. We’ll even digitise all your paper-based onboarding and induction processes, so they’re more easily accessible too.
Everything has been designed to save busy HR teams valuable time and energy, and all at an affordable price. If you’d like to find out more, we’d love to hear from you. Why not book an obligation-free demo with us today?
