Survey: How employees feel about mandatory compliance training
August 2, 2026 · Research · 7 min read
Mandatory compliance training is one of the most common forms of workplace learning, but completion alone says very little about whether employees found it useful or whether it changed behaviour.
Available survey evidence points to a consistent problem: many organisations can show that training was assigned and completed, yet far fewer can show that employees found it memorable, relevant, or useful in real workplace decisions. The most useful question is therefore not simply whether employees completed compliance training, but whether the training helped them recognise risks, understand expectations, and know what to do when something goes wrong.
23%
of employees who had taken ethics or compliance training in the previous year rated it excellent in Gallup research.
17%
rated web-only compliance training excellent, compared with 30% for in-person and 28% for blended delivery.
1 in 10
strongly agreed that the training changed how they did their work.
84%
of employees who rated their training excellent strongly agreed that they knew where to report unethical or dishonest behaviour.
Source: Gallup, 4 Hard Truths About Ethics and Compliance Training. Gallup published these findings in 2021. They describe employee perceptions and associations, not a MATSH survey and not proof that one training format causes every outcome.
What Employees Say About Compliance Training
Gallup’s findings are useful because they distinguish between merely attending training and experiencing training that employees consider excellent. Among employees who had participated in compliance or ethics training in the previous 12 months, fewer than one in four rated the experience excellent.
Delivery format also mattered in the survey. Fifty-two percent said their recent training had been delivered digitally or online, 25% described a blended experience, and 23% had received fully in-person training. Only 17% of employees who received web-only training rated it excellent, compared with 30% for fully in-person training and 28% for blended delivery.
That does not mean online compliance training is inherently ineffective. It does mean organisations should be cautious about assuming that moving a policy into an e-learning module automatically creates a good learning experience. Relevance, interaction, manager reinforcement and the ability to connect policy with real decisions all matter.
The Harder Test: Does Training Change Behaviour?
The most important finding is not a satisfaction score. It is the gap between completion and application.
Gallup reported that only one in ten participants strongly agreed they had learned something that changed how they did their work. Only 11% strongly agreed that their coworkers applied what they learned in compliance training every day.
This is a useful warning for L&D, HR and compliance teams. A 100% completion rate can coexist with weak transfer to the job. Completion is an administration metric. Behaviour change is an outcome metric.
Quality Appears to Matter More Than the Checkbox
Employees who rated their compliance training excellent also reported much stronger confidence around speaking up. Gallup found that 84% of this group strongly agreed that they knew where to share a concern about unethical or dishonest behaviour. Seventy-two percent strongly agreed that their organisation created an environment where people could speak up about unethical behaviour.
These are associations, so they should not be read as proof that excellent training alone created the culture. Strong organisations may also have better managers, clearer reporting systems and stronger ethics programmes. The practical lesson is still important: training quality should be evaluated alongside the wider compliance environment, not treated as an isolated annual event.
What Compliance Teams Say in More Recent Surveys
Employee perception is only one side of the picture. More recent surveys of compliance professionals show that programme owners are also under pressure to make training more relevant, easier to update and less time-consuming.
A 2025 survey by Ethena and Compliance Week collected responses from 134 compliance, risk and HR professionals. One-third said their organisation’s compliance training took employees five hours or more to complete. Forty-six percent reported pressure to reduce training time. Eighty-one percent said they supplemented e-learning with live training, while 59% said their training was accessible on mobile devices.
The same survey also highlighted a content-maintenance problem. When organisations needed a vendor to customise a course, 34% said changes took about a week and 32% said they took multiple weeks. For fast-changing regulatory topics, that delay can make training less responsive to the risks employees are actually facing.
Sources: Ethena, 2025 State of Compliance Training Programs and Compliance Week’s survey coverage.
Measurement Is Still a Weak Point
The 2025 OCEG survey on compliance and ethics training adds another important perspective. Based on 347 qualified responses from professionals involved in training design, delivery or oversight, OCEG concluded that organisations still tend to measure training activity more often than training impact.
That distinction matters. Useful compliance measurement should go beyond assigned courses and completion rates. Depending on the risk, organisations can examine knowledge checks, confidence in reporting channels, recurring policy questions, hotline trends, control failures, manager observations and evidence of behaviour in the workplace.
Source: OCEG, 2025 Survey on the State of Compliance & Ethics Training.
What Better Mandatory Training Looks Like
1. Make the risk specific
Employees need to recognise the decisions they are likely to face, not memorise abstract policy language. Scenarios should reflect the employee’s role, authority and actual exposure to risk.
2. Use online delivery where it helps, not as the whole strategy
Digital delivery is efficient for scale, consistency and tracking. It becomes stronger when organisations add manager discussion, live practice, role-specific examples or follow-up for higher-risk topics.
3. Keep content current
Compliance training loses credibility quickly when policies, examples or legal references lag behind current practice. Programme owners need a process for reviewing and updating content when regulations, internal controls or risk patterns change.
4. Measure application, not only completion
Completion should remain an operational requirement where appropriate, but it should not be mistaken for evidence of effectiveness. Define in advance what employees should know or do differently and choose measurements that can test that outcome.
5. Connect training to the speak-up system
Employees should leave training knowing where to ask questions, where to report concerns, and what happens after a report is made. Ethics training works inside a wider system of leadership, reporting channels, investigation and accountability.
What the Evidence Does Not Prove
These surveys should not be combined into a single universal effectiveness score. Gallup surveyed employees about their experience of training. Ethena and Compliance Week surveyed compliance, risk and HR professionals about programme operations. OCEG surveyed professionals responsible for compliance and ethics training. They answer related but different questions.
The evidence also does not justify claims that a particular delivery format guarantees ethical behaviour, retention, revenue or a specific return on investment. Those outcomes depend on the organisation, risk, training design, management environment and the quality of the wider compliance programme.
Practical Questions for an Internal Review
- What proportion of employees say the training was relevant to decisions they actually make?
- Can employees explain where to raise a concern and what protection or process follows?
- Which risks require live practice or manager discussion rather than a self-paced module alone?
- How quickly can the programme be updated after a policy or regulatory change?
- What behaviour or control indicator will tell us whether the training worked?
- Are we measuring activity because it is easy to count, or impact because it matters?
Build Internal Training Capability
Compliance teams often know the policy but still need strong facilitation, scenario design and evaluation skills to turn that knowledge into learning that employees can use. MATSH’s Train the Trainer Course focuses on practical facilitation and transfer, while the Measuring Training Impact and ROI Course covers evaluation beyond satisfaction and completion metrics.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do employees dislike all mandatory compliance training?
No. The Gallup evidence does not show that employees reject compliance training as a category. It shows that relatively few employees rated the training they received as excellent, and that ratings differed by delivery format. The useful question is how to make required training relevant, memorable and connected to real work.
Is online compliance training ineffective?
No. Gallup found lower excellent ratings for web-only training than for in-person or blended delivery in its survey. That is not evidence that every online programme fails. Online delivery can be effective when the content is relevant, well designed, current and reinforced in the workplace.
What should organisations measure?
Start with completion where it is required, then add measures that reflect the purpose of the programme. Examples include knowledge, confidence in reporting channels, behaviour in realistic scenarios, recurring errors, control failures, reporting patterns and manager observations.
How often should compliance training be updated?
There is no universal schedule for every topic. Review should be triggered by regulatory changes, policy changes, incidents, audit findings, new risks and evidence that employees are confused about a requirement. High-risk content may need more frequent review than stable foundational topics.
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