Year-End Compliance Checklist: Setting the Stage for a Successful 2025

The cost of non-compliance can be devastating, with Globalscape reporting an average cost of $14.82 million for an organization with non-compliance problems. As we approach the end of 2024, there are numerous housekeeping and planning activities that savvy business leaders ought to complete to avoid a huge headache and even bigger costs. This includes ensuring that your employees are all where they need to be in terms of their compliance training completions. Finding time to perform these kinds of audits may feel grueling, but they should be a standard part of your annual rhythm. Such coordinated efforts will help you improve your business outcomes – and compliance – ensuring your people are ready for whatever the year has in store.

Close Out 2024 with Intention

The completion of required courses is the foundation of knowledge and efficient communication that you can leverage to keep your workplaces, schools, and communities safer, more inclusive, and more ethical. This is also smart from a financial perspective, considering the astronomical costs associated with non-compliance issues. In fact, according to a benchmark study conducted by Globalscape, the average cost of non-compliance issues to organizations is $14.82 million. This is thanks to business disruption, decreased productivity, fees, settlement costs, and more.

Ultimately, that same study shows that conducting compliance audits helps reduce your overall compliance costs. Here are a handful of popular compliance topics and related courses at Vector that can help improve your compliance, cultivate a better working relationship with your employees, and create an environment where everyone can thrive.

Popular Compliance Topics and Related Courses

Environmental Safety

• Environmental Awareness: Maintaining a healthy environment is essential for a healthy life. In an environmentally aware organization, understanding how your job impacts the environment is crucial. This environmental awareness course provides foundational knowledge of basic environmental regulations and emphasizes the importance of being a responsible environmental steward. The course covers essential topics such as resource conservation, waste reduction, proper waste disposal methods, and preparation for environmental incidents.
• Heat Illness Prevention: This course is designed for any employee that may be exposed to conditions of excessive heat. The course reviews the causes of heat illness, the symptoms and effects of heat illness, how to minimize and treat heat illness on the job, and how to recognize and treat the more dangerous outcome of heat overexposure (heat stroke).

Transportation Safety

• Alert Driving: Understanding the importance of being an alert driver can make all the difference between life and death. This course teaches learners how to stay vigilant on the road, anticipate potential hazards, and respond effectively to avoid accidents. It covers topics including maintaining safe speeds, the risks of driving under the influence, and strategies for increasing your reaction time using the two-second rule. Mastering alert driving is crucial for enhancing your overall defensive driving skills.
• Backing Up Safely: How often do you need to back up your vehicle? If you are like most drivers, you spend less time backing up than driving forward. However, backing up is one of the more risky maneuvers you do throughout the day, especially in crowded parking lots or restricted spaces. This course will identify potential hazards for backing up and best practices for avoiding those hazards.

Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Courses

• Discrimination in the Workplace: Every year, 100,000 charges of workplace discrimination are filed. Workplace discrimination is the unfair or illegal treatment of a person based on their race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability. Discrimination among employees can contribute to a hostile work environment and negative company culture, leading to lower efficiency and high employee turnover. This course raises awareness by discussing the civil rights laws protecting people from discrimination, types of discrimination, and how discrimination can affect the workplace.
• Anti-Harassment Training for All Employees: Through real-life scenarios, this interactive course illustrates how to recognize inappropriate behavior such as sexual harassment, bullying, and gender discrimination, as well as providing learners with acceptable ways to address and report unwelcome conduct. This training, combined with your company’s policies and commitment to combat workplace harassment, will help foster an atmosphere of respect.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Courses

• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Awareness for All Employees: Today’s workplaces are made up of people of diverse backgrounds and experiences. Different beliefs and values, as well as the distinct ways we express our individuality, encourage new ideas and perspectives that can help grow and strengthen our businesses. When employees respect the unique qualities each person brings to work, the entire organization benefits. This course is designed to give an overview of the fundamental aspects of diversity, equity, and inclusion and how they bring value to the workplace. Topics covered include how certain policies and practices have historically undermined these concepts, how discrimination and harassment continue to play a part in today’s professional landscape, challenges faced by those in the LGBTQ community, and implicit bias and the destructiveness of microaggressions.
• Disabilities in the Workplace: A disability is defined as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of a person’s major life activities. Employers often struggle with how to respond and cope with workers with disabilities, so learning the basics about etiquette, as well as rights and responsibilities as outlined by the American Disabilities Act (ADA), can make the situation better for everyone. This course describes the ADA, the benefits of hiring workers with disabilities, types of disabilities, reasonable accommodations, interviewing and etiquette, as well as how to prevent and deal with discrimination.

Tech Compliance Courses

• Cybersecurity Awareness for Employees: From hotspots to password management, this interactive online course walks you through end-user best practices. It also discusses the importance of administrative rights, defines types of physical attacks against privacy, and recommends ways to protect against malwares and viruses.
• Internet and Computer Policy: As the internet grows, a touch of the screen can take you to anywhere. Using application exercises and a rich multimedia process, this course takes you through basic internet protocol to keep you and your employees safe and focused.

Ethics Courses

• Business Ethics Quick Refresh: Designed as a review to supplement a comprehensive business ethics course, this course covers the definition of ethics and an understanding of how trust functions in our social interactions. You will also look at some of the thinking errors associated with unethical behavior. From there, you will find brief descriptions on the different rules defining business ethics.
• Understanding Business Ethics: This course covers the important principles of ethics as they relate to your business and professional environment. Understanding and practicing ethical behavior plays a critical role in your professional career. Your ethical reputation is important because it sets the tone for how your actions are perceived by colleagues, customers, and clients. Ethical behavior can make the difference when you or your company are in line for a new contract or business opportunity. Perhaps more importantly, there are often very strict laws and rules of conduct established by the authorities that you’re obligated to follow. When you fail to meet these laws, the consequences can be severe both for you and your employer or company.

Physical Safety Courses

• Active Shooter and Other Acts of Targeted Violence: Knowing how to react in a targeted violence situation can increase your chances of survival. This interactive online course will teach you about various types of targeted violence. You will learn how to improve your chances of survival by preparing for targeted violence. You will also learn about the precautions for targeted violence and the indicators and traits to look out for so you’ll know what to expect in various situations. Finally, you’ll be trained on how to react to targeted violence by identifying roles and responsibilities and relaying communication effectively so that you can calmly interact with first responders.
• Protecting Your Team Against Workplace Violence: Workplace violence can occur at or outside the workplace, can range from threats and verbal abuse to physical assaults and homicide, and is one of the leading causes of job-related deaths. It can occur at any time and be perpetrated by anyone you may come in contact with at work. This interactive, online course will present the factors that contribute to violence in the workplace and how to spot problem behavior and prevent violent incidents.

Ensure that 2025 is Your Best Year Yet

When you take the time to cover important compliance topics, you position your company and your team to perform at a higher level in the future, while also avoiding the devastating impact of non-compliance costs. At Vector, this means taking a hard look at where we are meeting our compliance requirements, and also understanding where we may be missing the mark – particularly before a big deadline gets overlooked.