Most compliance failures don’t stem from a lack of knowledge, but from behaviour gaps.
For this reason, a thorough understanding of the different types of compliance training – and how they’ll benefit your organisation is paramount.
But before we dive into the benefits and so much more of workplace compliance training, let us address something important.
What Are the Most Common Types of Employer and Employee Compliance Training?
It’s a common question. And an important one that organisations must ask to ensure compliance and risk mitigation in an increasingly complex regulatory landscape.
In 2026, the primary types of compliance training include workplace health and safety, cybersecurity awareness, anti-harassment, data protection, DEI code of conduct, anti-bribery, industry-specific regulatory training, environmental compliance, and – increasingly in 2026 – AI ethics.
Organisations that invest in consistent, regulatory workplace training tailored to sector and roles maintain safe and effective operations, comply with all legal requirements and cultivate a robust operational culture.
However, there’s a big caveat – compliance training is hardly inspirational.
Employees complete it. They don’t absorb it. This disconnect can result in foundational cracks. Why? Employees may not remember, or even understand, the importance of specific issues. And incidents happen irrespective of an investment in L&D training.
The problem isn’t compliance itself, it’s how it’s delivered.
Generic content, outdated formats and a “box-ticking” ethos mean that compliance training fails to change behaviours.
In this guide, we’ll discuss a range of compliance training topics for 2026, including training examples and how to effectively roll out compliance training so that L&D and HR professionals can ensure their 2026 training will have a big impact.
Why Compliance Training is Changing in 2026
In 2026, employer and employee compliance training is rapidly shifting.
Driven by new technologies, shifting work patterns and rising regulatory expectations. What was once a straightforward activity, one that organisations encouraged people to tick a box or two, has evolved to deliver real impact.
Let’s have a look at how compliance training is changing below.
AI is Creating New Compliance Obligations
The introduction of the EU AI Act is forcing organisations to formally train employees on how AI systems are used, monitored and governed. AI ethics is no longer theoretical – it’s a legal requirement in many contexts, complete with clear explanations around transparency, bias and accountability.
Remote and Hybrid Work Has Changed the Risk Landscape
With roughly 40-46% of people in the UK engaging in either remote or hybrid working, risk exposure has expanded. Cybersecurity threats increase when employees operate outside secure office networks.
Digital environments also affect workplace conduct, bringing new issues to the forefront, including harassment, which can take new forms in a digital environment. Therefore, compliance training must now be consistent, accessible and relevant, regardless of location.
Regulatory Pressure is Intensifying
UK bodies, including the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Health and Safety Executive, are increasing enforcement activity. Consumer Duty has raised employee understanding of expectations.
In fact, according to the IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report, the global breach cost reached $4.45 million or £3.36 million, highlighting how high the stakes are.
The Completion Mindset is Being Challenged
Let’s not forget that regulators in 2026 want evidence of comprehension and behavioural change – not just compliance course completion. For L&D teams, this means designing training that genuinely lands and is absorbed organisation-wide.
10 Types of Compliance Training
Now we come to the crux of the article – the 10 types of compliance training.
Below are the most common compliance training examples, why each matters in 2026, what the training is, who it’s critical to, and how often your organisation should run these types of mandatory training.
Workplace Health and Safety
Definition
Workplace health and safety training teaches employees how to identify hazards, follow safety procedures, and prevent accidents or injuries in their work environment. It ensures organisations adhere to the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974 (UK), while protecting the physical and mental wellbeing of their workforce.
Why It Matters in 2026
As enforcement activity from regulators like the Health and Safety Executive continues to rise, so too does increased scrutiny on employer accountability.
Hybrid working and evolving workplaces (e.g. warehouses, remote setups) have also introduced new categories of risk that organisations must actively manage.
What Good Training Looks Like
Strong workplace health and safety training is practical, personalised, and grounded in real-world scenarios employees will face, rather than generic, one-size-fits-all content.
It focuses on behaviour change – using interactive formats, timely refreshers, and measurable outcomes – so organisations can prove not just completion, but real understanding and impact.
Who It’s Most Critical To
Construction, manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, and any frontline or site-based roles. These environments pose, arguably, the greatest health and safety risks.
Typical Frequency
As a baseline, health and safety training should be completed annually. However, should environments change or new members of staff join the business, health and safety training should be completed more frequently.
Cybersecurity Awareness
Definition
Cybersecurity awareness training teaches employees how to recognise, avoid, and respond to common digital threats such as phishing, password hygiene, malware, data handling, and social engineering attacks. This helps reduce human error by building everyday habits that protect systems, data, and organisational security.
Why It Matters in 2026
The continuing evolution of hybrid and remote work means that non-local cyber attacks have become increasingly difficult to mitigate. Yet human error remains a leading cause of breaches.
The IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report (as highlighted above) highlights the financial and reputational damage of not taking appropriate measures to safeguard organisations’ digital ecosystem.
What Good Training Looks Like
Good cybersecurity training is continuous, combining simulated phishing exercises, real-world scenarios, and regular updates on emerging threats to keep employees alert and prepared.
Who It’s Most Critical To
Cybersecurity training is applicable to all employees working within an organisation’s digital ecosystem. However, it’s most critical to finance teams, executives, and IT administrators.
Typical Frequency
Training should be ongoing, supported by structured quarterly modules that reinforce key concepts and update employees on new risks.
This should be complemented by frequent microlearning and simulated exercises to keep awareness high and behaviours sharp throughout the year.
Anti-Harassment and Discrimination
Definition
Anti-harassment in compliance training educates employees on how to recognise, prevent and respond to inappropriate behaviour in the workplace.
This can include discrimination, bullying or harassment in the workplace. Training ensures that employees understand what inappropriate behaviour is to maintain a safe, respectful and acceptable conduct, while emphasising reporting mechanisms, manager responsibilities and bystander intervention.
Why It Matters in 2026
As 2026 – and the future – unfolds, so too will social expectations and legal standards continue to rise.
This is especially wise in remote and hybrid working environments where incidents can occur in different formats. Employers are under increasing pressure to demonstrate proactive prevention, not just reactive management.
What Good Training Looks Like
Interactive training, complete with scenario-based content to promote context and reflect real-world scenarios, including virtual representations and clear reporting pathways, is the surest way to ensure understanding and retention.
Who Its Most Critical To
Everyone – but especially managers responsible for leading teams – can implement training, filtering essential information down through the team.
Typical Frequency
Organisations typically run anti-harassment and discrimination training annually or at least in a longer-than-expected interval. However, key policy updates can prompt employers to increase frequency, something that’s commonplace after, for example, incidents.
Data Protection and Privacy
Definition
Data protection is the practices, policies, and technologies used to safeguard personal or sensitive information from being accessed by people without proper authorisation and potentially misused or lost. Typical legislation organisations must meet include GDPR in the UK and EU, and the CCPA.
Privacy is an individual’s right to control how their personal information is collected, used and shared. Together, data protection and privacy ensure that data is managed responsibly and within all regulations and laws.
Why It Matters in 2026
Regulatory enforcement by bodies like the Information Commissioner’s Office has intensified. Data volumes and sensitivity continue to grow across all sectors.
Organisations that fail to take appropriate measures to safeguard people’s data face significant non-compliance fines under frameworks like UK GDPR.
What Good Training Looks Like
Effective data protection and privacy training is role-specific, offering guidance on, for instance, how to manage data, while demonstrating practical examples of breaches and clear escalation processes.
Moreover, understanding what counts as personal data, lawful processing bias, subject access requests and data breach reporting is integral to employee understanding. Organisations should thoroughly document training completion rates to make sure that they don’t fall foul of regulatory compliance.
Who is it Most Critical To
Pretty much every organisation. Why? Organisations hold significant amounts of personal and private data about who works for them. However, HR, healthcare, and financial sectors and departments will likely hold significant amounts of personal and private data.
Typical Frequency
Most organisations run data protection and privacy training annually, or at longer intervals than other training. However, targeted training refreshers for high-risk roles are commonplace, particularly for high-risk roles.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Definition
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training is a structured program that helps individuals understand and value differences, address biases, and promote fair treatment in the workplace or wider community. It focuses on creating an environment where everyone has equal access to opportunities (equity) and feels respected, supported, and able to contribute fully (inclusion).
Why It Matters in 2026
Today’s modern workplaces are more globally connected (and therefore) diverse than ever before.
Moving from awareness to action is essential to ensuring that organisations demonstrate a DEI-conscious workplace culture. This means that it’s essential for people to understand how to effectively collaborate with people of different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives, cultivating allyship, unconscious bias and promotion practices.
Training helps organisations to address bias, reduce inequality and create fairer opportunities – something that employers are expected to do in 2026. Moreover, DEI is increasingly linked to employer brand, retention and risk management.
Having a strong focus on DEI will build an organisation’s reputation while mitigating potential problems.
What Good Training Looks Like
To educate employers and everyone working for them on everything they need to know about DEI in 2026, they should focus on behaviour-focused sessions that go beyond basic awareness, addressing decision-making, hiring and leadership bias.
Who Its Most Critical To
DEI training is critical to all employees, but especially those in leadership, HR and hiring positions. Actions can then be filtered down to team leaders and employees, ensuring that everyone understands their responsibilities.
Typical Frequency
How organisations run DEI training is up to them; typically, training is run at lengthy intervals (in many cases, annually) and supported by additional initiatives and learning moments should they be needed.
Code of Conduct & Business Ethics
Definition
This is the foundation of your organisation’s culture.
Code of conduct and business ethics is a formal set of guidelines that outline expected behaviours, responsibilities and standards organisations must follow to remain in legal and ethical guidelines. They outline the behavioural standards that employees must follow when working in the organisation.
Business ethics refers to the broader principles and values – such as integrity, fairness and accountability which guide decision making.
Together, they help organisations to ensure employees know how to act lawfully and ethically, reducing risk and promoting a culture of compliance, emphasising conflicts of interest, whistleblowing, acceptable use of company resources, and even gifts.
Why It Matters in 2026
In 2026, stakeholder scrutiny and organisational accountability are high. Ethical failures can quickly become public crises. Regulators and investors increasingly expect organisations to demonstrate evidence of their ethical culture, not just document policies.
What Good Training Looks Like
Impactful training includes ethical dilemmas that reflect day-to-day situations employees may face, ensuring they are clearly aligned with the company’s core values and standards.
Organisations that provide practical guidance on how to respond, including the right time and place to speak up if something feels wrong and encouraging people to access appropriate reporting channels, while reassuring employees that any concerns they have are valid and can be raised in a safe environment, are all integral to successful training.
Who Its Most Critical To
Training is critical to all employees across the organisation, ensuring a consistent understanding of expectations and responsibilities.
Emphasis is placed on senior leaders and customer-facing roles, as they set the tone for ethical behaviour and represent the company directly to clients and stakeholders.
Typical Frequency
Training should be delivered annually to ensure employees remain up to date with expectations and any changes in policies or regulations. Ongoing reinforcement should be provided through regular internal communications and consistent leadership messaging to keep ethical standards top of mind throughout the year.
Anti-bribery and Corruption
Definition
According to the UK Bribery Act 2010, Anti-bribery and corruption training equips employees with the knowledge to identify, avoid, and appropriately respond to bribery, fraud, and other corrupt practices in the workplace.
Training provides practical examples and clear guidance on recognising red flags, what constitutes a bribe, facilitation of payments, third-party risk, hospitality policies, and making ethical decisions. The training also emphasises the importance of timely reporting and following established procedures to ensure compliance.
Why It Matters in 2026
Global enforcement of laws like the UK Bribery Act 2010 remains strict, with severe penalties for violations. International operations and third-party relationships increase exposure to risk.
What Good Training Looks Like
Training that focuses on scenario-based guidance on gifts, hospitality, and interactions with third parties ensures that employees understand what is acceptable in practical, real-world situations.
When this is tailored to reflect the regional risks and legal requirements, helping employers to navigate cultural differences while maintaining compliance and not falling foul of anti-corruption laws, organisations can spearhead success.
Who Its Most Critical To
This training is critical to finance, procurement, and sales teams, as well as organisations operating across international markets where risks may be higher.
Employees in these disciplines are often exposed to third-party interactions and need to make financial decisions, so targeted guidance is beneficial.
Typical Frequency
The training should be delivered annually to ensure all employees maintain a strong understanding of requirements and any updates to policies or regulations.
Additional training should be provided for high-risk roles and markets where employees face greater exposure to compliance and ethical risks.
Industry-specific Regulatory Compliance
Definition
Industry-specific compliance training varies from sector to sector, but primarily focuses on the unique laws, regulations, and professional standards. These include CQC healthcare, SRA legal standards and OFSTED education standards. Organisations must ensure they understand and verify the specific obligations they’re required to comply with.
Regulatory training enables employees to understand the specific requirements they must follow in their roles, including any regulatory bodies or legal obligations that apply and ensures organisations remain compliant while reducing the risk of sector-specific violations and penalties.
Why It Matters in 2026
Regulatory complexity is increasing across sectors, from finance to healthcare. For example, the Financial Conduct Authority continues to raise expectations through frameworks like Consumer Duty.
What Good Training Looks Like
Training content is tailored to specific roles, ensuring employees receive guidance that directly reflects their day-to-day responsibilities and risk exposure. It is also aligned with current regulations and incorporates operational scenarios to make compliance requirements practical and easier to apply across individual roles and workplaces.
Who Its Most Critical To
Highly regulated sectors such as financial services, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and energy, where strict legal and compliance frameworks govern daily operations. Why? Organisations across these sectors must ensure employees understand and adhere to complex regulatory requirements to manage risk and maintain compliance.
Typical Frequency
Industry-specific regulatory compliance training should be delivered at least annually to ensure employees remain current with key compliance requirements and organisational expectations.
In many cases, it may need to be provided more frequently to reflect changes in laws, regulations, or industry standards. This ensures that employees are always working with the most up-to-date guidance and reducing compliance risk.
Environmental & Sustainability Compliance
Definition
Environmental and sustainability compliance training ensures employees understand regulations and practices related to environmental protection and sustainable operations.
Organisations are facing increasing pressure to comply with environmental and sustainability legalities due to legal obligations, including waste management, environmental reporting, net zero commitments and supply chain due diligence.
Why It Matters in 2026
Climate-related regulation and reporting requirements are expanding rapidly, e.g., CSRD in the EU or the UK’s Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR), alongside stakeholder pressure for transparency. Non-compliance can result in financial penalties and reputational damage.
What Good Training Looks Like
Good training provides practical guidance on how employees can reduce their environmental impact in their day-to-day activities at work.
It connects these actions to the organisation’s broader sustainability goals and helps employees understand how their behaviour contributes to overall performance, and highlights relevant reporting obligations, ensuring employees are aware of how environmental data and progress are tracked and disclosed.
Who Its Most Critical To
The training should be conducted annually to ensure employees maintain a consistent understanding of requirements and expectations.
If needed, the training should be routinely updated to reflect any changes in regulations or internal policies, ensuring the information remains accurate and relevant.
AI Ethics
Definition
With AI proliferating at an increased rate, ensuring regulatory compliance has become a pressing issue.
This set of principles, controls and governance requirements that AI systems are used in a lawful, transparent, fair, and accountable way.
It goes beyond voluntary ‘best practice’ and overlaps with binding regulation, particularly as frameworks like the EU AI Act and similar global rules begin to require risk classification, human oversight, and documentation of AI systems.
Compliance means ensuring AI is designed and used in ways that prevent bias, protect privacy and data security, maintain explainability in decisions, and keep humans accountable for outcomes.
Why It Matters
AI ethics matters to organisational compliance in 2026 because it is increasingly embedded in binding regulation, not just voluntary guidance.
Laws such as the EU AI Act, alongside evolving UK and global regulatory frameworks, require organisations to demonstrate control over AI systems, including risk management, transparency, and human oversight.
From a compliance perspective, AI ethics helps organisations reduce legal, financial, and reputational risk by ensuring AI-driven decisions are fair, explainable, and auditable.
It also supports regulatory readiness by enforcing governance over data use, bias mitigation, model monitoring, and third-party AI tools, which regulators now expect to be documented and continuously reviewed.
What Good Training Looks Like
Good AI and ethics training in 2026 is practical, role-specific, and grounded in real-world cases that reflect how employees use AI tools in their work. The training clearly explains regulatory expectations, such as transparency, human oversight, data protection, and bias mitigation.
Additionally, training demonstrates how to apply these principles in everyday decisions, while incorporating scenario-based learning and clear guidance on governance, approved tools, and escalation routes to ensure responsible and compliant AI use.
Who Is It Most Critical To
AI and ethics training is critical to employees who design, develop, deploy, or directly use AI systems in decision-making, such as technology teams, data scientists, and product managers.
The training is also essential to risk, compliance, legal, and internal audits, as they’re responsible for governance, oversight, and regulatory assurance. Additionally, business leaders and high-impact decision-makers need this training to ensure AI is used responsibly and in line with organisational and regulatory expectations.
Typical Frequency
AI and ethics training should typically be conducted annually (at the very least) to ensure employees maintain a consistent understanding of expectations, risks, and governance requirements.
However, because AI technologies and regulations evolve quickly, organisations may well be wise to conduct more frequent updates or refreshers when there are significant changes in laws, tools, or internal policies. High-risk roles or teams working directly with AI systems may also require more regular, targeted training throughout the year.
Which Compliance Training Should You Prioritise First?
Most SMB L&D teams cannot tackle every one of the above types of compliance training simultaneously. Instead, they likely focus on the compliance that’s most relevant to their sector and organisation. Let’s not forget that not all compliance training carries the same level of risk or urgency.
Organisations need a model that allows them to identify which compliance training is most important to them, and the best way to do this is to introduce a risk vs. frequency framework. This might look something like this:
The Risk
If something goes wrong, what’s the potential impact? This could be legal, financial, reputation, or people being harmed.
The Frequency
How often does this happen in the day-to-day activities an organisation engages in?
Simple, right?
Once you know the risk vs. frequency quotient, it’s time to apply it, and the best way to do this is to follow the basic guide below:
High risk and high frequency should always be the top priority. Decide what matters the most to your organisation. This could be data protection if you routinely manage sensitive data.
High risk and low frequency should be the second priority. This applies to an important aspect of your organisation, but it’s not the top priority. This could be anti-bribery for sales teams.
Low risk and high frequency should be the third priority. What presents a low risk, yet addressing it would be beneficial to organisational success. Think automation or acceptable use policies.
Low risk and low frequency should be a priority that doesn’t come at the top of the list, but shouldn’t be ignored. Low-risk and frequency occurrences still present risk. This could include something like incorrectly onboarding someone.
Practical Takeaway
Start with 2-3 priority areas. Trying to tackle everything at once will, ultimately, lead to failure.
Remember that some training is legally required, and this should always be prioritised over compliance training that, although useful to conduct, won’t drastically affect continued operational performance.
Lastly, beyond legal compliance, prioritisation should be driven by your organisation’s risk profile.
From Tick-Box to Behaviour Change: How to Make Different Types of Compliance Training Work
The way organisations have historically viewed compliance is almost counterproductive.
More about ticking a box than ensuring that your organisation doesn’t fall foul of any legal or ethical pitfalls. All this achieves is that employees can click a box; it doesn’t demonstrate that employees fully understand how to remain compliant when performing their role.
Basically, employees click through content, absorbing and remembering what they can, then answer a quick quiz. The problem? Most people will forget 80% of what they’ve absorbed within a week of completing the quiz.
Without continual reinforcement, compliance knowledge will fade rapidly. This presents a risk that organisations can ill afford to take. Understanding how to make compliance training effective is paramount.
Instead of viewing compliance training as merely a box-ticking exercise, something to get out of the way, try thinking of it as a continual learning process. Repeated exposure over time in short bursts creates lasting focus and understanding.
Real-world scenarios (not just hypothetical policy questions), manager reinforcement (placing compliance as a top priority) and microlearning embedded in the flow boost an organisation’s chances of delivering truly impactful compliance training.
This mindset shift allows organisations to easily identify change behaviours (e.g., incident rates, near-miss reporting and audit outcomes) and completion rates to gain a detailed picture of the training’s success.
Thirst helps L&D teams move beyond tick-box compliance – delivering personalised, engaging learning that employees understand, absorb and can adhere to.
FAQs
Now that we’ve explained most everything you need to know about compliance training and the types that mean the most in 2026, let’s review some of the most common FAQs.
What are the main types of compliance training?
The main types of compliance training cover areas including code of conduct and ethics, anti-bribery and corruption, data protection and privacy, and health and safety. This training covers an organisation’s core legal and organisational obligations.
Additional training includes regulatory compliance, environmental and sustainability compliance and emerging areas, such as AI ethics and technology use.
What is mandatory compliance training?
The types of mandatory compliance can differ from organisation to organisation; however, they have the same goal: to equip employees with the requisite legal or organisation standards required to meet regulatory, policy, or contractual obligations.
Simultaneously, mandatory compliance training helps employees to understand key rules and standards relevant to their role, helping the organisation remain compliant and reduce legal, financial, and reputational risk.
How often should compliance training be conducted?
Generally, compliance training should be conducted whenever there’s a specific organisational, regulatory or legal change that affects processes or annually at the very least. However, frequent re-training or refreshers may be needed in some circumstances, such as the emergence of new risks.
What are examples of compliance training in the workplace?
Examples of employee compliance training in the workplace include code of conduct and ethics, anti-bribery and corruption, data protection and privacy, and health and safety training.
Organisations may also provide industry-specific regulatory training, environmental and sustainability training, and diversity and inclusion training. Increasingly, companies are also introducing AI ethics and responsible technology training to address emerging risks.
How do you make compliance training more engaging?
You can make compliance training more engaging by using interactive, scenario-based content that reflects real workplace situations and encourages active participation.
Incorporating storytelling, short modules, and relevant examples, along with clear, practical takeaways, helps employees better understand and apply what they learn.
What compliance training topics are the most important in 2026?
In 2026, code of conduct and ethics, data protection and privacy, and anti-bribery and corruption remain core regulatory priorities across industries and are therefore the most important training topics. Industry-specific regulatory training also remains critical, particularly in highly regulated sectors.
However, increasingly, organisations are also focusing on AI ethics and responsible technology use, cybersecurity, and environmental and sustainability compliance due to evolving laws and risks.
Final Thoughts
Compliance training is built around behaviour, not just a box-ticking exercise. Organisations that understand this and take a practical, consistent approach to the training will, invariably, encourage organisation-wide engagement.
The compliance training you choose to prioritise and how you choose to deliver training can drastically impact how compliant your organisation is – and if it’ll fall foul of regulatory or legal pitfalls.
It’s not about ticking a box and moving on. It’s about consistency and dedication. Making sure that everyone understands their responsibilities in remaining compliant. Do this, and your organisation won’t fall foul of any compliance issues.
Got 2 Minutes?
Most compliance training gets completed. Little of it changes behaviour. Thirst helps L&D teams move beyond tick-box training – delivering personalised, engaging compliance learning that sticks.
So instead of chasing completions, you can focus on what really matters: reducing risk and building better habits across your organisation.
Take a quick guided tour today and see how Thirst could support your team.
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