Compliance groups play an important role in helping bio-pharmaceutical companies avoid large fines and negative publicity.  They need to ensure that Sales Professionals understand and apply the requirements for compliant behavior in the field.

This means that training offered by Compliance needs to be practical and targeted at changing behavior.  However, training alone is not enough. To produce behavior change, training needs to be monitored and reinforced.  The organization should implement field based monitoring to assess the application of compliant behaviors in the field. It should also link training to ongoing coaching for reinforcement and to address any potential compliance issues.

The following best practices can help your Compliance group develop effective compliance training and field force monitoring programs for instructing and reinforcing compliant sales behavior:

• Partner with Sales and Marketing groups to define what good compliant selling behaviors look like. 
• Ensure that compliance training is designed to encourage learning and application of these behaviors, e.g., provides opportunities for practice and feedback.  This can be done by combining compliance and sales training at POA meetings.
• Reinforce training by monitoring compliant selling behaviors in the field.  This also communicates the importance of compliance to the organization and helps create an organizational culture of compliance.
• Include both knowledge and behavior assessment in your field monitoring efforts.  This will address the requirements of recent Corporate Integrity Agreements (CIAs) for the monitoring of "direct and indirect" behavior.

To learn more about WLH recommendations for effective compliance training and field based monitoring, please read our articles, "Optimizing Sales Performance with Field Based Monitoring" and "Overcoming the Pitfalls of Traditional Compliance Training for Sales Professionals" published in the Rx Compliance Report. 

Sincerely, 
 
Wendy Heckelman, Ph.D.
WLH Consulting, Inc.
Wendy@wlhconsulting.com