KPMG Australia – part of one of the world’s largest professional services firms – relies on its 3,500 partners and staff being absolutely up to date with accounting and statutory requirements. Facing the challenge of educating staff on a new reporting standard – in just six weeks over the holiday season - KPMG needed to mitigate the risk of staff failing to acquire the required knowledge on time.

As Peter Russell, Partner, Financial Services, KPMG Australia comments, “If all KPMG personnel are not across our policies and procedures, the consequences for the firm, our clients and our reputation could be serious. Therefore, when we needed to bring staff up to date with a new standard, we could not afford the risk that staff would miss the training by being on leave, on secondment or on other deadlines.”

Having a small team to manage the training process, KPMG began researching for a system that would help it achieve two outcomes: firstly, certainty that designated staff successfully completed the training on the new standard. It was also important that KPMG could, if required, provide evidence that their staff had demonstrated the requisite knowledge.

The firm’s training program for the new standard – which brought Australia into line with the International Financial Reporting Standard of 2005 – included four days of face-to-face training, supported by two pre-course online training modules. The pre-course modules were to ensure all staff had a common level of knowledge and could ‘hit the ground running’ at the face-to-face training course.
After reviewing available options, KPMG Australia chose PolicyPoint, a web-based policy compliance education platform to deliver the online modules. PolicyPoint’s online service was quickly implemented and, once live, managed the pre-training component, including initiating the training with an email to all participants outlining their obligations and deadlines, and presenting the pre-course material.

Following the four-day training, a post-course assessment was conducted – written by KPMG professionals and delivered by PolicyPoint – which provided quantitative evidence that users had achieved the required level of knowledge.

Throughout the project, PolicyPoint sent automatically-generated emails to participants who had yet to complete the training, reminding them of their obligations. Notifications of non-compliance were also sent to staff members’ managers to follow up.

From KPMG Australia’s point of view, the training program was a stellar success: ?70 percent of participants passed the assessment before the end of the six weeks, the remainder completing their training obligations after a short extension.

Variations on this training program continue to be used for new starters and a quarterly update courses on the standard, including assessments in PolicyPoint are conducted on a quarterly basis.

“PolicyPoint is a simple, flexible system that ensures our policies are known by those that need to know them,” says Russell.

KPMG Australia has since expanded its use of PolicyPoint to deliver additional modules to staff members across the firm’s operations in eight states and territories. To date, these have included delivering general information – for instance, on ethics and independence – broadly across the organisation, as well as role-specific information or training material to relevant employees.

KPMG is now also using PolicyPoint to schedule follow up training courses, at regular intervals, for staff in overlapping groups who need to keep particular standards or procedures top of mind. The platform provides the facility for automatic testing of particular groups or individuals at pre-scheduled intervals.

“PolicyPoint is a natural part of our organisation now. We have deployed it very widely and it enhances our ability to keep our client facing staff up-to-date with their responsibilities and key business practices,” he adds.

Importantly, concludes Russell, PolicyPoint is easily administered. In fact, ongoing configuration of the platform, including scheduling new modules, is managed on a part-time basis by four people from unrelated departments.

In short, there has been no need to hire additional or specialised staff to run the platform – which continues to operate, automatically, ensuring that all KPMG Australia staff get access to the policy and training material they need to know.

No staff members fall through the cracks, regardless of being on leave or on secondment when the initial email is distributed. This ensures KPMG Australia has the peace-of-mind – and an independent audit trail proving – that staff have the knowledge they need to fulfil their roles.

About PolicyPoint

PolicyPoint Pty Ltd is an Australian-based developer of a business service that ensures comprehension of vital organisational policies and procedures. It is a proven, Web-based compliance education system, developed in conjunction with a major international services firm over four years in actual operating conditions.

PolicyPoint focuses in legal, financial, manufacturing and government, where its services are used extensively in leading organisations in Australia and New Zealand. PolicyPoint has staff in Sydney and Brisbane.