Go1 Research Finds Compliance Confidence Outpaces Real-World Readiness; Introduces Immersive Simulations for Scenario-Based Learning

Up to 96% of leaders are confident employees can apply compliance policies, while employees averaged 64% on scenario-based assessments, highlighting the need for more applied, scenario-based learning.

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Go1, the learning and compliance solution helping organizations build capable, compliant and future-ready workforces, today released research showing a gap between leader confidence in compliance readiness and employee performance when real-world scenarios require judgment.

The research, based on three quantitative surveys of 945 compliance, risk, legal, HR, people and L&D leaders and employees who completed employer-provided compliance training in the past year, found that organizations have strong confidence in employee understanding of compliance policies, but performance becomes more uneven when employees must apply those policies in situations requiring judgment.

• To download the report, The Compliance Readiness Curve, visit https://www.go1.com/reports/compliance-readiness-curve.

Leader confidence in readiness was consistently high:

• 89%–95% of leaders are confident that employees understand compliance policies after training.
• 90%–96% are confident they can apply them in real-world situations.

Employees, however, averaged 64.5% on scenario-based readiness assessments. More than half of leaders said their organization experienced a compliance incident in the past year that additional training, reinforcement or earlier intervention may have helped prevent.

"Compliance teams have built programs that give them confidence employees understand the rules, but our research shows the gap becomes most visible when people have to turn what they've learned into a decision," said Kristina Ryan, VP, Product and Design at Go1. "Real-world compliance decisions rarely arrive as simple test questions. The harder challenge is preparing people for situations where context matters and giving employees opportunities to practice those decisions before they happen."

To help organizations close this readiness gap, Go1 introduced Immersive Simulations, a new capability that allows employees to practice compliance decisions in realistic workplace situations and receive feedback on their responses.

Employees know clear rules, but judgment creates gaps

Employees generally understand clear compliance requirements, but results drop when situations require interpretation, context and judgment.

For example, 90% of employees trained on harassment prevention recognized that same-sex harassment is covered under federal law. That's a relatively straightforward knowledge check.

However, employees struggled more with applying compliance concepts to more nuanced scenarios:

• Only 43% correctly distinguished a general complaint about unethical management from protected whistleblowing, a harder decision that requires employees to understand how policies apply in practice.
• Only 39% understood that management awareness does not eliminate a conflict of interest, showing a gap between knowing compliance rules and recognizing how they apply in real-world situations.

Readiness also varied by topic:

• Harassment prevention: 70%
• Conflict of interest and code of conduct: 56%
• Whistleblower protection: 69%

Leader responses show compliance training is still most often assigned broadly. About half of leaders say all employees receive the same required training, compared with roughly one-quarter who assign training by role or function and about 1 in 10 who assign it by risk level.

Employee readiness depends not only on understanding policies, but on being able to apply them in situations where the right response varies by role, circumstance and context. The findings highlight the need for opportunities to practice making those decisions before they happen in the workplace.

Completion does not tell the full readiness story

Most organizations still treat compliance as something to track after training happens: who completed it, who passed the quiz and who needs a reminder.

That gives leaders some signal, but it rarely shows whether employees can apply what they learned when the situation is more complex.

Today, 30% of leaders say their compliance approach primarily records completion, and 38% focus on assessments. Fewer than 1 in 5 prioritize reinforcement after training or proactively identifying risk before incidents occur.

The same pattern shows up in how organizations assess readiness. Most leaders rely on knowledge checks or assessments to determine whether employees are prepared to make compliant decisions, while only 34%–36% use scenario-based testing.

Immersive Simulations help turn compliance knowledge into real-world readiness

The research highlights the need for solutions that help employees apply policies in situations where context and judgment matter. Go1 Immersive Simulations give employees opportunities to practice realistic workplace scenarios, respond in their own words and receive feedback on their decisions.

Organizations can select workplace scenarios covering areas such as harassment, discrimination, code of conduct, cybersecurity and privacy, then tailor the experience to their own policies, company context and expectations.

Employees practice through interactive conversations with AI-powered avatars that adapt based on their decisions and responses. They receive personalized feedback on what they did well and where they can improve, while organizations can use the resulting data to identify readiness gaps and assign relevant follow-up learning from Go1's content library.

By combining policy-tailored Immersive Simulations with Go1's comprehensive learning ecosystem, organizations can identify where employees need more support and connect those readiness gaps to targeted follow-up learning.

To learn more about Go1 Immersive Simulations, visit https://www.go1.com/immersive-simulations.

To access the full research report, visit https://www.go1.com/reports/compliance-readiness-curve.

Methodology

Go1 commissioned three quantitative surveys in the United States: one of 313 compliance, risk and legal professionals, one of 312 HR/People and L&D/Training leaders, and one of 320 individual contributors and managers. All respondents worked at companies with 500 to 5,000 employees. Employee respondents were not members of executive leadership and had completed employer-provided compliance training within the past 12 months.

Employees answered scenario-based questions across harassment prevention, conflict of interest/code of conduct and whistleblower protection. The two leader surveys examined compliance training programs, readiness, reinforcement, risk and future investment. Because employee and leader respondents were not drawn from the same organizations, the findings compare perspectives across the three surveys and should not be read as a direct organization-by-organization gap. All three surveys were conducted in August 2026.

About Go1

Go1 is a learning and compliance solution that helps organizations build capable, compliant and future-ready workforces through trusted learning that is easy to access, easy to manage and designed to deliver measurable impact.

As the trusted learning foundation for a future-ready workforce, Go1 brings together the world's most comprehensive learning ecosystem with trusted content, unmatched breadth, learning intelligence and expertise. This gives organizations confidence that employees can access the learning they need to perform today and prepare for tomorrow, while giving teams the tools to manage, measure and scale learning with confidence.

Millions of learners worldwide use Go1. The company works with more than 10,000 organizations globally and is backed by leading investors including AirTree Ventures, Blue Cloud Ventures, Five Sigma, Insight Partners, Madrona, Salesforce Ventures, SEEK Investments, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and Y Combinator. To learn more, visit Go1.com.

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SOURCE Go1