Integrating a culture of compliance into your organization is critical to minimizing risks. The thing with compliance issues is that they not only will divert major resources and time away from your business’ core mission, but they also can be the reason why you go out of business. But before you consider online compliance training from True Office Learning to claim your organization’s culture of compliance, there are things you need to have in place.
What Elements Do You Need To Build A Culture Of Compliance?
Training and Communication
When building a culture of compliance ensure that the entire organization and your partners and vendors understand the rules, know about your commitment, and know who to go to if they have any concerns. While communicating your commitment is crucial, having compliance training from True Office Learning in place is crucial. Your team members should know the regulations they should follow and they should also be tasked with being brand ambassadors to your partners, vendors, and their fellow employees. Also, employees should be empowered so they can raise compliance issues without fear and knowing that their concerns will be taken seriously.
Compliance Plan and Control Measures
Make sure you come up with a compliance plan that establishes detailed measures for monitoring compliance training. Also, it should identify clear owners for each process. Accountability is essential in ensuring you have a successful compliance plan.
Code of Conduct
The organization should have written principles and sets of rules that guide employees’ behavior with competitors, with each other, with customers, with partners, and with the world at large. You should be able to point at your organization’s code of conduct as a reference point for your business’s values and ethics. As such your team members should be able to refer to your organization’s code of conduct if and when in doubt. This then acts as the focus of your culture of compliance. So, it’s important that you ensure that the company’s expectations are written down for all team members to see and adhere to.
Compliance Ownership
You must identify a clear owner for different compliance issues. Employees should know who to talk to if they see an issue or have questions. That means someone in the company must have a clear duty to follow up on the raised concerns. You should also have someone tasked with observing, updating, and communicating the company’s compliance processes at all times.
Commitment from Leadership
Without the commitment from the leadership of an organization, it will be impossible to integrate a culture of compliance into your company. So, the management must be committed to compliance as a key foundation or it will not work. What’s more, that commitment needs to be supported with unwavering reinforcement and example-setting. Make sure there’s compliance at the different levels and hold the leaders and employees responsible for their actions. Again, be sure to reinforce this commitment at every opportunity when speaking to team members and other leaders within your company.
In closing, if there is no communication about compliance within your organization, your employees will have a hard time knowing how applicable regulations, laws, and company policies affect their everyday job responsibilities. Also, since regulators check for non-compliance which can lead to levying heavy fines, and at times some individuals going to jail- your organization can’t afford to leave out compliance training.
