Compliance in business means obeying rules, regulations, and standards pertaining to your organization.
Compliance management ensures that your company’s infrastructure, processes, organization, activities, and policies are in accordance with established rules, standards, policies, and regulations that guide businesses and companies.
Governments, industry and regulatory bodies, and employee unions set these rules and regulations.
Compliance management is ensuring your establishment follows all the rules set by the government and regulatory bodies to ensure that your organization and all its activities are legal.
When starting a business, it is essential to ensure it is legal and follows established policies and regulations governing businesses in general and companies in your particular industry. This is compliance.
Compliance management is the process of maintaining this state of compliance. It is the regular assessment and evaluation of your company’s systems and policies to ensure they are up-to-date and compliant with the established regulations and policies.
Compliance management is essential because it:
- Regularly assesses the entire state of your company regarding infrastructure, employees, policies, products, security, etc., to prevent security breach and non-compliance with established regulations and standards.
- It protects your company from the consequences of noncompliance, such as fines, lawsuits, security breaches, loss of certification, damage to reputation, and so on.
- It protects your company from ignorance. A company might be unaware of specific policy changes, but not implementing these changes counts as noncompliance. Compliance management protects your company from such occurrences.
Who is a compliance management consultant? What does a compliance management consultant do?
A compliance management consultant is an expert who identifies the shortcomings of an enterprise regarding obeying government regulations and established standards.
A compliance management consultant must ensure that a company follows all the necessary policies, regulations, and standards and remains compliant.
Some of the tasks a compliance management consultant performs are:
- Identify areas where a company is non-compliant
- Proffer solutions to fix non-compliant issues
- Train employees to understand compliance policies
- Compile reports for regulatory bodies
Software Options for Compliance Management
Compliance management can be a complicated process. Trying to account for every policy and regulation that applies to your company and ensuring you stay updated on policy changes can be tedious for a company to carry out. But there are software options that make the process a lot easier.
Some examples of these software options are:
- Connecteam
- SiteDocs
- Qualtrax
- PowerDMS
- QT9 QMS
- Skill cast
- DoneSafe
- Libro
- Netwrix
Compliance Management Regulations
As said before, compliance management is assessing your company’s operations and policies to ensure they comply with government regulations. But what rules, policies and standards must companies pay attention to and remain compliant with?
Some of them are:
- Sarbanes-Oxly Act of 2002
It’s a United States Federal law enacted due to major corporate and accounting scandals. This regulation protects people from financial crimes, improves investor confidence and ensures that financial statements are accurate and reliable. This is a regulation company should ensure they remain compliant with to stay legal and avoid consequences.
- CAN Spam Act of 2003
This protects a person’s rights and prevents a company from sending spam emails to people. It also enforces the right of an individual to unsubscribe from emails, as an unsubscribe feature must be included in all emails.
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996
This prevents the personal details of patients from being disclosed to unauthorized persons without consent.
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
This legislation protects the privacy rights of people, and it also ensures that when data is collected, it is done responsibly.
- Dodd-Frank Act
This regulation promotes financial transparency and accountability to protect the public and customers from abusive financial services practices.
- The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS).
This protects cardholders against abuse of their personal information and ensures the security of credit, debit and cash card transactions.
Compliance Management Standards
- ISO 37301
ISO 37301 is a Type A management system standard that identifies the requirements for establishing, implementing, improving and maintaining a compliance management system.
- ISO 19600
ISO 19600 guides create, develop, maintenance and improve an effective and efficient compliance management system within a company.
Compliance Management Guidelines
- Determine your end goals at the start
This concerns your preparation and the methods you’ll use to manage compliance. This involves preventing noncompliance with attention to detail, proper structuring, and employee training. It also includes conducting internal audits and surveillance. If a non-compliance issue has been identified, it should be remedied immediately.
- Know your industry’s rules and regulations
Just as business structures vary, so do the rules and regulations that apply to businesses, depending on the business structure and industry. Note the laws and standards that affect your particular business so you can know how to comply with them.
- Write clear internal policies.
Your staff is a significant part of your organization. They are responsible for how the business operates daily, so they must be aware of all the policies that affect your business, both internal and external. This ensures that ignorance doesn’t cause non-compliance.
- Train your personnel
Sometimes noncompliance issues arise from errors your employees make. To avoid this, ensure they are well-trained to conduct the affairs of the company with total accuracy.
- Conduct compliance audits routinely.
You should conduct audits for your business and also perform internal audits. This is to ensure that your compliance management structure is up-to-date and not lacking.
- Conduct risk assessment
Compliance management is all about attention to detail. Conduct risk assessments routinely in your company to fully understand the company’s strengths and weaknesses, and ensure that all areas of noncompliance are identified quickly.
