Most organizations are not facing a set of compliance requirements. There are healthcare requirements, financial requirements, data privacy, industry specific requirements and then there is what they say they do in their own policies. For compliance departments this means that keeping on top of all of these is a question of juggling, like someone keeps throwing balls in the air and expecting you to keep them all going.
The question is not whether any organization should be dealing with multiple compliance requirements. They absolutely should and many do. The question is how to do it without drowning in paperwork or without burning out your compliance team.
The Problem with Multiple Requirements
Multiple compliance requirements are problematic for firms because they do not exist independently of one another. A single business process has to meet healthcare privacy requirements, employee requirements, financial requirements and often quality based requirements too. If an employee submits an expense for example, they could set off requirements around financial controls, tax laws, anti-bribery laws, data retention
This means that compliance teams cannot view every compliance framework as an independent project. They need systems that are able to cope with the cross over without doubling and tripling the amount of work that needs to be done by the compliance team. Trying to track individual spreadsheets and trackers becomes impossible once multiple compliance requirements have been identified.
Understanding the Challenge of Coordination
Most organizations probably discover pretty quickly that spreadsheets and email threads are not going to cut it if they are going to need to manage more than one compliance framework. Coordination challenges increase as companies grow and usually as they expand into different jurisdictions. Someone needs to approve the process after it has been completed. Who? Does it need finance’s approval or just the legal department? What happens if someone is out of the office?
Dynamic workflow software addresses these challenges by automatically routing tasks and action steps in the order that they set. This means that compliance departments are not left trying to figure out how to put the puzzle of completed requirements together to ensure that all necessary approvals or actions have been completed
The benefit here goes beyond simply saving time for department members. It also reduces the cognitive load for department members who would otherwise have to keep track of all the moving pieces of compliance on their own.
Keeping Visibility but Not Making it Transparent
Another challenge of successfully managing multiple compliance requirements is visibility. Compliance departments need visibility into both the big picture of whether they are complying across all requirements but also they need to dive into the specific details when auditors come calling or when challenges arise for a particular process.
Companies that successfully manage multiple compliance departments do so by centralizing their compliance information but ensuring that this information is not forced into an inflexible template. Different compliance requirements may have different needs in terms of reporting, documentation, approval processes and even deadlines. The goal is not to make information that does not apply to a single framework fit into a single box template. The goal is to achieve some level of unity in how compliance information is processed.
A unified approach also assists departments who are facing changes in regulations. Rather than having to sort through different forms of documentation at different locations, compliance teams can quickly see which processes are impacted by changes and alter them accordingly.
Building Adaptivity
One aspect that all regulatory compliance departments have in common is that requirements change. Organizations face new and different regulations all of the time due to changing or new laws or even changing priorities. Organizations who must deal with multiple compliance frameworks need a system that allows them to change processes rather than requiring a complete overhaul every time the rules change.
The best setup allows compliance teams to treat compliance procedures as living documents. When new compliance requirements need to be added the system should allow compliance teams to add steps without ruining the workflow that has already been established.
Some organizations also have the ability to build in steps that automatically escalate requests if they get stuck in a loop at some department or person for too long. If someone goes on leave it should not cripple the department’s ability to get approval for the requests.
Integrating Compliance
The companies who manage multiple compliance frameworks most successfully integrate compliance into their everyday operational processes instead of treating it as an additional task that has to be completed after a process has been completed. When individuals have to check for compliance after every action it becomes more of a chore than an integrated piece of business operations.
By integrating compliance into the operational process, team members who are tasked with reporting high volumes of invoices or other expenses do not also have to be experts on every aspect of reporting here compliance standards. The system guides them through the necessary steps before the expense can be processed and it also provides them with additional information if they need to know something instead of making it the responsibility of the processing teams who already have enough that they need to keep track of.
Managing Multiple Frameworks
Managing multiple compliance frameworks will always be a complex task. Organizations are learning to manage this complexity in a systematic way though. The focus is not on creating a massive cognitive load on those completing this type of work though. The focus is keeping processes growing and developing organically but while keeping front of mind the goal of any compliance department – effective compliance without burnout.
