Compliance

Compliance

Compliance refers to conforming to a particular set of established rules and guidelines such as specifications, policies, and standards. Qatar Lubricants company has an additional number of additional projects that have been planned. As such, there has been an increased level of activities that the compliance team will have to undertake. Compliance activities often require adequate resources as it is almost impossible for compliance activities to be seamless in cases of limited resources. As a direct consequence, the compliance team asks for an increase in the departmental budget for the coming year.

Compliance offers a way out for organizations by enabling them to manage the overwhelming regulations that come from all corners of the globe. Scholars believe that modern regulatory change management is the solution to increased cases of compliance costs. It does so by offering both continuous and comprehensive regulatory updates. Here, there is the application of an automatic data collection process that looks into and carefully analyze regulatory policies in an organization.   There is also the aspect of content classification and summarization.  This involves sorting out of lengthy procedures and identifying all obligations that must be attended to. In addition to this, there is task assignment and collaboration. This includes identifying who does what in an organization I relation to compliance issues, the overall workflow, and collaboration between different expertise in making sure that compliance is fully observed in an organization. As such, it is, therefore, essential to note that compliance serves as regulatory management to some extent and not the respective individuals who oversee it. It is also a continuous process that identifies what needs to be changed and the way to change it.

The volume of regulatory change, tracking, and implementation is considered as one of the most significant challenges faced by most compliance officers. In most cases, organizational change management is defined in four key phases which are; identification, review, implementation, and validation. Identification is often accompanied by compulsory advocacy activities that are mostly outside the scope of the regulatory change management team involved.  This is then followed by a review that entails a preliminary study of the regulatory event identified therein.  Here, the applicability and the potential impact of the regulatory event is addressed. The review often checks in to some of the affected areas and the individuals who will be responsible for managing the actual change.  Implementation is the third phase, and it provides a precise analysis of the execution of the regulatory management change plan. Validation is the last phase, and it incorporates all ongoing policies and program maintenance as a whole. The volume of regulatory change is usually enormous, and this is considered as one of the most significant challenges that compliance officers face in the modern world. This is so because it is pervasive as it involves making the whole aspect of regulatory change management part of business as usual in an organization.  This entails establishing a profound and robust regulatory monitoring process. This is undertaken to identify all potential changes and have them addressed by the assigned individuals within the timeframe provided. Also, it includes setting up a process to facilitate the handoffs of vital information that is overseen by a proper audit trail. The volume of activities in regulatory change management is quite enormous, and this creates challenges for most compliance officers.

Modern trends indicate that the pace, as well as the scope of regulatory change, continues to be unabated.  Before the technological advancements that were brought into play, firms used to spend so much time tracking as well as analyzing regulatory advancements. Regarding this, the number of hours that various compliance teams spend in analyzing and monitoring regulatory developments in a week has remained consistent over the years, irrespective of the multiple advancements and developments. This shows that the volume of regulatory activities has increased over time, and this has created more pressure on compliance officers in trying to meet all the requirements within a limited time.

Limited resources, coupled with the drive to minimize costs within a regulated business, has also created more challenges to compliance officers in an organization. This is so because compliance officers are forced to work extra hard to counter the challenges associated with the whole aspect of following and abiding by the stipulated regulations as per various provisions of the law. This often makes it almost impossible to have a proper compliance team in an organization because of limited resources. Over the last decades, there have been significant changes in both regulatory and compliance landscapes, and as such, compliance costs have increased tremendously.  Creating a compliance culture in an organization is one of the ways to eradicate inefficiency in accordance with related activities, but there should be enough resources to make this happen. Having a compliance team that performs all compliance activities requires so many resources that are not always available for most organizations. As a result, firms need to strengthen as well as re-shape their compliance functions to manage the significant increase in compliance activities. As a result of inadequate resources, compliance officers have to undertake several measures to meet all the compliance requirements in an organization. Some of the activities undertaken by compliance officers to ensure that ends meet comprise of; periodically conducting compliance risk assessments, providing regular training and learning opportunities to the compliance team and creating as well as maintain a compliance culture in an organization.

Compliance officers have to conduct compliance risk assessments to match the compliance requirements of the organization. It is a requirement that compliance teams undertake compliance risk assessments regularly.  Through such assessments, the team will identify problems and risks an organization is facing and what steps can be taken to deal with the issues. It is important to note that risk assessment is a very time-consuming process but is considered as one of the best ways of identifying risks and thus having enough time to deal with them.  Limited resources tend to limit an organization’s ability to carry out a risk assessment and thus hindering the whole compliance activity in the process. It is recommended that an organization invest so much on its compliance team as it is vital for the survival of an organization.

Providing regular training is also very fundamental in addressing compliance issues in an organization. As such, a firm should invest on employee training in order to meet their compliance policies. Lack of training has the effect of developing an inefficient and costly compliance process. Moreover, the dynamic nature of the compliance process requires that employees are imparted with the right knowledge and skills necessary.

Three strategies can be adopted to enhance better compliance and reduce compliance costs and volumes to a very great extent. Some of the proposed methods of doing so are; automating processes, secure access to the Web, and the central management of social media as well as cloud apps. First and foremost, automating most of the processes in the organization tends to reduce the overall effort required by teams. Automation also tends to ensure consistency. This is so because automation ensures the same set of procedures and processes followed to the later and in the same way each time. A secure access to the Web is as well another issue that can be adopted to cut down compliance costs. Even though the Web is considered a fundamental aspect of the productivity of most organizations around the globe, it also poses a very significant exposure to risks of all sorts. Scholars indicate that at least 75% of all web-based attacks often target flaws that could otherwise be used to launch attacks in an organization. It is recommended that organizations should have a closer examination of how the secure web browser could mean for the organization. The central management of social media and cloud apps is essentially an extension of the risk that the Web can bring about. In this particular case, however, social media and cloud apps are tools that increase risks, particularly for compliance. Regarding this, organizations are required to have policies and methods that would centrally manage and monitor cloud apps and social media usage to ensure that there are no cases of compliance violations whatsoever.

As depicted above, compliance activities tend to get impaired when there are limited resources. As a result, the compliance team is required to be in contact with management to communicate change needed, if any.   The dynamic nature of compliance makes it almost impossible not to never look at it again.  Scholars believe that various policies are needed to make compliance as seamless as possible. It is therefore advised that a compliance culture is created and maintained in an organization.  Creating a compliance culture is very advantageous as it makes it possible to reduce other compliance obstacles that would otherwise be created by untrained members of the ream. As depicted earlier, the possible way of creating and maintaining a compliance culture is by conducting a regular risk assessment. Some other methods that can be appropriate in creating and keep a compliance culture are by aligning all compliance functions, lobbying effective technology, and working alongside internal departments, among other issues. It is, however, essential to note that while effective techniques of creating a functioning compliance team are well known, creating this with limited resources is impossible. Since resources are always unlimited, one must identify the skills required in a compliance team. In most cases, the individuals in a compliance team should be assertive, principled, and determined. Moreover, it is a requirement that they are good communicators to make the entire compliance process seamless.

In the past decade, there has been a tremendous rise in trade requirements and regulations. There is no doubt that the increase in such regulations is primarily intended for investor security and protection. Still, the consequence of high compliance costs and workloads is becoming a burden for most organizations. Statistics indicate that global spending on compliance activities is around $270 billion. The same applies to workloads; there has been a rise of up to 15% of the workforce in an organization that is committed to compliance regulations. The increase of regulations is unpredictable, and this calls for organizations to be committed to seeing to it that compliance activities prioritized because, in one way or the other, they dictate the survival of an organization.