It’s no industry secret: it’s hard to be in a Compliance role. Whether correct or not, Compliance can often be perceived by others in the organization as coming from a place of “no”. And when you come from the perception of “no”, it can be difficult for initiatives such as driving a culture of compliance to be warmly accepted by the organization. This is why we, as Compliance, need to get creative and build organizational allies that can help us change the perception of Compliance internally.
One great internal ally – Human Resources (HR)
HR is one of the few roles in the organization that sees, interacts with and influences all employees. By aligning with HR, you are able to get a pulse on the needs of the organization. Additionally, HR has a common goal with you – compliance. HR, like Compliance, has required processes for employees to certify that they are engaging in best practice programs as well as subject to audit that could have legal ramifications.
When it comes to driving a culture of compliance, you need someone who helps to influence the company culture. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, “HR has a special role in ensuring that an organization’s culture will continue and thrive.” HR is able to do this by putting values and practices of a company into place and then turning them into larger policies. Working with HR to help rally employees to participate in compliance activities by working compliance into the larger organizational values and culture, is a great way to get a culture of compliance into practice.
If you are struggling to get employees engaged with your compliance program, working with HR on a formal engagement program is an excellent place to start. Within the HR practice, there are many different best practice frameworks that can easily be expanded or altered to fit a compliance engagement program — for example, using the Gallup Q12 Index, a framework of 12 questions used for employee engagement to gauge compliance. Questions such as, “Do you know what is expected of you at work?” or “Do you have the materials and equipment to do your work?” – could be fitted to “Do you know what is expect of you for adhering to compliance” or “Do you have all the materials you need to meet compliance expectations?” Working with HR, you are then able to distill the insights into an actionable business framework.
HR and Compliance also share the need to certify that employees are following policies
Using compliance technology that integrates with HR systems in order to support both compliance and HR activities is one way to show a united front. A solution should offer a way to capture the on-boarding and off-boarding of employees, certification processes for Compliance and HR, as well as the ability for attaching important documentation to records. This helps HR and Compliance reinforce best practices to employees and has the added bonus of alleviating labor intensive workflows for each department.
Employee engagement is a key component of the success of both compliance and HR programs. Together, HR and Compliance can make a powerful team that drives best practices across the organization.