Can Technology Create a Culture of Compliance?

 

In a time of shifting compliance and governance requirements, embedding a culture of compliance at the heart of your organisation will streamline your operations and reassure regulators of compliance readiness and awareness of the risks associated with non-compliance.  As more businesses adopt remote or hybrid working models, technology now forms an integral part of facilitating business operations. Therefore, compliance and change needs to start from the top and through commitment from senior management, a culture of compliance can be developed and appreciated company-wide.  

 

Culture of compliance definition: 

A culture of compliance means that at the root of your organisational culture, compliance forms a fundamental part of your ethics, ethos and mission. This means more than a bit of training, or reporting suspicious behaviour, but requires due diligence procedure to form the basis of all operational functions. 

 

4 steps to creating a culture of compliance using technology

With the prevalence of remote working, technology plays an integral role in your compliance cultural overhaul! There are many ways to instil compliance as best-practice within your operations, including:

 

1. Create the right tone from the top and shout about it! 

Senior leadership set the standard for attitude and behaviours that contribute to and even comprise company culture. If executives are seen cutting corners, or to encourage growth at all costs then employees will follow suit and may bend the rules similarly. However, if leadership emphasise company ethos and ethical practices, and even reward good compliance behaviour, employees will understand that compliance should form the baseline of all activities and actions.  

Chief Compliance Officers (COOs) and the wider compliance team should be involved in critical internal committees to provide relevant compliance information or insights to leadership and across departments.  

 

2. Ensure policies and procedures are digitally accessible and regularly communicated 

In first instance, ensuring your policies and procedures are up to date is vital. Making them accessible will ensure everyone in your organisation is on the same page and has tangible guidelines to reference. Having them housed somewhere central, like an internal intranet and ensuring they are actively communicated through internal channels, will ensure agreed-upon policies are always accessible and understood. This should help reduce intentional or accidental compliance violations.  

 

3. Put the right compliance tools in place 

There are many different types of compliance tools, software and methodologies available that can be customised to suit the unique needs of an organisation. Compliance tools typically facilitate compliance processes and procedures (and can even automate them) in line with legal, regulatory, industry or security requirements.  

Some popular compliance tools and technologies include: 

Data classification solutions: These help by improving management processes, ultimately improving data security.  

IT auditing systems: Auditing systems demonstrate that appropriate controls are present to regulators.  

Governance, risk and compliance (GRC) tools: Such software can ensure regulatory compliance with a wide variety of financial risk, IT and environmental factors.  

 

4. Set up regular virtual training 

Conducting compliance awareness training as a part of your wider ethics or values training can truly embed a culture of compliance into your company if it is done regularly. It should form part of the onboarding process for every department. Reinforcing the training with regular updates and communications will help embed compliance into every area of your workforce and how employees approach their work. 

 

5. Building your compliance team 

Barclay Simpson is an international recruitment consultancy that specialises in recruiting professionals for the interrelated disciplines of Governance, namely Information/IT Security, Risk, Resilience, Audit, Compliance, Legal and Treasury.  

When you’re looking to build and secure your organisation for the future, Barclay Simpson can help you quickly build a technically proficient compliance function and team

 

Get in touch for support in creating a culture of compliance