Corporate compliance is about so much more than upholding GDPR guidelines or abiding by the law. In short, corporate compliance involves every law, regulation, standard, ethical practice, or expectation that sets out to standardise your operations and staff behaviour. Be that regarding safety, security, or the daily running of your organisation.
From daily cleaning checks and routine fire alarm testing to destroying customer data within a specified time frame or regulating how marketing materials are displayed, it all falls under the umbrella term of corporate compliance.
But upholding stringent compliance isn’t always easy. In fact, a 2018 study showed that 47% of respondents have observed behaviour in violation of either laws or organisational standards. Franky, the logistics of running a large business with multiple departments and locations, can make compliance a nightmare.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Here are three simple tips to help you boost your organisation’s compliance today.
Get rid of the paperwork
Piles of paperwork will never be the most organised or efficient way to go. Even with the greatest of intentions, paperwork gets shuffled into the mix, goes missing, or is forgotten about. As such, monitoring checks, tests, and organisational standards using paperwork can be a sure-fire way to make simple mistakes to be made and miss critical checks.
Instead, why not go paperless? This way, you have a permanent record of all completed action, staff always have access to their upcoming tasks, and you can more easily assess the overall performance of your multi-site organisation – on-site and remotely, ideally.
Automate tasks and create standardised processes
When it comes to your organisation’s compliance, the less room you leave for error, the better. With this in mind, it can pay dividends to automate the scheduling of essential checks and tests. Whether it’s by location or department, you can automatically assign responsibility to the qualified individuals and set up recurring scheduling for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual audits. Including expiration dates is a great way to make sure everything’s completed on time.
Maintaining one centralised system for all checks can also guarantee the same, compliant processes are upheld across all locations and teams. For each standard, assign a checklist that informs staff of exactly what’s needed from them. By providing clear, easy-to-follow instructions, you minimise the chance of errors and ensure maximum compliance across all departments.
Real-time reporting
Compliance isn’t something you’re always going to get right. Mistakes happen, daily operations get chaotic, and critical tasks will inevitably fall through the cracks. But real-time reporting allows you to minimise any such errors and quickly rectify any mistakes. To improve your compliance, you need to clearly visualise all current processes.
With the right reporting system in place, you can promote continuous improvement, instantly getting feedback on the entire organisation. With this, you can quickly identify which teams are performing well, and which may need further training or assistance.
Corporate compliance is critical to any organisation that wants to be as safe, secure, and efficient as possible. There will always be ways to improve your existing systems and processes. And compliance is something that’s always worth taking the extra time and effort to get right.
If you’re looking to boost your organisation’s compliance, the Inform People platform is a tailor-made solution able to streamline all your safety, standards, and security checks and tests. To find out more, get in touch with us via email.
