Spring Cleaning Compliance and Crisis Communications Protocols
Enron, the Mortgage and Banking Crisis, Walmart, do we not pick up the paper or go on line every day to be regaled with the never ending list of organizations and companies charged with sex, race or age discrimination? All that could be avoided with strong company policies, a well orchestrated review policy, and consistent training modules and collateral materials for employees at all levels. Do a compliance spring cleaning today with these 10 housekeeping tips.
1 – Dump the Denial
Hire outside Compliance Specialists to review your protocol and procedures with a fresh, unbiased, eye, and make recommendations for improvement. Company leaders are, at the end of the day, just regular people with an overwhelming and extraordinary list of daily tasks that require singular focus on immediate action items. Often this daily pressure creates a tendency to not recognize the warning signs developing in a manager’s peripheral view. Stay vigilant, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Ignore Compliance Review activities at your own risk!
2 – Assign a Compliance Review Manager
Select someone in your firm with Project Management background or experience. You don’t necessarily have to have someone in your company or organization with specific compliance project management credentials but they should be familiar with working on a project team, and with creating a project task list, and calendar to keep the moving parts of the Compliance Review in perpetual motion.
3 – Create a Compliance Checklist.
Compliance Checklists lists are made to maximize efficiency, control unnecessary spending, and ensure one has what protocols needed for any eventuality.
There are approximately 10 general categories of compliance including EEOC, Training Compliance, Regulatory Compliance and General Company or Organizational Policies and Procedures Compliance.
4 – Assess Your Strategic Plan’s Progress
Compliance has a direct impact on the Company or Organization’s ability to reach its overall strategic plan mission and goals. There’s nothing like a unplanned government audit or lawsuit that can throw you off your schedule. Where are you on your 1-3-5 year continuum? Are you meeting your strategic plan benchmarks? Do an immediate review to assess if your are meeting these goals and how compliance protocols or lack of them may be impeding your progress.
5 – Check Your Emergency Recovery Plans and Procedures.
Do you have emergency recovery plans for your internal systems? If not, you have made your Company needlessly vulnerable. Compliance Audits depend on retrievable data. If your data is missing due to technical systems failure and you haven’t anticipated the need for a backup data plan, then you have imperiled your Company and completely flown in the face of what Compliance is primarily designed to do, reduce operational risk to your firm.
6 – Review and Update your Contact Lists
Community Partners, Government official and other compliance staff contact lists are the key communicators in crisis situations. Information such as regulatory agencies, commissions and organizations that are a part of your Company’s Compliance network along with all of your emergency planning information should be kept in multiple digital and hard copy formats on and off site..
7 – Involve your whole team in compliance and crisis oversight.
Ensure that your manager/directors tasked with monitoring oversight involve their team appropriately. This can be done as a regular part of the operational interface, i.e., as a regular part of the agenda for the weekly staff meetings, or more discreetly maintained such that details of the meetings are recorded and the meeting minutes are subject to review for potential breaches in Company protocol, which could be dealt with immediately.
8 – Generate a Recommendations list
Utilize your the Managers/Directors tasked with compliance review. The actions recommended by the Manager/Director should ensure the continuing effectiveness of the Company’s Compliance program and can confirm actual or potential inadequacies exposing Company to liability issues.
9 – Schedule Regular Compliance Training for all staff and employees.
Ensure that Compliance Training is offered regularly as part of the staff development training curriculum schedule for your colleagues.
10 – Go Back to Number One.
A certified compliance consultant is your best bet to help you analyze your compliance program ensuring you are meeting and exceeding federal and state guidelines, establish internal protocols to maximize success, mitigate vulnerabilities, and create training modules and collateral materials for employees at every level.
Follow these ten tips for a compliance spring cleaning, and be secure in the knowledge that you are prepared for any eventuality.
Christy Davis Jackson, Esq. is a former Public Affairs executive with more than two decades of experience in guiding organizational change, including executing Compliance Review and EEOC Company audits. She is a master at guiding companies and organizations out of denial and into compliance!
