Navigating Compliance Throughout the Employee Lifecycle

Employees can help an organization build a culture of compliance and adhere to the policies and procedures that have been put in place to fulfill regulatory and end-client requirements. Even in today’s tech-enabled world, the employees are the ones that help you execute your last-mile compliance strategy, internally and externally.

To get your compliance in check through the employee’s life cycle, your organization must have a robust compliance management system that covers the entire employee life cycle. A compliance management system (CMS), with its features around policies, procedures, and controls can empower you to do the same. Let’s learn how.

Onboarding and Induction

Onboarding is the first step in the employee life cycle and an opportunity to ensure that new hires are fully aware of your compliance policies and procedures. All new hires must be educated on the risks and compliance requirements relevant to their department and how they can contribute to the overall success of your business’s overarching compliance strategy.

A CMS can help you automate some of this onboarding process (knowledge tests, acknowledgment of preliminary compliance policies, etc.), reducing the time and effort required to complete all necessary forms and paperwork, and ensuring that new hires are fully informed about their internal/external compliance-specific responsibilities.

Performance Management and Ongoing Employee Development 

Once they get absorbed into the system, employees need to play a key role in maintaining a culture of compliance. And to enable them to do so, you must create comprehensive policies and procedures and use LMS to notify them of the training course uploaded. You can use an advanced CMS like IPACS to notify them of current certifications and pending tests/courses, helping them digitally certify/recertify/acknowledge training material. 

Performance management is another ongoing process that will help you ensure that employees are constantly acting as per the client’s compliance requirements and industry regulations. A CMS can help automate a large chunk of performance management by tracking employee activity (certification acknowledgment, etc.), managing performance audit management, generating reports, etc.

Exit Management

Organizations often get so busy ensuring that the access of the soon-to-be-an-ex-employee to client data is retracted in time that they forget to expand their employee separation program to encompass compliance-related concerns. As a result, exit interviews are often relegated to questionnaires, resulting in limited or no value compliance feedback. Asking the questions mentioned below (to be expanded as per your compliance structure) can help you make a change to your overall compliance management:

• “Was your decision to leave influenced by any compliance concerns?”
• “How effective was your training on the compliance program and policies?”
• “Did you believe that reporting compliance issues were protected from retaliation?”
• “How could we strengthen our message regarding ethics and compliance?”
• “Do you believe management fully supports the compliance program?”

Doing so will help you regularly assess and monitor the minutest compliance risks and adjust policies and procedures accordingly.

Final Thought: Getting your compliance in check through employees requires a robust compliance management system that covers every stage of the employee life cycle. By automating pieces of this puzzle, a cutting-edge compliance management system like IPACS can help you reduce the risk of human error, ensure that all necessary checks are carried out promptly, and provide a single source of truth for all compliance-related information. To learn more about IPACS, click here.