A Beginner's Introduction to Compliance

How your organisation manages its compliance is key to deliver value

What is compliance?

Compliance can be defined as the act of complying with a task, order, rule or regulation.

However, this does not communicate the value that it can actually deliver to a business. A better way to understand compliance is as a tool which allows businesses to bring structure and guidance to complicated or high-risk areas of their operations.

Compliance means we follow certain rules and regulations that are set by the law, and has two components:

Comply with external rules and regulations such as the ISO 27001 controls, which is an external regulation set by the ISO organisation.
Comply with rules within an organisation that have been created to meet external requirements.

How is compliance a part of businesses?

When building a business, you need to make policies which meet government regulations and reflect your internal expectations for your employees.

The most important and common compliance requirements are;

Health and Safety – In the UK, this regulation indicates that employers are responsible for protecting the safety of their employees at work; this also includes preventative measures in case of an accident, such as; training, policies about using specific facilities…
Fire Safety – The regulations with fire safety, stipulate you need to comply with a series of requirements to guarantee the safety of your employees in case of a fire, and what measurements you have to prevent it from happening, including; smoke detectors, evacuation plan, meeting point etc.
Data Protection – It helps protect people and established rules about how customers’ or employees’ data can be used.

How can organisations make compliance easier?

Compliance is an inescapable part of business, but there is always a way to make things easier, which can include:

Creating an engaging training program
Ensuring there is a continuous learning system in place.
Keeping a record of the problems you may have encountered in the past.

These are just a few things you could do to make compliance easier in your organisation, there are plenty of ways, but for that, you will need to identify your business needs and goals first.

A compliance solution will help to make things easier, and this is where you need to have a solid understanding of what your business goals are and what problems you want to solve with GRC (Governance, Risk and Compliance) software.

Conclusion

Compliance is likely involved in most of the everyday tasks you do in your role without you even thinking about it.

One of the best ways to ensure that compliance delivers value for your business is to make sure your organisation has a “compliance culture”, where people feel involved and understand their role in maintaining your accreditations.

By committing to GRC and embedding it into your daily operations, your organisation becomes more efficient, secure and trustworthy to prospective customers and partners alike.

If you would like to learn more about GRC software, and how it can help to simplify compliance and align your people – get in touch below!

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