Best practices for organisations to manage their compliance training.

1. Are You Compliance Ready?
Compliance training ensures that employees, contractors, and partners have the right knowledge
and understanding to comply with an organization’s legal, operational, ethical aspects of
business. It is something that organizations can’t compromise on, if they don’t want to risk a
complete business failure.
Despite regular reiteration of all state and federal compliance guidelines and audits,
organizations fail to be compliant with the latest regulations and research indicates that
compliance lawsuits have increased tremendously over the past few years. A recent example is
of Barclays Capital Inc., who was charged by The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for
failing to build adequate compliance systems, after the firm acquired Lehman Brothers' advisory
business in 2008. It resulted in overcharges and client losses of $472,000, for Barclays.
Even companies who have aproper compliance methodology get caught in the midst of changing
regulated environment, new compliance measures, etc. At times, they focus on one area of a
compliance program more while sidelining other elements. Or, they are still following the
outdated compliance policies and technology at the organization.
Let’s look atways through which organizations can develop a compliance culture and be prepared
for compliance audits.

2. Leadership Focus: If the leaders own and support ethical, compliance measures, it is going to
trickle down in the organization in the same way. Senior executives should be the role models
for employees to build a strong compliance culture at every level of an organization. It is
important to show and communicate that leaders are committed to compliance measures and
the company will not negotiate on its compliance program in any way.
Identification of Risk Areas: It is important for organization to identify and evaluate all risk areas
that relate to its core business. They also need to identify and abide by workforce rights and
regulations pertinent to them to save themselves from an employment lawsuit. Organizations
must create a complete checklist of risk areas to create the right compliance strategies and
measures. It is also important to evaluate them in order to put the right focus on different areas.
Communication and Training: Compliance policies and regulations must be effectively
communicated to employees along with the right training and technology. Organizations should
ensure that there is a proper communication between the compliance team and employees.
Training should be done in a systematic, centralized and seamless way with a proper reporting
and monitoring structure. If there is a need to customize the training courses for different
functions at the organization, the compliance team should be ready to provide that.
Review and Monitoring: A compliance program should be reviewed on a recurring basis to catch
any breaches or potential lapses. Regular review and monitoring would provide an opportunity
to discover compliance failures, issues before it becomes uncontrollable. The compliance team
should work along with the leadership team to take the right measures to stop such lapses take
place in future. A regular report to leadership team also ensures their ongoing attention and
commitment for compliance programs. A compliance training report can also act as a proof
during a compliance audit.
To build a robust compliance program, it is necessary to invest in to the right technology,
processes and systems. Organizations should look for a Learning Management Systems (LMS),
which can help them communicate, monitor as well as report on their compliance programs. A
LMS willalsohelp in automation of certain processes,which willavoid lapses and manual failures.
Author: Surabhi Singh- Marketing Specialist at Gyrus Systems. www.gyrus.com