Compliance innovation is the ability to identify and change compliance processes that are not working. Compliance managers need to communicate a sense that compliance processes are in place to look out for you and not over you. When you create this kind of culture, staff morale increases and non-compliance reduces radically. In order to facilitate compliance innovation, two things need to happen:
- Remove unnecessary processes
If your ship is becoming slower, heavier and harder to handle, it’s a good sign that processes are being added but not removed. You’re in danger of sinking! Get each department to list their compliance processes and go on a culling spree.
- Innovate processes that need to remain
An example of process innovation is the current sentencing and prison reform taking place in some American states. Driving these reforms is cost. Over the past two decades, spending on prisons has grown faster than any segment of states’ budgets except Medicaid. However, as states like Texas have changed failing processes, crimes of many kinds have declined and the incarceration rate fell by 4.5 %, while the nationally the rate rose slightly.
Just as Richard Nixon could open relations with China without being soft on communism, so compliance managers can push for compliance reform without being considered soft on compliance. Don’t forget, the word innovation means – “to renew or change” and not that latest gadget. Leave a legacy of compliance innovation and you will become in hot demand!