u/Embarrassed-Ad4423

Summary:

I have a new job and part of it involves compliance. I have worked two somewhat similar contract roles with this same company prior to my current job, just with different departments. The current process for compliance in my department is basically my team and I enforcing compliance despite not being on the compliance team. Department compliance is terrible and everyone on my team is stressed because we have to face the consequences of others’ non-compliant actions while also not having the authority to grant exceptions. The only realistic solutions is kind of expensive, that being increasing headcount of the compliance team with entry level roles that address the largest sources of non-compliance: communication and authority to enforce compliance. In fact, the role I have in mind is very similar to my second contract role with this company, and the department I worked under at that time had very good compliance metrics despite being infamous for being a high stress environment. How do I make this suggestion (or at least figure out another better solution to my boss)?

Longer context:

I started a somewhat new job a little over 2 months ago. Prior to this new role, I successfully completed two contract roles at that same company, just at different departments (9 months in the first department and 5 at the second department). Those roles have decent overlap with each other, though there are some functional differences.

This new department is by far the most difficult department I’ve worked in. It is saying a lot because the second department I worked for is infamous for being extremely difficult to work in (the reputation was so bad that during the interview process for this new role, the recruiter and hiring manager kept bringing up how this role will be so much easier than my second contract job). However, now that I’ve been in both departments, my previous contract role was far easier even though the department I worked in previously was high paced and high pressure. What makes this new job difficult is how this department navigates company wide processes that are solely based on company wide policies (side note: these are compliance process that run based on compliance policies). This new department has a lot of things that are out of compliance. Things barely get done because the central compliance office always pushes back on things that are out of compliance (as they understandably would). A lot of the time, an exception needs to be made for non-compliance. The other way is by blurring the lines of what is permissible and what isn’t. In other words, if the central compliance office doesn’t know what really happened, then things will be done. I’ve been told to do the latter a few times, though less frequently compared to getting exceptions.

A lot of my team is has also already mentioned these frustrations too and my boss is aware of their frustration. This is especially because my team has to bear the consequences on non-compliance despite us not being the one who did something out of compliance nor do we have the authority to grant exceptions. This team also has many other responsibilities outside of compliance due to other teams also being short staffed. I’m already very stressed and overwhelmed too; way more stressed than all of the stress I’ve experienced at my two previous contract jobs combined.

All this context is to say that I honestly really don’t believe that things need to be this stress for my team and myself. How do I use my previous experience to push for change since I’ve been at this department the shortest amount of time (most of my team has been there for about a year or two, so technically speaking, I have about the same amount of experience working with the same company policies and processes)?

The crappy part is that the only solution I can think of is increasing staffing on the compliance team within our department. The main reasons I’ve seen for non-compliance is due to (1) communication breakdowns where the central compliance department doesn’t communicate policy changes to our compliance team; the compliance team also doesn’t communicate with us nor other staff about changes in policy when they do receive it and (2) a lack of authority (like granting exceptions) of people in my team to hold those in non-compliance accountable and enforce policy. Given that, imo, it would be worth it to create an entry level role within compliance that focuses on communicating policy changes and enforcing policy. Those entry level roles can focus on both communicating those policy changes when they reach our compliance team (e.g. through monthly update newsletters) and enforcing compliance given that they have authority (both literal authority given the scope of responsibilities of the compliance team while also having credible authority just by being on the compliance team). Tbh, fwiw, this would be almost the exact same role I had with my second department (which had good compliance metrics). Basically, if these roles were to be created, department compliance metrics can improve while also allowing my team and I to double down on working with other teams and projects that also require our attention and involvement due to staffing shortages.