There is a recent trend amongst businesses to focus on achieving compliance at all costs.
Having the special compliance logo on your home page or on your email footer saying you have achieved compliance with a standard is very important to many businesses and can often mean the difference between winning a contract and not even being considered.
But here is the catch, is the ‘compliant’ management system achieving its goals and helping a business to succeed, to keep its people safe, or is it just achieving the compliance tick every 12 months?
Make no mistake, all businesses should be doing everything they can to comply with their obligations, but this compliance must be in alignment with actual business practices, not just the practices that are dusted off every time an auditor is scheduled for a visit.
Having a big fat folder sitting on a shelf containing a beautiful management system that none of your workers knows about, let alone comply with, is doing nothing to improve your business.
Management systems don’t need to be complicated, they need to be simple, they need to align with your business and most importantly they need to clearly articulate what you expect your employees to do.
Compliance is a product of your people embracing and implementing your systems and processes, compliance is a practical outcome, not a desktop assessment. Desktop compliance is easy but does little for your business or your employees.
Field compliance should be the only measure use to assess the effectiveness of management systems, anything short of field compliance is merely measuring how well you have written your procedures.