It is there for all to see that each day compliance becomes more cumbersome.
In 2018 there were 76 pieces of legislation passed by the Australian Government. That’s one new item of legislation passed on average every five days during the 2018 calendar year.
The dilemma with this is it is unlikely 76 pieces of legislation was repealed during the same period, therefore imposing increasing regulation upon Australians and Australian businesses.
The navigation of new legislation every five days, and how it may or may not relate to you and your business becomes the challenge for most businesses.
With this becomes an increased reliance on the regulators and industry bodies to communicate to those affected, and it is here where the real impact your compliance program has on your business occurs.
It is my experience when regulators and industry bodies become the key source of your information relating to your compliance obligations, there is always a tendency such advice is to over comply.
The reason this occurs is that they take their integrity first, above and beyond industry, which causes this tendency to provide advice which is over compliant. The dilemma with this scenario is the impact additional compliance has on your customers, your employees, your company officers and your business continuity.
That is why if you want the best outcome when it comes to your compliance programs, businesses should aim their compliance programs at ‘the sweet spot’ of compliance. The spot is where you are neither under compliant nor over compliant.
Under compliance obviously creates risk to business and in many circumstances has the capacity to compromise your company, company officers and its employees.
Over compliance creates a risk to your continuity of business, overly burdens your employees, and worst of all in most circumstances makes it more difficult for your customers or other businesses to do business with you.
Therefore the goal in building any compliance program needs to consider legislation which impacts on your business, and ensuring you hit ‘the sweet spot’.
