Why a Documented Evidence Trail around Policies & Awareness is Critical

Throughout the dynamic risk environment of modern-day business, organizations find themselves continually struggling with their compliance programs and policy management frameworks.?Government regulation and ethical obligations seem to be changing too frequently for most compliance teams to keep up, and a weak compliance program can be extremely dangerous to any organization, as one slip-up can cascade into significant fines or damage to the organization's reputation.?Fortunately, organizations are not alone in the fight to build a robust and agile compliance program.

The Department of Justice released an updated document in June of 2020 regarding the evaluation of corporate compliance programs.?This document identifies areas that investigations should focus on and the extent of penalization, if any, based upon the effectiveness of the organization’s compliance program.

The document briefly gives organizations an outline as to what is expected of them and their compliance program and how organizations can optimize their policy implementation and management processes.

Well-designed policies and procedures address the ethical norms as well as reduce risk identified throughout the risk assessment process.?Effective policies and procedures should address the following:

• Design.?How does the organization design and implement new policies around their compliance program? How are old policies managed and updated? Who is involved in the policy distribution process?
• Comprehensiveness.?How does the organization monitor regulation change and emerging risk, and how does the organization implement policies and procedures that reflect those changes?
• Accessibility.?How does the organization effectively distribute and communicate policies to all relevant parties??In addition, how does the organization manage and handle barriers to policy distribution such as language barriers?
• ?Responsibility.?Who owns what risk and who is responsible for the policies and their distribution??How are the policies and procedures reinforced through the organization’s internal control systems?
• Training.?Training is a crucial aspect for any compliance program, and DOJ investigations will examine an organization's method of training to ensure that all relevant parties have received adequate training on the policy or procedure, the extent and frequency of training, if there are barriers to training, again referring to language.?The DOJ will also look to identify methods of analysis as to who needs to be trained and why.

?What can be done?

It is evident that an effective policy and procedure management process, followed by effective training is essential to effective compliance, however, in many cases a compliance failure will slip through the cracks and result in an investigation from the DOJ.?In the event of an investigation organizations must have a detailed document trail as well as complete situational awareness.?Situational awareness as to change in regulation and the policy adoption and implementation processes are all essential to effectively understand and allocate compliance resources.?

When it comes to developing and implementing policies and procedures, a detailed record must be kept to better provide defensibility.?Not only do these documents offer a roadmap to the organization’s compliance program, but also offer the best defense against regulatory scrutiny.?These documents must be regularly updated and managed to ensure that documents are not out of date or scattered throughout the organization.?

The?DocTract Cloud Platform?is an efficient, ready-to-use tool that is built by experts that know how to make the journey towards effective policy management easy for you and your organization. DocTract provides an unparalleled experience for organizations of all sizes and assists in building an optimal Policy Management System with transparent pricing and rapid implementation.?