Economic volatility, tightening labour markets, and geopolitical instability; each of these factors are impacting how global compliance leaders manage their responsibilities. Despite these challenges, compliance tasks must be completed to preserve the legal standing of business entities around the globe.

Compliance leaders develop diligent compliance programs to instill structure and organization while ensuring proper reporting data is submitted to regulatory authorities. As new challenges disrupt traditional compliance workflows, leaders must adapt their protocols and push through these difficult times. Failure to maintain compliance amounts to significant penalties for the business.

So what are the three biggest compliance function trends that leaders must address? Gartner conducted a recent study to identify how compliance departments are adapting to complicated legal and geopolitical landscapes. Here’s a quick overview of the protocols that will impact compliance reporting into the new year.

Leaner financial capital to invest in compliance

Two economic considerations are affecting compliance departments everywhere: stubbornly high inflation rates and the ongoing risk of a global recession. As financial costs rise, leaders must mitigate the situation by finding more efficient ways to get important work done.

Most of a compliance department’s direct costs are tied to employee personnel. With inflation remaining near record-high levels, demand for higher wages has forced many businesses to implement hiring freezes. Forced to do more work with less staff, it’s imperative that business leaders, including compliance leaders, find ways to retain top-performing talent.

One way to do so is to hop on a growing trend in compliance matters. Compliance departments have spent the past few years doubling down on investments in technology that help automate many workflows and improve productivity. Technology can also take some of the pressure off overworked employees — stress becoming more profound with hiring freezes in place.

Solutions like entity management technology help companies build compliance protocols in more efficient manners. The platform includes a built-in compliance framework using drag-and-drop features that speed up how compliance-related tasks are completed. Employees can check off their lists faster and easier, freeing up their own time and reducing fears of burnout.

Fewer dedicated resources to support compliance workflows

With hiring freezes in place and salary demands on the rise to keep pace with inflation, it leaves companies struggling to maintain full-time workers. Compliance departments are no stranger to these challenges as, according to Gartner, compliance teams have seen decreases in full-time employee headcounts for over three years.

It’s also difficult for compliance leaders to retain top-performing talent in light of these challenges. The Great Resignation saw many full-time employees voluntarily resign their positions at companies where expectations placed on those same employees were deemed no longer reasonable. Low pay and fewer opportunities for advancement also trigger mass quitting.

Challenged to enforce compliance protocols with fewer members of the team, compliance leaders are increasing their reliance on technology to automate their workflows. Once again, solutions like entity management software can accelerate all compliance reporting data management tasks.

Workflows that used to require at least five minutes for support staff to file, tag, and sort pieces of compliance reporting data are no longer necessary. Using entity management platforms, the filing process for a particular record is completed in seconds, not minutes. Time saved on these workflows adds up to an abundance of hours that give limited staffed compliance teams more time to enforce protocols across the organization.

Compliance leaders investing in more supportive technology

In part due to global concerns about inflation and recessions, compliance leaders freely admit to Gartner that technology is a growing part of their operating plan. Investments in technology will be how many compliance leaders use their limited budgets, implementing solutions that will help automate compliance tasks and protect the interests of the organization.

Some of the areas cited by Gartner where technology will improve compliance workflows are:

• Automated systems to manage organizational hotlines
• Digital training modules to support compliance and ethics coaching
• Systems that help control risks to organizational compliance

Amongst all possible technology companies, providers of entity management software should be high on compliance leaders’ lists of vendor partners. Entity management software functions as a single source of truth for all compliance protocols. Any employees with questions about compliance and ethics protocols can simply refer to the platform for a helpful guide to answers.

Additionally, entity management software’s intuitive design includes automated prompts for any missing compliance data that poses a risk to the organization. If the prompts are triggered, compliance managers know exactly what data is missing that risks compromising compliance. They can input the missing data and, if they don’t have it, they know exactly what to ask for from the appropriate stakeholders.

Ready to transform compliance matters with more modern solutions? Join the MinuteBox revolution and introduce valuable entity management solutions to your organization’s compliance mandates.