Reason 1: Legislative compliance is Good Governance
Active management of legislative compliance risks is a cornerstone of good governance for both commercial and public sector organisations.
- For public sector organisations, how can the Crown expect citizens to comply with the law unless the Crown itself is actively managing its own compliance with those same laws?
- For commercial entities – shareholder value is unnecessarily at risk when legal risks are not actively managed.
- Many boards of directors and audit committees are no longer satisfied
with ‘exception reporting’ of non-compliance and are demanding
regular ‘active reporting’ on significant compliance obligations.
Reason 2: Auditors now expect legislative compliance systems to be in place
Auditors are reporting on the adequacy of legislative compliance systems, for example AG-208 Auditor-General’s statement on Consideration of Laws and Regulations in an Audit:
|
What auditors considered acceptable in the past may no longer be acceptable, in particular paper-based systems relying on managers ‘certifying’ compliance with lists of statutes are now considered poor practice.
Reason 3: legislative compliance can Mitigate the potential impacts of non-compliance
Like many regulators, the Commerce Commission encourages the use of legislative compliance systems to promote compliance with legislation.
The following appears on the Commerce Commission website:
 |
| “ The existence of an effective compliance programme may in some circumstances also assist a business in establishing a legal defence to any prosecution under the [Fair Trading] Act. The courts may also view favourably the existence of a compliance programme when imposing penalties for breaches of the Act which occurred despite the diligent supervision of the business. A programme tailored to a specific business, that explains to staff what they have to do to comply with the Act, will reduce the likelihood of breaches.” |
 |
Reason 4: It Makes Good Sense
Other good reasons for a organisation to have an effective and current legislative compliance system include:
- Improved customer service through better informed staff and managers
- Better customer and stakeholder relations as the entity will be identified as acting as a good corporate citizen
- Actively monitoring compliance provides valuable information that helps management identify problems and deal with them before they become big issues
- Eliminate or reduce the following non-compliance
risks
- fines or monetary penalties
- civil damages or restitution
- adverse publicity and damage to reputation
- wasted management time and disruption
- legal costs and insurance premiums
ComplyWith does the hard work - you benefit
Developing compliance questions for the core legislative obligations applying to organisations like yours could be a vast undertaking - keeping those compliance questions completely up to date can be equally daunting. Subscribing to ComplyWith is the cost-effective and efficient way for you to meet these challenges.
The 'active reporting' functionality of the ComlyWith software enables legislative compliance monitoring and reporting obligations to be satisfied efficiently and effectively - the system was developed from the start with input from subscriber organisations, which now number over 35, its extremely user friendly and cost-effective.
