[author: Linda Meikle]
Every year, the global regulatory landscape becomes more complex. New legislation, evolving standards of practice, and enforcement nuances can be too obscure – or too fast-moving – for in-house compliance or legal functions to effectively track and manage. And missing crucial developments in this space can have devastating consequences to the business – from reputational damage to regulatory enforcement and heavy fines.
Currently, organizations operating in highly regulated spaces or with a high level of structural complexity dedicate large portions of their compliance budgets to outside counsel brought in solely to perform this ongoing analysis and management. In addition to the added cost, outside resources are not always equipped to analyze and quantify the risk such regulatory change poses to your specific organization.
If this sounds familiar to you, you’re probably challenged with:
- Keeping track of changes to whistleblowing legislation and regulatory updates in the jurisdictions that matter to your organization and understanding their relevance to your program
- Assessing how well your program complies with requirements and understanding how to remediate shortcomings (made more difficult without the right tools)
- Manual processes and ad hoc solutions don’t scale with your business and don’t address your organization’s specific needs or industry requirements
- Expert advice from outside counsel is costly and as complexity grows, costs start to really add up
How do I keep track of my whistleblowing compliance obligations?
Whether you’re in your first risk and compliance role of a seasoned compliance expert, keeping track of what whistleblowing requirements your company needs to be comply with is a labyrinth that keeps changing.
Some issues that might keep you up at night could include:
- Expanding whistleblowing requirements, including country level nuances for the EU Whistleblower Protection Directive, mean that if you’re doing business in Europe, you have to meet requirements with different standards and reporting options
- Outside of the U.S. and the EU, countries all over the world are adopting new whistleblower protection laws – depending on where your business operates, you may be impacted differently in the future
- Whistleblowing enforcement is on the rise – meaning that if your program is not prioritizing a well-resourced and high-functioning hotline and incident management program, your company is already facing higher risks
- Government agencies in the U.S. are setting up new whistleblower programs, so if your employees aren’t reporting internally, they’ll likely be going elsewhere which can be devastating to a business
So, how can your company keep track of changes to the regulatory whistleblowing environment without draining your budget? Though the cost of non-compliance is steeper than dedicating resources to an in-house team or outside counsel, that doesn’t necessarily address the real-world scenarios of operating on a limited budget. Frankly, it’s often difficult to secure appropriate resources when posing a “what if” scenario to leadership, meaning various levels of risk acceptance are a (rather unfortunate) part of the game.
How can I track whistleblowing compliance obligations without breaking the bank?
OK, it’s time for us to level with you, dear reader. Beyond the whistleblowing and incident management solutions you already know, NAVEX has solutions to help you track and manage the changing landscape of global whistleblowing regulations. While we typically steer clear of directly showcasing our many risk and compliance solutions on the Risk & Compliance Matters blog, we’d be remiss not to share the solution to this specific problem facing so many risk and compliance leaders.
With our Global Whistleblowing Compliance solution, NAVEX helps you proactively track regulatory changes and provides a comprehensive list of whistleblowing laws relevant to the territories and regions where your business operates. With guidance from the experts and human-led program analysis and assessment, you won’t have to secure additional resources or drain tight budgets on outside counsel.
How to stay on the right side of whistleblowing compliance
Often seen as a cost center, getting buy-in and appropriate resources for your compliance program can be tricky. If you want to realize program value quickly with an affordable, easy-to-implement solution, we have you covered. Reduce your spend on costly outside counsel fees with a straightforward per-country pricing model, so you’re only spending on what you need to and can easily scale as your needs change.
OK, we’ve said our spiel – if you want to learn more about our Global Whistleblowing Compliance solution, check it out below.
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