Standards and compliance. These terms may seem abstract, but their impact on your company’s financial health is very real. Compliance and standards are not just about meeting regulations; they are about ensuring the minimum quality of a product or service and making sure what you sell is fit for purpose. This, in turn, can lead to significant financial benefits, such as avoiding the staggering cost of noncompliance and boosting your company’s bottom line.
Across the board, the cost of noncompliance and loss of integrity is estimated to be around $14 million, and companies can be hit with harsh penalties or even jail time, depending on the severity of the issue and the damage caused.
Of course, the exact standards your company needs to adhere to and the level and type of compliance you need to be on board with following will be determined by what you do, global standards; for example, pharmaceutical products are strictly regulated across the world, but in the US, there is little to no regulation for a supplement industry meaning that companies don’t have “a line to tow” in regards to their claims and ingredients used.
Here are some benefits to ensure you meet all the requirements for your industry. It will help you produce a better product and facilitate facility growth and expansion plans, reduce costs, improve brand perception, and boost sales.
This post will discuss some ways you can ensure that compensation is met within your company and that you are maintaining standards as required by regulatory bodies.
Know Your Remit and Compliance Guidelines
In the first instance, you need to be clear on what exactly you need to be compliant with, what the standards are, and what you need to aim for at all times. Understand the non-negotiables, the impact of noncompliance, and how you and each person on your team or within your company stand in terms of needing to be compliant, e.g. your front-of-house receptionist might not need to be as well versed on certain regulations as your product developer for example. In contrast, food preparation staff and servers will need to be well-versed in food handling and serving to ensure standards are met ned across the board.
Build Relationships
True compliance can only be achieved if every part of your business is on board. This is everyone from your in-house teams to your external partners, such as outsourcing companies and suppliers. Anyone who is involved with your company in any way needs to be aware of and understand the compliance issues you face and how you expect standards to be met so everyone is on board and working towards the same goals and standards.
Use Compliance Software
Enacting standards and compliance undoubtedly comes with a mountain of paperwork and tasks to be carried out to ensure things are operating as required for you to meet standards. This can be pretty time-consuming and complex to stay on top of. Let’s look at the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). Food and beverage manufacturers adhering to these compliance standards are unquestionably committed to providing better quality food and drinks to achieve and maintain excellence. However, meeting these requirements can bring about copious amounts of training, paperwork, regular audits, etc, to ensure companies are on track and not neglecting tiger responsibilities. To support easier compliance, using software that can track all activities and functions pertaining to meeting GFSI standards can enable companies to reduce the workload associated with meeting regulations and ensure everything is documented and carried out as required.
Understand Your Business
Having a deeper understanding of what you do, how you do it, and how things are changing and evolving in your sector means you can really grasp the challenges faced by everyone and adapt your work to ensure they are able to do what they need to legally and safely at all times.
The reality is that if you don’t understand aspects of the business or you only ensure compliance in certain parts you understand well, you are leaving yourself wide open to use in those parts you’re not clued up on. Make it your business to know the business inside and out to pursue complete compliance and adherence to the highest standards.
Know Industry Standards and Competitors Too
It’s not enough to just meet the standards set by your industry. To truly excel, you need to understand what your industry as a whole expects from everyone in it and what you, as a company, should be doing at the bare minimum. Then, look at how others are hitting these standards and regulations and what they’re doing to go above and beyond. This understanding can fuel your drive to be better and help you stay ahead of the competition.
Identify your closest competitors and analyse their approach and output. Are you meeting this? Can you meet or even exceed it? What impact will striving to be better have if you strive to be better than them? Improving standards will cost you a lot more than maintaining them, so being able to reach the exact standards set out in your industry and stay there will cost you less overtime and drastically improve what you do.
Learn From Mistakes
Mistakes are not failures; they are opportunities for growth. If you’ve made mistakes in the past, use them as stepping stones to a better future. Be aware of what did and didn’t work, and use this information to move forward and put yourself in a better position. Whether you use it as a benchmark for improvements, for further training, or for future developments, take these failures and use them to fuel what you do and ensure you only move onwards and upwards.
Monitor and Review
Establishing rules and regulations to meet guidelines is not enough. It’s crucial to constantly monitor and review their impact and effectiveness. This ongoing process allows you to make necessary adjustments and adapt your operations to ensure continuous adherence to standards. Neglecting this step could mean you’re not truly enforcing what you need to be.
