Employee Compliance — Meaning and Tips

Keeping up with the ever changing HR policies can be exhausting for companies. Not knowing the latest codes and legal laws can get organizations running into regulatory risks.

Coping up with these legalities can be tough, especially when an organization hires a distributed team and therefore must comply with local labour laws of different countries. This is why companies seek third party assistance to understand and keep themselves aware of the latest policies and laws.

Now we know that ensuring Employee Compliance becomes important for the company to hire remote teams without getting into legal trouble.

Let’s understand in detail about Employee Compliance:

· What is Employee Compliance?

· Why is Employee Compliance important?

· Tips to maintain Employee Compliance

What is Employee Compliance?

The term ‘compliance’ in a business environment is defined as an act of following the laws, rules, regulations, and policies as dictated by a country’s governing body. It is also known as ‘corporate compliance’.

‘Employee compliance’ then refers to the act of ensuring that all employees adhere to all the federal laws and regulations. Employee compliance is mainly important for remote employees because of different international employment laws and policies.

Why is Employee Compliance important?

1. To reduce legal complications

Maintaining employee compliance prevents companies from penalties, fines, and lawsuits. Therefore, regularly conducting HR audits, filing taxes, etc., becomes important. Third party organizations such as EOR or PEO can simplify and automate HR compliance.

2. To improve public relations

If a company complies with legal obligations, it is easy to talk about it on their websites or when they advertise or market about their service or products.

For example, if you are recruiting new employees you can mention about the policies and benefits about healthcare and fitness, or about non-discrimination policy. This improves the company’s reputation and image in the market.

3. Higher employee retention

Employee compliance creates a more safe, secure, and professional environment for potential and existing employees. It increases employee retention. Ensuring the policies are followed and implemented, and complaints are handled properly should also be looked at by the companies.

Tips to maintain Employee Compliance

1. Be Proactive

The company must hire professionals who can keep a track on policy changes and thus can align the company’s rules and regulations accordingly.

2. Conduct audits regularly

Auditing helps to keep the company’s system and books updated. It even points out the strengths and weaknesses in handling overall issues related to policies. It helps companies understand how to adapt new policies.

3. Attend conferences for better understanding

Sometimes the technical jargon used by policy makers make it difficult for even HR professionals to rightly comprehend the changes. Here the company can seek out help from an EOR (like ShieldGEO, Skuad, or Omnipresent) or they may send HR professionals to attend conferences and webinars that explain these new policies.

Looking at the growing digital market, ensuring employee compliance will benefit the company in the long run. As remote working has become the new normal, companies will increasingly need to focus on employee compliance. Whether companies take the help of a third party organization or rely on in-house HR workforce, the important part is to ensure complete compliance.