Are you annoyed by people’s continuous disregard for written policies?
Do you have people in your organisation who treat business processes like a ‘choose your own adventure’ exercise?
Are you tired of being the ‘bad cop’, chasing people through non-compliance reports and escalation to senior management?
If yes, here are some positive ways to increase compliance to improve consistency of process execution and to better manage associated business risks.
But before I launch into these, please note that if the non-compliance significantly impacts peoples’ safety or the organisation’s reputation and the culprits are tolerated by management, then you have a bigger problem on your hands.
This post is about things that don’t require a ‘clean sweep’ at the executive level or a major cultural change. These are things that are not extremely difficult to do and are mostly within your control as the policy owner or team leader.
What they do require is effort on your part, as well as patience because you are trying to instigate behavioural change. It’s effective, but not always easy.
Model behaviour
If you are a perfect person that does absolutely everything correctly 100% of the time, without breaking a sweat, no matter how difficult and how long it takes, please disregard this tip.
But if you are not a superhuman, you may sometimes be tempted to play dumb or to take shortcuts. Just remember that people are watching, so it’s important to resist the temptation and do the right thing. We can't expect others to comply if we're not doing it ourselves.
And even if people aren’t already watching, promote your own ability to comply, to show that it can be done and motivate others to follow along. Sometimes people overcomplicate things in their minds, so seeing someone else being successful, makes it seem more doable.
Make it personal
Unless compliance is reliant on a system-based control that cannot be by-passed (although humans tend to find ways to do so), increasing compliance is about behavioural change.
It’s about people, so make it personal.
What I mean by this is that you can’t expect to email a policy out and expect everyone to just follow along. You will need to do a bit of campaigning and promotion, to bring people along on the journey. You will need to explain why the policy is in place, how it addresses business risks, protects the employees and the organisation, or makes things more efficient.
You will be addressing people’s doubts, uncertainties and resistance. There may be a bit of eye-rolling going on – just ask anyone in a back-office role introducing yet another boring and annoying thing people need to follow.
Make sure it's explained in a live session, whether in-person or via videoconference. Take the time to respond to people’s questions and concerns.
Become the ambassador of this thing so when they embark on the business process, they think: “Yikes, if I don't follow, I am letting Jill down.” And no one wants to let Jill down – she is so lovely and helpful!
Increase focus on values
Instead of just promoting the rules or process steps, tie them back to something broader, like corporate values. People may find this more motivating, as well as easier to understand why it matters and how it fits in with everything else.
Telling someone they need two signatures on a form sounds a bit dry, until you tell them that it addresses fraud risk and is aligned with the corporate value of integrity.
Make policies easy to find and follow
These days, most organisations make policies accessible to employees via their Intranet or shared local drives. That said, there could be dozens of other policies there, so consider categorising and organising them in a way that will make sense to your employees. Give them clear titles that are logical and easy to search for.
Think about how the policies are written. Are they written in plain English? Are they as short as possible while still getting the message across? Is the important information upfront and not buried on page 12? Are flowcharts and other visuals used to explain and draw attention to crucial parts of the process?
Make it fun
Before you start rolling your eyes, hear me out.
Now, I know that policies are not the most fun thing in the world, but there are ways of making things more interesting. The goal is to increase awareness and understanding, so think of innovative ways of doing this, as appropriate to your work environment.
You could have funny posters in common areas that each address one misconception about the policy or process. You could also ask people for their anonymous feedback on what they find confusing or off-putting and then make videos of you and your team responding with constructive tips.
Have perspective
This one is directed more at you than at others.
As I said in the beginning, identifying continuous non-compliance can be frustrating and chasing it up can be unrewarding. On the other hand, behavioural change takes time and effort.
So, have perspective and pick your battles.
Maybe people are not following everything perfectly, but are they doing the key things correctly? Do you even know what matters most in this process? If not, figure it out and start by only promoting those things. Once that’s sorted, you can get more ambitious.
Good luck!