So, you’re here because you’re considering increasing the compliance training budget for your company. Quick answer: Yes, you should increase the budget for compliance training courses!
But the next question is: Why? Understandably, many CFOs want to keep budgets as low as possible, even cutting them to keep the business afloat amid what’s happening to the world today. However, you’ll be surprised with how beneficial it is to focus on compliance, especially with programs like True Office Learning making things easier.
Still unconvinced? Here are the reasons why you must increase the compliance training budget:
- Have a better competitive edge
If your company operates in a crowded market and you’re looking for ways to achieve that competitive edge, then consider increasing your compliance budget. Focus on running an effective risk management and compliance training program with that increased budget to gain the edge.
With improved compliance, you get to build a safer and more resilient company. You’ll get to avoid all the disruptive incidents competitors experience. Furthermore, you can use the compliance program as a selling point.
Even the research says so! Research shows that companies incorporating risk management and compliance into their business strategy experience enhanced profit margins, growth, and customer experience. You can even see many risk leaders saying that they plan to invest more to improve their resiliency programs.
- Less budget may drive up compliance costs in the long run
If your company relies on ad-hoc tools and manual processes to accomplish compliance work, and you’ll need to adhere to regulatory requirements soon, it’s essential to invest in the proper tools. If not, the total costs the company will deal with in the future to maintain compliance can end up being even bigger than expected.
But why?
For example, using spreadsheets to run compliance training programs won’t scale successfully. If your company has to go through numerous cybersecurity-related audits yearly and your compliance team tracks everything in Excel, there’s a higher risk of committing errors and missing essential issues.
Such inefficiencies can end up having insidious effects, such as hefty penalties or poor company reputation from violating compliance requirements. Moreover, the more time your compliance team spends on repetitive administrative tasks to meet compliance obligations, the less time they have for more important tasks.
- Regulators need to see compliance programs are resourced for one’s risk profile
If regulators discover a compliance violation, the first thing they’ll look for is whether that company has a current, effective, and well-documents compliance program.
If a corporation is convicted of a crime, two factors mitigating the ultimate punishment are:
- The existence of effective compliance and ethics programs
- Cooperation, self-reporting, and acceptance of responsibility
That said, regulators want to ensure that companies have enough people with adequate skill sets to run the compliance programs. Furthermore, the company must have sufficient tools to operate and maintain such programs, along with the resources devoted to making improvements.
Wrapping It Up
Now that you know the importance of compliance, this is your sign to look into your budget and strategies in that department.