The Unseen Role

From the outset, most people could look at a business and with a good degree of accuracy reel off the primary management positions within: director, operations manager, sales manager, office manager and finance manager.

However, more often than not there is one more role often left unaccounted. The individual that weaves in and out within the background with a handful of paperwork.

The compliance manager.

Almost immediately you get the stereotypical image of a desk full of files, policies, procedures all being painfully scrutinised by a beady eyed little fellow looking over his glasses with a grim expression. Although this has comedic value, it could not be further from the truth.

Working within a compliance role has never being more exciting, with such a dynamic breadth of tasks it can certainly be a challenging yet stimulating role for someone with a keen eye for detail and a passion for investigation. A simple task of double checking an audit report can snowball in to a days work of investigative auditing checking and cross checking until you have your facts.

Although the investigative side of crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s is a fundamental for the job, the emphasis should be less about catching people out and more about ensuring the system works.

In an industry such as food & drink manufacturing, where business exposure is high, policies and procedures are the only time tested method of ensuring the company is protected for all eventualities. Each policy, procedure, monitoring record or statistic, however tedious is integral to the company success and key in proving due-diligence.

But above all else, the key thing to remember is people. For in the end, we may have the technical knowledge, but we are just putting words on to paper. A truly successful compliance manager has the knowledge and knows how to implement change on a staff level.

Taking the time to train staff on new compliance criteria and ensuring they fully understand what is expected of them and how this directly influences both their working day and the business as a whole is one of the most important lessons to learn. A new or amended procedure should be a pro-active positive step and thus should be communicated as such.

So the next time you see someone sat at a desk trawling through document after document, cross referencing and tutting just remember.

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