That sometimes dreaded word: compliance projects.
Compliance in project management can mean one of two things:
- Managing business projects to internally agreed standards so that they are within budget, scope, and time deliverables.
- Specific projects that enable you to adhere to certain industry rules and regulations set by bodies outside of your business — like health and safety or GDPR.
Whether it’s option one or two, compliance projects needn’t bring on cold sweats.
With the right processes and hacks in place, adhering to compliance can be a doddle.
Let’s see how.
“Compliance Projects” is a part of our Project Management Glossary — check out the full list of terms and definitions.
When you’ll need compliance projects
But first, let’s run through the scenarios when a business will probably need to run different types of compliance projects.
Scenario #1: Data and cybersecurity
For regulations, like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance, there will be certain processes and training that you need to put in place. Similarly, if your business engages in telemarketing or text message marketing, you need to ensure TCPA consent. This involves following another set of guidelines that require their own specialized processes and training, such as employee compliance training.
Scenario #2: Legal issues
This can cover a multitude of challenges, such as a data breach under GDPR, a lawsuit, or challenges within the workforce. Failure to quickly and appropriately address these can mean big fines and potentially a damaged customer reputation.
Scenario #3: Human Resources issues
When it comes to HR, you’re likely to need processes in place to ensure diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI). Scenario three also covers challenges like high employee turnover.
To sum up, businesses can mitigate risk with compliance projects with the right approach to tackle them.
Now, let’s take a look at the anatomy of a typical compliance project.
The make-up of successful compliance projects
In project management, the processes and standard operating procedures create the roadmap for a compliance project. It’s key to follow these requirements to get the compliance thumbs up.
This roadmap is helpful for several reasons:
- Roles and responsibilities – Make it clear what team member’s roles are in the project and who handles certain tasks. You can assign people to tasks and share roles and responsibilities on your project management tool.
- Setting limits – Get better control over scope, budget, time management, and deliverables.
- Monitoring progress – With all this in place, you can easily track and report on the progress of projects at any point in time to keep projects within deadlines and quality guidelines.
The bottom line? Compliance projects help to reduce problems and minimize risks during the project lifecycle.
So now we have the make-up of a compliance project. How do businesses get started? Let’s look at the key stages of a compliance roadmap.
The 4 pillars in your compliance project roadmap
Rules and regulations lead to concrete business requirements.
Ready to get started? Here are the four pillars businesses need to implement and monitor compliance:
[Foundation] Prepare compliance policies and documentation
These documents set out the standards, codes of practice, and controls for any project.
The point? To make the management of business, employees, and customers super clear, so that you can follow relevant laws. At the same time, you can build up company morale and employee loyalty, and the business comes across well to clients.
[Execution] Build your compliance team
As the custodians of compliance, these teams are the compliance whizzes that can answer queries, provide training and, most importantly, monitor and report on compliance to stop risks right in their tracks.
That’s because these team members are incredibly knowledgeable about their subject area.
[Management] Find a solution to manage compliance projects
Compliance projects often affect all the workforce. Ensuring everyone follows processes under compliance can be a little tricky without the right solution.
Savvy businesses lean on software that can track processes, activities and communication through an easy-to-access, hyper-visual dashboard. This helps compliance teams to easily spot and raise compliance risk issues. Team members can also easily whistle blow on any potential issues before they become a major problem.
[Monitoring] Create processes for compliance audits
Let’s go a level deeper here. At a more comprehensive level, compliance audits provide a more granular level view of the strengths and thoroughness of compliance projects. Audits cover everything, from security policies, user access, through to reviewing risk management procedures.
More specifically, audits can check for things like if data is backed-up or if you are storing employee health information securely. The audit looks at all the processes involved in processing and managing this information to ensure it meets the standards set out in the compliance project.
Improve your compliance projects with monday.com
With monday.com, we’ve got you covered.
Our cloud-based software allows teams to create workflows in minutes, and all in one place. You can bridge communication silos, update changes in real time, monitor performance easily with intuitive dashboards — so, even at a glance, you can make quick decisions.
The result? Smooth compliance project management across the workforce.
Plus, we practice what we preach. At monday.com, we build security into our DNA. And we follow strict international standards and regulations to keep your data safe – including ISO, GDPR, Service Organization Control (SOC), and many more. Check the full list out here.
That’s why we’re trusted by Coca Cola, HubSpot, Universal Music Group, and over 180,000 more customers.
If you have any further burning questions, take a look at our frequently asked questions below.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here you can find the most commonly asked compliance project questions.
What are compliance projects?
Business create compliance projects to ensure processes and procedures follow a set standard. They allow you to do two things:
1) ensure all projects meet a certain standard internally
2) enable you to meet externally set rules and regulations
How do I start a compliance project?
There are four key pillars to a successful compliance project. The first foundation pillar is preparing compliance documentation. This sets the code of conduct and highlights the key steps in the process. You will then need a solution to help you track compliance projects.
What are compliance project examples?
Compliance projects range from reporting statutory tax, audit requirements, health and safety regulations, GDPR, and employment laws, through to setting processes for projects to ensure they meet the same standard.
Embrace uncertainty
Running a business comes with a lot of uncertainty. But with the right tools to manage your compliance projects, you can take some of this stress away.
You can minimize risks such as high employee turnover and lawsuits, and prepare for things like a data breach. You can say goodbye to unnecessary hours spent in meetings, reduce admin time on clunky processes, and reduce the impact of human error.
Get started