All businesses are responsible for complying with federal and global laws. These laws vary greatly, and compliance in the fluctuating climate of our global business environment can be overwhelming. Keeping track of regulations governing an organization's ethical and legal practices is an ever-changing process.
I believe there are three building blocks to successful compliance in an organization: reliably achieving objectives, addressing uncertainty, and acting with integrity.
This is where Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance, which is known as GRC more commonly, comes into the picture. Risk management is proactive; it encompasses identifying, analyzing, and responding to the organization's vulnerabilities. Ensuring compliance is mostly reactive, where we conform to business requirements and applicable laws and regulations. Governance is how we implement risk management and compliance.
It takes 3-5 years to put together a GRC program consisting of administration procedures, internal controls in all areas, and uniform documentation across all lines of business.
There are many benefits to a strong workplace compliance program:
An effective compliance program is never complete. Instead, it continuously evolves and considers the inevitable regulatory, organizational, and external developments that influence our status and future directions. It is a journey of putting together administration procedures, internal controls, and uniform documentation across all lines of business.
We already have the building blocks and a ton of work done at Sagitec. But we are closely monitoring regulatory changes and changes in industry best practices to ensure that we stay current and continuously improve.
Two of our core values are about being a trustworthy partner to our customers and ethically achieving business results. We have encouraged all employees to act lawfully, ethically, and in the organization's best interests. Our reputation for integrity is our most valuable asset and is directly related to the conduct of our employees.
We strive to adhere to the highest legal and ethical standards applicable in our business and to conduct ourselves in observance of all applicable laws, with the integrity of each employee of the utmost importance.
You can have the best compliance programs, but it doesn't matter much if you don't have the people focused on consistently ensuring they are up to date and followed. And I am happy to say that we keep accentuating our compliance program with holistic teamwork here at Sagitec, right from the leadership to all the employees.
About the author:
Dawn Miller to lead Sagitec’s risk and compliance charter. Dawn graduated from Temple University and has obtained numerous risk and compliance professional certifications. She has over 25 years of experience in risk management, compliance, safety, data privacy, and emergency preparedness. Her experience includes workplace safety matters, emergency preparedness, and disaster relief, including playing a role in response to the September 11th attacks. She has held leadership roles in federal and global healthcare programs as a Director of Risk Management and Compliance and Data Privacy Officer. She has been responsible for managing HIPAA, GDPR, and data privacy requirements.