If you’re a compliance pro, here’s one you’ve undoubtedly heard: “We just need to get all that knowledge out of your brain!”
It usually comes from someone with good intentions but doesn’t fully grasp what we do. It’s also a pretty thinly veiled dig: we appreciate your expertise, but scale is a problem.
Honestly, we get it. And we want the same things. We don’t want to be involved in every “compliance” related conversation. We don’t want to spend all our time keeping up with a regulatory landscape that’s constantly in flux. And most of all, we want our deep employment industry knowledge baked into our products and services.
But here’s the rub: untangling the web of interrelated and often conflicting employment regulations is an art–and one that can take the better part of a career to be good at. Employment laws change quickly, are usually written more as policy statements than clear law, and the ones that trigger a series of urgent escalation emails are often out of scope for our businesses.
So, how do we scale compliance?
Building the Compliance Engine
When I think about my own journey building regulated employment and hiring products, two things stand out: (1) context switching and (2) CYA. We bounce from dissecting employment laws in spreadsheets to building flowcharts for new hire onboarding packets, then it’s over to I-9 processing based on the start date– which spreadsheet is that again? And is that document allowed?
All of this context-switching can result in our industry-specific expertise getting lost in the noise. And sometimes, yes, mistakes happen and compliance debt starts to build up. This is where the CYA really starts to creep in. We’re cautious we’ve missed something so we overcompensate by including more than is necessary.
Take the challenge of staying up-to-date with various employment forms (income tax withholding forms, minimum wage postings, required policy disclosures, etc.). Of course, there’s no centralized source for this information, so we’re left subscribing to dozens of newsletters, regularly checking state government websites, paying for legislative monitoring services–and canceling after we don’t really use it. Which results in a bloated employee onboarding packet that includes repetitive entries, and irrelevant or confusing information.
This is what has me so excited about building our compliance engine. A set of tools that can refocus our expertise by taking some of the complex and error-prone logic flows off our plates and significantly cut down on the context switching. And by lifting the burden of constant research and monitoring, the engine can significantly reduce our tendency to CYA –unlocking cleaner and more targeted compliance flows.
Embracing Compliance-as-a-Service
I’m not the first to coin “Compliance-as-as-Service” (CaaS). It’s usually in reference to a point solution in banking (like KYC questions)--not exactly a huge value add for most. What I mean, is compliance-at-scale. Not replacing a lifetime of industry knowledge, but rather freeing those internal compliance pros from the burden of upkeep in a sprawling landscape. And ultimately enabling them to focus on edge cases, strategy, and nuance.
To be clear, Compliance-as-a-Service isn't a magic wand. When you see billboards that say “Global Hiring Compliance” you should roll your eyes. What they are selling is access to compliance resources. You’re left on your own to search, synthesize, analyze, and ultimately implement. Access to information is not compliance at scale.
With Onboarded’s compliance engine, we are delivering implemented compliance in real-time. Embedded compliance workflows mean we provide curated sets of questions tailored to your employee profiles. When relevant laws change, those workflows change. This allows you to scale processes without painful interruption.
One more thing: embedded compliance isn’t just about scale—it’s also about respect. Respect for your compliance pros stuck in the world of spreadsheets. But also respect for your new hires. These bloated and difficult processes we build over time often deliver an unintended message–We don’t respect your time. When you onboard a new employee, you are building a relationship with them. And by embracing compliance-as-a-service, you can focus on building a meaningful one from the start.
**Tyler Browne, Head of Compliance & Operations at Onboarded. Tyler is an attorney with 10+ years of regulated product development, including compliance and operations teams at Checkr and Apple. He’s a father of 2 and is no slouch with a spreadsheet.
Join Our Beta Program
Are you ready to try our compliance engine? We're selecting a limited set of clients to work with to deeply understand your business and how and ensure your success. Contact us at www.onboarded.com or sales@onboarded.com for more information.
.png)
