What should your Compliance Management Software look like?

There are a lot of companies out there offering software to help you manage your compliance today at a wide array of pricing. For as little as $80, you can pick up a bare bones package that will promise you the moon, yet deliver only smelly cheese. At the other end of the scale, there are software packages out there that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, carrying every bell and whistle you can think of, but they are so complex that the learning curve is steeper than Mt Everest, or designed for use in an academic environment, with industrial and commercial regulatory features tacked on.

How can you know which package is right for your business?

Here are a five key features to look for in any compliance management software package.

1. It should be designed from the start to handle the unique requirements of the regulatory world.
2. It should be designed to give you the information you need quickly, easily, and from multiple locations.
3. It should be designed to function seamlessly with your other office software packages, such as Human Resources, Safety, and Procurement, or provide those functions itself.
4. It should be easy to use.
5. It should have excellent support.

Before we examine each of these in depth, let’s take a step back and talk about workforce compliance, and what it is and what it isn’t.

When we talk about workforce compliance and compliance management, what we are trying to do is answer a deceptively simple question: “Does Sally meet all the requirements she needs in order to perform her job?” Answering that question should be as simple as asking it, but until recently, it has not been that way, and here’s why.

Sally drives a forklift as part of her job as a warehouse operator. In order to drive that forklift, she has to meet several different sets of requirements. The first come from OSHA, the federal regulatory body covering occupational health and safety. OSHA requires three things. First, Sally must have gone through some form of documented instruction, usually done via a class or CBT. This instruction must cover the topics specified by OSHA and she must be able to document passing that class. Next, she must go through practical training, where she operates the forklift under the instruction of a qualified operator. Finally, she must operate the forklift, performing tasks similar to her regular duties, while being evaluated. Only after completing all three tasks will she be qualified to operate the forklift.

But wait, there’s more.

She also must comply with any state, local, or company procedures, policies, or regulations. Each of these requirements may expire, depending on the source of the requirement. And, if a requirement changes (for example, Sally’s company changes their forklift speed limit from 10mph to 7mph) Sally is required to be informed of that change once it goes into effect prior to operating a forklift.

Sally’s manager must be able to verify that she complies with all requirements before assigning her to a forklift each time he makes that assignment. So how does he do that?

In the past, he would contact training, or go to the document storage room himself, and verify that she met all the requirements, that none of them had expired and that none of them had changed.

To make things harder, Mark, the crane operator, called in sick, so Sally is switching to the crane and Margie will be operating the forklift today. Tracking this manually is time consuming, error prone, and inefficient, which is why we started using spreadsheets. With spreadsheets, we could keep track of who was trained to which requirements, which requirements applied to specific jobs, and who was assigned to each job. The problem was that we needed a minimum of three spreadsheets to track all of this, and we still didn’t have a handle on other crucial pieces of information like when training expires, and so on.

Enter the database. Now we could track all the pieces and relate them together. But we still had a problem. Most training management databases were adaptations of educational software, and they were totally inadequate for managing industrial compliance. For just one example (for a deeper discussion, check out our paper comparing educational curricula to workforce compliance.) once you take a course in college, it doesn’t matter if they revise the textbook; your degree is still good. For another example, a degree lasts forever, unlike industrial requirements, which must be repeated periodically.

It quickly became clear that workforce compliance was a new animal, and that it required a dedicated software solution, designed from the start to meet the needs of the workforce, not the student.

Let’s set out some of these unique requirements and see how they inform our list of five key features.

• Workforce requirements may expire, may be revocable, or may need to be repeated.
• Workforce requirements may be fulfilled through multiple delivery methods or external paths.
• Workforce requirements may not be transferable between business units.
• Workforce requirements may change, disqualifying workers from a job until the requirement is repeated.
• Workforce requirements attach to a job or task, not a person because the person may change tasks from day to day.
• Workforce requirements are constantly under revision and those changes must be applicable instantaneously throughout the workforce.
• Workforce requirements may have a legal component and may require specific documentation and retention procedures.
• Workforce requirements may come from multiple sources, each of which may have different policies and procedures that must be followed.
• Workforce requirements are often met through self or independent study.
• Workforce requirements must be documentable at remote job sites as well as locally.

While an academic program may be able to be warped to fit some of these needs, it is apparent that a solid workforce compliance package, designed from the ground up to deal with these unique needs, provides the best solution, which is the first criteria mentioned above.

But the best compliance information on the planet would be no good unless you have the ability to access it easily. Given that requirements are linked to a job, not a person, it makes sense that a compliance management package should do the same, linking compliance requirements to a task, not directly to a person. You need to be able to access that information quickly, either by the job, the person, the location, or manager. If you can’t get to the information, it might as well not be there.

Duplicate entry is a recipe for disaster. One entry per piece of data is the goal. You not only minimize the chances for mistakes, you also save endless time and money when your compliance system interfaces with existing systems, like Human Resources, Document Management, Safety management, or Learning Management Systems. Better still is an integrated package that can perform all of these functions.

Usually, the more powerful the software, the steeper the learning curve. And if a package is too hard to learn, people won’t use it and that’s a waste of time and money. However, software designers are spending more time making their systems more intuitive and user friendly. Built-in context-sensitive help systems, moderated user forums, and most importantly, intelligent software design has reduced the learning curve to a manageable level for even the most complex software packages. It is absolutely vital that your compliance management package is one of those.

Finally, no software is perfect. More importantly, learning the ‘Why” behind the “How” ensures that you get the most from your investment. Consider it this way: You can climb in to a NASCAR racecar and drive it around the track withy little or no problem. BUt you’ll never get it up to 200mph without training and support from a pit crew. Make sure your chosen package has an All-Star pit crew to help you hit 200mph.