Focus on labour compliance: from obligation to opportunity

Current labour compliance and post-pandemic labour relationships are more complex than just compliance with local regulations. Starting from the need to adequate our ancient working and payment models, companies must adapt to trends and demands of the economy while managing complications related to employees’ engagement. Under such a challenging and fast-changing scenario, labour compliance is also affected by indirect factors, which are rising from emerging regulations, built to adapt the existing legal environment to international recommendations or treaties, and new minimum compliance standards.

Among these international commitments, it is worth mentioning Data Privacy and IP regulations, Antibribery and Crime Prevention Models, and, more recently, Cyber-Crime Prevention laws, which create new demands in terms of prevention, investment, monitoring and digital transformation. All such regulatory bodies have proven to open discussions around extraterritorial applicability of the law, depending on the labour contracting models we have in place or the type of data we are handling or controlling as employers.

The above matters should not be considered out of the scope of HR managers or compliance officers, who should constantly incorporate into their fields of knowledge diverse aspects such as adequate use of IT resources by employees and their managers, diversity and inclusion initiatives, protection, custody, and elimination of applicants and employees’ data if it does not longer serve its purpose.

This broad and diverse spectrum of obligations may become a huge burden, depending on the maturity of each organisation and the resources dedicated to the identification, prevention and risk management. Nevertheless, this challenging framework can also be seen as an opportunity to differentiate from others in the market if the compliance officer embraces what I like to call the ‘new compliance’ which can be done by adopting best practices and upgraded codes of conduct oriented to create a culture of prevention and compliance according to international standards.

In conclusion, compliance may be a key factor of success for your company. It may also generate new business opportunities and growth, along with underlying sustainable and competitive models and better work environments.