Compliance expectations keep getting bigger, often without the department getting more resources, and CCI columnist Mary Shirley has a word for it: shrinkflation. Her prescription is practical and, in at least one case, counterintuitive.
Oftentimes, I find our greatest strengths can also end up being our biggest weaknesses. The very kind person may be taken advantage of by someone else. The generous person can give away too much and leave themselves with too little.
This double-edged sword holds true in compliance, where one of the best parts of the job is that we deal with ever-evolving subject matter in a dynamic space. The downside is that responsibility areas may be added to our plates without the added resources to proportionately cover the increases in workload.
For many of us, this happens year-over-year. In 2020, it was ESG; more recently it’s AI governance.
There’s another word for this phenomenon of doing more with less: shrinkflation. How can we combat this in our compliance functions?
Working groups
Cross-team working groups can be an efficient way to address compliance tasks where there is not a dedicated member hired for the activity. This also helps to break down silos and create new working relationships with the department.
How does this work? Take an activity that needs to be done and pull together folks from various areas of the department to work on it as a project team. Compliance topics suitable for this include risk assessment, training and education, communications, data analytics, compliance week activities and so on.
Essentially, you’re asking yourself whether there is anything that is too much to allocate to one existing person and might be deferred otherwise. This enables your team to make a start quickly while team members can build their resume and get to collaborate with others they don’t normally work with closely in their core roles.
In selecting the team members, consider whose skills are most aligned with what needs to be done and what areas of experience or types of work the team members have indicated they want to do more of during your catch-ups.
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Read moreDetailsUse AI and the skills of your peers to your advantage
Whether you were an early adopter of AI and consider ChatGPT to be an honorary member of your team already or whether you’re still a little nervous about it, learning to refine your prompts is an ongoing area of opportunity. There’s no reason to start from scratch, though, as an emerging social media group can help you take advantage of community insights.
Compliance practitioners Kortney Nordrum and Nicole Di Schino set up a LinkedIn group with a library of compliance prompts and share some tips with do’s and don’ts to be more effective with your prompts.
Kortney reflected upon the usefulness and importance of AI earlier this year.
“AI isn’t here to replace compliance officers,” she told me. “It’s here to make us faster, sharper and a lot less overwhelmed. I use AI every day to jump-start drafts, stress-test policy language, summarize regulatory changes and surface issues before they become emergencies. It gets me from zero to a strong first draft in minutes so I can spend my time where it actually adds value: judgment, strategy and advising the business.
“That’s exactly why Nicole and I built a draft library and a LinkedIn community for compliance professionals. Not to outsource thinking but to upgrade it. We’re using AI to share smarter starting points, improve consistency and raise the bar for the whole function. Less grind and higher impact with fewer resources.”
Of course, don’t forget to be a good ambassador for ethics and compliance and follow any AI governance rules of your organization including avoiding putting confidential data into generative AI tools.
Unconventional hiring
While added headcount might not be overtly offered, it is worth considering whether this is an opportune juncture to make a case for new headcount and boldly make the ask. Instead of asking for a new full-time team member by default, consider whether a part-time role might be appropriate for your circumstances.
This taps into an under-utilized job market in compliance, giving folks who want to work but aren’t well-positioned to do so on a full-time basis the opportunity to contribute. And it can be an easier yes to get to for approval with relatively less expense expected.
I shared my success story of one such hiring in this LinkedIn post as an example of how doing something different to how we’ve always done it has paid off for everyone involved, and it really resonated with the LinkedIn community, hopefully inspiring others to try the same.
Setting expectations
If you do nothing else, remember to set expectations with relevant stakeholders about what you can reasonably accomplish with the resources you have available. Be open about the new additions to your compliance program that demand more time and especially those that are heavy lifts.
Confirm that your team is alive to new risk areas and government expectations but that stakeholders need to understand what is possible and realistic based on the status quo. The wellness of you and your team should not be compromised in the face of increasing expectations.
