Compliance
Welcome to New Zealand Compliance! Compliance is a system of individuals, processes, policies, and procedures to comply with applicable federal and local laws, regulations, and contracts governing the actions of your organisation. Our mission is to empower you with compliance matters in New Zealand.
Compliance ensures your commitment to an ethical way of operations with a system for helping everyone involved do the right thing. You may need a compliance program if you are a foundation, government agency, non-profit organisation, private business, publicly traded company, school, or any other form of organisation.
Through a dedicated site, Compliance Matters, the New Zealand government addresses requirements and benefits of compliance in each of its program guidelines. An effective compliance program safeguards your legal responsibility to abide by applicable laws and regulations. With a compliance program, you also demonstrate to employees and the community your commitment to good corporate conduct. A program serves to identify and prevent criminal and unethical conduct by creating a knowledge base of relevant information on regulations. The program provides a methodology for employees to report potential problems, besides the ability to engage in appropriate action and conduct investigation in cases of alleged misconduct. With a compliance program, you will also reduce your exposure to civil damages, penalties, criminal sanctions, and remedies.
Compliance Matters
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) provides general guidance on compliance-related matters. Compliance Matters, a tool developed by MBIE, is an easy-to-use tool to understand and develop a compliance program—say building compliance, car compliance, gas compliance, plumbing compliance, or labour compliance—for any kind of business or organisation. Government entities including Accident Compensation Corporation, Inland Revenue, Ministry for Primary Industries, New Zealand Customs Service, Statistics New Zealand, and WorkSafe New Zealand have contributed to the Compliance Matters tool.
Using the tool, a building contractor or client could learn about building standards applicable to a new project, for instance, or an individual could identify consumer affairs issues for a service. Businesses could learn about employment relations or immigration-related matters for hiring expatriates. The tool also covers subjects such as motor vehicles and requirements for plumbers, gas–fitters, and drain-layers, which are not well understood or difficult to find. Individuals or businesses wanting to start new businesses could look up relevant standards such as trading standards or tenancy services, saving time and resources for business development.
Implementing a Compliance Program
Our mission at New Zealand Compliance is to help you establish a culture of integrity with a compliance program. A compliance program will help you manage legal and reputational risk. Since the stakes are high, a compliance program is about protecting the organisation, its members, and associated stakeholders from harm.
Since compliance is a complex process, you must be aware of all potential applicable laws and regulations for your organisation, as you have an obligation to know, understand, and follow the rules and laws. A compliance program will help the members of your organisation know the rules and ensure that they follow them.
A compliance program should be carefully crafted, in consultation with experienced compliance professionals. In order to ensure compliance, policies and guidelines should to support the program. With training, you could promote all aspects of a compliance program so that everyone is aware and responsible.
A high-quality compliance program needs to blend rules, regulations, and laws with ethics to develop and sustain a culture based on accountability, integrity, and values to ensure that everyone always does the right thing. A culture of compliance will ensure that the program has consistency to eliminate and lessen the opportunities for damage from undesirable conduct or compliance failures. Sustaining a culture of compliance requires management support, which will ensure that a program goes beyond the minimum requirements. Commitment from senior members of the organisation will promote ethical conduct and adherence to the program.
Implementing a compliance program requires ongoing training to develop a two-tiered approach, which are actions and mindset. Both are required for an effective compliance culture. Building a culture of compliance may take a while as ethical conduct needs to be nurtured, reinforced, and repeated over and over again.
A compliance officer could be designated to review and manage the program. The officer should be accountable for the effectiveness of the program. Periodic reviews or assessments could ensure that the program is up to date with changing regulations or new requirements. The compliance officer could use the Compliance Matter tool as a measurement and benchmarking system for compliance and ethics program performance.