Skip to content



How pandemic time is changing compliance

When the situation is urgent and unpredictable (like all pandemics are), we have to react accordingly. Compliance teams have an especially heavy workload since it’s they who need to reorganize supply chains and prepare work teams for remote work or different tasks.     

Thanks to the experience of compliance teams during the pandemic, we have a chance to analyze a recent survey conducted with the help of SCCE and HCCA. The changes we can see in the pandemic world (and expect after the end of the pandemic) are the following:

 

1. Learning to collaborate  Teamwork is on the rise: compliance actively collaborated with other departments during the pandemic and continues to do so. 16% of respondents answered that collaboration with the board increased, and up to 47% of respondents noticed the same changes in collaboration with the HR department, legal and internal audit.

Three colored circles with statistics

Unfortunately, some people experienced decreased collaborations with different units — nearly 18% of respondents weren’t satisfied with the work of the internal audit. Mostly, collaboration within departments increased or stayed the same, which is a good sign of effective communication.

 

2. Higher number of reports. The second predictable conclusion from the active collaboration is a high number of inquiries to compliance teams. During the pandemic, nearly 36% of respondents from different industries claimed that there is an increase in inquiries. Especially evidently, this increase was observed in healthcare - almost 42% of respondents in this field reported on current issues, compared to nearly 30% of increased reports in other fields.

The pandemic identifies the most crucial and at the same time, vulnerable industries - it is the case with healthcare. Considering the budget cut for compliance teams who can deal with all the requests from healthcare, there is a significant risk for compliance units to fail some tasks and multiply the number of requests.

 

3. Everything is remote?   The last, but not the least notable switch in the life of all employees all over the world - the work which couldn’t be remote now is remote. New working conditions, less time for commuting - we can only take a deep breath and hope that after the end of the pandemic at least part of employers can reconsider their attitude toward part-time and remote work. Let’s look at the facts: up to 60% of employees in non-healthcare industries work exclusively remotely, and 25% work mostly remotely.

Statistics on remote work during quarantine (1)

Some healthcare specialists also switched to remote work - 37% of them work solely remotely, and 33% work mostly remotely. Specific jobs didn’t imply the opportunity for remote work before the pandemic, but during the pandemic, the workload of particular specialists in healthcare turned into a 24/7 challenge. Consequently, we can’t deny that the ability to organize your work and communication is now essential more than ever - part of this task is a duty of compliance teams.

 

We are thankful for the survey about compliance during the pandemic time made by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics & Health Care Compliance Association. This article serves educational purposes only.