What is a compliance tracking and reporting framework?
Compliance monitoring is a continuous assessment of whether your organization adheres to regulatory requirements. Its purpose is to establish strict internal policies that align with specific industry standards.
A compliance tracking and reporting framework helps your organization consistently enforce regulatory compliance and avoid penalties. Failing to maintain compliance can result in expensive fines. In extreme cases, non-compliance could result in criminal charges for your key stakeholders.
The core purpose of a compliance tracking and reporting framework is to achieve the following:
Conduct an accurate risk management assessment to minimize the risks of non-compliance. By detecting these risks early, you can dedicate resources and create tasks to address these risks and maintain compliance.
Develop compliance policies that define procedures, and clearly communicate them to your co-workers. The policies lay down your compliance rules, and your compliance tracking and reporting process ensures the compliance policies are followed properly.
Stay up-to-date with current compliance and monitoring protocols. Your frameworks should be regularly updated to reflect changes in regulations or business operations, along with technological advancements.
Why use a compliance tracking and reporting template
A compliance tracking and reporting template is designed to help you keep track of compliance requirements, manage audits and ensure timely reporting. It’s a structured tool that standardizes compliance monitoring and helps your team organize all compliance-related tasks.
These are some key benefits of a compliance tracking and reporting template.
Proactive compliance management: Help your team identify risks early and complete tasks that keep your business compliant.
Evaluate risks and build task management workflows: Create standard processes to address risks of non-compliance and align your business with regulatory standards.
Build efficient compliance enforcement processes: Create detailed action plans to develop or evaluate compliance programs and implement changes that protect your business interests.
Ongoing monitoring: Use the project board to continuously track compliance tasks and adapt to changing regulations.
Make more effective decisions: Give all team members guidance on how best to support compliance protocols so that all tasks are completed effectively and efficiently.
Improve collaboration: Create a centralized project board for all compliance matters so you improve teamwork, coordination and accountability.
How to use your compliance tracking and reporting template
Using a compliance tracking and reporting template helps your team build projects to address and mitigate any risks to compliance.
Here's a step-by-step guide on how to use the template effectively:
Step 1: Build your project board
At the start of the project, create sections for each stage of the compliance tracking and reporting framework. Treat this as your master project board and visualize how tasks will move through the project. Use the existing labels To do, In progress, Under review, Completed, and Archived. Alternatively, you can change them to suit your individual workflow.
As your team members begin work on compliance-related tasks, you can use your sections to track status updates throughout the project. If there are any project delays or roadblocks, assign additional resources or reassign tasks so that compliance matters remain on track.
Step 2: Create and assign your tasks
Once you’ve built your sections, fill in the project board with all the tasks that must be completed to enforce compliance. To create a new task, simply click the + icon at the top of your project board or any project section.
Once you create the task, you can assign it to the proper team member and even add tags to manage the degree of complexity.
To create a new tag, click “Tags” in the task sidebar > Manage > Add Tag.
Step 3: Monitor and update
Compliance requirements may change as new laws and technologies are implemented. Make sure to regularly review and update the status of each task so that you’re working as efficiently and effectively as possible.
As tasks are completed, move them to the “Completed” section on your project board. Once the task deliverable is reviewed and finalized, you can move the task to the “Archived” section and reassign resources to new tasks. If new risks arise during the project, make updates to your project board and identify, tag and manage new tasks that support the updated requirements.
Step 4: Track and review
As work begins on each of your project tasks, you can monitor workflows and performance statuses using your template. Click the “Reports” icon on the left dashboard of your project board and evaluate team performance. This feature will help you improve how you build your project board for similar compliance-related projects in the future.
