How To Ensure My Business Complies With The Law?
Businesses must ensure they comply with all legal requirements. Below are some of the most important considerations for any business:
- Any professional regulator (e.g. the Financial Conduct Authority ‘FCA’)
- Finance regulations including tax, payroll, HMRC, accounting, record keeping regulations, companies house, anti-money laundering regulations
- Employment law and workers’ rights
- GDPR / Data Protection compliance including websites, data storage, data systems, password controls, policies, to name but a few
- Contracts and agreements with third parties
- Sector-specific permits, licences, permissions
- Health & Safety for workers and visitors to your offices/site
Research
Researching the laws which apply to your business/sector can be incredibly daunting. For many it is a should not a must. The good news is that there have never been so many free resources to find out information that applies to your business.
Many people we know have suffered by either a) taking over businesses and assuming the practices and systems in place were complaint and/or, b) creating a new business using the same practices and systems in place at their former workplace only to find they are not compliant.
You can locate free information to assist you and your business in the following places:
- The Government provides a phenomenal amount of information for businesses generally and sector-specific queries. https://www.gov.uk/browse/business
- Legislation can be located for free at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/
- Be careful using search engines. However, many solicitors and legal professionals have provided content and information for free. Do not rely on this solely but it can provide a quick foundation for you to start from. Remember some of the information may be out of date or even incorrect so proceed with caution on search engines
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is a vital solution for every business. Decisions over which areas to retain internally and which to outsource vary from business to business but one thing that can never be outsourced is overall responsibility.
If you are regulated, e.g. by the FCA, you can of course outsource your compliance and take various steps to utilise highly skilled compliance teams to ensure your systems, controls, training, and policies are of a high standard. Unfortunately, though when things go wrong this is no defence, and whilst separate legal action may be viable overall regulatory responsibility falls with the business owners.
Whether you are regulated or not the same is true of HMRC responsibilities, GDPR, and employment law to name but a few.
The areas of your business that you perform internally should be audited by a third party at least once a year to ensure compliance.
The areas of your business that are outsourced need to be carefully monitored. How can you be certain your outsourcing partners have maintained your legal compliance? We have seen many examples of businesses who have been let down by their outsourced partners thinking they were compliant with the law / a regulator and unfortunately being left exposed.
This does not mean you should never outsource of course. When outsourcing we would recommend:
- Careful selection of outsourcing partners
- Close attention is paid to the terms and conditions. Do not be afraid to alter the terms and conditions and ensure they are as favourable to you as possible.
- Ensuring your internal key personnel are trained, have the right resources, and time to review and sample check the work of outsourcing partners
- Annual audits of your outsourced partners work either internally or by an alternative partner in the profession
- Seek feedback from industry peers, friends, and associates on their recommended partners
Solutions
To ensure legal compliance in any business a combination of internal and outsourced solutions is best practice.
Ensuring the business leaders and key personnel have the required training, support, and time allocated is crucial. Ensuring that internal audits and checks are performed on outsourced areas is also of high importance to prevent third-party errors damaging your business later down the line.
There are invaluable free online resources that provide the foundations for any business to ensure compliance.
Utilising third-party software, systems, and processes can be hugely beneficial. Selection of key partners and ongoing reviews of their performance, compliance, and value for money is an absolute must. Trust your instincts and do not shy away from challenging supposed experts from third parties with famous brand names behind them.