Corporate compliance involves the design, implementation, and monitoring of effective policies, programs, procedures, and practices surrounding compliance by an organization and its employees and other representatives with legal and regulatory requirements applicable to the organization’s business activities as well as detection of potential violations of these legal and regulatory requirements by an organization’s employees and other representatives. Corporate compliance also encompasses internal policies and procedures adopted by organizations to minimize risk to the organization and ensure ethical behavior and personal conduct by the organization’s employees and other representatives.
Although the types of compliance programs and policies that may be appropriate for a particular organization will vary according to an organization’s size and complexity of operations, all organizations, large and small, corporate or otherwise, benefit from having effective corporate compliance programs in place, be they formal or informal, that are well-designed, appropriately tailored to the organization’s operations and actively monitored following their establishment.
While the design and implementation of an effective corporate compliance program is important for all types of organizations, a well designed program is ineffective without a culture within an organization that fosters a real spirit of adherence to the program from its leadership. A successful program demands the timely reporting of potential violations of the program to appropriate leaders within the organization and the prompt handling of those apparent violations.
The services of knowledgeable and experienced legal counsel can be used to assist an organization in not only cost effectively designing corporate compliance programs that are appropriate in light of an organization’s size, form of entity, operational focus, complexity, management structure, and breadth of operations, but also in aiding organizations in dealing with apparent violations of those programs and the underlying laws and regulations.