Practice Makes Compliance Perfect

As learnings reinforced by recent scams and frauds across the country have shown us, a culture of being compliant must be driven from the highest management and operation heads of organisations. This is the most successful way to remain compliant in letter and in spirit.

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Serving in the Armed Forces gives a unique perspective to everything in life, and this includes compliance. Non-compliance to processes and procedures never remains to be an option in the Armed Forces. Shifting to the corporate world and witnessing the nuances of compliances in HR and its adherence by organisations has been an eye opener. Before getting into the nuances of compliance, I would say that it is no great secret that the general culture of India is not conducive for compliance. And, this is so because a child grows up in our country looking at people breaking traffic rules and begins to believe that rules are meant to be broken. The concept of stopping before a stop line (if the stop line even exists) is something that most Indians do not seriously consider. So, compliance to hazy HR laws whose meanings are open to interpretation, can be a daunting task for us in India.

The impact of non-compliance

Non-compliance to HR laws can indeed have a very high impact based on the severity of non-compliance. While serving as the HR head in an organisation, my own experience of non-compliance led me to deal with an arrest warrant issued on one of the Directors of the organisation. We then had to spend quite a bit of money and time to resolve the situation. Most of the laws in India stipulate imprisonment and hefty fines for non-compliance misdemeanours. Enforcement agencies such as the labour commissioner and labour inspector can invoke these provisions at any time, based on the non-compliance of an organisation.

HR compliance in India