6 skills every compliance officer should possess

Compliance happens to be one of those professions that people fall into from parallel roles such as HR, Legal, and Safety. This creates a dynamic mixing-pot of skillsets that further strengthens in the profession.

But as you will see in the list below, at least half of the top skills for a compliance officer (in our opinion) are soft skills such as communication and collaboration.

Read on to discover our pick of the top skills for a compliance officer.

  1. Industry knowledge

    Industry knowledge is a key skill for compliance officers because regulatory and compliance issues differ dramatically between sectors. For example, while a compliance officer in a mining company might be focused on ensuring safety and training certifications are met, a colleague in a financial institution would be more focused on financial and credit checks related to staff being placed in a position of managerial or financial responsibility.

    For this reason, a compliance officer who has come up from within the ranks of a certain industry will be much more effective than someone parachuted in from an unrelated sector.
  2. Understanding of the regulatory landscape

    Do you know your ISO31000 from your ISO 37301? Do you understand what the 2022 Critical Infrastructure Bill will mean for compliance checks?

    Keeping abreast of the ever-evolving regulatory landscape is no small task. There’s a lot of information to wade through, along with the task of identifying the relevant parts and applying them to your organisational context. And let’s face it’s very dry reading.

    Top compliance officers know how to stay ahead of the regulatory curve by keeping a close eye on government legislation and planning ahead to ensure their organisation is never taken by surprise.
  3. Risk assessment

    Compliance is about risk management, mitigation, and avoidance. Risks not only include fines for non-compliance, but the very real possibility of employee injury or even death in some industries, and financial fraud in others. Risks like these can lead to brand damage and a loss of customer trust.

    Compliance professionals should have a strong understanding of risk management and know how to identify, prioritise, and mitigate risk using digital toolkits such as CVCheck and Cited.
  4. Collaboration and influence

    Compliance officers cannot be effective if they attempt to operate in a vacuum. They should be able to collaborate with other departments including Legal, HR and Recruitment, Safety, and Finance. Doing so takes good communication, influence, an ability to identify shared challenges across teams and the ability to speak the language of different stakeholders.
  5. Communication, perseverance and patience

    A compliance officer’s communication skills will help determine how the function is seen by others in the business. With great communication and the ability to show others what’s in it for them, compliance can be seen as enablers rather than blockers, and avoid being branded as the organisation’s police.

    When communicating with staff who take longer than others to complete important compliance tasks, compliance officers will require perseverance and a boatload of patience. Some of the burden of this aspect of the job can be lifted through the power of automated reminders.
  6. Data analysis and IT skills

    Do compliance officers need to be IT savvy?

    It depends on what system the organisation has in place. If, for example, you are trying to manage compliance with the help of spreadsheets, it can take sophisticated Microsoft Excel skills to turn columns of data into meaningful insights.

    The best compliance management systems such as Cited are intuitive, easy to use, and can generate custom reports at the touch of a button, meaning there is no steep learning curve required for use.


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