Tips for Keeping Your Business in Compliance

Every business owner must ensure that their business is compliant either with the federal regulations or state regulations. Although it is not an exciting topic such as innovation, compliance helps protect businesses in many ways including license retention. Non-compliance which can come from cutting corners, ignorance or negligence of laws governing your business industry can result in grave implications for you and your business. To help your business meet all compliance requirement needed, we have put together a few tips for you.

Understand tax rules 

Tax codes, rules, and regulations are contradictory and confusing at times. This is because they are constantly changing and evolving. Despite the fact, you need to always keep up with the changes and adhere to them accordingly. We all know the implication of tax code noncompliance; it can earn you a few years behind bars after sinking your business. Understand that you need to be both federal and state compliant.

Digest Human Resource rules and policies 

Your business needs to have all the necessary policies governing the human resource. Have a sexual harassment policy that is robust and actionable. In some states it is mandatory that you have this policy, train your employees and have them sign that they attended the training and received the policy. Having employees sign the policy can help your business in case of a legal action. Sexual harassment is a major concern in the workplace. It affects both male and female colleagues. State and federal governments have seen the need to legislate on the issue and have businesses comply. There are other rules that govern human resource policy such as work benefits compensation plan, pension policy, among others.

Regular audit reports 

You should have periodic compliance audit within your company. If say, for instance, you are running a healthcare business; you might find intentional or unintentional overpayments. An audit should point you towards the anomaly and assist you to remain ZPIC compliant. However, despite all your efforts to maintain your ZPIC compliance, it can elude you at times, and that is where the services of an expert would come in handy. Such a person should help you investigate where and how you received overpayments and what you can do to return that which does not belong to you. Outsource compliance personnel

Part of being a successful entrepreneur is understanding you cannot be a master of everything; there are aspects of your business operations that you will have no clue about at all. Those are areas that you will need to be compliant. Bring in a compliance management team that will look into all your business requirements and areas that you need to be compliant. This will save you time, money and energy. Most business owners make the mistake of trying to do everything on their own only to realize that they overlooked somethings that are important or they neglected to fill a certain form. Outsourced personnel is a team that understands the system, knows what is required and they use their contacts to your benefit.

Educate your employees

Regardless of the size of the business, you need to train your employees on compliance requirements. It is not necessarily that an employee does something on purpose but a simple mistake from ignorance can land you in a sea of legal troubles. Training them on what compliance means can help you and your business escape legal challenges. You might also require them to do some compliance procedure, and they must know that cutting corners can be counter-effective.

Document evidence 

Learn how to document and safely keep all documents regarding the compliance process. Invoices, contracts, or any other related document should be scanned and stored in a safe place to produce as evidence in case a problem arises. Understand that a simple paper can exonerate you from a full-blown legal crisis.

Conclusion

Business regulation compliance is a must do for every business enterprise, and there are no shortcuts about it; it is either you are compliant, or you are not. We have seen and heard businesses that have lost their licenses because they failed to be compliant. These few tips should help you stay clear of legal battles both from the state and federal governments. However, compliance rules are dynamic; you should, therefore, remain updated on the current requirements.

Adam Richards

About Adam Richards

Adam Richards is a semi-retired business professional originally from Bangor, Maine. He spent the majority of his career in sales and marketing where he rose to the marketing lead of a Fortune 1000 company. He then moved on to helping people as a career counselor that specifically helped bring families to self-sufficiency through finding them rewarding careers. He has now returned to Bangor for his retirement and spends his free time writing. This blog will be about everything he learned throughout his career. He'll write on career, workplace, education and technology issues as well as on trends, changes, and advice for the Maine job market and its employers.