In nearly 20 years of discussing with automotive organisations how they achieve compliance I have concluded that there is a hidden “rule of thirds”:

1. Roughly one third of management will carry out the required actions when they have a good understanding of what is required. These are the senior management of tomorrow who understand the commercial importance of compliance and are happy to carve out their careers based on their personal success within their management roles.
2. Another third of management will carry out the required actions when they see that the first third is benefiting from being compliant. They are good managers in their own areas of expertise, but don’t always have the bigger picture from the view of the directors.
3. The final third of management will consider they have more pressing priorities and frustrate your objectives. They are the most challenging and is where most effort should and will have to be given. It’s no coincidence that this is the third with the most financial risk.

When an organisation grows fast, whether by acquisition or its own development programme, improving compliance across all areas including health & safety and finance can be problematic. Difficulties with new processes, systems and sales targets will be prioritised over matters of compliance. In these situations it is often the case that compliance managers and auditors are overwhelmed with site visits. But is there a different approach that can provide an easy solution?

Implementing a Manager’s Self-Assessment is an ideal tool that can achieve good results with the first two -thirds of your organisation, while creating more time to deal with the challenging final third. The principle is very simple: “Show us you can accurately assess and manage your own compliance objectives, and we will leave you alone.” Of course all sites will still need to be audited, but not all sites will need to be audited as frequently as the final third. The ‘acid test’ of self-assessment is that the audit results are in line with the location’s current self-assessment leaving your compliance team to prioritise time where it’s needed.

Censeo has several resources with minimal costs, that can each or in combination, be used to achieve more efficiently the results you are looking for. They include Audits (onsite, remote and revisit audits), Scheduled Tasks and Self-Assessment, all online and available in real-time.

If you would like to hear more about how we help large automotive organisations free up their compliance teams with successful compliance improvements please get in touch with one of the team.