Companies can have their compliance management system certified according to ISO 19600. Whether and when this makes sense must be carefully examined.
The standard can be applied in companies as well as in other organisations. Small and medium-sized companies can also benefit from the standard, as the recommendations are scalable and can be applied to varying degrees depending on the size of the company.
The Compliance Management System (CMS) of ISO 19600 is based on five pillars, which can also serve as a "roadmap" for the introduction of a CMS:
1. compliance and risk audit
The compliance audit serves to determine the status quo of the company with regard to its compliance activities. The risk audit serves to identify the compliance obligations (risks). The result is a "compliance risk map" for the company. This analysis is the basis for all further measures for the development of the CMS.
2. leadership
The different roles, responsibilities and competences within the company are considered, especially the company management. The management must make the decision to introduce a CMS and define the goals and framework of the CMS as well as provide the corresponding resources. The role model function of the management is crucial: if the management is committed to clean, legally compliant behaviour and thus to preventing and punishing illegal practices, and if it lives up to this commitment, then an important prerequisite for a CMS to work has been created.
3. steering and control measures
The control measures that a company must introduce include regulations such as a code of conduct, process descriptions and instructions for action. These are to be developed depending on the results of the compliance and risk audit and should be specifically designed with regard to identified compliance risks - always close to the business processes. Suitable monitoring and control measures must be integrated into the processes.
4. communication and training
Most rule violations are based on a lack of knowledge. Knowledge about the existence of a requirement and about the consequences of one's own actions is therefore crucial if compliance is to be achieved. The standard requires ongoing training to enable employees to know compliance requirements and act accordingly. Intensive communication as well as awareness-raising contribute to the creation of a sustainable corporate culture.
5. continuous improvement
Similar to quality management, the continuous improvement of the implemented CMS is one of the central tasks. This involves random and ad hoc checks on the fulfilment of compliance requirements (e.g. through internal audits). Continuous monitoring of the legal environment as well as continuous updating of the risk analysis is necessary in order to constantly adapt the system to new circumstances.
Identified compliance violations must result in a reaction by the company. This includes investigating the incident and determining the consequences of the identified misconduct (sanction). Corrective and preventive measures serve to avoid recurrence.
Certification of a management system is not always sensible or necessary. Therefore, when setting up a CMS, this aspect should be carefully examined in advance: what are the advantages of certification? Is it required (by the market, by customers)?
Only if these and similar questions can be clearly answered with "yes" should certification be considered. In addition to certification, there are numerous alternative options available to the company to effectively communicate the existence of the CMS.
Eckart Achauer, studied law and business administration, postgraduate studies to become a Master of Business Administration (MBA). In-service training to become a European Quality Manager (DGQ), a mediator specialising in business mediation and a Certified Compliance Manager (TÜV).
He worked for around 10 years in the international insurance industry in the management of a Swiss insurance group in various functions (claims department, sales, assistance) before moving into management and business consulting in 1997.
As a consultant and managing director of various consulting companies, Mr Achauer has specialised thematically in organisational and process optimisation as well as in the development and implementation of management systems - quality management, risk and compliance management.
At Senator Executive Search Partners, Mr Achauer is responsible for the area of compliance management. Within the scope of compliance audits, he analyses their organisational "compliance fitness", he sensitises and trains the management, executives and employees and supports the companies in setting up and implementing individual compliance management systems. In doing so, he always takes into account the specific risk situation of the companies. Due to his many years of experience as a manager and consultant, he is very familiar with the entrepreneurial challenges from practice.
It is not without reason that employer rating portals such as kununu or glassdoor offer their own sections in which candidates can rate the course of the application process or the interview. If openly communicated criticism does occur, companies should definitely take it seriously and respond accordingly - both in external communication and in the application to internal processes.
Draw on external expertise
But what can companies do? Often the key to success lies in the cooperation between the HR managers and the specialist departments. If specialist departments register their staffing needs at far too short a notice due to the high workload in their daily work or only provide their feedback on proposed candidates with a long delay, this is understandable but still a disaster for the recruiting process. Recruitment should not only be recognised by all those involved as one of the decisive factors for the success of the entire company, this realisation must subsequently also be lived.
This means that the specialist departments also become aware of their responsibility within the recruitment process and set appropriate priorities. This requires the support of the management and joint work on solutions. Often the involvement of a neutral authority in the form of a personnel consultancy helps here. External consultants are more likely to be listened to, can resolve points of contention and help to define efficient and manageable processes together with all those involved. This applies to the use of technical systems as well as the mandatory definition of response times and rules for communication with applicants.
On this common basis, the internal processes are then actually no longer a problem.
After graduating as an automotive engineer and industrial engineer, he began his career in the automotive industry in the areas of sales, development and marketing and also spent a year in Japan with one of the largest automotive suppliers.
He then moved to a world-renowned premium car manufacturer, where he was responsible for product marketing in Japan and South America and marketing strategy in North and South America.
In 1994 he decided to become self-employed and founded a personnel consultancy in Munich, where he has been driving development and expansion for over 20 years. As managing director, his industry focus is naturally on the automotive world as well as mechanical and plant engineering.
With his doctorate in the field of aptitude diagnostics, he ideally rounds off his fields of competence, especially with regard to personnel and management consultancy. The dissertation deals with the identification and proof of typical personality traits of engineers as well as the definition of development areas for a successful professional career.
These are scientifically derived and presented in the book "Eignungsdiagnostik im Praxiseinsatz".
At the same time, his focus is on building networks and cooperation models as well as the continuous further development of systems and processes in HR consulting.
Within the last 20 years in personnel consulting, he has developed several brands that are still successful on the market today.
The topic of the Best Practice Profile (BPP) has already been dealt with intensively in several previous articles. A BPP serves as a comparison. It allows conclusions to be drawn about the candidate's positioning in the individual personality traits and reveals possible areas of development and potential. It shows how the best in an industry are "knitted" and which characteristics are particularly necessary and conducive to success in a job profile. In short, a best-practice profile is a comparison with the best.
In this article, we will look at the procedure necessary to create a best practice profile.The creation of a best practice profile consists of five steps: The first step is to identify the most successful employees of a professional group in the company. In order to be able to record these employees, success criteria must be defined. What criteria should be used to select the most successful employees? Which figures are decisive for success? Examples of success criteria are the turnover achieved or the return on investment. Then a best practice group is formed from the most successful employees of the company and the success-relevant and verifiable characteristics are collected. Figure 1.1 shows a table to determine the most successful employees.
Next, each selected employee completes an aptitude diagnostic procedure online. This is a self-assessment. The strengths and weaknesses of the participant are found out and pointed out. Some sample questions are shown in Figure 1.2.
This is followed by the evaluation of the aptitude diagnostics. The result of the aptitude test shows the different characteristics of the most successful employees. By combining and evaluating all the profiles of the best-practice group, a best-practice profile is created. This profile is also known as the ideal profile. It shows which criteria are unanimously important or unimportant for the participating employees.
But also the evaluations of each individual employee are considered and recorded in an individual profile.
In the last step, the values of the individual profile are compared with the values of the best practice profile. A deviation analysis is carried out. The extent to which the values of both profiles correspond to the individual characteristics is checked. The key criteria are also checked. Attention is paid to whether the key criteria are the same and how high the difference is between the individual and the ideal profile. Figure 1.3 shows an example of a partial evaluation of an aptitude test.
By mirroring the best practice profile against several comparison profiles, significant changes in the self-assessment to the values of the comparison group can be shown more easily.
In a structured interview, deviations can be discussed on the basis of the BPP. In addition, the causes for the discernible differences can be clarified through targeted questioning.
The next article in this series deals with the criteria for goods. What criteria must a good and reputable procedure fulfil? What else should be taken into account?
After graduating as an automotive engineer and industrial engineer, he began his career in the automotive industry in the areas of sales, development and marketing and also spent a year in Japan with one of the largest automotive suppliers.
He then moved to a world-renowned premium car manufacturer, where he was responsible for product marketing in Japan and South America and marketing strategy in North and South America.
In 1994 he decided to become self-employed and founded a personnel consultancy in Munich, where he has been driving development and expansion for over 20 years. As managing director, his industry focus is naturally on the automotive world as well as mechanical and plant engineering.
With his doctorate in the field of aptitude diagnostics, he ideally rounds off his fields of competence, especially with regard to personnel and management consultancy. The dissertation deals with the identification and proof of typical personality traits of engineers as well as the definition of development areas for a successful professional career.
These are scientifically derived and presented in the book "Eignungsdiagnostik im Praxiseinsatz".
At the same time, his focus is on building networks and cooperation models as well as the continuous further development of systems and processes in HR consulting.
Within the last 20 years in personnel consulting, he has developed several brands that are still successful on the market today.
As part of our "mini-series" on international negotiation, we discussed the goals of negotiation as well as effective preparation and argumentation in the last article . Today we will look at other essential aspects of international negotiation with the help of a case study.
Peter H. is negotiating today with representatives of the Australian company Smith Ltd, a competitor in the V-belt sector. Smith Ltd. wants to improve its product quality and is negotiating with Peter H. about a know-how licence. As it is not worthwhile for Peter H.'s company to produce in Australia itself for various reasons, he is also interested in obtaining a manufacturing licence.
Smith Ltd. is seeking an exclusive manufacturing licence for Australia. They have to invest a lot to implement the know-how and therefore want to be protected in Australia. Peter H. is concerned about a secure income from royalties. He fears losing money because if Smith Ltd. cannot implement the know-how as intended, his royalty income, which is linked to Smith Ltd.'s turnover, will remain low. Peter H. intends to grant a licence without exclusivity in order to be able to sell a licence to another company if necessary.
Failure seems inevitable. Both parties insist on their positions and the negotiating atmosphere deteriorates. The problem is reduced to the position of whether the manufacturing licence should be exclusive or non-exclusive. Even if the parties agree on the other issues, the licence becomes the core issue. A positional approach to negotiation leads not only to disagreement on the substance, but also to a mixing of the factual and relational levels.
How can this problem be solved? Peter H. must try to negotiate in a factual and interest-oriented way. First of all, the unresolved issue of the "licence" should be declared a common problem by both parties. Furthermore, a structure should be developed that shows where interests and common points of intersection lie. Ideally, this structure has already been developed by one of the parties and could look like the following figure:
A closer analysis of these structures reveals that the interests of both parties overlap at a certain point: Peter H. grants Smith Ltd. an exclusive licence with the proviso that a certain minimum turnover per year is achieved after a fixed start-up period. This secures a minimum licence fee. As long as Smith Ltd. achieves this minimum turnover, which may also be staggered over the years, the licence may not be granted to third parties in Australia. The exclusivity is thus linked to a minimum turnover - the licence is thus quasi-exclusive and Smith Ltd. remains unrivalled in its country.
As a rule, both parties grant each other concessions in the course of the talks and converge in their positions. One should also negotiate on the individual concession. If possible, a wise negotiator will only give a concession if the other party is willing to make a concession in return. The better one knows one's own interests and those of the other side, the greater the possibilities for making concessions.
Relevant aspects of international negotiation:
Communication level
Analyse the other side's understanding of the language, i.e. how profound and detailed is their knowledge of the language and how much overlap there is between what you say and what the other side replies. The more accurate your analysis, the better you can assess whether the statements of both parties are congruent.
Active listening and questions
Interests need to be explored through interested listening and questioning. The ability to listen is a trump card in the age of internationalisation! If you let your negotiating partner finish what he or she has to say, put yourself in his or her place, ask specific questions and refrain from lecturing, you have a good chance of getting the fullest possible picture of the other side. Because listening and understanding does not mean agreeing with a specific opinion. Besides, one gets the chance to expose contradictions based solely on the other party's presentation. Then you beat them with their own weapons, i.e. with their own arguments.
Definition of key terms
In many negotiations it is a good idea to define key terms of the deal together in advance. This reduces misunderstandings from the outset and structures the course of negotiations.
Interests instead of positions
Positions are often associated with negative definitions and reflect personal attitudes. It is difficult to move away from such a position without losing face, at least in part. It is better to explore the interests hidden behind the obvious positions and discuss them.
Interest-based negotiation has a de-escalating effect and shows how to recognise the underlying ideas of both parties and find possible points of intersection.
If one knows the interests, it is more possible to respond to them appropriately and effectively. Those who manage to successfully summarise the position of the other party and then explain their own point of view significantly improve their chances of success.
Broadening the scope of negotiation
When one has explored both one's own and the other party's interests, new, previously unrecognised possibilities for a solution arise - the scope of negotiation is thus broadened.
Contract coordinator
It often helps to appoint a contract coordinator on both sides. If such an approach has been unusual with your business partner so far, you should make the advantages of a functioning working level clear to him. While respecting all intercultural realities, also emphasise his duties to cooperate in order to ensure necessary preparatory work for the contract negotiation. Suggest the further procedure and work out the individual implementation steps or milestones together with your partner: Who? When? With whom? In what way? Also determine who is responsible for meeting the milestones. This way you ensure that the euphoria after a jointly achieved negotiation result does not fizzle out, but that the further procedure proceeds efficiently, quickly and purposefully with the help of a contract coordinator.
Delayed or no feedback, too complicated application procedures or too high demands from the HR departments - mistakes in the internal processes often make it difficult to fill vacancies quickly. The problems are known, but are too rarely actively dealt with.
In view of the shortage of skilled workers, which in some cases is already assuming considerable proportions for some occupational groups, one should actually be able to assume that companies would pull out all the stops to be able to fill success-critical positions as quickly as possible. But the word actually is in many cases also the key term that describes the failure of the efforts. "Actually, we should coordinate much more closely with the specialist department", "Actually, the candidate should now receive our contract offer as quickly as possible", "Actually, we should build up a pool of applicants". Every experienced HR manager knows how important internal processes are for successful recruiting, but in practice these internal processes are not handled as they should be.
Lack of feedback is the biggest point of criticism
According to a reader survey by the job and application portal Karrierebibel.de*, applicants are particularly annoyed by receiving no response or only a very late response to their application or interview. Almost 23 percent of the participants stated that they never heard anything from the company again after their application. 13.5 percent of the respondents did not receive any feedback after the interview.
Other points of criticism are too little openness about why the application failed (18 per cent) and the fact that the job in question is re-advertised after the rejection (just under 10 per cent). All of this shows little appreciation for the applicants and ultimately damages both the image and the recruiting of the company looking for a job.
Threats to new hires
A current study by the personnel service provider Robert Half** also confirms that recruiting processes take too long and applicants are lost as a result. On the one hand, the reasons lie in the overly extensive processes, but on the other hand also in the increased demands of applicants. More than half of the CFOs surveyed in the study (55 percent) agree that applicants have become more impatient. This is because most candidates have several options available to them through multiple applications and thus have a choice.
"The consequence: long application processes jeopardise the quality of new hires," the study says. In plain language, this means: If the searching companies wait too long with their decision, the good applicants will have left in the meantime and, in the worst case, the search will have to start all over again.
After graduating as an automotive engineer and industrial engineer, he began his career in the automotive industry in the areas of sales, development and marketing and also spent a year in Japan with one of the largest automotive suppliers.
He then moved to a world-renowned premium car manufacturer, where he was responsible for product marketing in Japan and South America and marketing strategy in North and South America.
In 1994 he decided to become self-employed and founded a personnel consultancy in Munich, where he has been driving development and expansion for over 20 years. As managing director, his industry focus is naturally on the automotive world as well as mechanical and plant engineering.
With his doctorate in the field of aptitude diagnostics, he ideally rounds off his fields of competence, especially with regard to personnel and management consultancy. The dissertation deals with the identification and proof of typical personality traits of engineers as well as the definition of development areas for a successful professional career.
These are scientifically derived and presented in the book "Eignungsdiagnostik im Praxiseinsatz".
At the same time, his focus is on building networks and cooperation models as well as the continuous further development of systems and processes in HR consulting.
Within the last 20 years in personnel consulting, he has developed several brands that are still successful on the market today.
