As Commonwealth Parliament is in recess until 6 February 2007 now is a good time to review your compliance programs, do some audits and some training.

So where do you start?

Why not start with a quick check of the laws that apply to you to make sure you haven’t missed anything.

Then let’s look at the fundamentals to see that you in fact have policies and procedures:

• trade practices
• privacy
• workplace relations
• occupational health and safety
• outsourcing contracts
• corporate governance
• website compliance
• marketing
• anti-money laundering
• FSR (if applicable)
• insider trading (if applicable).

Then let’s do some random checks at all levels to look at compliance.

If you identify some gaps (hopefully non-material), fix them up and organise some appropriate training.

Of course, how you do this will vary with your type of business and the size of your organisation but the principles are the same: design a continuous program  that allows someone in your organisation to have an overview of compliance obligations and how they are satisfied.

Be able to document your systems and the way in which you test your systems and measure compliance.

Train your staff (both existing and new recruits) and keep up to date: don’t assume anything!