As regulatory compliance expands to impact companies outside of typically regulated industries, the need for good governance is increasing. Bringing together our experiences working with clients, we explore what good governance for compliance looks like. Many companies we’ve assessed through our Compliance Health Check are in a similar position. They have reasonable compliance policies, most have training programmes and the majority have risk registers. What is consistently lacking is the governance structure that makes all the elements of their compliance management work together as a system. In this article, we explore what governance for compliance management should look like for effective compliance management systems.
Why compliance governance gets overlooked
Compliance governance gets overlooked because compliance itself tends to sit across multiple functions. Legal handles regulatory risk. Sustainability manages ESG reporting. Operations deals with supply chain obligations. Each function playing a vital role. But governance requires something different: cross-functional oversight, defined accountability at senior level, and a regular cadence of review that connects the parts into a whole.
Organisations frequently skip this step because it feels like bureaucracy. In practice, it is the difference between a compliance programme that works on paper and one that works under pressure, because it is only when something goes wrong that governance comes under scrutiny and its value is recognised.
What weak compliance governance looks like
From our health check assessments, the same patterns appear repeatedly. If any of the following are familiar, your compliance programme potentially has a governance gap.
No standing compliance committee or forum
Compliance is discussed when something goes wrong, not managed as a standing item. There is no forum where cross-functional risks are reviewed together.
Ownership spread across teams with no single point of coordination.
Legal owns one piece, Sustainability owns another and Procurement owns a third. Everyone has a slice of the picture, but nobody has the full view.
Board-level reporting that is annual at best
Leadership receives a compliance update once a year, usually as part of a broader risk report. They have visibility on outcomes after the fact, but no view of how the system is functioning day to day.
Risk registers maintained but not actively reviewed
The documentation exists and may even be well structured. But the feedback loop between what the register says and what the business does about it is broken.
No defined escalation or exception process
When something falls outside the normal compliance framework, there is no clear path for raising it, assessing it, or deciding how to respond. The reaction is improvised each time.
What effective governance requires
Companies that manage compliance well share a set of structural characteristics. None of them are complex, but all of them require deliberate design, proportional to your organisation.
Named accountability at board or executive level
One individual owns compliance outcomes and can speak to the health of the system along with the results it produces.
A compliance committee with a defined mandate.
This group meets on a regular schedule, with documented terms of reference and cross-functional representation. It is the forum where compliance risks are reviewed, escalated, and acted on.
Documented escalation and exception processes
When something falls outside normal parameters, there is a defined path for raising it. Incidents and exceptions follow a process, not an all-hands-on-deck scramble.
Integration with enterprise risk management
Compliance risk is an integrated track within the companies approach to risk management. It feeds into and draws from the same risk framework the business uses for operational and financial risk.
A review cycle that responds to regulatory change
Governance is not a set-and-forget structure. It adapts when the regulatory landscape shifts, rather than waiting for the annual planning round.
How regulation is raising the bar
ISO 37301, the international standard for compliance management systems, sets compliance governance expectations explicitly. Leadership commitment and oversight are foundational components of the framework.
The broader direction of global regulation reinforces this, increasingly with statutory audit requirements. Regulators are increasingly asking not just whether companies comply, but whether they can demonstrate how they manage compliance on an ongoing basis. Companies without a compliance governance framework will struggle to answer that question when it is asked.
How Jordisk can help
Governance for compliance is one of the dimensions we assess through our Compliance Health Check. If any of the points we raise in this article sound familiar to you, the health check is the practical first step. It tells you where your governance stands and what needs to be built. Contact our team to discuss a free Compliance Health Check for your organisation.
