Chapter 2: Human Resources Management Audit: Ensuring Compliance With HRM Laws and Regulations

Compliance with HRM laws is essential for any organization to be successful in today’s and tomorrow’s legal environment and for creating and maintaining an organizational culture of character and integrity (Sauser & Sims, 2007; Sauser, 2008). But achieving and maintaining compliance can be elusive goals for organizations that do not recognize the challenges and develop an effective strategy to meet them.

Compliance should be treated as a process of defining both individual and group behaviors to ensure the organization’s applicable laws and policies are followed. The HRM department has an obligation to hire and retain individuals that are knowledgeable about HRM-specific laws and are able to create policies and procedures in relation to these laws. This is especially important given that just writing policies and procedures and placing them in a repository is not enough. Once these various policies and procedures are established, HRM professionals and other organizational leaders must effectively communicate them throughout the organization.