With a huge chunk of the global workforce now working through a remote or hybrid working model, new challenges are arising for firms to maintain effective supervision.
In a recent webinar hosted by RegTech firm Clausematch, the company spoke to Stephanie Feldt – chief compliance officer and general counsel at Trading.com – to find out more on the topic.
With the work-from-home environment thriving, what does effective supervision look like today? According to Feldt, effective supervision means developing processes and procedures to detect and prevent possible wrongdoings by an organisation’s employees and its other agents. This, she adds, is being closely observed by regulators, as a lot of the fines and regulatory infractions happening currently relate to supervision.
Feldt also commented that companies ‘need to ensure they are monitoring work-related emails, phone conversations and messages’ as well as making sure employees are following policies and procedures and ensuring customers are receiving timely statements and that trading is being conducted properly.
Monitoring employee activity was already a difficult process prior to the pandemic claims Feldt. However, organisations were able to apply certain restrictions. With working from home though, this has created a whole new ream of challenges for supervision.
Feldt said, “When people are in the office everyday, it is easier to make sure policies and procedures are being followed. If you have a team working on a trading floor, for example, phones are not allowed and access to personal emails is blocked. Now that people are working from home, they have access to all of that, with both their personal computers and mobile phones at hand. So how can you know what your employees are effectively doing?”
It is key for companies to understand their business model and how staff need to interact with customers in order to develop effective policies and procedures that meet such requirements. Feldt gave an example, “Do you have policies and procedures to prevent employees from using personal computers when working from home and to make sure that they only communicate with customers using company-provided hardware?”
Feldt recommended having ‘well-drafted policies and procedures’ that tell employees exactly what needs to be done and provide clear guidelines to follow.
She continued, “The use of technology is very helpful. It allows you to generate reports remotely, monitor interactions with customers, customer training activity, or what traders are doing on the trading floor. Technology helps enable surveillance of email and social media, establish clear procedures as to what emails can and cannot be accessed, and guide the use of social media websites. Technology also helps you spread the word on your policies, because having policies that are not followed can actually be worse than not having them at all”.
Feldt concluded by stating that it is key to provide adequate training to employees and constantly communicate with your team to make sure they are aware of the consequences of non-compliance – including fines and reputational damage.
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