As October arrives, many regulatory and compliance teams face two competing demands. Year-end deadlines are adding to an already heavy workload, while the annual planning cycle requires leaders to set priorities for the first quarter.
According to ACA Group, the usual answer is to protect the plan by asking staff to give a little more. That can work for a short time. When the work is sensitive, time-critical or likely to need reworking, however, it rarely holds up for long.
The issue is not just whether a team is busy. It is whether the team’s current capacity fits the type of work ahead. A queue of routine tasks can usually be ranked and worked through. A regulatory examination, a remediation programme, a policy overhaul, a transaction or a long absence is different. Each of these creates work that needs experienced judgement, steady momentum and clear ownership straight away.
There are four signals that a capacity gap may be forming. The first is when work stalls because the same senior people have to sign off every material decision. The second is when a team must choose between forward-looking planning and urgent remediation, rather than making progress on both.
The third is when temporary gaps are covered informally, with nobody clearly responsible for the result. The fourth is when the Q1 plan assumes the current workload will simply fade away, even though there is no solid reason to expect it to.
None of these signals automatically means a firm needs to hire permanently. They do suggest the existing resourcing model deserves a closer look. Depending on how long the need lasts, how complex it is and what expertise it requires, firms might reprioritise work, move internal resources around or bring in interim support.
Before the year ends, compliance leaders should map out the work that cannot be delayed, pinpoint the decisions that need senior input and separate a short-term spike from a deeper structural shortfall.
From there, they can decide which tasks must stay in-house and which could be handled by an embedded resource. This approach is more valuable than a general request for headcount, because it sets out the mandate, seniority and timeframe needed to protect the outcome.
Where the need is clearly defined but not permanent, interim support can sit alongside internal reprioritisation. A secondment can tackle a specific workload, cover a leadership transition or period of leave, support a regulatory change project or keep day-to-day work moving through a critical stretch. It fills an immediate gap without the long-term commitment of a full-time hire.
The aim is not only to make Q4 easier to manage. It is to ensure teams start Q1 with critical work on track, clear ownership of known risks and enough capacity to meet the priorities ahead.
Read the full ACA Group post here.
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