I’ve been thinking a lot about Zenefits lately, especially about things we at PayScale can learn from their recent troubles. Zenefits is an online HR software company, and they focus mainly on small businesses. They make their money by selling insurance to said small businesses, but they were recently exposed for being out of compliance with insurance regulations. Whoops!
Long story short, they did an audit, replaced their CEO, and took a bunch of steps to fix the problem and save some face. (If you’re looking for more info, this is a pretty good summary.) One of those steps was to hire a Chief Compliance Officer.
While many people don’t find compliance to be super thrilling, as a career choice it’s actually quite compelling. In an information age where secrets regularly end up online, ensuring compliance has gained attention as a necessary and critical role when it comes to organizational protection.
And that’s why compliance jobs are hot, and pay is climbing. Let’s dig deeper into some of the compliance jobs out there.
Compliance Officer
This professional-level job is responsible for investigating compliance issues, monitoring compliance activities according to company, state, and federal regulations, and developing risk management strategies. In the past year alone, pay for this job title has increased roughly 9.3 percent across the US, a sign that it has become a much more valuable and in-demand profession.
Compliance Manager
At the management level, compliance professionals perform regular audits, and develop and improve systems, policies, processes, and practices that ensure organizations stay within legal and regulatory boundaries. Pay for this job has climbed nearly 5 percent in the past year, making it another hot profession.
Compliance Director
At the director level, we’re looking at a job that leads a team responsible for compliance. This job is about both oversight and foresight: keeping an eye on emerging laws, regulations, trends, and industry standards. The Compliance Director seeks to find solutions to any compliance problems that might get in the way of the organization’s success. In the past year this job hasn’t moved significantly, despite the ups and downs.
Chief Compliance Officer
The Chief Compliance Officer is capital-R Responsible for compliance for the organization. The Chief Compliance Officer provides guidance to the Board and other executives around compliance and compliance-related communication, and ensures legal, regulatory and company compliance. Pay for this job has also been on an upward swing, currently up nearly 6 percent over 2015.
But do they like their jobs?
But are compliance professionals are actually happy in their jobs? The answer, plain and simple: yes. PayScale recently created a chart plotting pay against the percent of compliance professionals reporting that their job makes the world a better place, as well as the percent reporting high job satisfaction. It shows that compliance professionals believe their jobs are relatively valuable in terms of making the world (or at least their organizations) better. And what’s more, they’re satisfied with the work they do! Makes sense to me; it’s nice to have a job where questions have definitive right answers, or at least a clear wrong ones.
While compliance roles and responsibilities have taken a back seat in the past, current trends have compliance jobs moving front and center within organizations that want to race on the public track. The work is gaining in notoriety and, hey, the salaries don’t hurt either.
Leave a Reply