When it comes to workplace safety, I’ve noticed that companies generally fall into one of three...
We recently discussed the basics of building a holistic compliance program for your small business, regardless of industry.
This time, I want to zoom in on one specific area that I find can be a make-or-break issue when it comes to compliance-related matters: when to handle compliance in-house and when to bring in an external compliance consultant.
But first: Have you ever heard of Mr. Beast? He’s the highest paid Youtube star, raking in an estimated $700 million per year from making crazy videos like “$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!” and “I Spent 50 Hours Buried Alive.” He wrote an onboarding document for new employees of his production company called “How to Succeed in MrBeast Production,” and that doc was recently leaked online.
I don’t make a habit of taking advice from Youtubers, but there’s one thing in the document that caught my eye. On page 18, in the section called “USE CONSULTANTS,” Mr. Beast (a.k.a., Jimmy Donaldson) says the following:
“Consultants are literally cheat codes.”
I have to agree.
Cheat codes (in case you don’t know) are used in video games to gain something that you wouldn’t otherwise have: more lives, more progress, more items, etc. His point is that when his production crew is trying to make insane videos about things like making the largest slice of cake in the world, they should call and hire the guy who already holds the world record for largest slice of cake so they can learn from his experience.
What does Youtube have to do with compliance for small businesses? While you may not be in the business of building giant cakes, when you hire an accountant to ensure you are complying with relevant tax laws, you are immediately leaps and bounds ahead of where you would have been had you decided to do the job yourself. Same goes for employment attorneys, safety professionals and others.
When you think about the amount of time it would take and the number of mistakes you would make along the way and the risk that you still might not get it totally right, there are some areas of your business where it certainly makes sense to bring in the professionals.
With that in mind, I want to look at the types of external compliance consultants you can bring in to help your business stay compliant – and in business.
1. Employment Attorneys
Complying with labor laws is about more than hanging a poster in the breakroom. It involves training, info tracking, policies and procedures and much more.
While we typically think of lawyers only helping with court matters, employment attorneys can help your business become compliant with labor laws in a variety of ways. Whether it’s leading your team in anti-harassment training, ensuring your company is OSHA compliant, or helping ensure your hiring process is non-discriminatory, paying a lawyer a little upfront can help ensure you don’t have to pay them a lot later when you get sued for some non-compliant practice.
Most companies can handle certain areas of employment law without expert help. For instance, most small businesses opt out of anti-harassment training and choose to monitor that themselves (in other words, they choose to shoulder the risk themselves).
2. Tax Professionals
According to a 2023 Pew Research study, 44% of people in America are “significantly bothered” by the complexity of our tax system. I wonder how many of the people surveyed were small business owners, because sometimes it feels like corporate taxes are deliberately overcomplicated.
Regardless of how we feel about tax laws, being found out of compliance can be incredibly costly. Whether it’s payroll taxes or Social Security or something else, keeping up is paramount. The further you fall out of compliance, the higher the risk of incurring a sizable fine from the IRS.
Taxes are the area where I most often recommend bringing in a professional to the businesses that we work with. Even if you get most of it right, the chances of getting something wrong are too high to risk it.
3. Safety Professionals
If industry is regulated by OSHA or DOT or another safety-focused agency, you probably understand the challenges of maintaining a compliant workplace. If you don’t start with a culture of safety, dangerous work habits can set in that are hard to break.
Safety consultants can help you make sure you’re audit-ready with everything from industrial hygiene to workplace ergonomics to recordkeeping – they can even come in and run a mock OSHA audit to see whether you would pass the real thing or not.
Even just hiring safety consultants to do a semi-annual check-up or regular site inspections can end up saving you a lot of money and headaches in the long run.
4. Industry-specific Associations
Industry-specific associations don’t just lobby on your behalf in Washington. They provide compliance-related education and training, and many even offer on-site compliance consultation services.
In addition, industry associations are often aware of the latest regulations and any additional ones coming down the pipeline, so they can help you make sure you’re up to date.
5. Risk Management Experts
If you ask a construction association to do an OSHA walkthrough on a job-site, you’ll get a lot of valuable information – then what do you do with it?
Risk management experts (like Ellerbrock-Norris) help connect the dots at a deeper level. We can do the walkthrough and then help you address each item on your to-do list.
If you hire an expert to come in and help you look at one specific area like safety or taxes or labor law compliance, that’s great, but it’s a siloed experience. They will help you solve that corner of your risk picture, but what about everything else?
Risk management experts can walk through every area, point out what needs done, and then help you determine what can be handled in-house and where it makes sense to bring in an outside expert.
Take something like OSHA compliance. Most people look at it solely through the lens of compliance. When we come in, we view it as a byproduct of working safely at your company. When you’re working safely, you’re protecting your most valuable product (your people), which means you’re protecting your reputation, your ability to get on job sites, etc. When your workplace is safe, you have fewer injuries, which means lower insurance rates. Not only are you avoiding OSHA fines, you’re reducing costs and protecting your company as a whole.
Once you know which kind of compliance experts are out there, you can dial in the right “cheat code” and avoid the cost of noncompliance.
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