By Adam Turteltaub

As I’ve written before for the blog, there’s a problem compliance people are facing:  many people are too willing to write that a so-called compliance officer has been arrested, fined or imprisoned.  Problem is, those compliance officers weren’t really regulatory and legal compliance professionals as we know them.

There’s one more problem, your organization may be contributing to this situation;  You may have people in your organization with “compliance” in their title but don’t actually work on the compliance team.

Jenny O’Brien, at United Healthcare had precisely that problem. When she assumed the role of Chief Compliance Officer she found out that there were a couple of hundred people not on the compliance team but with compliance titles.

This posed significant risks.  People were “clearing things through compliance” without ever actually talking to compliance.  In addition, the fact that people didn’t know who truly was a compliance officer led to dangerous confusion, and the potential of the government stating that the compliance program didn’t meet the standards for effectiveness.

Listen in as she relates how she remedied this situation via what turned out to be a year-long project.  In the podcast she shares:

* How she enlisted the help of HR and the business units

* The process for developing new titles for affected personnel

* The importance of regularly auditing to see if new people that shouldn’t have received compliance titles, nonetheless

* The surprising upside to the process and the attachment many have to compliance