Cuting clutter, implementing additional accountability in job descriptions, and moving toward a transparent organisation are some of the critical corporate recommendations for the 2024 annual compliance wheel for business growth and competitive advantage from the Copenhagen Compliance group.

There are multiple areas every organisation needs to see in 2024, all depending on the corporate discipline, GRC maturity, and IT platform(s). However, every organisation must be agile, engaged, and dedicated to complying, focusing on sustainability and transparency as top priorities for companies of all trades and sizes.

Besides the focus on privacy, cybersecurity, ethics, and ESG, the board and management must keep a vigilant eye on the board of directors and senior management’s engagement in the areas identified below to ensure that they are integrated into annual board activities and clear communication to senior management on the objectives. In addition, the monthly items will ensure that the company is conducting effective stakeholder engagement and understanding the relevant perspectives, risks, and opportunities in a structured manner to drive executive management’s mindsets for long-term corporate value.

  1. Start the year by planning multiple workshops to provide insights for developing the maturity of the corporate approach to address the areas discussed in this calendar to measure management’s maturity to measure, monitor and manage. In addition, the workshop will provide the structure, checklist, and templates to implement the outcomes. Suggestions:
    1. Customise the AI Corporate Governance Codes
    2. How to comply with CSRD
    3. Develop the ESG/Sustainability compliance roadmap and framework
    4. How to focus towards complete IT and data transformation to address cybersecurity, risk, and privacy tasks
    5. Address the growing emphasis on sustainability, climate, privacy, and cyber competencies
  2. Prepare a clear plan for digitisation and data transformation of the corporate processes. Technology must genuinely safeguard and ensure the benefits of the IT structures and processes and planned governance initiatives across the IT departments. It’s a journey. Get on the train instead of being left on the platform.
  3. Identify the critical societal, economic, and regulatory forces that will impact the organisation with key priorities for 2024 to address the challenges and opportunities based on the Governance priorities and ESG.
  4. The fundamental drivers of ESG are the G or the S. Ensure that the G is embraced structurally and the S is adopted accountably to focus on renewables, social issues and human rights initiatives with full disclosure and transparency.
  5. Added focus on the workforce, skills, and resources are significant differentiators to communicating data policies to drive discipline, transparency, accountability, risk intelligence, technology, process, workflow, and metrics to measure compliance confidence.
  6. Corporate Culture, Transparency, fairness, gender pay gap, diversity, and inclusion will reflect the contributions to corporate culture. Compliance by design is critical for transforming organisational disclosures as a gold standard to chart a new path for corporate culture if the previous has failed to deliver.
  7. Mandatory reporting and the new regulation are when agility can provide a competitive advantage. Oversight authorities do not give the GRC officers more than they can handle. (ADPPA, CPRA, CDPA, EU-US DPF, CTDPA, UCPA, CSRD, SFDR and the EU DSA, DMA; OMG, the regulatory compliance to-do list never ends…)
  8. Update the AI and ESG Sustainability Governance and Stewardship Codes for investors and stakeholders to link the ESG issues explicitly;
    1. demonstrate the benefits of the updated Governance and Stewardship Codes and relate to the broader strategic goals of the business and vital metrics are measured
    2. Training, awareness, and certifications are part of the Governance and Stewardship.
  9. Compliance certifications are a competitive differentiator to demonstrate corporate values through action and embed trust and privacy into the core business.
  10. Stakeholder and Public expectations of investors and stakeholders. Track and address strategic areas to report and disclose the public arrangements on the regulatory trend due to the collective responsibility and liabilities.
  11. Data Transformation: 85+% of compliance data is often redundant, obsolete, obscure, or trivial. IT governance will ensure that data literacy can lay the path for artificial intelligence to mature the data transformation with appropriate and adequate protection.
  12. Digitisation: Customised technology can help to cut through the clutter of big unstructured data and complex corporate structures. Addressing jurisdictional differences and obstacles is the key.

The emergence of the above issues and concerns is a collaborative effort: 2024 will see a rise in the emergence of GRC and IT security programs for cross-functional collaboration.

The Corporate Governance Institute by Copenhagen Compliance conducts customised workshops to take off and launch the above implementation processes during Q1, 2024.