How do I manage increasing compliance requirements without hiring more staff?

Compliance requirements often increase faster than compliance headcount.

New obligations, ASIC guidance, breach reporting expectations, complaints data, cyber controls, training requirements and board reporting can all add pressure. The usual response is to ask whether you need another compliance person. Sometimes you do. But often the bigger issue is that skilled staff are spending too much time on low-value administration.

Common examples include chasing advisers for attestations, manually updating spreadsheets, preparing the same report each month, searching for evidence, checking whether tasks are overdue, and copying information between registers.

That work is necessary, but it should not consume the compliance function.

The operational risk is that your team becomes reactive. They spend their time collecting information rather than analysing it. Issues are identified late. Follow-up depends on memory. Management reports are delayed. Compliance starts to feel like administration rather than governance.

Good compliance practice means separating routine process from professional judgement. Your people should be focused on reviewing risk, testing controls, assessing incidents, supporting Responsible Managers and improving the compliance framework. Systems and workflows should handle recurring tasks, reminders, status tracking and evidence collection wherever possible.

For example, an annual compliance attestation should not require multiple email follow-ups, a spreadsheet tracker and manual reporting. It should be issued, tracked, reminded, escalated and evidenced through a repeatable workflow.

A better approach is to improve compliance capacity before adding headcount.

Where configured, [complyᵉ] can help centralise obligations, tasks, actions, registers, monitoring activities, attestations and reporting. This reduces duplication and gives your team a clearer view of what is due, overdue, completed and unresolved.

It also helps you use staff time more effectively. Instead of asking someone to maintain a spreadsheet, you can have them review exceptions, assess trends and improve controls. Instead of manually compiling board reports, you can draw from current compliance records.

The outcome is not "less compliance". It is better managed compliance. You create more visibility, stronger accountability and better evidence without relying on constant manual effort.

This also supports scale. As the business grows, you can add advisers, offices or obligations without rebuilding the process each time.