In high-growth businesses, ignorance isn’t bliss - it’s liability.
Compliance: HR’s Most Boring Superpower
Let’s be honest - “compliance” isn’t exactly the word that gets people queuing up at your All Hands. But neglect it, and it’s like forgetting to put brakes on a Ferrari. Sounds dramatic? Maybe. But not when you're scaling a tech business in heavily regulated industries like payment services and crypto.
As a Chief People Officer in fintech, I’ve learned this the hard way: you can have the best culture deck, the slickest onboarding, and a workforce that’s 95% emoji-positive on Teams channels, but if your employment contracts and policies don’t meet local labour laws in the regions you’re hiring in, it all comes crashing down.
The Real Costs of What You Don’t See
We think about compliance risk as fines and legal action, but the hidden costs are often scarier. One of the biggest being reputational damage and a loss of trust and confidence. And it’s hard to stay focused on strategy when you're firefighting labour disputes or data breaches. In 2023, businesses in the UK lost an estimated £3.6bn due to avoidable HR compliance failures (CIPD). Let that sink in.
Why Compliance Needs to Be Built-In, Not Bolted On
At Wirex, we’ve scaled across multiple regions, each with its own quirky set of employment norms and legal frameworks. And what I’ve learned is this: you can’t retrofit trust. You can’t tell your employees “we value you” while winging maternity entitlements or mishandling pay and tax deductions.
HR Compliance shouldn’t live in a silo of its own, it should be embedded in the employee experience.
Takeaway: Treat Compliance Like Culture
Compliance doesn’t need to be exciting - it needs to be strategic. Embed it into your onboarding experience from day one. Bring in specialist and local expertise early, especially when expanding into new markets or shaping new policies. Invest the time to carefully vet and select the right external partners - reliable suppliers can ease the pressure and add real value.
Final Thought
You don’t have to love compliance, but you do have to lead it. When it’s woven into your culture, not bolted on, it becomes a sign of care, not control. And in this market? That care builds trust, loyalty, and long-term resilience.