Guidance compliance: Company Management System (CMS) assistance

Traditional supervision has several shortcomings. Although certain regulatees need a deterrent approach, most regulatees are willing to comply to public regulations. Some of them, especially the bigger regulated organizations, are responsive to new forms of regulation. For these companies, a traditional command and control approach is not very effective because it does not recognise the company’s own capabilities and may undermine the intrinsic motivation.

For competent and motivated companies therefore it is more effective to assess the way they organise compliance rather than just measure compliance. We call the part of a company management system that aims at assuring compliance, the compliance management system of a company.
This guidance is applicable for the assessment of a compliance management system. It can be used to assess the compliance management system of any regulated company.

This guidance provides a short description of the basic principles, advantages and a flow chart to use applying CMS supervision. Annexes provide further explanation for use like a glossary, a CMS supervision tool, competences for CMS supervisors and practical tips for agencies and inspectors.