022: HR & Compliance - with Roland Romata and Sarah McKee-Harris

On today's episode, and as part 2 of our mini-series, we’re chatting with two previous podcast guests – Roland Romata of RR Compliance and Associates and Sarah McKee-Harris of Kingswood Group. Talking about all thing’s mental health in the current climate and returning to work, we look at this from a HR and compliance perspective and what we can expect over the upcoming weeks and months. LEARNING OBJECTIVES: The pandemic has highlighted what the lack of support within firms can cause in terms of compliance and operational efficiency. The FCA should encourage regulatory expectations with regards to mental health in the workplace and the mental health status of employees from a compliance angle. ‘Mental Health First Aid’ should be more than a lip service and having an ‘on-site’ Mental Health First Aider is something that firms should look to incorporate over the upcoming years. Senior members of staff should embrace an emotive and empathetic viewpoint on mental health rather than a standard tick box exercise/approach. Returning to work and considering mental health is a major risk assessment to be considered by firms. Documentation is important not only from a regulatory perspective, but it allows a business to measure its success. Firms should incorporate mental health policies that encourages senior managers to get to know their terms. BEST MOMENTS: ‘’…when one would look at the general overarching regulatory framework, and most notably the FCA principles of business, the 11 principles of business, it's quite evident that the FCA would expect firms to have the appropriate controls in place to handle mental health concerns, in particular where those issues would have an indirect or direct impact on how the firm would end up treating customers.’’ ‘’The FCA it expects firms to recognize all the key risks that is present within the business and in and manage those risks so they can deliver the value and treat customers fairly at the very end. Mental health is not that prominent and obvious as a regulatory expectation, but it’s not within the rules of the FCA and it needs to be incorporated…’’ ‘’…he was saying it really brought home this term mental health and there is no divide, there's no private and personal vs work life. You're one person, you live one life and you can't just, or the majority of people, can't just box up their problems and put them in a place and the people that do often find that spills out at a later date.’’ ‘’It's just about getting people to recognise that you can expand that very same client centric focus to your employees, employers and colleagues.’’   RESOURCES RR Compliance Associates Website: https://www.rrcompliance.com/ Kingswood Group website: https://kingswoodgroup.org/about-us/ ABOUT THE HOST Sarah Myerscough is the Sales and Marketing Director of Boston Tullis Group. The founder of The Insurance Brokers Podcast, she brings a wealth of marketing experience and a fresh perspective on marketing in the insurance sector. Boston Tullis works with insurance brokers to offer solutions to business development ceilings, particularly in the rapidly developing fields of video marketing and thought leadership. If you would like Sarah to help you develop an integrated marketing strategy, using state of the art concepts, then please book a free 20 min call via Calendly    Website: https://bostontullis.co.uk/ Evaluation Link: https://s.bostontullis.co.uk/s/podcastevaluation   ABOUT THE GUESTS Roland’s experience includes directorship of independent brokers, working for the financial ombudsman service and in the last few years, providing compliance consultancy to the insurance and financial services sector. RR Compliance Associates was funded to bring a dynamic and collaborative approach to compliance consultancy and the team represents over 30 years’ experience in an FCA regulated environment. Roland’s mission is to provide both the solutions and the know-how to compliance procedures using automated