Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a compliance officer and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.

A Compliance Officer is tasked with the primary duty of supervising and managing all compliance related issues ensuring that everything is done by following the laid down rules and regulations of the company. He/she will also ensure that the organization's licenses are up to date with the latest guidelines.

Besides that main role, he or she will get to undertake the following roles; reporting all compliance issues the management, recommend necessary and workable solutions to compliance problems, assess compliance risks, and develop risk management strategies to manage them and conducting reviews and audits to ensure that compliance rules are followed.

Core Skills Required to be a Compliance Officer

Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.

Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.

A compliance officer should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.

Multi-Tasking:

Multi-Tasking allows one to juggle and perform more than one task at a time without losing track of what you are working on or dropping the ball.

A Compliance Officer must learn the trick of multitasking and help the staff balance the competing demands of their time and energy that they are expected to handle multiple priorities every day without compromising on the effectiveness of the work done.

Inspiring others:

Inspiring is encouraging one to be their best in contributing to the vision of an organization where they are placed and entrusted to work.

A Compliance Officer must create a culture where the staff can use their professional prowess and aspire to be the best by giving them a clear vision and purpose through decisive leadership that motivates and inspires them.

Dependability:

Dependability is the characteristic of being able to be counted on and relied upon by providing services that be trusted within a period.

A Compliance Officer needs to be dependable and hire reliable employees who can be counted on as consistent and beneficial to the business, building their niche as an essential element of the larger team without worrying about bringing less than your efforts.

Work Attitude:

Work Attitude is one's feelings towards and beliefs about one's job and their behavior that can tell how it feels to be there.

A Compliance Officer ought to encourage his workers and provide all the requirements for the workplace to ensure a positive attitude is maintained by the employees that can help them get a promotion, succeed on projects, meet goals and enjoy the job more.

Assertiveness:

Assertiveness is the inclination to stand up for your rights or other people's rights in a calm and concrete way without being aggressive or accepting a wrong.

A Compliance Officer must be self-assured and confident to master the skills to put his points across without upsetting others or becoming angry and allowing the employees to do the same while complying with the company's policies and procedures.

Emotion Management:

Emotion Management is the ability to realize, readily accept and successfully control feelings on oneself and sometimes in others around you by being in complete authority over your thoughts and feelings that are generated whenever your values are touched.

A Compliance Officer must be able to manage his emotions as well as assist the staff to control their emotions to ensure that the professional reputation, the efficiency, and productivity is not compromised.

Personal Accountability:

Personal Accountability is the feeling that you are entirely responsible for your actions and consequences taking ownership without blaming others.

A Compliance Officer should provide a list of duties and responsibilities that every employee is expected to perform and define timelines and supervisors who oversee the work to ensure each knows what she /he should do and remain accountable without passing blame.

Personal Commitment:

Personal Commitment is an obligation that you have voluntarily agreed to fulfill without being cajoled or threatened and are willing to be held accountable for the results.

A Compliance Officer ought to understand that though adopting new policies and procedures will be met with resistance, the approach by which safety standards are implemented and enforced influences employee's attitudes and commitment towards the organization.

Quality of Work:

The quality of Work is the value of work or products produced by the employees as well as the work environment they are provided with.

A Compliance Officer needs creativity in assisting all teams in identifying characteristics that will result in a quality product and lead to greater efficiency and increased productivity by following the four critical outcomes of employee retention, customer satisfaction, profitability, and productivity.

Entrepreneurial Thinking:

Entrepreneurial Thinking is a mindset that allows embraces critical questioning, innovation, service and continuous improvement with an attitude of change.

A Compliance Officer should challenge himself to see the big picture and creatively think outside the box too with the ability to fight all the challenges faced and keep going in the face of calamity and the social skills needed to build great teams in the workplace.

Hard Skills Required to be a Compliance Officer

Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.

Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.

A compliance officer should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.

Compliance Officer: Hard skills list

Administration and Management
Analytical
Auditing
Business
Communication
Computer hardware and associated software
Customer and Personal Service
Employee coaching and professional development
English Language
Enterprise risk management methods and techniques
Interpersonal
Innovation
IT Audit
IT Controls
IT Risk Management
IT Security
Mathematics
Management
Mathematics
Monitoring
Monitoring of compliance with internal and external policies, rules and regulations
MS Access
MS Excel or Spreadsheet
MS Outlook
MS Word or word processing
Planning/Organizing
PowerPoint
Presentations
Professional/Technical technique
Project Management
Risk assessment capabilities
System Analysis
Writing

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