Are you in compliance with federal regulations? New survey says many aren’t

A new poll shows a gap between the importance human resources professionals place on compliance and whether they know if their organization is actually compliant.

The survey by Corporate Synergies, an employee benefits broker and consulting firm, shows that in addition to only 35.7% of survey participants saying they’re “fully confident” they comply with federal regulations, only another 25.7% of respondents said they’re “fairly confident” they are in compliance.

Do the math and that means just over six in 10 human resources pros are confident they’re complying with federal regs.

Meanwhile, 8.6% said they were “unsure” whether or not they were in compliance.

“Our experience shows that an alarming number of companies are not in compliance with federal regulations that apply to their health and welfare plans, and a significant portion of them are unaware of this potentially costly situation,” said Benjamin Lupin, Director of Compliance at Corporate Synergies Group. “The costs to the organization can range from the discomfort of an audit, to substantial fines, to possible criminal penalties. Compliance is something we feel strongly that more organizations need to pay attention to.”

The good news however, is that an overwhelming majority of the HR pros surveyed said compliance was at the very least important to them. In fact,71.8% admitted being compliant was “extremely important” to them. And in total, 94.3% said it was at least “important.” Just one of the participants said he or she’d “never checked” to see whether or not his or her company was in compliance.

Employers that have doubts about their compliance should consider doing an in-house audit to see where potential problem areas are.