How to Create a Culture of Contract Compliance

Most companies have contracting policies and procedures. We design these policies to prevent signing contracts that the right people had not reviewed. These policies outline how to store and manage copies of the contracts.

But who makes sure everyone is following these rules?

Legal could get involved in every transaction. But that approach is expensive, inefficient, and Legal ends up the scapegoat for slow processes.

In some companies, Supply Chain and Sales Ops manage this. But unless these teams are embedded in the business unit, they may not know everything that’s going on.

My favorite solution?

Designate a contract compliance lead in each business unit.

Each department has one employee coordinate all of the department’s non-disclosure agreements and random contracting.

I found the best people for this role have a compliance mindset and report to a senior VP or director. I provide detailed training, so they know the requirements. Then this person would field all first-level questions from their team.

I saw much better compliance rates than relying on every person to understand and follow all the policies’ intricacies.