Know Your Compliance Monsters: The Obfusticator

Basic Information

He has driven brilliant minds to madness, transforming familiar human speech into incomprehensible technical terminology. He guards a library of policies so dense with jargon a mere paragraph can turn up into down, names into acronyms, and language into frameworks.

–Source: Compliance Monsters: A Field Guide

True to his epithet, the Obfusticator revels in confusion, ambiguity and over-complication. His feathery mane, made of legalese fluff, produce a unique distortion effect: any clearly-written policies they touch turn to mush. If that wasn’t enough, the Obfusticator further tortures his victims and distracts them from policies by impatiently tapping his overgrown nails.

Habitat

The Obfusticator usually makes his home among tall stacks of thick books, but recently he’s been known to reside in the digital world as well—occupying hundred-page PDF documents and elaborate directories of folders and subfolders. You may even encounter him in an email conversation, nested several layers deep next to a name you don’t recognize or a passage of “important information” that seems to have nothing to do with your job.

Known for his ability to camouflage himself, the Obfusticator seems to leave few traces of his presence—until you understand where to look. Pay attention to policy language that makes liberal use (or, in his words, “utilization”) of the passive voice, is riddled with doublespeak or fills pages where a two-sentence clause would have sufficed.

Or, to put it as simply as possible: if you have no idea what you’re reading, you’ve found the Obfusticator.

Eradication

Cleaning up a mess left by the Obfusticator is entirely possible and simpler than it seems. Eradication involves two primary concerns:

1. How you create your workforce compliance policy
2. How you deliver your workforce compliance policy

First, you’ll need to make sure you’ve drafted your organization’s policy in a way that ensures anyone reading it immediately understands its scope, objectives and requirements, as well as relevant risks and regulations.

Second, you’ll need to consider how members of your organization receive this information:

• How often should employees undergo training?
• How often should they review the policy?
• How much information is too much at once?
• How much information is too little?
• Does the organization’s compliance library include all relevant guidelines, procedures and forms?
• Where can employees go if they have questions about the policy?