More Than a Compliance Officer - Dale Kirkwood

Tell us about your role at Decision Time?

As the Compliance Officer at Decision Time, my role is split in two, the first part being the compliance side and the other being improvement. The compliance side involves looking at where we stand against certain requirements, which can be either internal or external. Internally, it would be our own companies’ policies and procedures, and externally, it would include customer requirements, GDPR and specific standards (ISO, Cyber Essentials, etc). After compliance, the second part would be the natural follow-up with improvements. This side of my role would primarily be projects and actions based.

How long have you been with the company, and how did you come to work here?

I joined Decision Time in September 2019. Before that, I worked with Noel Doyle, who is currently our Head of Customer Success at Decision Time. When he moved to the company, we still kept in touch, and he saw there were issues in the industry I was working in. Noel reached out to say that a role was coming up at Decision Time that was quite similar to what I was doing. This worked well for me as I wanted to get into an industry that was a bit more secure. The role itself fitted the bill as it was still working in processes and improvement and brought in areas I hadn’t worked on before. Because of Noel, I understood the culture of Decision Time which also appealed to me, so I applied for the role and was successful.

Describe a typical day working at Decision Time.

To explain a role like mine, describing a typical week would be better suited. A few things are done throughout the week, such as auditing or spot-checking. The next step would be actions based, either an action I need to complete or generally managing and following up on other people's actions. The main chunk of the week would be project work, things that would be assigned as a higher priority for the quarter or month. Project work like this would usually look at the bigger picture in the company, improving security and efficiencies.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

This is a well-timed question as we have just finished our PDP (Personal Development Plan) process. I think the good thing about the structure of those plans is that it naturally makes you think about what you enjoy, what has hindered or helped you. There have been two things that have really stood out for me in this process. Firstly it would be the role itself because I have always enjoyed investigating, finding links or issues and then doing research to find the best solution. That brings me to my second point, as much as the role is enjoyable, if the business culture isn’t right, it will never have a big impact. I knew that the culture was right in Decision Time from the word go. As cliche as it sounds, everything I do in my role is genuinely built into every step of the process.

What are the biggest challenges of your role?

The biggest challenge is no different to any role like this in any other business or industry. I work with every part of the business, department, team and level, the nature of that means there will be a clash of priorities. Something that is a high priority for me may not be a high priority for another team. So, I always need to plan ahead, manage my workload to expect those delays and build that in so I can still finish everything I need to on time.

Tell us something interesting about yourself.

Most people don’t know that I was born in South Africa, which isn’t a given from my accent! I was in South Africa until I was two years old before heading back home to Northern Ireland. My parents went out there at a young age and were there for the best part of a decade throughout the 80s.

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