By Mel Kleiman, President, Humetrics

I was in Boston recently when  three local businesses made “breaking news” due to their failure to pass random testing for tobacco and liquor sales compliance regulations. ​

Everyone knows without being told that it’s illegal to sell these products to minors, right? So, what on earth went wrong?

In HR talk, it’s called non-compliance to structure, and, in my experience, things like this happen when no one is  held accountable. Corporate isn’t holding store managers accountable and store managers aren’t holding employees accountable. Beyond the employees’ initial compliance training, spot checks and regular retraining should have been in place to prevent this kind of unfavorable publicity.

Bottom line: If you’re not reinforcing the rules, why do you even have them?