Question

How would you ensure that your colleagues are kept up to date with changes in legislation which is relevant to your work? (maximum 250 words)

Answer 1

This is practical problem faced today across departments & companies. I will answer this from a Finance perspective by assuming that you are a part of the FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis) team of your company. Typically things which are the most relevant for you in this case are:

1. Tax treatment of traded goods & services : GST (Previously VAT, Octroi, CST)

2. Corporate Tax

3. Schemes / Rebates passed by the government under various schemes such as MEIS, SOPS for SEZ, etc

4. Accounting standards changes i.e. IFRS, Ind AS, etc

Given that coverage by media through offline & digital mediums has increased tremendously, it is much easier now to track changes through the digital space. You could use the following steps:

a) Google News allows you to configure topics of interest where you can add keywords that will pull the right news articles regarding the above topics for your view. You could then circulate this on the Whats App group of your team or put it on a central repository. Alternatively google news could be configured in a similar manner for the entire team so that everyone gets the information first hand

b) Follow the facebook / twitter handles of MCA (Ministry of Corporate Affairs), ICAI (the institute of chartered accountants of India), GST council, etc to get a regular feed in case they post anything about any changes. Again you could then circulate it in your team / make it a central thing so that everyone gets the information first hand

c) Join SIGs (Special Interest Groups) which are specific to these topics as typically here information comes up first & is also debated which gives good perspective on topics. These groups exist on various social media platforms like Whats App, facebook,etc.

I have personally found the google news configuration way the best way where everyone gets updated regularly. You just need to know the right keywords that you should mention so that google can troll through its database and share the right pieces of information with you.