Over half (53%) of governance, risk and compliance (GRC) professionals report that the increasing volume and scope of their workload has outpaced available resources. New regulations, cybersecurity threats, AI risks, sustainability, corporate responsibility — risk management and compliance demands keep piling up, while the headcount rarely keeps pace.
In far too many businesses, short-staffed GRC teams are the new normal. But that trend comes with unique challenges. To help you adapt without overloading your existing team, this GRC guide for lean teams examines why talent shortages are becoming the norm and what that means for your program maturity across compliance operations.
The Reality Facing Lean GRC Teams Today
Across organizations, the scope of GRC teams’ responsibilities has expanded faster than the existing workflows can handle:
- PwC reports that 85% of organizations feel compliance requirements have become more complex in the last few years. Another 77% report that compliance complexity has negatively impacted their companies in several areas that drive growth.
- Almost half (48%) of GRC professionals find it difficult to stay current with updates to compliance frameworks and risk areas, including data protection and evolving regulatory language.Â
- Over half (51%) of GRC professionals cite handling complex regulatory requirements as a top challenge.
The common case in today’s GRC profession is the pressure to meet changing risk and regulatory requirements more quickly. This pressure stems from several structural and operational challenges that can overwhelm an existing team and strain risk tracking.
Expanding Risk and Compliance Scope
Every day, an average 234 regulatory alerts are issued across industries. Add in emerging AI governance, third-party risks, cyber threats and sustainability initiatives, and you’ll understand why GRC teams are stretched thin. Responsibilities that your team could have easily managed have grown into a complex web of overlapping requirements.
Managing More Frameworks and Stakeholders
Besides managing the expanding risk and compliance scope, your GRC team is expected to oversee more frameworks and coordinate more stakeholders, with the same headcount. This includes aligning internal policies with external requirements and supporting cross-functional teams that rely on accurate risk assessment data. So the volume of work is increasing faster than staffing, creating constant pressure in lean teams.
Traditional Operating Models that No Longer Fit
Another reason for the staffing gap in GRC teams is that some organizations still use traditional operating models that weren’t designed for the growing volume of compliance regulations.
For example, manual processes and siloed compliance platforms might have worked when compliance demands were low. However, they often force organizations into reactive risk management, which can’t keep up with the expanding scope. Without centralized GRC tools or a unified GRC platform, your already-lean team will often spend more time chasing updates than analyzing risk, slowing program maturity and weakening trust in the system.
Why Are GRC Teams Short-Staffed?
Several factors cause the staffing gap in GRC programs. Together, they create a disconnect between the staffing your organization needs and what the existing team can provide.
GRC Talent Is Hard to Find
GRC roles require a hybrid skill set of cybersecurity, regulatory knowledge, data privacy, business operations and legal compliance. According to Governance Intelligence, 90% of employers struggle to find this rare talent combination, and training programs and universities haven’t evolved yet to produce it. So there are few entry-level pipelines feeding into the profession.
Competition Is Fierce for the Same Talent
When it comes time for a GRC professional to choose a career, they’ll face a near-endless list of options. Often, their skill set overlaps with that of security, privacy, audit and consulting roles. This wide range of opportunities means competition is fierce, as some alternative positions may offer higher compensation or clearer career paths.
Plus, the growing scope of risks and compliance requirements is forcing other organizations to compete for the limited GRC talent. If you have a fixed budget, you might find it difficult to attract and retain experienced practitioners for internal GRC roles.
Burnout Shrinks Teams Further
The barrage of daily GRC tasks usually goes unnoticed: a short email here, small questions there, another alert fires. On their own, these tasks require little attention, but over the course of a day, they quickly add up.
If you combine daily GRC work with expanding responsibilities, a lean team needs to put in extra hours to keep up. And if the team relies on manual workflows, the workload and repetitive tasks can burn them out.
According to SHRM reports, burnout drives serious workforce consequences:
- 45% of burned-out workers proactively look for a new job
- 34% will choose a lower-paying job to protect their mental health
- 26% will change careers to protect their mental health
- 22% will quit without having another job lined upÂ
When an experienced team member leaves because of burnout or a mental health concern, the loss of institutional knowledge hits lean teams especially hard.
Hiring Doesn’t Equal Capacity
Even when you manage to hire a new team member, it’ll take them time to become productive. Before they build the right capacity, they have to learn your organization’s internal systems, control frameworks, workflow design, data mapping and risk context. This learning period can take months, so the new team member could mean additional workload during onboarding and delayed relief from staffing pressure.
How to Redesign Your GRC Program to Do More With Less
To achieve more with fewer employees without taking a toll on their well-being or long-term success, you need to address systemic workplace flaws and change your GRC strategy. Constantly reinvent your risk and compliance management approach until your team develops the capacity to meet organizational needs. These strategies can help your lean team do more without overloading them.
Use Technology as a Force Multiplier
One of the best ways to solve your GRC staffing issue is to give the existing team the right tools. Too often, organizations use fragmented tools that introduce manual coordination. Teams can automate individual GRC steps but still manage the process manually.
To use technology as a force multiplier, adopt a solution that automates repetitive tasks such as:
- Evidence collection
- Status tracking
- Risk assessment
- GRC reporting and visibility
- Compliance documentation
- Reading and analyzing documents
- Duplicate detection
- Content generation
The technology should have a single dashboard, so your team doesn’t waste time coordinating with stakeholders. Instead, team members can focus on strategic tasks that move your organization forward.
Focus More on Risks
Another way to expand your GRC team’s capacity is to prioritize activities with the greatest impact on your organization’s risk. A lean team can’t treat every requirement as equally important. Deprioritize low-impact, low-value tasks to reduce the burden on your GRC team and increase its bandwidth to focus on what actually matters.
Standardize Work
GRC teams waste time when team members perform the same type of work differently each time, or when they rebuild it for each request. You can save a lot of time and bandwidth by reducing one-off processes and custom workflows wherever possible. Establish repeatable processes for recurring GRC work, like regulatory framework mapping and control testing.
Build a GRC Program that Works for Lean Teams
At Onspring, we offer a high-performing GRC program that even a lean team can run if they focus on high-impact tasks and automate the rest. With our solution and the right operating model, you can reduce your small team’s workload to improve capacity without burning team members out. You can automate:
- Policy management and attestation
- Risk assessment and scoring
- Controls monitoring and testing
- Third-party risk assessments
- Regulatory framework mapping
- Evidence collection and reporting
- Remediation tracking and workflows
Automation will free your lean team to focus on risk judgment, regulatory interpretation, stakeholder management and strategic decision-making. Download our Doing More with Less in GRC ebook today to see how businesses are building resilient GRC programs with a lean team.
