The 30-Second Document Fix That Eliminates 90% of Compliance Headaches

As College Leaders, we’re constantly drowning in paperwork, emails, & documents. 

80% of those documents don’t require our immediate attention.

So, we can use simple systems that leverage prioritization & delegation to make our lives simpler.

Prioritization:

As soon as you open an email, take 15 seconds to ask: “If this isn’t handled today, will it create a compliance issue or affect our student experience as a whole?”

Delegation: 

How much better would it be if the incoming documents reached you already pre-sorted?

With one email sent out to my staff, I trained them to sort documents into 3 categories before they send them to me.

The “Pre-Sorted Document Filter” System:

*Red (Handle Same Day)

- Enrollment Agreements

- Financial Aid Changes

- Withdrawal Requests

- Attendance Appeals

*Yellow (Within 3 Days)

- Grade Changes

- Schedule Modifications

- Policy Updates

*Green (These can wait)

- Event Invitations

- Curriculum Suggestions

- Annual KPIs

Implementation: Ask your staff to ‘Tag’ emails with *RED, *YELLOW, or *GREEN in the subject line of every Email that they send you.

(Subject: *RED, need you take a look at these enrollme...)

[For better organization, create a filter for each in your emails – *RED/ *YELLOW/ *GREEN]

“If this isn’t handled today, will it create a compliance issue or affect our student experience?”

Yes = *Red. No = *Yellow/*Green.

The Result: 8/8 Directors using this system report:

- saving 18+hrs/week dealing with compliance headaches.

- 70% fewer "urgent" requests due to staff learning what actually needs immediate attention.

Most importantly, issues that could’ve later resulted in compliance headaches are immediately brought to your attention & resolved.

The Effect of Compounding: When this sorting is automated with smart routing rules for other college operations at a larger scale, you never worry about a single Compliance Report.

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Gradly – for Canadian Directors, by Canadian Directors.

Gaurav Sharma

Fellow Campus Director & Gradly Founder

February 13th, 2025

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