Riddle for the day: how does the untimely death of a pop superstar somehow turn into a blog about ethics reporting? Allow me to explain. A week after the passing of Whitney Houston, my wife and I are watching “The Bodyguard,” the 1992 film starring Kevin Costner in the title role and Houston as the endangered entertainer reluctantly needing protection. A good movie. I like the quiet hero-type who carries a big sword. Fast forward a few days, and I come across a FOXBusiness article called “Bully Adults in the Workplace: What to Do.” It’s a story based on a survey done last year by CareerBuilder that says that 27% of U.S. workers have experienced bullying in the workplace, and most have not done anything about it, presumably because of fear of reprisal or retaliation, lack of confidence in the system, or a belief that reports will not result in a better situation.

Employers are a bit like the Costner’s character of Frank Farmer, the bodyguard in the movie – they’ve seen it all before, they know and understand how the workplace works, and they feel it’s their responsibility to protect their employees – even if the employees are a bit hesitant to accept the protection. When employers set up anonymous hotlines, they don’t do so hoping to catch the bad guy, but more to protect the innocent, and to empower them with a confidential way to speak up when they see or experience misconduct.

Bullying can even be seen as another form of workplace violence and harassment, sometimes taking the form of a tough-as-nails manager or co-worker who operates strictly by the books. It becomes bullying when there is humiliation, unnecessary criticism, or verbal and strategic assaults that affect the person’s ability to do their work. And it can damage your organization’s effectiveness as well as your employee relations.

Here are a few scary facts from that CareerBuilder survey: only slightly more than one in four employees reported bullying to their HR department. Only slightly more than a third of those employees felt that the matter was sufficiently investigated and resolved. That means that only one out of 10 employees who experienced bullying gained any sense of closure. As the leader of an anti-bullying consultant quoted in the article put it, “Without protocols or consequential actions in place, HR becomes complicit and unaccountable for bad behavior.”

Another bullying stat: 37% claim standards and policies applied to them were not used on others. That’s an issue on many levels, including awareness, training, policy management and executive commitment.

When I see facts and figures like this, I’m reminded why we need bodyguards in the first place, and why the need to create and sustain an ethical workplace—an environment where everyone feels comfortable, respected, productive and worthy—is so important to the good standing of your business.

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RELATED LINKS:

BLOG: Employment Stats Tell a Story of Retaliation and Discrimination (Feb. 14, 2012)
BLOG: Lack of Ethics Will Sink You (Jan. 18, 2012)
ARTICLE: “Workplace Snitching: If You See Something, Should You Say Something?” Meghan Casserly, Forbes.com (Jan. 26, 2012)
WEBSITE: The Healthy Workplace Bill.org

Hopefully it’s a sign of improving times for the economy, but two recent reports found that spending is on the increase for employee learning and development. The American Society for Training and Development says that US organizations spent more than $170 billion on training in 2010, which represents a spend rate in excess of $1,200 per employee. Another report, Bersin & Associates’ Corporate Learning Factbook 2012, puts the figure at a more conservative $800 per employee in 2011.

Both reports highlight the increased spend as positive signs for the economy, saying that the trends indicate that employers see their employees as important factors towards their growth.

As we continue to develop eLearning content focused on the ethics & compliance space, I wasn’t really surprised by the findings of the report. In the not-too-distant past, dollars devoted to training and awareness, including employee ethics & compliance training, were often some of the first funds to be cut when budgets got tight. But, as recent reports of fraud and corporate misconduct have increased, the need to mitigate risk – through training – has increased, too. Now, the consequence of not training (or mediocre or ineffective training) translates not only into missed opportunities, but also vulnerability and exposure to serious loss.

Many organizations recognize that knowledgeable employees are in a position to identify risks to the organization and, properly educated, can report violations of policy and the law. Reports of violations often rise following training events as employees become aware of their organization’s standards and better understand how to support them. Organizations are subject to complex legal requirements and employees must be educated about them to avoid inadvertent violations and recognize circumstances in which they need to seek guidance. Training dollars are not just a budget line item, but an important investment in corporate stability, growth and future success.

I hope that HR executives take a look at these findings and realize that training should be built to fit a company’s corporate culture – not the other way around. And the fact is that traditional training methods are typically not flexible enough to 1) meet a wide cross-section of employee needs, and 2) reflect the specific pain points each company faces.

eLearning, and for that matter, mobile learning, offer fresh options because training can be delivered to employees at a time and place that works for them. Another very interesting tidbit touched upon in the Bersin report: it says that training that is on-demand, available anytime and anywhere, is also coming in vogue, what Bersin calls “bite-sized learning on a continuous basis.”

If done well, it can engage, not just educate, and resonate with all kinds of learners (visual, auditory and sensory). And if training is less of a chore and more of an experience, it will arm the employee (and the company) with the tools needed to stay in compliance (and off the front page). Not all learning and development need be delivered as formal training. Organizations should look to augment their efforts with other forms of communication designed to sustain awareness and reinforce key points over time.

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RELATED LINKS:

BLOG: Training Fills the Space Between Ethics and Actions
BLOG: Large and Small Alike, eLearning is Good for Business
WHITE PAPER: The Value of Animation and Visual Storytelling for Corporate Training
ARTICLE: “Spending Up For Learning, Development,” HR Executive, Jan. 30, 2012

Last month the US EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) released findings for fiscal year 2011 in regards to discrimination charges brought before the commission. Not surprisingly, the numbers are on the rise, and the top three areas of concern are troubling: age and disability discrimination are up, as are cases involving retaliation.

Almost 100,000 charges resulting in more than $450 million in mediation and ligation were assessment by the EEOC, and of those, the EEOC stats show that more than one in three charges involved retaliation.

The shaky economy is no doubt to blame, at least a little, but these numbers really verify why it’s still important to build and maintain an ethical culture and a better workplace in the world of increasing issues being brought before the EEOC. If you want to look for a silver lining here, maybe it’s the fact that more employees are willing to come forward and not be subjugated by unfair employment practices.

What would be really telling would be if we could correlate these statistics of charges filed versus the standard ethics & compliance practices present within the places of employment. Were adequate corporate policies clearly defined and communicated? Was there sufficient training regarding discrimination and retaliation? Did these companies have a way to report, remediate and resolve these claims? Could employees have been protected earlier and more effectively?

Now to play devil’s advocate for a second…. What if the numbers had gone down? Would that have been a good thing? Would that have meant that discrimination and retaliation weren’t as prevalent – or just not reported as much?

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RELATED LINKS:

BLOG: Incident Management More than Digging Up Dirt (Jan. 17, 2012)
BLOG: Retaliation is a C-Level Issue (Jan. 9, 2012)
ARTICLE: “EEOC Releases FY 2011 Statistics; Charges At An All-Time High,” Hunton Employment & Labor Law Perspectives, Feb 13, 2012
ARTICLE: “Private Sector Bias Charges Hit All-Time High,” U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Jan. 25, 2011

When I recently received an email from a colleague with the subject line “The Daily Stat,” I thought, another silly forwarded email. But I was wrong, it read, “Extra Thinking Time Leads to Ethical Decisions.” Turns out that The Daily Stat is an email sent out from the Harvard Business Review and the article was a report about a new research study with some very telling numbers.

Led by J. Keith Murnighan, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in charge of the research, the study says that seven out of eight subjects chose not to be dishonest in a situation where they stood to gain if they were given three minutes to contemplate their choice. When told to make an immediate decision, more than half lied for personal gain. According to the HBR, the “study suggests disarmingly simple way to better job ethics: slow down.”

The full study, which will appear in the upcoming issue of The Academy of Management Journal, points out an equally simple fact that we have long supported: having an ethical position in place, via a solid compliance program, a code of ethics, employee training, a hotline reporting program, etc., gives people both the time and a way to contemplate their actions.

Murnighan says that “having time to think things over may not make much difference in big-time financial swindles, but our findings suggest that it would make a considerable difference in innumerable instances of lying and fraud that happen every day in the business world.” The study finds that “even a modest nudge on behalf of morality can carry the day in such battles, with ethical urgings four times more likely to engender good deeds than advice on behalf of self-interest will.”

This may read a bit academically highbrow, but you’ll get the gist of it: “The study urges organizations to consciously design moral decision-making processes, integrating them into training and enforcing them institutionally via policies, rewards, and sanctions. Policies mandating a ‘cooling-off period’ or multiple levels of approval for consequential decisions, for example, might provide institutional analogs for contemplation, and ethics hotlines might act as institutional conversations. Opportunities for instituting and improving these kinds of procedures abound.”

Translation? Set down ethical policies and codes of conduct for your employees, train them on what behavior is accepted and expected, give them a way to discuss any issues and incidents that do occur, and actively promote this attitude across the entire enterprise.

So for the sake of ethics, slow down, but for the sake of your organization’s ethical health, be quick about it.

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RELATED LINKS:

BLOG: Best Practices for Code of Conduct: Good Questions!
WHITE PAPER: Better Compliance Through Technology
ARTICLE: Moral Development and Leadership? What a concept! (Frank Bucaro, Corporate Compliance Insights, Feb. 7, 2012)

In our e-world, data privacy and cybersecurity have become commonplace terms. In our business, we have an obligation to secure our clients’ data, which has been obtained per their explicit permission solely for their use. That’s an important point if not readily apparent. There’s been a lot of talk lately about Google’s new privacy policies, and the discussion quickly spreads to other Internet monsters like Facebook and how they also handle and treat our personal information. A recent article on CNN.com regarding Google caught my attention, first for its title – “Google Knows Too Much About You” – and then for the implications that the continuing debate over data privacy will have for corporate ethics and compliance issues.

First, the article. The writer, Frida Ghitis, a columnist at the Miami Herald and a former correspondent and producer at CNN, makes a valid point about the ethics of companies like Google that obtain, store and potentially use our personal data. She even alludes to Google’s famous code of conduct: “Do no evil.” Two other points are equally interesting. First, she says, her “real fear is that computer technology has turned into an arms race between good guys and bad guys. Google may see itself as a jaunty white hat wearer, valiantly protecting all our information…. But hackers are hard at work all the time.” My reaction is, yes, that’s true, so besides the obvious technical solutions for data protection, how else can companies make sure their use of personal data is kept for “non-evil” purposes? That’s where a solid, technology-based compliance solution comes into play.

The other thing Ghitis mentions is the new data privacy laws being debated in Europe, the so-called “right to be forgotten” proposals that would mandate that companies in the EU companies with more than 250 employees have a data protection officer to ensure compliance with the laws and that they delete personal data unless there are legitimate grounds for retaining it. Which is yet another reason why organizations must continually strengthen their business processes to stay aligned with regulatory and compliance matters.

Besides these observations, I’m concerned about the data security in regards to the general state of ethics, at both a personal and corporate level. Two old adages come to mind. One, rules are made to be broken. Two, locks are to there to keep honest people out. Some of our apprehension over data security is born of ignorance. We simply don’t know how the bits and bytes work. Ethically speaking, are we morally obligated to protect another’s possessions in our care (i.e., data) and how do we compel others to feel the same way?

One of the comments submitted to Ghitis’ article really drove it home: “The rule of thumb is this: Where corruption is possible, there corruption will be found.”

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RELATED LINKS:
BLOG: Lack of Ethics Will Sink You, Jan 18, 2012
BLOG: Ethical Lessons Learned, Jan. 17, 2012
ARTICLE: Comprehensive Data Protection Reform Proposal Released by European Commission (Cynthia Larose, PrivacyandSecurityMatters.com., Jan. 25, 2012)

The Big Game is now only days away, and we wait with great expectation to see who will… have the best commercial. We all know it’s really about the advertising. And this year, there is even a little bit of compliance thrown into the mix.

Hyundai Motor America is all set with a slew of Super Bowl pitches for its cars, but the company almost ran afoul of the FTC in regards to a compliance issue. Seems that Hyundai’s ad company gave incentives to bloggers to talk up the new Super Bowl ads for the car company. That’s not a new tactic in today’s social media world, and there’s nothing wrong with doing that as long as the rules are followed. The FTC says that if a blogger receives compensation to look and act like neutral third-party in regards to what they say about the product, the blogger, and potentially, the company itself, must disclose this fact to the public. Otherwise, it sets up a situation of non-compliance with the FTC and borders on unethical behavior, i.e. false advertising.

Ethics and compliance has come a long way, but it’s a complicated world out there. Having to consider whether a blogger needs to disclose a gift while they are previewing commercials?  That sounds like it’s almost taking it too far. Not to sound overly defensive of Hyundai, but reportedly the company has a well written policy to cover that, but was everyone aware of it?  How are the bloggers supposed to know what the policy is? A good policy that people aren’t aware of is really no policy at all.

The FTC chastised Hyundai but would not take it further because they felt that Hyundai did not knowingly or willfully go against the compliance laws.  As is often the case, the finding of fault and even financial penalties can be reduced if an organization can show that they had a viable compliance program actively in place when the violation occurred. That level of compliance initiative includes elements that work to protect the company and its employees, detect incidents and issues, and correct any faulty situations. That’s the heart of our “Protect, Detect and Correct” mantra. It’s all about setting standards, communicating those standard via awareness programs and training, taking active risk assessments and incident reporting, and following up on those issues.

With that said, I’m sure that the leaders and line employees at Hyundai, like all of us, can sit back and enjoy the game.

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RELATED LINKS:

ARTICLE: From the Experts: Super Bowl Ads Meet Corporate Compliance, Corporate Counsel (Law.com), Jan. 24, 2012
BLOG: Ethical Lessons Learned, Jan.17, 2012
WHITE PAPER: Better Compliance Through Technology

The cruise ship industry took a hit this past week as the Costa Concordia sank off the coast of Italy.  Rumors are swirling that the ship’s captain may not have followed company procedures, and may have been performing an unauthorized “salute” intended to approach the shore to provide a view to people on land.

Carnival, the parent company of the Concordia’s owner, announced they will be conducting a thorough review of operational practices and procedures in order to prevent future incidents.  Passengers are concerned whether the procedures and policies in place are being followed, but are finding that cruise lines’ policies frequently limit the ability of travelers to get refunds.

A Huffington Post article, “Sinking Trust,” summed it up this way: “The media and public must ask—aren’t there rules, procedures or drills for the possibility of an accident? Of course there are, but if not practiced or put into action when needed, emergency plans become little more than dusty notebooks that fulfill a corporate or government check list. The public is left to conclude that in practice there are no rules or the rules that do exist are inadequate.”

In order for Carnival to fulfill its promise to review procedures and the policies they support, a great deal of behind-the-scenes work has to be performed to ensure:

• All necessary policies and procedures are reviewed
• New versions of any updated policies are distributed to the correct personnel
• Records are kept that employees have been communicated the updated information
• New versions are understood by the relevant persons

When an incident occurs, do you have systems in place to help you navigate through the waters of your company’s policy framework to make the appropriate changes in a timely manner?  And can you prove your due diligence in communicating changed policies to your workforce?

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RELATED LINKS:

BLOG: Lack of Ethics Will Sink You, Jan. 18, 2012
WHITE PAPER: Integrity: Does Your Organization Walk Its Talk? (Corporate Integrity LLC)
ARTICLE: Must the CEO Go Down With His Ship?, The Business Ethics Blog, Jan. 19, 2012

Ethics training is boring… or most people think it is. That’s the way ethics training is usually perceived. Of course, some organizations have gone to the opposite extreme, using frivolity and even satire. They see the value of humor in training, and here they are correct. Laughter makes you feel good, and you retain the memory of those things that made you laugh. But if the training is all about humor, without some meaningful content, is the training all that valuable?

A series of video-based ethics training modules are getting a lot of press right now. In those clips, humorous pseudo business types find themselves in odd and compromising situations. We laugh, but does it actually “click” with us? Do we really see ourselves in that situation, or do we see something that borders on slapstick?

Yes, the videos make it to YouTube and are tweeted about and “liked” around the world. But still, do they have any real meaning? Can we relate to them, to our workplace? Sure, maybe a little, but often the similarity becomes mockery. We think it’s funny, but we find ourselves laughing at the other guy, the one in the video, and not seeing ourselves as actors in the play. We actually distance ourselves from the content, like watching a horror film and knowing that it’s fake blood.

Ethics training does not have to be boring, but it should retain a certain level of seriousness and respect for the topic. Humor in training can be engaging, and it can be memorable, but it can also turn into all play and no work. 

Last month Compliance Week ran an article entitled “Taking the Snooze Factor Out of Corporate Ethics Training.” I especially liked the article’s quote from David Farrell, chief compliance officer of Yahoo.  “The bottom line,” Farrell said, “is that you try to find a way to reach the employees on their level and things they’re receptive to. You hope they come out of it and say, ‘that was really worthwhile.’” When you’re looking at options for ethics training, remember that word: worthwhile.

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RELATED LINKS:
BLOG: Overcoming the Illustration Stigma, Sept. 17, 2011
Turning Work Into Play: Gamifying Your Comms, Strategic Communication Management, Sept. 15, 2011
Is gaming a hot new trend in employee communications?, Ragan Communications, March 1, 2011
Training Tip 8: The Humor Paradox, IEC Journal (Interagency Ethics Council: Standards of Conduct for Federal Employees), Feb. 21, 2011
Cisco Transmits Ethics to a ‘Wired’ World, Ethikos, Nov./Dec. 2008

What a story. A modern cruise ship like the Costa Concordia is sunk by “significant human error,” and everyone is pointing a finger at the ship’s captain. Just as a CEO is responsible for his or her company, the captain was in charge of the vessel and he let down her crew, her passengers, and the ship herself. What happened to “going down with the ship,” or just the simple matter of leading by example?

I’ve been on cruises before, and I remember the safety drills, the life vests and seeing the crew members with their bullhorns and clipboards. I certainly didn’t expect anything disastrous to happen, and nothing did, but it was reassuring that policies and procedures seemed to be in place to protect passengers. I believed the ship was sound and the captain and crew would be there to steer the vessel safely.

So it seems the operational rules of for safe conduct were not followed by the one person most responsible for the ship. Pier Luigi Foschi, head of the company that runs the cruise line, got right to the point: “[The captain] took an initiative of his own will which is contrary to our written rules of conduct.”

Ethics blogger Chris MacDonald looks at the disaster this way: “Ethics often requires of us actions that we’d rather not carry out.” Chris goes on to say that organizations must make sure their employees “think of the relevant ethical rules as something more than the terms of a contract, to help members become the sorts of people who simply would never abandon ship when they are needed most.” 

No one wants to really see the captain go down with his ship (well, maybe not until now). The point is, almost everyone appreciates a code of ethics and expects it to be followed, to both protect the ship against capsizing and to guide the passengers to safety afterwards.

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RELATED LINKS:

BLOG: Toneless at the Top, June 3, 2011
ARTICLE: Workplace Ethics on the Decline? (Compliance Week, Jan. 17, 2012)

When something has happened and an investigation is warranted, what is your primary purpose? To punish the wrongdoer?  Your incident and event management tools can – and should – be leveraged to do more. It’s really important to your business to learn the “why’s” as well as the “how’s” behind the misconduct.  Consider it a form of hindsight if you want, but also see this tack as a form of business intelligence.

If fraud has taken place, take the time to look at the incident both in terms of what happened as well as what can be learned. Is additional training required? Did a process or compliance subsystem fail? How did the incident come to light? Are there loopholes that need to be closed? Is the issue isolated, or systemic?

Compliance leaders are often stereotyped as dirt-diggers, right up there with the internal affairs department of the best TV crime drama. But it’s good to know the image is changing, at least a little. Part of that is because compliance teams and investigators are collaborating on the process, not just the incident itself, to uncover the real dirt. Together, they are asking questions about how issues affect the business and how best to correct the situation so that the incident doesn’t occur in the future. That’s preventative planning at its best. Even better, leveraging not only what you know about the outcome of an investigation but also what you know about the root cause of the issue gives you a checkpoint for policies and procedures going forward.

So remember to use your findings for a constructive purpose – not just for punishment or to resolve just one incident.

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RELATED LINKS:

BLOG: Is Your Ethics & Compliance Data Left Sitting on the Shelf?, April 11, 2011
BLOG: Case Management is the Cornerstone of Your GRC Solution, Feb. 7, 2011
REPORT: Investigation Technology Platforms: What to Look For, Corporate Integrity, June 23, 2011
VIDEO: Incident Management & Reporting