You Don’t Have to Build It Alone: How BELA Helps Compliance Leaders Scale with Confidence
You’ve seen the mandate: benchmark, build and/or evolve your ethics and compliance program. Maybe your program is decentralized. Maybe policies are scattered or outdated. Maybe your team is running lean. Whatever the case, you’re staring at a 12-month implementation plan that feels more like 12 mountains.
You could start from scratch. Or you could start from structure. We say “there’s no competition in compliance” – our community is where E&C leaders turn to action mission-critical risk mitigation efforts.
What Compliance Leaders Tell Us They’re Up Against
In the last 12 months, organizations are asking leaders “do more with less,” artificial intelligence is pervasive, and economic volatility is creating pressure to perform. Across industries, we’re hearing the same thing from CECOs and heads of compliance at global companies:
- “Our policies are all over the place.”
- “We’re decentralized and under-resourced.”
- “We don’t have time to write everything from scratch.”
- “Leadership wants a plan. I need momentum.”
- “I need to be able to prioritize initiatives against industry standard benchmarks”
We’ve helped organizations turn questions like these into strategic clarity.
The good news? There are solutions that don’t just reduce your workload — they strengthen your program and provide support when you otherwise feel alone. Compliance program development shouldn’t mean reinventing the wheel.
Start With a Framework, Not a Blank Page
Ethisphere’s Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA) is more than just community — it’s a data-backed, trusted companion for compliance leaders in motion. Here’s just some of what BELA gives you:
- Access to peer-developed policy templates, training modules, communications, and program frameworks from companies like FedEx, Sony, and Western Digital.
- Real program benchmarking data to help with gap analysis, Speak-Up systems, and program validation — with insights from hundreds of organizations doing this work well.
These aren’t theoretical best practices. They’re proven, pressure-tested resources from peers who are navigating the same complexities you are.
If you’re responsible for compliance milestones in 2025, there’s a smarter way to hit them.
Plug BELA into Your Compliance Roadmap
Most compliance teams are juggling competing priorities: third-party due diligence, policy drafting, risk assessments, and evolving training needs. Adding BELA can dramatically reduce the load.
Let’s walk through the roadmap and see where it fits:
1. Gap Analysis
Benchmarking data from high-performing peers will put your current program state into context. Instead of relying on internal assumptions or generalized research, you get comparative insights that validate findings and help focus your recommendations and make a case to leadership.
2. Policy Development
Need a whistleblower policy that’s both current and defensible? A code of conduct you don’t have to write from a blank page? To get you started, BELA includes policy templates from companies like PepsiCo Rockwell Automation, and Milliken—already vetted and field-tested.
3. Speak-Up & Investigations Programs
Whether you’re launching a new hotline or strengthening an existing one, BELA’s examples from companies such as The Hartford, MetroHealth, and Zoetis show what modern, ethical, and effective systems look like—from communication to disciplinary measures.
4. Training & Communication
From new manager onboarding to poster campaigns and digital learning, BELA members like ABB, Autodesk, Bio Rad, and Flex have shared what works. You can adapt and scale their materials to match your tone and culture – fast.
Across your entire roadmap, the data and insights will help inform plans and give confidence, knowing you are building processes that align with your industry, organization size, or the best-of-the-best.
Take a look at your implementation calendar. If you’re like many compliance leaders we work with, your program rollout looks something like this:
Q2–Q3: Gap Analysis, Policy Development, Risk Assessment
Q3–Q4: Speak-Up System overhaul, Vendor Selection
Q4–Q1: Training, Communications, and Monitoring
For Fortune 500s, Time Isn’t Just Money. It’s Visibility.
If your board or leadership is tracking 2025 progress, the last thing you want is to delay because you’re developing content or frameworks from scratch. BELA eliminates that bottleneck.
Gain immediate access to resources and real examples that help you:
- Build executive confidence with data-backed benchmarks
- Align global teams with standardized policies
- Move from reactive fixes to proactive development
If You’re Building a Program, BELA Helps You Build It Right
You’re not looking for shortcuts. You’re looking for substance. And you need it to move faster than one person or team can reasonably go alone.
If you’re leading compliance strategy this year, you already know what needs to be done. With Ethisphere you have the tools to do it faster, smarter, and with a whole network by your side.
They give you:
- Speed without sacrificing credibility
- Support without extra headcount
- Structure without bureaucracy
Whether you’re preparing for a board update, a DOJ review, or just your own peace of mind — you can feel confident knowing that the foundation you’re building rests on experience, insight, and real-world results.
Let’s get your program where it needs to be — and let’s make sure you don’t burn out getting there.
Because doing it right shouldn’t mean doing it alone.
