Compliance and Ethics Week: A Complete Guide for Success

Ethics and compliance (E&C) touch every part of your organization from the policies you write to employee comfort in speaking up when they observe misconduct. Therefore, E&C should be
embedded across the organization and be top of mind for employees when they are making decisions.

Consider hosting an annual Compliance and Ethics Week to emphasize the importance of ethics and compliance. This can include activities and communications that help employees connect E&C principles to their daily work. The Business Ethics Leadership Alliance has held several conversations about how to host a successful corporate compliance and ethics week. Here are some best practices to follow. 

Identify Emerging Themes 

Pick emerging themes that resonate with employees to drive interest and focus on important E&C topics for your organization. The theme could be general, such as ethical decision-making or a recent organization change, or specific like addressing new compliance challenges and regulations. 

Unsure what to focus on during your Compliance Week? Consider: 

Is there a particular E&C topic you want to educate your employees on? 

• If there is something that you want your employees to know more about, such as the organization’s commitment to non-retaliation, you can center your theme around this topic to ensure that employees understand it. 

Look at your data – what is it telling you about the organization?

• Look at the data and results of your employee engagement, culture, and ethics and compliance surveys as well as your risk assessments. This data can tell you where you have gaps or what employees are interested in. 

Focus on organizational values 

• Your organizational values and mission statement can be another good place to start if you are unsure of a theme. They are already aligned with company strategy and messaging, so they should be familiar to employees and consistent with messaging they already see from you. 

Select a theme that reinforces the connection between E&C and the organization’s goals. This makes the week more impactful and relevant for employees. A well-chosen theme also inspires engagement and participation, helping to reinforce key ethical principles and compliance standards throughout the organization.  

Partner with Other Departments  

The Ethics and Compliance program has a broad scope, and many of the topics under the E&C umbrella will have additional stakeholders at your organization. Consider partnering with another department that has an interest or stake in the topic you are focusing on.   

Thinking about focusing on cybersecurity? Partner with the folks in Information Technology. Do you want to focus on culture and incentivizing ethical behavior? Partner with Human Resources and managers. 

Partnering with another department can also be a way to do more with less. If you have budget limitations or lack experience in engaging with employees across the entire company, working with another department can help you fill those gaps.  

Additionally, they may have recommendations on the timing of the event to avoid competing with other employee engagement initiatives planned, or times of the year when employees are under increased performance pressure. 

Promote the Event in Advance  

Communicate with employees and managers before the week to get it on everyone’s radar. Get people excited for the week’s activities by giving them a sneak peek or preview of what will happen. Share the schedule of activities and let employees know where to find more information and who to go to with questions.  

How should I get the word out? 

• Advertise the upcoming event on the company intranet and on message boards 
• Harness the influence of E&C champions and ambassadors to bring the message right to employees 
• Include the upcoming schedule of events and activities in your company-wide messaging or newsletters 
• Coordinate with the communications team to share company-wide messages getting people excited for the week 

Getting employees excited in advance of the event will help boost your engagement during the week. If you will have any prizes or incentives, make sure those are included in the pre-event messages and communications. 

Make It Fun – Whatever That Looks Like for You 

To get the best engagement, think about what will make it fun and interesting for your employees. Would a single day with multiple activities work best? Or small interactions throughout an entire week? Would employees prefer to submit pictures or compete against others for prizes? 

Activity Examples: 

Scavenger hunts 

• Have employees find where policies are housed or have them match a scenario to the relevant policy or Code of Conduct section 
• Find an E&C message (either in-person or virtually) 
• Where is the E&C hotline? 

Interdepartmental competitions 

• Get employees to team up with their coworkers to complete challenges and activities to compete against other departments or teams 

Word search and crossword puzzles 

• Create puzzles with topical keywords or E&C buzzwords like culture of compliance or due diligence to get employees thinking about the topic 

Spot the Violation or Error 

• Set up a scenario and have employees tell you what the problem is or what was done wrong 
• Give out a prize to the first person to spot the error in a fake version of the Code of Conduct 

Hand out employee recognition awards 

• This is a great opportunity to engage with managers, your E&C champions, and other departments. Before the event, solicit nominations for employees that embody organizational values or someone that spotted a problem and reported it, preventing risk or incident. 

What resonates with employees will vary from company to company, so make sure whatever activities you choose will catch the interest of the employees at your organization. 

Harness the Power of Storytelling  

 One of the best ways to educate and engage with employees on E&C topics is to use storytelling. Here are some ways to do that during your E&C week: 

Share videos and messages from senior leaders – 

• Messages from senior leaders, especially those that employees may not regularly hear from, can carry a lot of weight with employees. Capitalize on that influence and have leaders share messages on E&C issues throughout the week. This can help humanize the examples and show that leaders have experienced similar situations. 

Include actions and outcomes –

• Share anonymized scenarios that employees have found themselves in, how they responded, and what the outcome was. If applicable, share what the employee could have done instead along with resources from ethics and compliance and the related policy. For a fun take on this, turn it into an advice column. If you’ve received questions from employees on E&C issues and topics, answer them there as well. 

Bring humor to potentially dry topics – 

• Not all topics will be interesting to employees. Leverage humor to grab their attention. At this year’s Global Ethics Summit, Dianna Karg from FedEx shared an example where they interviewed a leader and asked them to share the top ten craziest reimbursement requests they had seen, then tied the message back to their policy on reimbursements. 

Use alternative communication mediums – 

• Emails and posters can be repetitive for employees. Consider using animated videos, cartoons like Ethisphere’s Ethitoons, or podcasts to share your message through new means. 

Don’t Forget Your Remote Employees  

Most companies have hybrid or remote workers these days, so make sure your Compliance and Ethics Week programming is accessible to these employees. Do they have access to email or your intranet site? How do they receive messages and where do they look for resources? 

Ways to engage remote or hybrid employees: 

• Post pictures of the activities and have them answer questions 
• Share interactive graphics 
• Make your games playable by remote workers 
• Hold separate competitions for off-site employees 

Provide Compliance Resources  

You want employees to continue thinking about ethics and compliance after the event is over. Provide them with resources and toolkits on the issues presented during the week and how employees can address them as they arise.  

When creating resources, follow the best practices from above – make them engaging, use storytelling, and ensure they are accessible by remote workers. 

Don’t forget to include where to go when they have questions about ethics and compliance issues or topics, how they can report a concern or instance of misconduct, and where they can find policies and additional resources. 

Conclusion

Hosting an Ethics & Compliance Week can seem like a big lift, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are some key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of an Ethics and Compliance Week: 

• Employee Participation Rate: Measure the percentage of employees who join in the planned events and activities for the week. 
• Training Completion Rate: Track the number of employees who complete any mandatory or voluntary training sessions or workshops offered during the week. 
• Feedback and Satisfaction Scores: Collect feedback from participants through surveys to gauge their satisfaction with the events and their perceived value of the activities. 
• Incident Reporting and Resolution: Monitor the number of reported ethics or compliance incidents before, during, and after the week to see if there’s an increase in awareness and reporting. 
• Knowledge Retention and Improvement: Assess employees’ understanding of key ethics and compliance topics before and after the week through quizzes or assessments to measure knowledge retention and improvement.