Ethicast Episodes

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: 

• 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. 
• 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.