Ethicast Episodes

8. The work environment is monitored for compliance pitfalls.   

Considerations: Even with top-notch policies and training, workplace challenges can derail compliance. Environmental impediments can lead to a workaround culture, where employees bend rules to perform their jobs, often due to unintended consequences like efficiency-driven processes reducing compliance controls or incentive plans encouraging questionable behavior.

Actions: 

• Examine the environment for possible compliance culture derailers – Are there inefficient systems, misaligned goals, time or performance pressures, contradictory communications, outdated incentive schemes, or a lack of resources that encourage a workaround culture? Include an environment assessment as part of the internal investigation process for misconduct cases. 
• Work with business leaders on solutions – Partner with leadership to audit the work environment and collaborate on ways to reduce the chances for ethical lapses and compliance gaps.

9. Training must be relevant and relatable.  

Considerations: If your ethics and compliance training was purchased off-the-shelf, consider tailoring it to your organization, industry, or employee roles. Even with limited resources, connecting general ethics and compliance concepts to employees’ day-to-day experiences is worth the effort.

Actions:  

• Customize your training to the organization and employees’ roles – Training on E&C concepts, risk identification, appropriate behavior, and more should be tailored to represent the likely situations your employees will encounter. 
• Supplement with additional communications – Supplement training with ethics and compliance scenarios that are specific to your organization (or even roles or functions) through discussion guides for managers to use during team meetings. The discussions can be short (10-15 minutes) and more effective if they coincided with, or occurred shortly after, any annual compliance training.  
• Measure effectiveness and engagement – Assess the effectiveness of training programs through quizzes, surveys, and performance metrics. Experiment with and assess interactive training methods like simulations and scenario-based learning. 

10. Policies are clear and consistently enforced.  

Considerations: Organizations do not act through policies, but rather through the behavior of their people. Your Code of Conduct and policies sets the standards for employee behavior. Organizations with strong cultures of compliance have strong written standards and apply them consistently, regardless of an employee’s role or rank. Consistent enforcement of compliance policies ensures fairness and demonstrates the organization’s commitment to compliance. 

Consistent application of rules and consequences is the concept behind our “organizational justice” pillar, part of our Eight Pillars of Ethical Culture. Ethisphere’s Culture Quotient® data shows that organizations with strong organizational justice improve the likelihood of an employee feeling safe to speak up by more than 70%. 

Actions:  

• Write for your audience – Make policies readable, relevant, and understandable. Place policies where employees can quickly and easily access them.  
• Clearly communicate the process – Define and communicate the range of consequences for non-compliance. Explain the reporting and investigation process so employees know what to expect when they raise a concern.
• Create transparency around investigation outcomes – Start with high-level, anonymized data on the number of hotline reports, substantiated cases, and the range of disciplinary or remediation actions taken. Sharing information about investigation outcomes reinforces that the process works, and your organization takes ethics and compliance seriously.  

Conclusion 

A culture of compliance benefits a business by enhancing its reputation, reducing legal and financial risks, improving operational efficiency, and fostering employee trust and engagement. It helps prevent costly violations, ensures adherence to regulations, and creates a positive work environment where ethical behavior is valued and rewarded.

These 10 factors represent just some of the ways that organizations can create a workplace where ethics and compliance is elevated from a series of check-the-box requirements to a place where acting with integrity is part of the day-to-day.

For more information on how Ethisphere can help your organization measure and build a culture of compliance, check out our Ethical Culture Accelerator and learn how to put the Eight Pillars of Ethical Culture to work for you.