31 Days to a More Effective Compliance Program

Well-know compliance training guru Shawn Rogers has developed ten design objectives for establishing your compliance program training design objectives. It would be best if you considered doing the same for your organization. Your organization may value other objectives. What the government has told us since the original FCPA Resource Guide back in 2012 is that it expects a well throughout the app...

How can you begin to think through a best practices compliance training program? I asked Shawn Rogers, training guru, expert, and maven. Rogers advised that you ‘envision’ what your training would like as a first step. He stated, “A common mistake is jumping right to the question is which courses you want and how to deploy them. However, you must consider several things before building the program...

Even with the Elon Musk defenestration of Twitter, one of the ways that CCOs and compliance practitioners can better use 360 degrees of communication is through this tool. In an MIT Sloan Management Review article entitled “How Twitter Users Can Generate Better Ideas,” authors Salvatore Parise, Eoin Whelan, and Steve Todd found that “employees with a diverse Twitter network – one that exposes them...

Other than the skill of listening, asking questions is about as important to the compliance practitioner as any other that can be employed. Yet, equally critical is to ask the right question, which is an issue explored by Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman in their book entitled “A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life.” Grazer is a well-known and successful Hollywood director who has directed s...

A 360-degree approach to communications entails looking at all forms of interactions as a way to interconnect. This means both verbal and non-verbal and in clues and hints. This concept can be particularly helpful in relating to and with cultures outside the U.S. as one of the most critical issues to a compliance function is breaking through a company’s internal cultural boundaries. In a  Harvard...

What if you could multiply the impact and effectiveness of your compliance program throughout your company? That would be a great boon to any compliance practitioner and compliance program. It is also possible by considering a 360-degree view of communications in compliance using multipliers. Liz Wiseman is the co-author with Greg McKeown of “Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter...

Such small gestures can make a difference. I recently read a biography of Dale Carnegie by Steven Watts, entitled “Self-Help Messiah: Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern America”, penned by Ian Frazier. Carnegie is of course well known for his seminal work “How to Win Friends and Influence People” first published in 1936. I was somewhat surprised to learn that the text was largely drawn up as tran...

Our next lesson on compliance communications comes from best-selling authors James Patterson and David Baldacci, and it is about your brand. I have always considered your brand the image customers have of your business. It should be strategic and intentional. For a corporate compliance function, it means doing business ethically and in compliance. It could mean creating an effective compliance pro...

How often have you thought about the role of communications in your entire hotline reporting system? I do not mean posters giving the hotline number, promising anonymity and non-retaliation. I mean using compliance communications to create a social environment where employees feel comfortable speaking up to ask questions and report concerns and they know the options for doing that. Why do many com...

The 360-degree approach to compliance works with all the stakeholders in a compliance program, even the “Document, Document, and Document” stakeholders; i.e., the regulators. By using innovative techniques, one law firm came up with mechanism to present verifiable evidence to regulators, using the basic techniques of social media in operationalizing compliance as a solution to a difficult complian...

One of the more difficult things to predict in the mergers and acquisition context is how the cultures of the two entities will merge. Further, while many mergers claim to be a ‘merger of equals’ the reality is far different as there is always one corporate winner that continues to exist and one corporate loser that simply ceases to exist. This is true across industries and countries; witness the...

Why do people share information? The answer to that question has important implications for every compliance practitioner and compliance program. Sharing is a primary method to communicate and connect. This is always a challenge in any far-flung international corporation, particularly for disciplines that can be viewed as home office overhead at best and the Land of No at worst. Work to hone your...

I am a huge fan of using social media in your compliance function. But how can you get your arms around how to structure such a program for your company? After acknowledging that social media focuses on the social aspects of communication, the most important thing to remember is that communication in social media is two-way, both inbound and outbound. It helps to bring your employee base together...

What is the message of compliance inside of a corporation and how it is distributed? In a compliance program, the largest portion of your consumers/customers are your employees. Social media presents some excellent mechanisms to communicate the message of compliance going forward. Many of the applications that we use in our personal communications are free or available at very low cost. Why not ta...

How did one company and one CCO actively use social media to make the company's compliance culture more effective? The company was Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. (D&B), and its then CCO, Louis Sapirman, discussed D&B's integration of social media into compliance with me. As we advance, these tools can go a long way toward enhancing your compliance program. Recall the declination to prosecute Morgan Stanle...

In this month's offering of 31 Days to a More Effective Compliance Program, you will learn about training and communication techniques that the CCO can use to provide a well-rounded role as a CCO and facilitate a much more holistic approach to compliance in your organization. Best of all, the techniques discussed are available at little to no cost. You can do things in your method of running the C...

One of the areas many companies do not focus on enough is possible corruption in their supply chain for goods and services provided on a company’s behalf. The FCPA risks can be just as great through those entry points as they can be through the sales side of an organization. You need to know whom your company is doing business with through this channel as much as you need to know your agents seeki...

The FCPA world is littered with cases involving freight forwarders, brokers and agents in the shipping and express delivery arena. Both the DOJ and SEC have aggressively pursued third-party business relationships where bribery and corruption have been found. This is particularly true where companies are required to deliver goods into a foreign country through the assistance of a freight forwarder...

One of the issues in any compliance program is the compensation paid to a third party, as FCPA exposure arises when companies pay money, either directly or indirectly, to fund bribe payments. Another area that leads to exposure from third parties is with distributors. In a distributor relationship, the distributor purchases a product, taking the risk of loss and title, at a discount from a manufac...

At some point, you will be required to terminate a third party and there will be multiple legal, compliance and business issues to navigate through. If you are stuck doing it in the middle of a FCPA or U.K. Bribery Act investigation, there may well be some tension to do so and do so quickly. If you have not thought through this issue and created a process to follow before a crisis occurs, you may...

It is universally recognized that third-parties are your highest FCPA risk. What if you could turn your third-party from a liability under the FCPA to an innovation partner to your compliance program? This is an area that not many compliance professionals have mined but once again in compliance, you are only limited by your imagination. In a Supply Chain Management Review article by Jennifer Black...

A study by Forrester Research Inc. compared the user experience which lead to a finding of a positive ROI for the technology user around third-party risk management. I found the approach and methodology used persuasive and valuable for the compliance professional to consider in evaluating such a process in your organization. Some of the key findings readily translate across for the compliance prac...

One of the key themes in the Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs is the use of data and data analytics in a best practices compliance program. This has specific application to third-parties. In the section entitled, Risk-Tailored Resource Allocation, the following question was posed, Does the company devote a disproportionate amount of time to policing low-risk areas instead of high-risk a...

Auditing of third parties is critical to any best practices compliance program and an important tool in operationalizing your compliance program. This is a key manner in which a company can manage the third-party relationship after the contract is signed and one which the government will expect you to engage in going forward. As stated in the 2020 Update, under the section entitled, Management of...

The building blocks of any compliance program lay the foundations for a best practices compliance program. For instance, in the life cycle management of third parties, most compliance practitioners understand the need for a business justification, questionnaire, due diligence, evaluation, and contract compliance terms and conditions. However, as many companies mature in their compliance programs,...