AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION IS WORTH A POUND OF CURE
Is your Ethics & Compliance program proactive or reactive? Are you advising the business or cleaning up messes? In this episode of Creativity & Compliance, Tom Fox & Ronnie Feldman critique how programs currently spend their time and resources and offer up some suggestions on how we should shift our focus in order to set ourselves up for success.
ARE WE ACTUALLY TRYING TO SOLVE PROBLEMS…NOT IF YOU FOLLOW THE MONEY
I think we can all agree that it’s more efficient and effective to prevent problems before they occur. And yet, most programs spend their time and resources on things that have little to no impact on behaviors. Unfortunately, for many programs, a large chunk of money goes towards investigations. This is most definitely reactive. But even prior to that, many so called preventative activities actually exacerbate the problem. Training that is long, boring and full of legalese doesn’t help anyone. No one learns and employees get resentful for wasting their time. It undermines trust. Analytics are all the rage. But most training analytics focus on the bells & whistles associated with passing the knowledge check directly after you just gave them the lesson. Or worse, it’s just tracking completion rates. And then there is a huge time-suck associated with tracking down those completion rates. Focusing on analytics and what you can report is important, but it shouldn’t be the focal point. We should focus on impacting behaviors and then find ways to measure those things.
INFLUENCING BEHAVIORS
So how do we impact behaviors. Most behavior science tells us we should focus on these things.
Impacting the Social Environment – We are highly influenced by our environment, by our peers and by group think.
- Promote speak up resources and speak up culture as often as possible. We need to create psychological safety. This will take time and a continuous communication effort. Entertainment is helpful to increase exposure without message fatigue.
- Promote the Ethics & Compliance team as a positive and helpful resources. Establishing the team as a trusted resource will take time and a continuous communication effort. Entertainment is helpful to shift the tone and increase approachability.
Impacting the Leadership Environment – We need to engage and empower leaders at all levels.
- Spend training dollars on ethical leadership and reinforcing that continuously. Entertainment is helpful to increase engagement with these influencers.
- Build training materials that empower leaders to deliver messaging on your behalf. Short, entertaining manager toolkits make it easier for them to deliver and look good while they deliver it.
The OIG has weighed to say that “alternative forms of training count.” The newsletters, the video shorts, the nudge-learning, the commercials played during town halls…it all counts. So do those things and measure those things. Its more effective than that annual e-learning that we’re all used to. Train less (reduce seat time) and communicate more. Spend training dollars on educating leaders and creating resources that make it simple and easy for them to carry these messages forward. We should be measuring effectiveness with more culture surveys on whether or not employees trust the speak up process and trust that there is a sense of organizational justice. That’s far more telling.
The main goal of ethics & compliance should be influence. Having a toolkit of short, entertaining comms, awareness and burst learning can help!
Ronnie Feldman is the President & Creative Director at Learnings & Entertainments, a learning content provider made up of comedians and entertainers with a focus on corporate risk. www.LearningsEntertainments.com