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 take advantage of them and use those same communication tools in your internal compliance marketing efforts going forward?
Louis Sapirman, Vice President and Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer for Panasonic Corporation of North America – Panasonic USA, often talks about the integration of social media into compliance. You should start with the tech-savvy nature of the today’s workforce. It is not simply about having a younger workforce but a workforce whose primary tool for communication is social media. If your company is in the services business, it probably means your employee base is using technological tools to deliver business solutions. Finally, consider the data-driven nature of business today so using technological tools to deliver products and solutions is something your company most probably does now.
Finally, never forget the social part of social media. Social media is a more holistic, multiple-sided communication. Not only are you setting out expectations but also these tools allow you to receive back communications from your employees. The D&B experience around the name change for its Code of Conduct is but one example. You can also see that if you have several concerns expressed it could alert you earlier to begin some detection and move towards prevention in your compliance program.
Three key takeaways:
- Incorporation of social media into your compliance communications can pay big dividends
- Focus on the ‘social’ part of social media
- Use internal corporate social media to facilitate a 360-degree conversation
