Tag: CCO

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31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

One Month to a More Effective Compliance Program with Boards – Compliance Expertise on the Board

Every Board of Directors needs a true compliance expert sitting at the table. Almost every Board has a former CFO, former head of Internal Audit, or persons with a similar background, and often these are also the Audit Committee members of the Board. Such a background brings a level of sophistication, training, and SME that can help all companies with their financial reporting and other finance-based issues. So why is there, not such compliance SME at the Board level?

This requirement was set out in 2017 in the FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy, where one of the criteria to be evaluated in a compliance program is “the availability of compliance expertise to the board.” Finally, the 2020 Update to the Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs, under the section entitled Oversight, posed the following questions What compliance expertise has been available on the Board of Directors?

The DOJ and Securities and Exchange Commission introduced this concept to the FCPA Resource Guide, 2nd edition. It means that when your company is evaluated by the DOJ, under the factors set out in the 2020 Update and the FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy, to retrospectively determine if your company had a best practices compliance program in place at the time of any violation, you need to have not only the structure of the Board-level Compliance Committee but also the specific SME on the Board and on that committee.

Three key takeaways:

  1. Boards must have compliance expertise.
  2. Government regulators and shareholder groups have both called for greater compliance expertise on the Board.
  3. Compliance expertise at the Board works up and down as such expertise can be a resource to both the CCO and Compliance Department.

For more information check out The Compliance Handbook, 3rd edition, available from LexisNexis here.

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Great Women in Compliance

Great Women in Compliance – Carolyn Renzin on Compliance at FanDuel

Welcome to the Great Women in Compliance Podcast, hosted by Mary Shirley and Lisa Fine.

Over the past few years, it seems like fantasy sports and online gaming have a higher profile than ever, and they are part of a rapidly growing industry. Today’s guest, Carolyn Renzin, is the Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at FanDuel, which is one of the leaders in that space. In a wide-ranging discussion, Carolyn and Lisa discuss building a compliance function at the same time an industry framework is being built, and how she has grown her team. She also talks about FanDuel’s commitment to integrity – both as an organization and for professional sports in general.

Her analogy between sports and her role is one we can all keep in mind – “you play offense, we play defense, and we need each other.”

You can find the Great Women in Compliance Podcast on the Compliance Podcast Network where you can find several other resources and podcasts to keep you up to date in the Ethics and Compliance world. You can also find the GWIC podcast on Corporate Compliance Insights where you can learn more about the podcast, stream prior episodes and catch up on Mary’s monthly column “Living Your Best Compliance Life.”

Corporate Compliance Insights is a much-appreciated sponsor and supporter of GWIC, including affiliate organization CCI Press publishing the related book; “Sending the Elevator Back Down, What We’ve Learned from Great Women in Compliance” (CCI Press, 2020). If you enjoyed the book, the GWIC team would be very grateful if you would consider rating it on Goodreads and Amazon and leaving a short review.  Don’t forget to send the elevator back down by passing on your copy to someone who you think might enjoy reading it when you’re done, or if you can’t bear parting with your copy, consider it as a holiday or appreciation gift for someone in Compliance who deserves a treat.

If you enjoyed the book, the GWIC team would be very grateful if you would consider rating it on Goodreads and Amazon and leaving a short review.  Don’t forget to send the elevator back down by passing on your copy to someone who you think might enjoy reading it when you’re done, or if you can’t bear parting with your copy, consider it as a holiday or appreciation gift for someone in Compliance who deserves a treat.

You can subscribe to the Great Women in Compliance podcast on any podcast player by searching for it and we welcome new subscribers to our podcast.

Join the Great Women in Compliance community on LinkedIn here.

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Compliance Into the Weeds

Compliance into the Weeds: Compliance and Middle Managers

The award-winning, Compliance into the Weeds is the only weekly podcast that takes a deep dive into a compliance-related topic, going into the weeds to explore a subject more fully and looking for some hard-hitting insights on sanctions compliance. Look no further than Compliance into the Weeds!

Join Tom and Matt as they delve into middle managers’ crucial role in fostering a culture of ethics and compliance within organizations. In this episode, the hosts discuss compliance officers’ challenges in working with middle managers and share some practical tips on building alliances, teaching soft skills, and developing personal relationships. They also examine the use of incentives and consequence management in promoting compliance and highlight the need for positive incentives for middle managers. Take advantage of this insightful and thought-provoking discussion on enforcing internal controls in a compliance program and learn more about the different ways to ensure compliance in gift travel and entertainment expenses. Tune in now to stay ahead in the world of compliance!

Key Highlights:

  • The Role of Middle Managers in Compliance
  • Training Middle Managers on Ethical Leadership
  • Investing in middle managers for ethical conduct
  • Compliance: Incentives and Consequence Management

 Notable Quotes:

“Compliance officers need to think about because you live and die in the success of your corporate culture, and the middle managers are the custodians of that culture.”

“Compliance officers should think about how do I help middle managers. How do I coach them on how to be good leaders?”

“Nothing is as significant as that personal touch point.”

“If the middle manager either turned a blind eye to the unethical practice or should have known about it but was just so aimless about it and didn’t care, should that middle manager suffer consequences along with the frontline employees who committed the offense? And the answer was generally yes.”

 Resources

Matt 

LinkedIn

Blog Post in Radical Compliance

Tom 

Instagram

Facebook

YouTube

Twitter

LinkedIn

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Compliance Into the Weeds

Compliance into the Weeds: A Compliance Response on Messaging Apps

The award-winning, Compliance into the Weeds is the only weekly podcast that takes a deep dive into a compliance-related topic, going into the weeds to explore a subject more fully and looking for some hard-hitting insights on sanctions compliance. Look no further than Compliance into the Weeds!

Join Tom Fox and Matt Kelly on “Compliance into the Weeds” as they delve into the recent SEC crackdown on messaging apps and improper employee use. The hosts explore the challenges of regulating messaging app use and provide solutions emphasizing the importance of corporate culture and risk management strategies. Hear from experts like the DOJ representative who spoke at Compliance Week 2023 and a defense contractor who offers tech solutions to monitor messaging apps on employees’ phones. With GDPR and FINRA regulations to consider, the podcast presents a comprehensive plan for compliance officers that focuses on effective controls, processes, and consequences for policy infractions. Don’t miss out on this informative podcast highlighting the importance of cultivating relationships with internal audit teams, IT teams, and other control departments to ensure proper compliance measures.

 Key Highlights: 

  • Risk management of employee messaging app usage
  • Tech solution for monitoring employees’ messaging
  • Corporate Culture Approach to Compliance in Financial Firms
  • Compliance Challenges in Monitoring Employee Communications
  • Building Relationships for Effective Compliance Management

 Notable Quotes:

“Assess your risks, put a risk management strategy in place, execute that strategy, train your employees, monitor the effectiveness, and remediate as appropriate.”

“And the tech company CEO said it is in his mind, People the policies, procedures, people and processes a more culture compliance strategy could work, but you would need to convince employees.”

“If they are also violating the policy, that’s bad. And that shows you have a corporate culture problem.”

“If it’s corporate culture, how is this any different than any difficult issue we’ve seen in compliance over the past 15 years?”

Resources

Matt 

LinkedIn

Blog Post in Radical Compliance

Tom 

Instagram

Facebook

YouTube

Twitter

LinkedIn

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Great Women in Compliance

Great Women in Compliance – Nicole Di Schino – The Compliance Education Fanatic

Welcome to the Great Women in Compliance Podcast, hosted by Mary Shirley and Lisa Fine.

Most E&C professionals know that you can have the best practices and policies, but if they are not understood by your employees and teams, they cannot be effective. And some of us, like today’s guest, Nicole Di Schino, help us with that next step in our training programs. She calls herself the “Compliance Education Fanatic,” and you will understand why after hearing this episode. Nicole discusses the importance of having creative and interactive training, and also how using training with a choice of a “best” answer is better than letting people pick a clear right answer.

Nicole and Lisa also talk about how different ways to communicate with and provide training for those in different generations, particularly with Gen Z.

You can find the Great Women in Compliance Podcast on the Compliance Podcast Network where you can find several other resources and podcasts to keep you up to date in the Ethics and Compliance world. You can also find the GWIC podcast on Corporate Compliance Insights where you can learn more about the podcast, stream prior episodes, and catch up on Mary’s monthly column “Living Your Best Compliance Life.”

Corporate Compliance Insights is a much-appreciated sponsor and supporter of GWIC, including affiliate organization CCI Press publishing the related book; “Sending the Elevator Back Down, What We’ve Learned from Great Women in Compliance” (CCI Press, 2020). If you enjoyed the book, the GWIC team would be very grateful if you would consider rating it on Goodreads and Amazon and leaving a short review.  Don’t forget to send the elevator back down by passing on your copy to someone who you think might enjoy reading it when you’re done, or if you can’t bear parting with your copy, consider it as a holiday or appreciation gift for someone in Compliance who deserves a treat.

If you enjoyed the book, the GWIC team would be very grateful if you would consider rating it on Goodreads and Amazon and leaving a short review.  Don’t forget to send the elevator back down by passing on your copy to someone who you think might enjoy reading it when you’re done, or if you can’t bear parting with your copy, consider it as a holiday or appreciation gift for someone in Compliance who deserves a treat.

You can subscribe to the Great Women in Compliance podcast on any podcast player by searching for it and we welcome new subscribers to our podcast.

Join the Great Women in Compliance community on LinkedIn here.

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31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

One Month to a More Effective Compliance Program in Training and Communications – 10 Compliance Training Program Design Objectives

Well-known 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 approach. If you consider your design objectives early in the planning phase, it will not only meet this requirement but also become a roadmap for your program implementation easier. Finally, you can pivot more quickly in this new era as new compliance risks emerge.

Three key takeaways:

  1. What are your design objectives?
  2. They should be dynamic, not static.
  3. You should use them as touchpoints going forward.
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Sunday Book Review

Sunday Book Review: May 21, 2023 – The Employee Engagement Edition

In the Sunday Book Review, I consider books that interest the compliance professional, the business executive, or anyone curious. It could be books about business, compliance, history, leadership, current events, or anything else that might interest me. In today’s edition of the Sunday Book Review, we look at books on employee engagement:

  • The Truth About Employee Engagement: A Fable About Addressing the Three Root Causes of Job Misery by Patrick M. Lencioni
  • The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier
  • Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work: Build a Culture of Employee Engagement with the Principles of RESPECT by Paul L. Marciano
  • The Employee Experience Advantage: How to Win the War for Talent by Giving Employees the Workspaces they Want, the Tools they Need, and a Culture They Can Celebrate by Jacob Morgan
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31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

One Month to a More Effective Compliance Program in Training and Communications – Envisioning Your Compliance Training Program

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.”

You should develop some principles on what your compliance training will look like. A key way to start is by reference to the Training and Communications section of the 2023 ECCP, which states, “Prosecutors should assess the steps taken by the company to ensure that policies and procedures have been integrated into the organization, including through periodic training and certification for all directors, officers, relevant employees, and, where appropriate, agents and business partners. Prosecutors should also assess whether the company has relayed information in a manner tailored to the audience’s size, sophistication, or subject matter expertise.

Some companies, for instance, give employees practical advice or case studies to address real-life scenarios, and/or guidance on obtaining ethics advice on a case-by-case basis as needs arise.” Some of these principles include the following, What are the Guiding Principles of your compliance training? What are you trying to communicate? Is it a broad set of values you want to speak to every employee about what your organization stands for? As noted in the 2023 ECCP, a company should “examine whether the compliance program is being disseminated to, and understood by, employees in practice to decide whether the compliance program is “truly effective.”

Three key takeaways:

  1. The 2023 ECCP has a strong emphasis on compliance training.
  2. Create a set of Principles for your compliance training programs.
  3. You should always use the Guiding Principles of your compliance training program to make decisions.
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31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

One Month to a More Effective Compliance Program in Training and Communications – Twitter and 360-degrees of Communication

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 to people and ideas they don’t already know – tend to generate better ideas.” Their research led them to three interesting findings: 1) Employees who used Twitter had better ideas than those who did not do so; 2) There was a link between the amount of diversity in employees’ Twitter networks and the quality of their ideas; and 3) Twitter users who combined idea scouting and idea connecting were the most innovative. Their research certainly confirms the experience of Louis Sapirman during his time as CCO at Dun & Bradstreet.

The key concept for the compliance profession is the roles of Idea Scout and Idea Connector. An “idea scout is an employee who looks outside the organization to bring in new ideas. An idea connector is someone who can assimilate external ideas and find opportunities within the organization to implement these new concepts.” It is the ability to identify, assimilate and exploit new compliance ideas, which makes this concept so powerful. However, to improve your compliance innovation, “you need to maintain a diverse network while also developing your assimilation and exploitation skills.”
Twitter can be a powerful tool for the compliance practitioner. It is one of the only tools that can work both inbounds for you to obtain information and insight and in an outbound manner, where you can communicate with your compliance customer base and your employees. It would be best if you worked to incorporate one or more of the techniques to help you burn compliance into the DNA fabric of your organization.

Three key takeaways:

  1. Twitter can be a powerful tool for the compliance practitioner.
  2. Data mine Twitter for best practices and see what the regulators may be saying.
  3. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it makes for a far better and more effective compliance practitioner.
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31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

One Month to a More Effective Compliance Program in Training and Communications – Asking Questions

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 such movies as Splash, A Beautiful Mind, and Cinderella Man. He believes that much of his success is because he asks many questions, and “Questions are a great management tool.” This is because “Asking questions elicits information” also “creates the space for people to raise issues they are worried about that a boss, or colleagues, may not know about.” By asking questions, you allow “people to tell a different story than the one you expect.” Finally, and perhaps most significantly, “asking questions means people have to make their case for the way they want a decision to go.”

You, too, can use this simple and straightforward technique to improve your leadership qualities in the compliance function. The reason that asking questions is so much better than simply giving orders is that you have a vast talented workforce to tap into to help you do business in compliance. But the how of doing a business process that is, or should be, burned into your company can be facilitated by possibilities that are out there in your employees’ minds.  360 degrees of communication allows you to create an atmosphere where nobody is afraid to ask questions. Perhaps equally importantly, no one is afraid to answer a question.

Three key takeaways:

  1. Asking questions is a great technique to elicit information.
  2. Asking questions creates the authority in people to come up with ideas, coupled with the responsibility for moving things forward.
  3. Create an atmosphere where employees are confident to ask or answer a question.