Tag: compliance

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Across the Board

Across the Board – Episode 3: Not Enough Time/Not Enough Depth

In this special 5-part podcast series, I am visiting with David Greenberg, Special Advisor at LRN. We take a deep dive into the LRN White Paper entitled, “What’s the Tone at the Very Top: Board and Compliance: The Role of Boards in Overseeing Corporate Ethics & Compliance”. In this podcast series we explore the white paper in depth and provide the Chief Compliance Officer and compliance practitioner with succinct and practical tips for educating, dealing with and reporting to a Board of Directors. In Episode 3, we consider many CECO’s concern that Boards do not dedicate sufficient time and priority to compliance nor go into sufficient depth into compliance programs and potential outcomes . Some of the highlights from the podcast include:

  • Why don’t Boards put in more time around E&C programs?
  • Why is compliance often the last item on the Board agenda and equally as often, left off for later?
  • CECOs want to be challenged by their Boards but often are not.
  • Does your Board have a compliance game plan?
  • Why don’t BODs go deeper into E&C programs? How would they do so?
  • Are Boards even asking the right questions?

Check out the LRN White Paper What’s the Tone at the Very Top: Board and Compliance: the Role of Boards in Overseeing Corporate Ethics & Complianceby clicking here.

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Across the Board

Across the Board – Episode 5: The Road Ahead

Over this special 5-part podcast series, I have visited with David Greenberg, Special Advisor at LRN. We take a deep dive into the LRN White Paper entitled, “What’s the Tone at the Very Top: Board and Compliance: The Role of Boards in Overseeing Corporate Ethics & Compliance”. In this podcast series we explore the white paper in depth and provide the Chief Compliance Officer and compliance practitioner with succinct and practical tips for educating, dealing with and reporting to a Board of Directors. In this fifth and final episode, we look at the road ahead. The White Paper stated, “Over time, the gulf between CECOs and boards should be bridgeable. We believe the bridge should be built quickly. The sooner that CECOs have the board’s ear – and that directors are fully aware of what CECOs and the initiatives they lead can bring to the table –the stronger and more resilient their companies will be.
Some of the highlights from the podcast include:

  • What practical steps should be taken to engage the board more actively and effectively in ethics and compliance oversight?
  1. More time, higher priority, stronger signals from boards in ethics and compliance oversight.
  2. Boards need to question whether ethics and compliance are genuinely integral to business operations.
  3. Elevate the CECO and establish direct and confidential reporting lines?
  • What lays on the road ahead?

Check out the LRN White Paper What’s the Tone at the Very Top: Board and Compliance: the Role of Boards in Overseeing Corporate Ethics & Complianceby clicking here.

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Across the Board

Across the Board – Episode 2: BOD Understanding and the Game Plan

In this special 5-part podcast series, I am visiting with David Greenberg, Special Advisor at LRN. We take a deep dive into the LRN White Paper entitled, “What’s the Tone at the Very Top: Board and Compliance: The Role of Boards in Overseeing Corporate Ethics & Compliance”. In this podcast series we explore the white paper in depth and provide the Chief Compliance Officer and compliance practitioner with succinct and practical tips for educating, dealing with and reporting to a Board of Directors. In Episode 2, we consider the average Board of Director’s knowledge of compliance and your game plan going forward. Some of the highlights from the podcast include:

  • Why don’t Boards have a better understanding of the compliance function within their organization?
  • Why do BOD’s have such little knowledge of the CECO role?
  • Why does the BOD tend to focus on what has passed rather forward looking?
  • Does your Board have a compliance game plan?
  • Why does a BOD need to develop a framework for discussing, evaluating, and measuring ethics and compliance?
  • Why should BODs relate ethics and compliance to their companies’ core strategy and be able to have a sufficient point of view to guide and oversee it?

Check out the LRN White Paper What’s the Tone at the Very Top: Board and Compliance: the Role of Boards in Overseeing Corporate Ethics & Complianceby clicking here.

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Across the Board

Across the Board – Episode 4: Metrics and Senior Management

In this special 5-part podcast series, I am visiting with David Greenberg, Special Advisor at LRN. We are taking a deep dive into the LRN White Paper entitled, “What’s the Tone at the Very Top: Board and Compliance: The Role of Boards in Overseeing Corporate Ethics & Compliance”. In this podcast series we explore the white paper in depth and provide the Chief Compliance Officer and compliance practitioner with succinct and practical tips for educating, dealing with and reporting to a Board of Directors. In Episode 4, we look metrics which a BOD should consider and how a Board should oversee senior management around ethics, compliance and culture.
Some of the highlights from the podcast include:

  • CECOs want their boards will send stronger signals to executive management about the importance of embedding ethics and compliance in the company’s business.
  • CECOs want boards to hold management more accountable for ethics and compliance
  • A BOD should ask management ‘What have you done to assure compliance. Show me.’
  • Why should a Board be concerned about metrics around culture?
  • What measures should a Board employ for culture and ethics?

Check out the LRN White Paper What’s the Tone at the Very Top: Board and Compliance: the Role of Boards in Overseeing Corporate Ethics & Complianceby clicking here.

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Everything Compliance

Everything Compliance-Episode 45, the Drinkin’ the Kool-Aid edition

Welcome to the only roundtable podcast in compliance. Today, in Episode 45 we celebrate our newest addition to the Everything Compliance gang; Sarah Hadden. Sarah is the Publisher at Corporate Compliance Insights, taking the helm from founder Maurice Gilbert earlier this year. She is a journalist by profession and has been working in the compliance space, largely at CCI for the past six years. She brings a wealth of talent, knowledge and perspective to our happy band of commentators and help us to ‘drink the Kool-Aid’.

  1. Sarah Hadden discusses experiential learning. She uses that as a basis to consider what is effective training and how interactive training can lead to a new level of not simply effectiveness but awareness to recency bias which can cloud decision making. Sarah shouts out to internet service providers everywhere who were able to make the Mueller report available as soon as it was released.
  1. Matt Kelly discusses best practices around disclosing reporting data and using interactive technologies to improve Codes of Conduct, compliance policies and procedures. Matt rants on former White House Ethics Counsel, Stefan Passantino who urged Mazars USA not to comply with a subpoena that House Oversight Committee issued for Trump’s financial documents. That is ethics for you in TrumpWorld.
  1. Jay Rosen talks about repositioning compliance as a business generator. He discusses companies which see compliance as a business advantage and details how they do so. Jay shouts out to former White House counsel Don McGahn for being a “real lawyer” because he takes notes.
  1. Tom Fox, sitting in on this episode, uses the top three FCPA settlements of 2019 (MTS, Cognizant and Fresenius) to illustrate how the FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy, announced in 2017 is being used in practice. He compares the three different types of resolutions used by the Justice Department and what it might mean for compliance going forward. Tom rants about Charles Van Doren and the quiz show scandals from the late 1950s.

The members of the Everything Compliance panelist are:

  • Jay Rosen– Jay is Vice President, Business Development Corporate Monitoring at Affiliated Monitors. Rosen can be reached at JRosen@affiliatedmonitors.com
  • Mike Volkov– One of the top FCPA commentators and practitioners around and the Chief Executive Officer of The Volkov Law Group, LLC. Volkov can be reached at mvolkov@volkovlawgroup.com.
  • Matt Kelly– Founder and CEO of Radical Compliance. Kelly can be reached at mkelly@radicalcompliance.com
  • Jonathan Armstrong–is our UK colleague, who is an experienced lawyer with Cordery in London. Armstrong can be reached at armstrong@corderycompliance.com
  • Sarah Hadden– the newest addition to our panel. Sarah is the Publisher at Corporate Compliance Insights. Hadden can be reached at Sarah@corporatecomplianceinsights.com

The host and producer (and sometime panelist) of Everything Compliance is Tom Fox the Compliance Evangelist. Everything Compliance is a part of the Compliance Podcast Network.
For additional reading, check out the follow resources:
Matt Kelly’s blog post, Three Ideas on Codes, Policies, and Tech in Radical Compliance.
For additional reading on the 3 top FCPA cases and how they were handled under the FCPA Corporate Enforcement policy, see Tom’s blog post FCPA Enforcement Going Forwardin the FCPA Compliance Report.
Jay Rosen’s article How to Reposition Compliance as a Revenue Generator on Corporate Compliance Insights.

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This Week in FCPA

This Week in FCPA-Episode 151 – the World Domination edition

Is the US utilizing FCPA enforcement for world domination? Recovering screenwriter Jay Rosen and frustrated novelist Tom Fox consider this while they also take a look at some of this week’s top compliance and ethics stories which caught their collective eyes this week. Stories include:

  1. Does the statute of limitations run while Trump is in office? Sara Kropf on Grand Jury Target.
  2. What is the compliance response to the Varsity Blues scandal? Sandra Erez reports on Corporate Compliance Insights.
  3. NYDFS cybersecurity requirements are live, is your organization ready? Michael McGrath in Corporate Compliance Insights.
  4. Matt Kelly has a twitter storm on Boeing, sales strategy and ethics. Check out the full storm on Radical Compliance. Tom and Matt take a deep dive into the imbroglio on Episode 120 of Compliance into the Weeds.
  5. Is the US using FCPA to garner world domination? Henry Astier opines on BBC.com.
  6. What are the best practices for managing employee hotline reports? Jaclyn Jaeger reports in Compliance Week. (sub req’d)
  7. What do the WME companies have in common? Aarti Maharaj in the FCPA Blog.
  8. Transparency challenges in CSR. Dunstan Allison-Hope in BSR.org.
  9. Tom is speaking at ECI’s IMPACT 2019 next week in Dallas about the importance of measuring the quality and maturity of your high quality E&C program. Regisration and information is availablehere.
  10. Join Tom and Jay at Compliance Week 2019 on May 20-22, in Washington DC. Listeners to this podcast can receive a $300 discount by using the code TOM300. You can check out the full agenda, see who’s speaking, and review registration information. 
  11. This week Tom visits with the team from Assent Compliance on Supply Chain Risk Management. Check out the following: Part 1-Who is Assent?; Part 2– Introduction to Supply Chain risk management; Part 3– Development of Supply Chain risk management; Part 4-Supply Chain failures; and Part 5-Market drivers for continued development. The podcast is available on multiple sites: the FCPA Compliance Report, iTunes, JDSupra, Panoplyand YouTube. The Compliance Podcast Network is now also on Spotify and Corporate Compliance Insights.
  12. Sarah Hadden joins the Everything Compliance as our latest panelist. Listen in on Episode 45, the Drinkin’ the Kool-Aid

Tom Fox is the Compliance Evangelist and can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com. Jay Rosen is Mr. Monitor and can be reached at jrosen@affiliatedmonitors.com.
For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit our sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com.

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Shakespeare on Compliance

Shakespeare on Compliance –The Fool (In theater and in business)

In this podcast series, I have used the current Broadway performance by Glenda Jackson as King Lear to introduce several compliance topics. Today, I want to discuss the role of The Fool. Initially I should note that the actor who played it, Ruth Wilson, also played Cordelia; which in and off itself is rather amazing. The Fool did well to speak truth to power during the play and Wilson was excellent in both roles.

Wilson’s performance as The Fool added a shading of interpretation that certainly works. It also informs today’s review topic which is who was the fool and who was the criminal in one of the most notorious acquisitions in recent memory, the Hewlett-Packard (HP) acquisition of the UK company Autonomy.  The matter is now on trial in London, it being the largest UK civil trial in history with HP claiming some $5 billion in damages. The former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch is in the dock as he will be in the US when his criminal case goes to trial sometime after the conclusion of this civil action.
The trial began last month and the fireworks have already started, with HP claiming Lynch and his former CFO engaged in massive fraud; the trial judge asking HP what accounting standards they used to evaluate HP and Lynch basically saying HP dropped the ball completely in both the acquisition and after closing for a variety of reason. Based upon all of this tomfoolery I thought a review of HP actions was warranted today.
Perhaps the simple truth is that everyone involved in this matter was a Fool.

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This Week in FCPA

This Week in FCPA-Episode 149 – the White Privilege edition

After a week hiatus, the lads are back. While debating white privilege and the Varsity Blues scandal, they also take a look at some of this week’s top compliance and ethics stories which caught their collective eyes this week.

  1. Guilty pleas begin in the Varsity Blues scandal. Antonio Blumberg report in the Huffington Post. For those who did not plead guilty, additional charges filed. Melissa Korn reports in the Wall Street Journal. Jay interviews Justin Paperny about the Varsity Blues sting, in Corporate Compliance Insights. For one of the best and fullest explanations of the white privilege component, see Caitlan Flanagan’s article in The Atlantic.
  2. Does your company lack integrity? Mike Volkov gives 5 signs which show it does, on Corruption, Crime and Compliance.
  3. Standard Chartered joins the $1 bn fine club. Emily Flitter reportsin the New York Times. Jon Rusch takes a deep dive in Dipping Through Geometries.
  4. What is the intersection of DD and AI? Merritt Smith considers in the FCPA Blog.
  5. OFAC enforcement action demonstrates need for pre-acquisition due diligence? Lawyers from Paul, Weiss in the NYU Compliance and Enforcement Blog.
  6. What is ethical AI? Tom Austin explores on the Analyst Syndicate.
  7. What are the shifting reasons for FCPA enforcement? Kevin Keller on the Global Anti-corruption Blog.
  8. What are the risks to investors in Uber? Shannon Bond reports in the Financial Times. (sub req’d)
  9. This week Tom explores the intersection of Shakespeare and Compliance through the lens of King Lear. Check out the following: Part 1-Innovation;Part 2– Changing Your Focus; Part 3– Engaging Your Audience; Part 4-a Different Interpretation; and Part 5-The Fool.The podcast is available on multiple sites: the FCPA Compliance Report, iTunes, JDSupra, Panoplyand YouTube. The Compliance Podcast Network is now also on Spotify and Corporate Compliance Insights.

Tom Fox is the Compliance Evangelist and can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com. Jay Rosen is Mr. Monitor and can be reached at jrosen@affiliatedmonitors.com.
For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit our sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com.

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Innovation in Compliance

Making Compliance Training Fun with Andrew Rawson


What if compliance training didn’t have to be boring? Joining us on this episode is Andrew Rawson, the Chief Learning Officer for Traliant, a compliance training company. Today we’re talking about the future of compliance training: how to make it truly effective, useful, and even fun.

The importance of training
The last couple of years have seen the intersection of two seismic forces that have created tremendous demand for quality training. The first was the #MeToo movement, which has brought up the whole topic of compliance training around sexual harassment — so much so that it’s become a need to have instead of a nice to have, even in states where it isn’t required. The second was a change in regulations in different states across the country, now requiring more than 10 million people to be trained.
Effective compliance training
There is a difference between teaching people about the law and teaching them what to do. At Traliant, they wanted to train people how to behave. What do you do when you’re faced with a particular situation? That should be the focus.
The training is also intentionally more modern: well-designed interfaces, interactive videos, professional actors, point systems, getting senior management to record training segments for their peers  — all of which help make learning more engaging.
An important part of making training effective is making sure that people are encouraged to speak up, and that when they do, they’ll be protected. You might not be able to stop bad actors, but you can encourage witnesses to point out the behavior.
Moving away from check-the-box training
Much of compliance training is very check-the-box: a once-a-year thing that companies do to get it over with. But that’s not an effective approach. Traliant has gone from doing one-and-done sessions to creating a more holistic training approach. Examples are 15-20 minute courses for managers involved in investigations and two-minute training videos on dating in the workplace that they call “sparks” — because they’re meant to spark conversations.
Preventing Workplace Sexual Harassment: 4 Top Trends for 2019

  1.  The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is keeping workplace harassment training front and center, remaining one of its top priorities.
  2. Harassment training continues to evolve, and we’re seeing a shift from helping companies avoid liability to helping people behave properly.
  3. Training is highly state-driven, given their different requirements. So Traliant has built a platform where people can access the training relevant to them, instead of a one-size-fits-all course.
  4. There is a focus on building respectful, inclusive work cultures that embrace compliance training not because they have to, but because they want to.

Resources
Andrew Rawson (LinkedIn)
Traliant (Website)
Preventing Workplace Sexual Harassment: 4 Top Trends for 2019

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Compliance Into the Weeds Daily Compliance News

Compliance into the Weeds: Episode 118-Hotline Metrics

Compliance into the Weeds is the only weekly podcast which takes a deep dive into a compliance related topic, literally going into the weeds to more fully explore a subject. In this episode, Matt Kelly (the coolest guy in compliance) and I take a deep dive into recently released NAVEX Global 2019 Ethics & Compliance Hotline Benchmark Report. We consider the details from the report and ask the following question “are you using all the right intake channels to capture a true sense of misconduct and corporate culture at your organization?” Some of the highlights include:

Some of the highlights include:

  • What are the intake channels available to your organization?
  • If you are only tracking complaints through a formal system, you may well be missing a wider variety and rich source of information.
  • Moving your intake past simply what the law requires will give you a much better accounting of your organization’s culture.
  • How can you improve your intake?
  • Has closure time for reported increase or decrease?
  • What has been the continued impact of #MeToo?

For more reading check out Matt’s blog post “Hotline Metrics-are you missing any?”
To read the full NAVEX Global 2019 Ethics & Compliance Hotline Benchmark Report, click here.