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Bridging The Speak-Up Gap: Insights from The 2024 Ethisphere Ethical Culture Report

In a recent episode of the FCPA Compliance Podcast, we discussed the 2024 Ethisphere Ethical Culture Report, “Closing the Speak Up Gap,” with Erica Salmon Byrne. As an expert in ethical culture and a familiar voice to our audience, Erika shared invaluable insights into this comprehensive report’s genesis, findings, and implications. Today, we delve into the critical aspects discussed in the podcast, focusing on how organizations can bridge the speak-up gap and foster a more ethical workplace culture.

The 2024 report builds on the foundation laid by last year’s inaugural culture report, which provided a broad overview of trends in ethical culture based on data collected over several years. Recognizing the value of this data-driven approach, Ethisphere committed to making the culture report an annual publication. This year’s report draws on data from approximately 2 million employee responses collected since the beginning of 2020, offering a current and comprehensive perspective on workplace culture during and after the pandemic.

Erica outlined the eight pillars of an ethical culture, which serve as the backbone of the report.

  • Awareness of Ethics and Compliance (E&C) Program and Resources
  • Perceptions of the Effectiveness of the E&C Function – Training, Communications, etc.
  • Observing and Reporting Ethical Misconduct
  • Pressure to Compromise Standards to Meet Goals
  • Organizational Justice – Perceptions of Wrongdoer Accountability Across Roles
  • Manager Perceptions – Supervisor Conduct and Ability to Approach with Concerns
  • Perceptions of Conduct, Values, and Communications of Senior Leadership
  • Perceptions of Values and Priorities Among Peers and Environment

These pillars are grouped into three categories that ethics and compliance teams should prioritize:

  1. Knowledge and Training: Do employees know what to do, and is the training effective?
  2. Willingness to Report: Will employees speak up when they see something wrong?
  3. Influence and Leadership: Who influences employee behavior the most?

These pillars provide a framework for understanding and measuring an organization’s various dimensions of ethical culture.

One of the most significant findings from this year’s report is the persistence of the “speak-up gap” – the difference between employees observing misconduct and those reporting it. Approximately 50% of respondents indicated they do not report observed misconduct. This gap is particularly pronounced among younger employees, who exhibit the least faith in the system and are the least likely to speak up.

Retaliation remains a significant barrier to reporting misconduct. Despite years of discussion and policy implementation, there still needs to be more clarity between what organizations believe they are doing to prevent retaliation and what employees fear. Employees’ concerns about retaliation extend beyond illegal acts, including any negative treatment following a report. This fear of retaliation and belief that nothing will change continue to discourage employees from speaking up.

A critical insight from the report is the importance of managers in the reporting process. The data revealed that 60% of employees report misconduct to their immediate managers. This underscores the need for compliance programs to equip managers with the skills and knowledge to handle these reports effectively. Managers must be trained to receive reports and support their teams inappropriately making ethical decisions and escalating issues.

Another intriguing aspect of the report is the “tenure smile,” a pattern where new and long-tenured employees are more likely to speak up. In contrast, those in the middle of their tenure are less inclined to report misconduct. This phenomenon may be linked to career aspirations and established relationships within the organization, which can create a reluctance to report issues that might jeopardize professional advancement or personal connections.

Based on the report’s findings, several strategies can help organizations bridge the speak-up gap:

  1. Enhance Manager Training: Invest in training programs that prepare managers to handle reports of misconduct effectively. This includes teaching them how to listen, respond appropriately, and escalate issues as needed.
  2. Improve Reporting Channels: Simplify and promote reporting mechanisms to ensure employees know how to report misconduct and feel confident that their concerns will be addressed.
  3. Data Integration and Analysis: Use data from various sources, such as HR, audit, and safety, to identify patterns and pockets of silence. This holistic approach can help pinpoint areas where reporting may be suppressed.
  4. Address Retaliation Concerns: Develop comprehensive anti-retaliation policies and communicate them clearly to employees. Ensure that any negative treatment following a report is addressed swiftly and transparently.

The 2024 Ethisphere Ethical Culture Report offers many actionable insights for compliance professionals. By focusing on enhancing manager training, improving reporting channels, and addressing retaliation concerns, organizations can make significant strides in closing the speak-up gap. As Erika emphasized, building a culture of integrity requires ongoing effort and commitment. By leveraging the findings of this report, compliance teams can better support their organizations in fostering an ethical workplace culture.

The conversation with Erika Salmon Byrne highlighted the importance of data-driven insights in understanding and improving organizational ethical culture. As compliance professionals, we must continue to advocate for and implement strategies encouraging employees to speak up and ensure their voices are heard. The 2024 Ethisphere Ethical Culture Report provides a roadmap for achieving these goals and underscores the critical role of managers in the process. By taking these insights to heart and applying them in our work, we can create a more transparent, ethical, and supportive workplace for all employees.

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FCPA Compliance Report

FCPA Compliance Report: Erica Salmon Byrne on Closing The Speak Up Gap

Welcome to the award-winning FCPA Compliance Report, the longest running podcast in compliance. In this edition of the FCPA Compliance Report, Tom Fox welcomes back Erica Salmon Byrne to discuss the recently released Ethisphere 2024 Ethical Culture Report: Closing the Speak Up Gap.

They explore the genesis and findings of the report, focusing on the eight pillars of ethical culture and significant insights derived from data collected since 2020. Key topics include the importance of equipping managers to handle employee concerns, generational and tenure-based discrepancies in reporting misconduct, and the persistent issues of retaliation and employee dissatisfaction with the current reporting mechanisms. Additionally, Erica shares practical strategies for compliance teams to address these challenges and enhance their ethical culture.

Highlights in this Episode

  • Genesis of the 2024 Ethical Culture Report
  • The Eight Pillars of Ethical Culture
  • Key Insights: Closing the Speak Up Gap
  • The Role of Managers in Compliance
  • The Tenure Smile: Willingness to Speak Up
  • Strategies for Improving Reporting
  • Ethisphere’s Future Plans and Masterclass

 Resources:

Erica Salmon Bryne on LinkedIn

2024 Ethical Culture Report: Closing the Speak Up Gap

Tom Fox

Instagram

Facebook

YouTube

Twitter

LinkedIn

For more information on the Ethico ROI Calculator and a free White Paper on the ROI of Compliance, click here.

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Great Women in Compliance

Great Women in Compliance: Erica Salmon Byrne – Building a Legacy of Ethical Value

In this episode of Great Women in Compliance, Hemma visits with Erica Salmon Byrne, Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Chair of Ethisphere. Having long admired Ethisphere for its commitment to advancing business integrity in a meaningful way, Hemma invites Erica to share how her organization backs that up with research, data from industry benchmarking and culture assessments, and the creation of a strong compliance community. Erica shares her ethics and compliance origin story and critical insights on building a legacy of ethical value and business integrity.

Highlights include the compliance value creation story and how not to be merely a cost center, how to stay outcome-driven rather than activity-based, what we can learn from decades of data on measuring culture, the crucial role of managers in ethics and compliance, the meaning of an employee-centered approach and treating employees as tangible assets, and the power of community in compliance.

Erica is the Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Chair for Ethisphere, the global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices that fuel corporate character, marketplace trust, and business success. In this role, Ms. Salmon Byrne oversees product strategy and M&A initiatives for the company while advancing Ethisphere’s founding ethos—that businesses that focus on the long term, commit to doing business with integrity, and invest in their stakeholder communities will outperform their peers.

Erica is also the Chair of the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA), where she works with the BELA community to advance dialogue, collaboration, and best practices around ethics and governance.

Over her tenure at Ethisphere, Erica has held several roles, including overseeing Ethisphere’s products and solutions, including data-driven program assessments; The Sphere, which offers benchmarking against peers and best practices, along with expertise and related regulatory guidance; ethical culture assessments; and the World’s Most Ethical Companies. To learn more about Ethisphere’s work, visit www.ethisphere.com

A prolific public speaker, Erica is known throughout the ethics and compliance industry as a leader, educator, and advocate for ESG, values-based leadership, and business integrity. In 2022, she was recognized as a Modern Governance 100 Leader by governance firm Diligent. Erica has been featured in the Wall Street JournalThe Washington PostFast CompanyForbes, SXSW, and various ethics and compliance publications and podcasts.

You can join the LinkedIn podcast community. Join the Great Women in Compliance podcast community here.

Resource:

2024 Ethical Culture Report: Closing the Speak Up Gap

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FCPA Compliance Report

FCPA Compliance Report – Erica Salmon Byrne on 2024 World’s Most Ethical Companies Awards

Welcome to the award-winning FCPA Compliance Report, the longest-running podcast in compliance. In this special Thursday edition of the FCPA Compliance Report, Tom welcomes Erica Salmon Byrne, Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Chair, at Ethisphere to discuss the announcement of the 2024 World’s Most Ethical Companies Designations and the new Ethics Premium.

Erica Salmon Byrne is a renowned figure in ethical business practices, recognized for her significant role in the annual announcement and recognition of the world’s most ethical companies. Byrne views this list as a crucial acknowledgment of companies globally that are making a positive impact, with representation across 20 countries and 44 industries. Her experiences in leading changes to the program’s methodology, such as introducing a third-party management category and a heightened focus on governance and culture, have shaped her perspective on the continuous evolution and improvement of the evaluation process. She sees the list as a valuable tool for companies to demonstrate their commitment to ethics and compliance and as a source of inspiration for others in the compliance community to strive for ethical excellence.

Key Highlights:

  • Global Recognition for Ethical Business Practices
  • Enhanced Scoring System Emphasizing Governance and Culture
  • Global Representation of Ethical Industry Leaders
  • Ethics Quotient Evaluation for Recognized Companies

Resources:

Erica Salmon Byrne on LinkedIn

Ethisphere

World’s Most Ethical Companies for 2024

Tom Fox

Instagram

Facebook

YouTube

Twitter

LinkedIn

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FCPA Compliance Report

Erica Salmon Byrne on 2023 World’s Most Ethical Companies

Welcome to the award-winning FCPA Compliance Report, the longest running podcast in compliance. In this episode, I am joined Erica Salmon Byrne, President of Ethisphere, to discuss the World’s Most Ethical Companies awards. Byrne explains the evaluation process and what types of areas are investigated. She highlights how the list has fluctuated over the years and the importance of a company’s people practices. Through the cross functional scorecard, companies can measure their performance compared to a global index.

We discuss the importance of “ethics premium” and the scorecard process. To measure the value of a company’s people practices, the survey demonstrated an outperformance of 13.6% against a comparable global index. Byrne also gives information to listeners on where to find more information on the world’s most ethical companies. Tune into this episode of the FCPA Compliance Report and learn more about the World’s Most Ethical Companies. 

Key Highlights

  1. What is the World’s Most Ethical Companies® recognition?
  2. How long has Ethisphere recognized the World’s Most Ethical Companies?
  3. What are criteria Ethisphere considers during the evaluation process? What is the evaluation framework.
  4. What are the benefits of applying for the World’s Most Ethical Companies?
  5. Even if a company is not selected, what are some of the benefits?
  6. What is the Ethics Premium and what was the 2023 Ethics Premium? 

 Notable Quotes

“What does the recognition itself mean? So, you know, it’s  really interesting, Tom. Because I I’ve asked a lot of honorary companies about that. And I  particularly liked the way 1 company phrased it to me when I was talking to them last week, and they said, look, there are lots and lots of times that companies get recognized for messing up.”

“We’re looking at the ways you are thinking about, your impact on the communities in which you operate. We are looking at your ethics and compliance program initiatives. We’re looking at the way you are governing your programs both at the board level and at the C suite level. We’re looking at your leadership and your reputation.”

“I’ve had multiple compliance officers tell me that their best self-assessment work is just reading the red line of our survey every year and asking themselves would I answer this new question from Ethisphere?”

“Are there questions on this survey I can’t answer without going and speaking to somebody else? Do I know who that person is? And if not, why not? Because all of those relationships are critical relationships to operating your program well.”

 Episode Links

World’s Most Ethical Companies

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FCPA Compliance Report

Erica Salmon Byrne – Information is a Gift

Welcome to the award-winning FCPA Compliance Report, the longest-running podcast in compliance. In this episode, I am joined by Erica Salmon Byrne, the CEO of Ethisphere, to discuss the company’s recent “2023 Ethical Culture Report: Lessons from the Pandemic.” Erica shares that the report found a significant uptick in reported cases of bullying, likely due to masking feelings with the anonymity of a keyboard. While an employee’s direct manager is most often the first avenue for employees to report concerns, other forms of reporting weren’t utilized due to a fear of retaliation. Erica suggests that companies need to make it easy for employees to communicate broader ethical issues, as doing so will result in a tripling of employee faith in the system.

Key Highlights:

·      The Impact of the Pandemic on Bullying Incidents

·      Reasons Younger Employees Don’t Speak Up When Witnessing Unethical Behavior

·      Creating a Speak Up Culture in the Workplace

·      Improving Communication Between Employees and Managers

·      Reporting Issues to Managers: Examining the Results of a Recent Report

·      The Importance of Managerial Leadership in Ethical Decision Making

·      The Importance of Making it Easier for Employees to Report Issues

Notable Quotes

1.    “Employee willingness to raise their hand stayed pretty steady.”

2.    “It’s a lot easier to be a jerk behind a keyboard than to be a jerk to somebody’s face.”

3.    “The reason we have non-retaliation language in our code is that information is a gift.”

4.    “Think of the information as a gift, practice thinking of the information as a gift, and then your responsibility as the manager is to listen and follow up.”

Resources:

Ethisphere Resources

·      Ethisphere

·      2023 Ethical Culture Report

Connect with Erica Salmon Byrne

●      LinkedIn

Connect with Tom Fox

●      LinkedIn

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FCPA Compliance Report

2023 World’s Most Ethical Companies Applications Open

In this episode of the FCPA Compliance Report, I am joined by Erica Salmon Byrne, President of Ethisphere and Chair of the Ethisphere’s Business Ethics Leadership Alliance. Some of the highlights include:

1.     Ethisphere announces the 2023 World’s Most Ethical application process.

2.     What is the application process?

3.     What is the Ethics Quotient and why is it such a useful measure?

4.     What are the 5 categories of evaluation?

5.     Why is going through the application process itself so useful?

6.     How can a company use it as a benchmarking exercise?

7.     How does the Ethisphere “The Sphere” interact with the application process?

8.     What are the 6 archetypes of value creation?

Resources

Erica Salmon Byrne

Ethisphere

World’s Most Ethical Companies application process, here

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Innovation in Compliance

Ethisphere’s The Sphere with Erica Salmon Byrne

 

Erica Salmon Byrne is the President of Ethisphere and Chair of the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance. Ethisphere is a company that believes that companies that focus on building a sustainable business will outperform their peers that do not. Tom Fox welcomes her to this week’s show to talk about Ethisphere’s innovative new service called The Sphere. 

 

 

What is The Sphere?

Tom asks Erica to describe The Sphere and why she is so excited about the launch. For more than 15 years, Ethisphere has been collecting data on the programmatic practices of the world’s most ethical companies through their questionnaire, called the Ethics Quotient, Erica explains. They realized a demand for solid benchmarking within the compliance space, and decided to democratize their data access. This was the birth of The Sphere – a subscription-based service that allows you to select the topic you are interested in getting data on and gain access to a multitude of resources. 

 

Peer Data: A Powerful Tool

Tom asks Erica what makes peer data so important and powerful for a CCO. Whenever you’re going to make a business proposition, she replies, the first question you will be asked is ‘What are other people doing?’. Businesses want to compare their practices and progress to their peers’. This is to avoid being dubbed “a weak antelope” – you don’t necessarily want to be ahead of the pack, you just want to ensure that you have a functioning practice compared to your competitors. So how to determine you’re in that comfortable middle position of the pack? The answer is data analysis. When you present the relevant data to your CFO or compliance team, they tend to believe in your leadership and vision more.

 

Resources

Erica Salmon Byrne | LinkedIn | Twitter

Ethisphere | The Sphere

 

Categories
FCPA Compliance Report

Erica Salmon Byrne on The Sphere


In this episode of the FCPA Compliance Report, I welcome back Ethisphere President and Chair of the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance, Erica Salmon Byrne, who talks about an exciting new innovation and service offering called The Sphere. Through this offering and for the first time, Compliance  Professionals can easily benchmark against the practices of companies with exceptional programs to identify gaps, benchmark and access a wealth of insights and resources to guide improvements.
Key areas we discuss on this podcast are:

  •  What is The Sphere?
  •  The data and resources are built into it.
  • The ease of access.
  • Where can listeners find this podcast?

Resources
Ethisphere
The Sphere
Erica Salmon Byrne on LinkedIn