Tag: Kyle Welch

Categories
31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

One Month to a More Effective Compliance Program Through Culture – Day 15 – The ROI of a Culture of Speak Up

We are now at a place where there is sufficient data, academic research, and actual use cases from corporations and businesses that demonstrate good ethics and compliance programs are not simply good for business but when properly used, they lead to greater profitability.

For 15 years, Ethisphere has been collecting data around its World’s Most Ethical Company awards. Companies that receive this designation have been found to outperform their peers on various stock indices. Ethisphere calls this the “Ethics Premium.” Ethisphere Executive Vice President (EVP) Erica Salmon Byrne has noted, “In tracking how the stock prices of publicly traded honorees compare to the U.S. Large Cap Index, we found that listed World’s Most Ethical Companies outperformed the large cap sector.” In 2010 that number was a delta of 4.5%. Yet by 2020, that number had skyrocketed to 13.5%. Clearly, Ethisphere has been on to something.

Academic research has also shown the efficacy of ethics and compliance programs. George Serafeim and Paul M. Healy demonstrated in their paper, An Analysis of Firm’s Self-Reported Anti-Corruption Efforts, that companies with robust compliance programs do better financially in countries prone to corruption than companies with less effective compliance programs. Without a robust compliance program, even with high sales in a high-risk country, the sales will drop off and lead to a negative Return on Equity (ROE) of between 24% to 30%.

Dr. Kyle Welch, Assistant Professor at George Washington University (GWU), in his paper, co-authored with Stephen Stubben, Associate Professor from The University of Utah, entitled “Evidence on the Use and Efficacy of Internal Whistleblowing Systems” (Report). In this paper, Welch and Stubben reviewed some 15 years of anonymized data from NAVEX Global, Inc. This data was from the company’s hotline reporting systems. Some of the key findings included that companies with a robust whistleblower and reporting system had greater profitability and workforce productivity as measured by Return on Assets (ROA) there were fewer material lawsuits brought against the company overall and there were lower settlement costs if a lawsuit did occur. Finally, there were fewer external whistleblower reports to regulatory agencies and other authorities.

 Three key takeaways:

1. It’s not simply speaking up, it’s a culture of speaking up.

2. Companies with speak-up culture, have a material reduction in legal fines and penalties.

3. Use Companies with a speak-up culture, to have a higher ROI.

Do you want to improve your culture? How can you assess your culture and develop a strategy to improve it going forward? In this free webinar on the new tool, The Culture Audit with Tom Fox and Sam Silverstein on Tuesday, November 28, 12 CT. For more information and registration, click here.

Categories
Innovation in Compliance

Breaking the Silence: How Speaking Up Enhances Corporate Cultures – Tom Fox on the ROI of a Speak Up Culture

Welcome to a special five-part podcast series on enhancing corporate culture through a great speak-up regime. This podcast series is sponsored by Case IQ. Over this series, Tom Fox will visit with Sharlyn Lauby, Jakub Ficner, Kenneth McCarthy, and Meric Bloch on the different facets of a great speak-up regime and how each of those facets will improve your corporate culture. They will tackle such topics as the indicia of a great corporate culture, the importance of triage and internal investigations in improving corporate culture, non-retaliation and protections for those who speak up, tying your entire system of speaking up to improving culture, and conclude with some thoughts on how an entire system of speaking up drives corporate culture to be better run and, at the end of the day, more profitably. In this concluding Part 5, Tom Fox discusses the ROI of a true culture of speaking up.

Strong reporting systems and a robust corporate culture must be balanced in business efficiency. One great academic paper demonstrates how companies with robust whistleblower and reporting systems enjoy greater profitability, increased workforce productivity, and fewer material lawsuits. Tom has seen firsthand the transformative power of a culture of speaking up. He emphasizes that it’s about having a hotline and an entire system with employee engagement. This culture of ‘SpeakUp’ can provide actionable information to prevent, detect, and remediate issues before they become legal violations and can contribute to a functioning and ethical corporate culture. A culture of trust and empowerment ultimately leads to motivated employees who can contribute to business efficiency and greater profitability. Join Tom Fox on this Breaking the Silence: How Speaking Up Enhances Corporate Culture podcast episode to delve deeper into this fascinating topic.

Key Highlights:

  • Academic research
  • Q2C and P2P
  • Material differences

Resources:

Case IQ

Categories
31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

One Month to a More Effective Compliance Program: Day 11 – Institutional Justice and Institutional Fairness

Companies have finally come to realize that institutional justice and fairness are perhaps the most basic tenet of any successful workplace. If employees believe they will be treated fairly, it will engender a level of trust that can work to not simply motivate employees but lead to a more successful workplace and, at the end of the day, a more profitable company. This encompasses the entire lifecycle of the employment relationship, from hiring through separation. It works in areas as seemingly disparate as compensation and incentives, discipline, promotion, and internal reporting.

On this final point, Kyle Welch and Stephen Stubben, in their 2019 paper entitled “Evidence on the Use and Efficacy of Internal Whistleblowing Systems”, noted that a robust whistleblower reporting system speaks to a functioning and ethical corporate culture. Employees who can report issues, in a fair manner, without fear of retaliation are more empowered to make the company run more efficiently and profitably. Yet an equally interesting finding was where there was robust internal reporting, employees were more likely to speak up to improve overall business processes, thereby making the company more profitable.

An often-overlooked role of any CCO or compliance professional is to help provide employees with institutional justice. If your compliance function is seen to be fair in the way it treats employees, in areas as varied as financial incentives, to promotions, to appropriate and consistent discipline meted out across the globe; employees are more likely to inform the compliance department when something goes array. If employees believe they will be treated fairly, it will go a long way to more fully operationalizing your compliance program.
Three key takeaways:

  1. The DOJ and SEC have long called for appropriate and consistent application of both incentives and discipline.
  2. The Fair Process Doctrine will help set institutional justice as the norm in your organization.
  3. Inconsistent application of discipline will destroy your compliance program credibility.

For more information, check out The Compliance Handbook, 4th edition here.

Categories
31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

One Month to More Effective Reporting and Investigations – Advantages of an Internal Reporting System

While it is clear that the government expects companies to have an internal reporting system, there are benefits far beyond putting you in the government’s good graces. Companies with a more robust internal reporting system generated more reports. Dr. Welch found a group of companies he termed “power users”, which were high-level users of whistleblower reporting systems who had more activity than the average entity. These “power user” companies have several interesting characteristics. First, they are typically firms with higher quality earnings reporting. They are more profitable entities. Finally, these “power user” companies were firms with higher quality governance, as rated by the Entrenchment Index, which is used to measure how entrenched management is in a company.

Conversely, companies which were observed to be a more limited user of whistleblower reporting systems are companies that were seen to have poor governance. They are more prone to financial accounting issues, such as discretionary accruals, which could prove problematic. These tend to be smaller and less mature firms. Their overall compliance programs were generally not seen as robust or as effective as those in larger, more mature organizations. Finally, these firms, probably because they were smaller and less mature, are more prone to extreme growth and the problems associated with trying to scale up quickly.
All of this points to one unmistakable conclusion, a robust whistleblower reporting system facilitates a company’s resolution of problems before they become major problems or legal violations bringing the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or DOJ calling.

Three Key Takeaways

  1. Companies with a robust whistleblower and reporting system had greater profitability and workforce productivity as measured by Return on Assets.
  2. There were fewer material lawsuits brought against the company overall and there were lower settlement costs if a lawsuit did occur.
  3. There were fewer external whistleblower reports to regulatory agencies and other authorities.