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FCPA Compliance Report

Tom Fox has practiced law in Houston for 30 years and now brings you the FCPA Compliance and Ethics Report. Learn the latest in anti-corruption and anti-bribery compliance and international transaction issues, as well as business solutions to compliance problems.
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Dec 8, 2017

What about the training on your finalized Code of Conduct? While there have been criticisms of Code of Conduct training, if you consider training as one source of your 360-degrees of compliance communications, the rollout of a new or updated Code of Conduct can be an opportunity. This rollout fits directly into the concept of 360-degrees of compliance as rollout is part of both communications and engagement. The delivery of a Code of Conduct is a key element of its effectiveness. By allowing your employees and other stakeholders to engage and interact with the Code of Conduct, through live or interactive training, the effectiveness can be better monitored and measured.

In a white paper, entitled “Top 5 Tips for Effective Code of Conduct Revisions, Eric Morehead noted that often companies have a formal launch of the Code of Conduct where senior management and the corporate compliance function “conduct on-site activities across the organization to promote the launch of the new Code, or launch interactive activities such as video competitions that ask stakeholders to such submit short videos on Code topics.” However, this is not the sole manner to have such a rollout as other companies “keep the message more informal but use frequent touchpoints, for example, through email or cascading messages through line managers, to keep up the drumbeat on compliance topics and reinforce the role of compliance.” The key is to exploit on the opportunity a new or revised Code of Conduct gives you to communicate in a 360-degree manner on your compliance program.

One of area in 2017 Department of Justice’s Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs that articulated a new emphasis was in the effectiveness of training. I think everyone would understand you do need to train but now the government's talking to us about effective training. Begin with live training that can be held at the corporate headquarters with senior management and even executive involvement. Many companies will videotape a message from the CEO to help celebrate the rollout. Then there is the opportunity for localized training that gives employees an opportunity to see, meet, and speak directly with a compliance officer, not an insignificant dynamic in the corporate environment. Such personal training also sends a strong message of commitment to the Code of Conduct. It gives employees the opportunity to interact with the compliance officer by asking questions which are relevant to markets and locations outside the United States, which can often provide employees with the opportunity to have confidential in-person discussions.

An important part of in-person training is the opportunity to interact with the audience through Q&A. There are a couple different approaches to Q&A. The first is to solicit questions from the audience. However, many employees are reluctant, for a variety of different reasons, to raise their hands and ask questions in front of others. This can be overcome by soliciting written questions on cards or note pads. A second technique is to lead the audience through hypothetical examples in which the audience is broken down into small discussion groups (up to five people) to discuss a situation and propose a response. However, with a worldwide, multi thousand-person workforce with multiple languages, an entire Code of Conduct roll-out based on live training may not be feasible.  

Not surprisingly, and one of the key themes in compliance, is to understand your company and tailor your compliance program, including your Code of Conduct training, for your audience. Companies have to consider their audience when considering drafting the Code of Conduct, the kind of tone it is going to have, how long it is going to be and topics you are going to cover in the Code of Conduct; the same analysis is true for your training.

Most organizations put together custom training for their Code of Conduct rollout. Live training is generally viewed to be the most effective with online training next in effectiveness. One technique which as gained traction is a modular approach where you might identify 10 key risk areas and train on each in 10 minute segments throughout the year, one per month. This drives engagement and lessons complaints that employees have to take an entire hour for such training.

Another mechanism is more interactive training. When audience members are required to answer questions on an ongoing basis it can foster more engagement. It can also help to meet the DOJ requirement to demonstrate the effectiveness of training. Of course, gamification which is another form of interactivity and it has become more popular over the last few years. It also has the advantage of more favor with millennial members of the workforce.

However, your Code of Conduct training should be an extension of the way you communicate compliance in your organization. If it is divorced from your 360-degrees of compliance communications style, you may well be missing an opportunity to drive better understanding of the Code of Conduct and denigrate the effectiveness of the training. Whatever approach is used, one of the critical factors is the length of time of the training session. Although lawyers and ethics and compliance professionals can (sometimes) sit through a multi-hour Code of Conduct, it is almost impossible to keep the attention of business and operations employees for such a length of time. The presentation and number of PowerPoint slides must be kept to a manageable length before the attendee’s eyes start to glaze over.

Three Key Takeaways

  1. Consider a video message from your CEO to help roll out your Code of Conduct initiation or update.
  2. Tailor your Code of Conduct training to your workforce.
  3. Consider interactive and modular approaches to Code of Conduct training.

This month’s sponsor is the Doing Compliance Master Class. In 2018, I am partnering with Jonathan Marks and Marcum LLC to put on training. Look for dates of one of the top compliance related training going forward.

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