Leading an Effective Ethics & Compliance Ambassadors Program

Whether you call yours an “Ambassadors Program”, “Champions Program”, or “Liaison Program”, they all do the same thing—spread awareness and broaden the reach of your compliance and ethics program by using businesspeople as extra arms, legs, and ears.

Join us on December 8, 2022 for this one-day virtual conference, Leading an Effective Ethics & Compliance Ambassadors Program. Through sessions led by industry leaders with deep experience leading Ambassador Programs, you’ll examine different state-of-the-art efforts and ways to improve (or even launch) your own program.

LEARN MORE AND REGISTER HERE

Hot topics

  • Successfully navigating the changing landscape for ambassador programs
  • Optimizing the structure of your program to maximize effectiveness
  • Recruiting and training your ambassadors: It’s all about the people
  • Inspiring, sustaining, and expanding the network in the medium and long term and building in continuous improvement
  • Communicating with the wider workforce
  • Metrics and assessing your program’s effectiveness

Speakers

  • Julia Bailey – Chief Compliance Counsel, SVP, Global Ethics & Compliance – Maximus Inc
  • Rebekah Coleman – Group Chief Compliance & Ethics Officer – Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
  • Lisa Fine – Senior Counsel and Director, Compliance – Pearson
  • Tobias Heine – Chief Integrity Officer – Volkswagen AG
  • Rhenu Jha – Ex-Regional Compliance Head APAC – CBRE
  • Toni-Lynne Langeveld – Senior Advisor, Ethics & Compliance – Southern California Edison
  • Daniel Lopez – Ethics Advisor – Northrop Grumman Inc.
  • Duncan Milne – Associate General Counsel – Global Benefits Group
  • Cristina Potter – Vice President, Chief Ethics and Privacy Officer – SAIC
  • Jennifer Selliers – Director, Senior Consultant – Renaissance Regulatory Services
  • Matt Silverman – Trade Director & Senior Counsel – VIAVI Solutions
  • Ruth Steinholtz – Values Based Business Ethics Advisor – AretéWork LLP

The EU Whistleblowing Directive – does it matter to me?

The good people at the Institute of Business Ethics are putting on a timely discussion on the EU Whistleblowing Directive:

The EU Whistleblowing Directive, adopted by the European Parliament in October 2019, is gradually being implemented across EU member states but this is lagging well beyond the original deadline of December 2021. Is the approach it takes helpful, and what relevance does it have for companies not domiciled in an EU country – such as a post-Brexit UK? In this webinar, we will be joined by Liz Gardiner, CEO of Protect, and Steve Pegg, International Ethics Manager with Lockheed Martin, who will discuss the public policy and practical corporate implications of the Directive.

BOOK YOUR SPOT HERE
The panel includes

And here’s a data point worth sharing from Protect:

Registration is now open for the 2022 EU Consumer Alternate Dispute Resolution Conference

In case you haven’t seen, you can now register for the Alternate Dispute Resolution conference of the year – it will run 9 & 10 NOVEMBER 2022 at WOLFSON COLLEGE, OXFORD.

Programme Highlights

Keynote: Modernisation of Regulation of Business Practice and of Dispute Resolution

Professor Emeritus Christopher Hodges OBE, Oxford University

Current and Forthcoming European ADR Framework

Professor Stefaan Voet, KU Leuven

SHARING EXPERIENCES

Access: How to improve consumer and small business access to information and assistance?

Chaired by Professor Naomi Creutzfeldt (Kent Law School, UK)

Intro by Katelijne Exelmans (Chair of the Belgian Consumer Mediation Service)

Respondents (2): Judith Turner (Deputy Chief Ombudsman, UK) and Marine Cornelis (Executive Director Next Energy Consumer)

Trust

Chair: Lewis Shand Smith (Chair of the Business Banking Resolution Service, UK)

Intro by Matt Vickers (Chief Executive and Chief Ombudsman at Ombudsman Services, UK)

Respondents: Felix Braun (Universalschlichtungsstelle des Bundes / residual ADR body Germany), Joachim Leitner (Conciliator, Verbraucherschlichtung Austria) and Dr Anna Howard (Guest Lecturer, UCL)

Procedure for Users

Chair: Eline Verhage (Leiden University, the Netherlands and independent ADR consultant)

Intro by Dr Alexandre Biard (BEUC)

Respondents: Lars Arent (European Consumer Centre Denmark) and Dr Christof Berlin (German Transport/Travel Ombudsman, söp)

Digitisation

Is ODR going to replace courts and ADR?

What developments have occurred in ADR/Ombudsmen?

Chair: Professor Fernando Esteban de la Rosa (Research Unit of Excellence Digital Society: Security and Protection of Rights, University of Granada)

Intro by Professor Orna Rabinovich (University of Haifa, Israel and Affiliate Academic, UCL Faculty of Laws)

Respondents: Dr Ying Yu (Adjunct Professor, Wuhan University International Law Institute), Professor Pablo Cortes (University of Leicester, UK)

Feedback and Affecting Behaviour

Chair: Diana Wallis (honorary fellow CSLS, honorary fellow law VUB, former Member and Vice-President of the European Parliament)

Intro by Prof Christopher Hodges OBE (Oxford University, UK)

Respondents: Eric Houtman (Energy Ombudsman, Belgium), Dr Lorenz Ködderitzsch (Johnson & Johnson) & TBC

JOINING UP THE DISPUTE RESOLUTION LANDSCAPE

Chair: Professor Emeritus Christopher Hodges OBE

Keynote: The Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of the Rolls (the unified Online Court Model in the UK)

Respondents: Professor Burkhard Hess (Director Max Planck Institute for Procedural Law, Luxembourg), Professor Xandra Kramer (Erasmus University Rotterdam, Utrecht University, the Netherlands), Professor John Sorabji (University College London, UK), Professor Alan Uzelac (University of Zagreb, Croatia), Dr Magdalena Tulibacka (Emory University School of Law)

The Future of Consumer Dispute Resolution

Ms Marie-Paule Benassi (Head of Unit Consumer enforcement and redress) via video link

REGISTER NOW

Culture and code of ethics: Connecting the dots through measurement

Article excerpt – By Ruth Steinholtz and Teri Quimby, JD, LLM in Ethikos Volume 36, Number 4. October 2022:

Organizational culture seems to be discussed daily, yet few can define it. For our purpose, we can use a simple definition: the way we do things around here. Edgar Schein’s three components are useful for a more precise and enduring definition: underlying assumptions and beliefs, norms and values, and artifacts that reflect these.[1] The next stumbling block is cultural measurement, a controversial topic. Exactly which aspects of culture are being measured by different assessment tools is not always clear. In addition, many assessments purport to measure culture against a preconceived standard of what “good” should look like.[2] One established measurement system being utilized is the Barrett Cultural Values Assessment (CVA), which has several advantages for integrity practitioners. It measures culture through the medium of the values and behaviors present in the organization. It aids risk assessment by essentially measuring “culture risk,” or the extent of dysfunction that can lead to disengagement and increase the risk of unethical behavior. Whichever system is used, leaders must understand their organization’s culture(s), track what changes over time, and know whether the ethical code has the desired effect.

Read the full article in Ethikos Volume 36, Number 4. October 2022

Anticorruption roundtable opportunity

From the good people leading #OECDintegrity… please help spread the word.

2023 World’s Most Ethical Companies

Ethisphere is back with their annual pulse check for ethical companies – help spread the word.

According to Ethisphere’s Ethics Index, the listed 2022 World’s Most Ethical
Companies honorees outperformed a comparable index of large cap companies
by 24.6 percentage points from January 2017 to January 2022.

Last chance to respond to the Governance & Innovation – Call for Evidence

The IoD Centre for Corporate Governance is running a Public Inquiry: Governance & Innovation – Call for evidence – the deadline is the 31st of August 2022 and I encourage you to have your say. To get you thinking, here are a couple of my answers to their timely questions around regulation.

Apart from rules and codes. are there any actions regulators and policy makers could take to encourage innovation?

Policy makers and regulators alike should recognise that the answer to every ethical failure isn’t more regulation but better regulation – well drafted, evidence based, proportionate and outcome based.  And, the focus of regulation should pivot to encouraging both the regulators themselves and the businesses they regulate to focus on developing a culture that supports innovation, which is the same thing as saying a healthy (ethical) culture.

The UK Corporate Governance Code and the Wates Principles highlight the role of the Board in terms of purpose, culture and strategy and the alignment of these.  This is an important step in the right direction when it comes to encouraging purpose-driven innovation. But it means that Boards must understand the culture of their organisations and the actual values that motivate people to act as they do. Key elements to support innovation are a focus on values  and purpose, a psychologically safe environment supported by the use of cultural measuring tools such as Barrett Analytics to assess culture (which they are required to do in one way or another).  In this way the Board will know whether the culture is evolving the attributes it needs to  support innovation and when behaviours are creeping in that may stifle it.

Ethical Business Regulation[RS1]  calls for regulators to have a variety of possible interventions to encourage and support business rather than simply enforcing against them when they fail. Traditional compliance and enforcement will stifle innovation by discouraging risk taking and incentivising people to be less than candid about the elements of failures. Based our experience and research, the approach outlined in Ethical Business Regulation would create a more trusting relationship – and support businesses to take the risks necessary to innovate.  In the event of a mistake or failure,  their ability to provide evidence that they were striving to nurture a healthy ethical culture should influence the choice of regulatory intervention. A culture where people are more likely to be open about mistakes and failures and learn from them is crucial. A psychologically safe environment in other words, is one where innovation can thrive.

It is a mistake to think that an innovative culture is somehow different than an ethical culture or a healthy culture or a safety culture for that matter. These characteristics are all created by the same things: conscious culture management, ethical decision-making and behaviour based on authentic values, linked to purpose and nurtured by skilled leadership who embody these values. It is not only about the board having oversight on “what innovative activity” is going on in a vacuum. The board itself and the management must be creating and supporting the type of culture mentioned above – one where employees can make mistakes and even fail, so long as they can openly admit their mistakes and do proper root cause analyses to understand what went wrong and learn.

It is often the board and management that behave in such a way – blaming and criticising rather than encouraging learning and being curious – that stifles innovation. Of course, intentional unethical or illegal activity should be dealt with accordingly – hence the description, “just” culture. 

Those are my thoughts on just one of the many great questions in the Public Inquiry: Governance & Innovation – Call for evidence. What are yours? Be sure to submit your response to the before the 31st of August 2022.

P.S. For reference, below some further thoughts that help illustrate elements needed to align purpose and values to a both innovative and ethical culture. Download: Ethical Business Practice & Regulation – A new paradigm for business and regulation – and for those who want to dive even deeper, specifically Chapter 9 of the book which is titled The Status of Corporate Governance, and within that there is a section entitled The Mirage of Maximising Shareholder Value and also a section called Can Corporate structures Impede Ethical Behaviour, which discusses Colin Mayer’s views in this context and in turn there is a section that is somewhat self-explanatory / auto-intuitive: Ethical Structures Tend to Be Open and Flat.

Last but not least – the subtitle of Amy Edmondson’s useful book The Fearless Organisation is: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth.

#EthicalBusinessPractice - Cultural and Leadership Framework 1200px GIF - Read more in Ethical Business Practice and Regulation: A Behavioural and Values-Based Approach to Compliance and Enforcement, by Hodges and Steinholtz, Bloomsbury Professional Publishing.
#EthicalBusinessPractice – Cultural and Leadership Framework 1200px GIF – Read more in Ethical Business Practice and Regulation: A Behavioural and Values-Based Approach to Compliance and Enforcement, by Hodges and Steinholtz, Bloomsbury Professional Publishing.

Pre-order now: Outcome-Based Cooperation: In Communities, Business, Regulation, and Dispute Resolution

Out this September – a new timely book from my co-author Chris Hodges:

How do we cooperate – in social, local, business, and state communities? This book proposes an Outcome-Based Cooperative Model, in which all stakeholders work together on the basis of trust and respect to achieve shared aims and outcomes.

The Outcome-Based Cooperative Model is built up from an extensive analysis of behavioural and social psychology, genetic anthropology, research into behaviour and culture in societies, organisations, regulation, and enforcement. The starting point is acceptance that humanity is facing ever larger risks, which are now systemic and even existential. To overcome the challenges, humans need to cooperate more, rather than compete, alienate, or draw apart. Answering how we do that requires basing ourselves, our institutions, and systems on relationships that are built on trust. Trust is based on evidence that we can be trusted to behave well (ethically), built up over time. We should aim to agree common goals and outcomes, moderating those that conflict, produce evidence that we can be trusted, and examine our performance in achieving the right outcomes, rather than harmful ones. The implications are that we need to do more in rebasing our relationships in local groupings, business organisations, regulation, and dispute resolution.

The book examines recent systems and developments in all these areas, and makes proposals of profound importance for reform. This is a new blueprint for liberty, solidarity, performance, and achievement.

Table of Contents

Part 1
1. Evolution in the Means of Cooperation
2. Human Motivation
3. Trust
4. Morality and Values
5. Purposes and Outcomes
6. Cooperative Culture

Part 2
7. Cooperation in Society
8. Cooperation in Business Organisations
9. Motivation in Capitalism & Business
10. Motivation, Reward, Remuneration
11. Cooperation in Regulation
12. Cooperative Regulatory Models
13. Traditional Approaches to Enforcement and Compliance
14. Intervention and Accountability
15. Cooperative Dispute Resolution

Pre-order from the publisher or reserve on Amazon.

Putting the “Why” above the “What”; reasserting fighting financial crime as the core purpose of financial crime compliance activity

Join me at the the key event for financial institutions and fintechs to manage their financial crime risks – the 2022 Anti-Financial Crime Summit – this December.

I’ll be in conversation with Shelley Schachter-Cahm, Chief Compliance Officer, CEX.io

EXPERT INTERVIEW: Putting the “Why” above the “What”; reasserting fighting financial crime as the core purpose of financial crime compliance activity

• Why tone from the top still matters, and how to assert ethics and ethical behaviour as central to your business mission. Who is doing this well, and what can be learned from them?

• Going beyond pure regulatory compliance; the value of radically rethinking the value of ethics across the board. Is this compatible with the required focus on regulatory compliance?

• How can a new regulatory approach help with this change – and what would this entail?

• Will ethics always be a problem in a profit driven banking environment?

Register Here