Compliance management is not easy. While we know in which areas of the company compliance breaches could be possible, it often needs a courageous person within the organization to become a whistle-blower and identify the cases where business ethics are violated. The question obviously arises whether you, as top management, have created such a hot line that whistle-blowers can make use of? If not, maybe it is time to open up safe whistle-blowing channels and encourage reporting to make sure you don’t miss out on any case.
It is understood that such a safe hot line must offer protection to the person who has the guts to step up. Allow employees to securely and confidentially report and follow up on cases online or via our telephone hot line.
Once a case is received via the hot line, it is essential that the case is investigated carefully and resolved quickly and effectively. It is essential that investigation activities are centralized in one place that tracks and records investigation notes, attaches evidence and tracks activities and outcomes related to the investigation.
Once the whistle-blower has submitted the case, investigators can continue the dialogue and ask follow-up questions; whistleblowers and investigators can communicate anonymously and exchange further vital details on the case.
It is important that you keep track and follow up; automatic reminders will spare you the time and pain of ensuring that investigations are on course. Send automatic reminders, alerts and escalations to the responsible person, or reassign cases to new investigators to ensure investigations stay on track.
If you have these procedures in place, what will you gain?
■ Liability—Criminal and civil penalties for corruption offences can cost your company millions and result in tough prison sentences. Some pieces of anticorruption legislation have near global jurisdiction and can hold almost any company liable for corruption.
■ Opportunity—Business partners and suppliers are increasingly required to document their
anticorruption-compliance programs or risk losing contracts.
■ Reputation—Your company’s reputation is its most valuable asset. Corruption investigations can harm business opportunities.
■ Blacklisting—Companies convicted of corruption offenses can be excluded from bidding on contracts. The European Union, the World Bank and others blacklist convicted companies.
Remember:
Your company’s top management should show visible support for the company’s compliance policies and activities; this will foster a culture of integrity in which bribery is unacceptable. Demonstrating top-level commitment for preventing corruption involves internal and external communication of your policies and top management’s involvement in developing the corruption-prevention procedures. This may include top management-setting prevention policies; assigning management to create, implement and monitor procedures; and keeping these under regular review. The commitment of top management involves formalizing the company’s anticorruption position in an available written document.
Your company should perform periodic assessments of its internal and external risks. Your company must focus most on managing the most serious corruption risks. Perform a periodic and comprehensive risk assessment to identify and weigh internal and external risks and in turn define your priorities. Remember to work together with those familiar with your company’s processes and sales channels to make effective risk assessments.
And finally:
UNITED States companies get extra incentives to disclose bribes: no charges. As before, the US will consider reducing financial penalties for companies that come clean. Now, the federal prosecutors will more likely consider forgoing criminal charges as well. However, in order to win full protection from prosecution, companies must cooperate with prosecutors, fix the problem and help investigators find those responsible for the misconduct.
If you need assistance in getting these processes and procedures going, we at the Integrity Initiative Inc. are on standby to help. Please contact me under Schumacher@integrityinitiative.com
Flashback: On July 11 I wrote about ‘Open Government Partnership – Part of Fighting Corruption’ and made extensive reference to reports prepared by the Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) of the local Open Government Partnership implementation group. The reason why I used the IRM source is that the Integrity Initiative is part of the Civil Society Groups supporting the OGP Program and the reporting of the IRM. In fact, the Integrity Initiative has added progress information to the latest IRM report.
Image credits: Kirill Makarov | Dreamstime