Exceptional Support is Our Standard

We help customers assess educational needs, plan strategies and programs, develop and deliver education through a number of formats, and measure the effectiveness of these efforts.

Risk: Codes and policies alone can only do so much to advance ethics. Employees who are ill-equipped to understand and consistently apply these standards will likely fail in their efforts, especially at critical events and when under pressure.

Value: A well-planned ethics and compliance education program provides employees with the knowledge and perspective to promote responsible conduct and skills that put into action their commitment to responsible business practices. These competencies support the overall program’s efforts to reduce misconduct, increase reports of suspected misconduct and promote greater responsibility.

Activities: We help clients:

• Conduct an education needs assessment to determine desired training and communications and the best, resource-effective methods to provide it.
• Design and deliver live training, including the development of train-the-trainer programs to enable staff to conduct training.
• Design blended and integrated learning solutions that incorporate the right mix of online training, live training, and other educational approaches.
• Plan, develop and deploy communications programs that increase employee awareness and education regarding standards and the organization’s commitment.

We help customers identify, evaluate and prioritize their risks and then plan efforts to manage these risks to reduce the organization’s liability and help it meet its business goals.

Risk: Organizations without a proper understanding of their ethics and compliance risks cannot effectively develop and deploy internal controls and other resources to manage these risks. Risk management becomes based on happenstance, guesswork, and ambiguity.

Value: An effective risk assessment effort supports regulators’ calls for a risk-based ethics and compliance program and supports efficient and successful risk management. Controls are focused on the highest risks while continuing to manage the broad range of risks relevant to operations.

Activities: We help clients:

• Identify both relevant business process and ethical culture risks.
• Assess risks based on significance, likelihood, and other measures.
• Prioritize risks to help focus resource application and leadership attention.
• Assess controls and develop plans to manage these risks.

We help customers understand the effectiveness of their program, its maturity level, and improvement opportunities, and develop a roadmap for further developing it in line with external and organizational changes.

Risk: When an ethics and compliance program is not periodically reviewed, leadership cannot determine if program activities are performing well, whether high-performing activities are effective and which activities truly have an impact. This leads to misapplication and waste of resources, an underperforming program, and further risk to the organization.

Value: A program assessment helps an organization identify poorly performing activities and improve them, optimize activities for their most efficient and effective outcomes, and offer a better chance of meeting the program’s strategic objectives.

Activities: We help clients:

• Assess their ethics and compliance program using a blend of techniques to elicit the most useful information to meet the organization’s needs.
• Develop findings, implications, and recommendations to help prioritize program improvement opportunities.
• Plan program improvements based on assessment findings that provide the best chance to meet program goals.

We assist clients with developing and enhancing an ethics and compliance program design that is comprehensive, risk-based, and tailored to the organization’s characteristics and needs. This effort best positions the program to achieve successful operations and outcomes.

Risk: A poorly-designed ethics and compliance program can hamper effective ethics and compliance management, break down at critical points, and likely will not meet regulators’ expectations.

Value: Strong ethics and compliance management begins with a program design and structure that reflects an organization’s characteristics and needs, incorporates successful methodologies, activities, and performance measures, and responds to regulatory expectations.

Activities: We help clients:

• Develop an appropriate overarching ethics and compliance program structure, including oversight and governance, leadership, authority, reporting lines, coordination, and records plan.
• Develop and strengthen the use of an enterprise-level leadership oversight/coordinating committee.
• Engage and enable leadership at all levels to understand and act on their responsibilities to promote and model the organization’s ethics and compliance efforts.
• Develop strategic planning and measurement processes that support core company objectives, effectively identify and use resources.

We help clients develop, strengthen and reinforce an ethical culture to further engage employees and guide and support their responsible actions on the organization’s behalf.

Risk: An organizational culture often has a profound impact on employees’ perspectives and actions on behalf of the organization. The wrong culture invites cynicism and distrust and can lead employees to act unethically, which can significantly harm the organization’s operations and reputation.

Value: A strong ethical culture increases employee engagement, trust, and responsible decision-making throughout the organization. It can help to differentiate the organization from its competitors and strengthen trust with the organization’s many stakeholders.

Activities: Specifically, we work with companies to identify, assess, articulate, and strengthen attributes of ethical culture, including:

• Purpose, mission, or vision
• Core values or principles
• Heritage
• Leadership engagement and enablement
• Other attributes unique to the organization

We assist companies with developing, updating, launching, and reinforcing their code of conduct and policies to effectively communicate the organization’s expectations regarding responsible conduct to employees and other constituents.

Risk: All organizations need to set expectations for how employees and other parties conduct business. Failing to set and communicate constructive standards of conduct and related policies heighten the risk of improper conduct, weakens internal controls, invites operational inconsistency, and undermines employees’ competencies, among other failures.

Value: An organization’s code of conduct and policies are the foundations for setting and communicating leadership’s expectations regarding responsible conduct and identifying resources to help employees make the right decisions.

Activities: We help customers:

• Develop, revise and launch codes of conduct as the principal means for setting an organization’s standards of conduct.
• Develop an overarching, coordinated policy program.
• Develop, revise and communicate individual ethics and compliance-related policies.
• Strengthen efforts to continuously reinforce the code of conduct and related policies to remain at the front of employees’ minds and serve as ongoing guides for employee conduct.