By Chris Caron
From Compliance & Ethics Professional, a publication for SCCE members
If you’re a compliance professional and your company recently had to deal with a make-or-break regulatory matter, congratulations.
That may seem sarcastic, but it’s meant to celebrate the incredible influx of resources and organizational commitment you received after all those years of ringing the bell. You’ve been telling management that the company needs to pay attention to those overtures that the federal and state agencies have been alluding to all these years. Finally, you have the attention that these regulatory matters deserve.
You’ve prepared for this moment your entire compliance career, whether it’s been for two years or 10 years. You know what needs to be done. You have the backing of the C- suite. You have the attention of middle management. Even that new intern knows the company is making a big deal out of this isolated issue. Now, with all the knowledge and effort you’ve put into protecting your company, you unleash your compliance program. Training, intranets, audits, hotlines, policies and procedures,… You have this covered.
The crisis is over
Fast forward two years. You have your company back on track, through the investigation/audit/litigation, and you’re more ready than ever to ensure you never have to go through that ever again. The message is getting through. People who take compliance lightly aren’t going to be around long. The Csuite is the company poster child for ethics and compliance. Middle management is spreading the word. You have more email in your inbox than your outbox for the first time in four years. Suddenly you don’t have any enemies at the gate.
Now what? Didn’t you just spend a huge amount of resources to correct this issue and ensure it never happens again? Management is looking at your group as a cost center and they don’t know if they see the value in all the effort going forward. Relying on the Ghost of Christmas Future is harder to do once Ebenezer has accepted the reality that the Ghosts of Christmas Past won’t haunt him, if he promises to do better in the future.
So how do you stop the pendulum from swinging fully to the other side? You didn’t set the stage for maximum response to the past issues; you just had to deal with the issues with the resources you had. You didn’t argue when the C-suite gave you more resources than you asked for, or could even use, on Day One. You were just thankful that someone was pulling the pendulum as far as possible. But now you wonder if they pulled it too far.
As the crisis fades from recent memory, people start to wonder out loud if they can just get back to the core business. Surely you can do what little needs to be done going forward with significantly less resources, right? Whether you agree with that ideology, or you want desperately to hold on to the people you’ve honed into compliance professionals, you now have a budget to answer to, and that budget is likely shrinking. You need a plan to ensure the pendulum doesn’t swing fully in the opposite direction.
Plan for the future
You have some things working for you. First, the tone at the top is still supporting the message and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. Second, you have a strong program that has likely helped uncover or avert other near-crisis issues. Third, you have your convictions and those of your team, having learned/earned your craft the hard way over the past couple years. Now is the time to put those assets to work.
Start with leveraging the C-suite tone. Their ethics and compliance message may have been “shiny new” a couple years ago, but now it’s starting to fade into the background as other key business messages take on a higher priority. Look back to the successes your company has experienced over the past couple years as a result of your program, and build those success stories into new messaging for the C-suite. And don’t just look at the successes you readily see; ask upper management where they saw the successes.
Next, start updating your world-class program. It got your company through the crisis, but will it help to avert the next one? Are you structured to detect past transgressions and quickly correct them? Then you need to start looking at the future. Start with a fresh set of eyes and take the time to complete another enterprise risk assessment, so the program can be tailored to look at the new or emerging compliance risk areas. Start developing the tools that the operations people need in order to incorporate their compliance responsibilities into their everyday work. Look for ways to replace the program requirements you’ve “saddled” them with by building more efficient processes or tools to get the same results. Find what isn’t working, and remove or replace it — not every idea you had during the crisis can be the best solution. Look for time-consuming processes you had to put in place, and find a way to streamline them with the direct input of those who will need to perform those processes.
Most importantly, look at the structure of your team. Do you have a team structure that will support your company’s forward momentum and your updated program? Does your team have the skills needed to critically analyze existing processes and rebuild them? Are you too attached to your “tried and true” program? You don’t need to have a Stuart Smalley[1] moment, but you need to look at your program and team truthfully, and determine what will be the most efficient way to move the program forward. Cutting people from the team isn’t easy, but if done right, you can find new homes for them throughout your company where they can be ambassadors for the compliance movement and message.
No doubt about it—the pendulum is going to swing back and you need to be prepared with a solid plan to streamline and improve the program. The pendulum can be slowed before you’re back to square one.
[1] Saturday Night Live character (portrayed by Al Franken) who hosted the fictional “Daily Affirmation” self-help show. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ldAQ6Rh5ZI
Chris Caron (chris.caron@kiewit.com) is Compliance Director at Kiewit Construction in Omaha, NE.
[clickToTweet tweet=”The Swinging Pendulum: Your Post-Crisis Compliance Plan @SCCE” quote=”The Swinging Pendulum: Your Post-Crisis Compliance Plan ” theme=”style3″]