Lessons in Whistleblower Protection

pre-taliation

One last dispatch from the HCCA conference this week: I dropped into a discussion led by a whistleblower, who discovered a $2 million embezzlement fraud while working as a university professor. Her story was gripping and vivid — and raised several powerful points about how people, compliance functions, and large enterprises should all work together.…

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Hotline Metrics: Are You Missing Any?

hotline

NAVEX Global released its 2019 Ethics & Compliance Hotline Benchmark Report this week, and raised an important point for corporate compliance officers to ponder: are you using all the right intake channels to capture a true sense of misconduct and corporate culture at your organization? At least, that’s the question that jumps to my mind,…

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Ethics, Compliance, and Corporate Value

compensation

We have one more point to explore about that new research finding that strong internal whistleblower activity correlates to better business outcomes — namely, why a speakup culture and better business outcomes are moving in step with each other, and why that two-step dance is only going become more crucial to corporate success in the…

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More on Internal Reporting Data

hotline

Last week we presented new academic research that found a strong correlation between more internal whistleblower reporting and better business outcomes: fewer material lawsuits against the company, smaller legal settlements, better corporate governance, and even higher profitability metrics. This is crucial material for compliance officers that raises lots of issues to explore. So today we’re…

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Holy Grail: Study Ties Internal Reporting, Business Outcomes

hotline

Important new academic research published this week empirically confirms something most corporate compliance officers have long suspected: a clear correlation between more internal whistleblower reporting and better business outcomes. The research, from George Washington University and the University of Utah, examined anonymized whistleblower hotline data compiled by NAVEX Global. Basically, the researches devised several benchmarks…

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When You Anonymously Report on Trump

Trump

Like millions of other Americans, I read that anonymous opinion column in the New York Times last week, apparently written by some senior official in the Trump Administration quietly aghast at the nuttiness of President Trump — and I thought, “Wow, that guy is a cowardly jackass.” That’s an easy reaction to have, after all.…

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New ECI Report on Complaints, Retaliation

The Ethics & Compliance Initiative published its 2018 Global Business Ethics Survey today, with both good and bad news for corporate compliance officers nudging their companies to higher standards of conduct. The good news (ECI divides the report into “good news” and “bad news” sections) is that fewer employees say they personally witnessed misconduct in…

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Podcast: Better Whistleblower Reporting

whistleblower

It’s time for another Radical Compliance podcast, this week discussing how compliance officers can improve the mechanisms they use for whistleblower reporting — a subject that could not be more timely, given that casino magnate Steve Wynn just lost his job over harassment allegations. Our guest is Scott LaVictor, CEO of Neighborhood Watch for Corporations.…

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Another Strategic Advantage Compliance Brings

Not long ago, a study landed on my desk from North Carolina State University and Protiviti, listing the biggest risks on the minds of boards and senior executives as we enter 2018. Most of the risks weren’t surprising: speed of business disruption, volatility in financial markets, vulnerability to cybersecurity attacks. One risk, however, stood out…

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SEC Just Put Pre-taliation Risk Front & Center

The SEC said this week that it will begin looking for signs of pre-taliation risks during routine examinations of registered investment advisers—the clearest sign yet that pre-taliation risk is here to stay, and that the SEC takes a serious, expansive view of the subject. Word of the SEC’s intentions came in an alert released Monday…

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