By Art Weiss
From Compliance & Ethics Professional, a publication for SCCE members.
One of our responsibilities as compliance professionals is to provide guidance to employees. We work very hard to earn employee trust, and we spend a great deal of time promoting our hotlines, open door polices, ombudsman program, or whatever mechanism we have for employees to come to management to seek advice in performing their daily tasks without violating any number of laws, regulations, or policies.
Just who gives this advice? The compliance officer doesn’t have time to handle every question. Neither does the Legal department or Human Resources. Even though it’s unrealistic to expect us to respond to all the requests for advice, it is our duty to ensure that there is a mechanism in place for employees to receive advice and guidance. We all talk about training our employees to do their jobs, but we also need to make sure that we train those who are providing guidance to our employees. Bad advice creates legal risks and can undermine an ethical corporate culture.
I read a column recently in the March edition of Money Magazine. It had readers write in to answer the question: “A customer overpaid for an order, and my employer told me to not point it out to him. What can I do?” This is exactly the kind of question a compliance professional might expect to hear. The column was tagged “Readers To The Rescue”. I was gratified to see that an employee would be troubled by his employer’s advice, but I hope no one in my organization gives advice like some of those who wrote in did.
One reader pointed out that the questioner put himself at risk if he tried to help the customer, and instead suggested he document what the employer told him to do in case the customer later discovers the overpayment and complains. Another helpful reader warned that if the employee lives in an area with few job opportunities, then they have no option but to say nothing. Wow!
A very pragmatic reader advised the employee to get out a resume as quickly as possible, warning that if the boss would do that to a customer, he could do it to the employee too.
My faith was restored however by a reader who advised the employee to go to the company’s Ethics department. Yeah!
How will your organization respond to such questions? If you don’t know, you had better find out fast.
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Art Weiss is a faculty member of the SCCE’s Basic Compliance & Ethics Academies and will be presenting education and training best practices at the Basic Compliance & Ethics Academy in São Paulo, Brazil. The session will cover the need for compliance and ethics training, the different types of training, targeted training, the dangers of ineffective training and the use of data to help prove “effectiveness.”