Governance and conduct video series: 5 key steps to integrating your ethics program
United Kingdom | Video | November 2018 | 02:57
Video Details
| Christian Blackwell | Hello, and welcome to the second in our Compliance and Governance series of videos. I'm here today with Anna Phillips, to talk about the five key steps that companies need to be aware of when integrating their ethics programme into their business. Anna, I don't know whether you could start by giving us the first of these key steps? |
| Anna Phillips | Thanks, Christian. I think a proactive management is absolutely critical. So, what I mean by that is, we're seeing a lot of companies react to investigations, or regulatory investigations. For example, instead of being proactive, it's more of a reactive approach. So, in that aspect, I think setting a proactive tone from the top in management is absolutely critical. |
| Christian Blackwell | Okay, thank you, Anna. And how do companies operationalise that? |
| Anna Phillips | It's really important that companies have in place policies and procedures that not only cover the technical aspects of their company but also the behavioural aspects, so that these aspects are embedded into the company structure, so that all tiers of management have a clear overview of their responsibilities, and they can act appropriately. |
| Christian Blackwell | And how do we encourage employees to comply with those policies and procedures? |
| Anna Phillips | We're seeing a lot of companies at the moment use incentive programmes to encourage not only performance, but also encourage their employees to do the right thing. So, that means encouraging speed of escalation, openness and transparency. So, we're seeing incentive programmes are critical in this area. |
| Christian Blackwell | That's really interesting. So, we're incentivising employees to do the right thing, but how do we go about measuring that? |
| Anna Phillips | So, it's absolutely critical that organisations have in place management information that not only measures their performance in terms of their sales activity, but also in terms of the behavioural performance, so that we can use their sales performance, for example, to measure that against their behavioural objectives. |
| Christian Blackwell | And what about if things go wrong? How do we ensure as an organisation that we're picking that up, and remediating any issues? |
| Anna Phillips | So, that means implementing an effective whistleblowing infrastructure. That's not only a whistleblowing policy, that also means having systems, clear routes of escalation and a really well-advertised infrastructure for whistleblowing in place. So, in this area, a whistleblowing infrastructure is the cornerstone of an ethics programme. |
| Christian Blackwell | Thank you, Anna, for your time today. |