How to Create an Effective Ethics and Corporate Compliance Program

A successful ethics course helps companies achieve corporate compliance and offers distinct competitive and business advantages. An increasing amount of data shows a strong correlation between ethical business cultures and corporate success, indicating a culture that promotes a code of ethics and earns a reputation for responsible conduct enhances its business performance.

High performing companies build ethics and OSHA compliance training into a cycle of oversight that fosters a companywide code of conduct and promotes a culture of compliance. Taking a process-oriented approach to corporate compliance demonstrates ethical leadership and proactively manages compliance risk by using a process lifecycle that:

• Defines legal and ethical risks by using a comprehensive assessment process to prioritize risks addressed in an effective corporate compliance program.
• Prevents risks from becoming liabilities by implementing a code of business conduct and a compliance and ethics training curriculum within the corporate compliance program.
• Detects business ethics and compliance issues as they arise through certification and registry programs, helplines and open-door policies that encourage employees to uphold company standards for conduct.
• Responds quickly with disciplinary action as soon as wrongdoing such as sexual harassment in the workplace or discrimination in workplace occurs by having systems in place to manage incidents when they are reported.
• Evaluates risks and continuously improves compliance process management.

According to the revised U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations (FSGO), an effective corporate compliance program, including an ethics training program, incorporates the following seven characteristics:

• It defines standards and procedures for the corporate compliance program range from a code of ethics to specific internal controls for key risk areas.
• It creates accountability at the top, with the board of directors and senior management providing oversight of its ethics training and corporate compliance program.
• It takes care in delegation to not give substantial authority to employees with a history of illegal activity or ethically questionable conduct over any part of the corporate compliance and ethics training program.
• It uses education and communication to promote standards and policies, including a code of conduct for business ethics and corporate compliance requirements to employees, officers and directors.
• It implements business processes such as monitoring, auditing and evaluating the corporate compliance and ethics training procedures and policy, including the methods for confidential and anonymous reporting of potential wrongdoing.
• It expects personal accountability, promoting ethical behavior through incentives and discipline.
• It quickly and appropriately responds to problems involving any criminal conduct, including instituting measures to prevent similar occurrences.

Since 1993, LRN has pioneered ethics and compliance training, helping nearly 300 companies put an effective ethics training and corporate compliance program into practice. LRN's 350 professionals bring a wealth of experience, from academia to business as well as multimedia, software and technology, to help you to develop and apply training tools that strengthen your code of business conduct and corporate compliance program. Go to LRN.com and learn how you can create an ethics and corporate compliance program that inspires principled performance throughout your organization.