How to Create an Effective Ethics and Corporate Compliance Education Program

A successful ethics and compliance training program is one that helps companies meet both HIPAA training and Federal regulations, 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 enhances its performance.

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

• Defines legal and ethical risks by using a comprehensive assessment process to maintain an effective corporate compliance program.
• Prevents risks from becoming liabilities by implementing a code of business conduct within the corporate compliance and diversity education program.
• Detects business ethics and compliance issues as they arise with certification and registry programs, helplines and open-door policies.
• Responds quickly and publicly with disciplinary action as soon as wrongdoing occurs.
• Evaluates risks and continuously improves process management.

According to the revised Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations (FSGO), an effective corporate compliance and ethics training program also 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 senior management providing oversight of corporate compliance, legal research and ethics training programs.
• It takes care in delegation to not give substantial authority to employees with a history of illegal activity or ethically challenged conduct over any part of the corporate compliance and ethics training program.
• It uses education and communication of a code of conduct for business ethics and corporate compliance requirements.
• It implements business processes such as monitoring, auditing and evaluating the corporate compliance and ethics training procedures and policy, including the reporting system itself.
• It expects personal accountability, promoting ethical behavior through incentives and discipline.
• It quickly and appropriately responds to problems involving any breach in ethics or corporate compliance, including instituting measures to prevent similar occurrences.

Since 1993, LRN has pioneered ethics and compliance training, helping nearly 300 companies put effective ethics training and corporate compliance programs 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 training programs. Go to LRN.com and learn how you can create an ethics and corporate compliance program that inspires principled performance throughout your organization.