Hallmark Number Six in the Ten Hallmarks of an Effective Compliance Program as spelled out in the Resource Guide to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act specified that there be continued advice regarding compliance inside of your corporation and how it is distributed. This means that you will need to work to hone your message but also continue to plug away to send that message out. The Morgan Stanley Declination will always be instructional as one of the stated reasons the Department of Justice (DOJ) did not prosecute the company as they sent out 35 compliance reminders to its workforce, over seven years. Social media can be used in the same cost effective way, to not only get the message of compliance out but also to receive information and communications back from your customer base, the company employees.
In a compliance program, your consumers/customers are your employees. Social media presents some excellent mechanisms to communicate the message of compliance going forward. Many of the applications that we use in our personal communication are free or available at very low cost. So why not take advantage of them and use those same communication tools in your internal compliance marketing efforts going forward.
The Justice Department expanded these ongoing communications to include some specific issues in the 2017 Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs. They added that companies should provide communications of employee discipline when compliance programs are violated. This should include information “to let employees know the company’s position on the misconduct that occurred”. They also posed the following question “What communications have there been generally when an employee is terminated for failure to comply with the company’s policies, procedures, and controls?”
Ongoing communications and continued advice can be provided in wide variety of media, including written, audio or videos. Work with your senior management to have their participation as a key component to demonstrate top to bottom commitment in compliance messaging.
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