How does the requirement for tailored training lead to operationalizing your compliance program? Consider current best practices for tailoring such training, such as a risk ranking system of employee job duties conducted by someone from the corporate compliance function who reviews lists of employees and then matches up their job duties, focusing on those involved in international operations with foreign government- or state owned-enterprise touchpoints. This would likely target those employees operating within the sales function. 

This type of analysis, however, does not fully tie the calculus of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act touchpoints to the panoply of the prevent, detect, and remediate mandates of an operationalized compliance program. There are innumerable employees in every corporation who could be employed in the detect prong and who are generally not being engaged as a part of the compliance backstop. 

Now, imagine a corporate algorithm that could connect the dots of a high-risk employee traveling to a high-risk country on a high-risk assignment. When making travel arrangements, compliance officers could read the information and then deliver a tailored compliance training reminder to that employee via e-mail, which could be as simplistic as a memo on the FCPA, the company’s code of conduct, or facilitation payments, or as sophisticated as the RESIST training program, which provides specific procedures to resist solicitation requests or even extortion demands by referencing a company’s specific anti-corruption polices. Management could even add a list of potential responses, such as an immediate response to the bribe-solicitor and reference to internal company reporting for assistance.

A thoughtful look at focusing compliance training on an employee-by-employee basis could mean the difference in keeping corporate compliance on the right track.