The FCPA Guidance has about as clear, concise and short a statement about hotlines than any other Tenet of an Effective Compliance Program. It states, “An effective compliance program should include a mechanism for an organization’s employees and others to report suspected or actual misconduct or violations of the company’s policies on a confidential basis and without fear of retaliation.” But more than simply hotlines, companies have to make real efforts to listen to employees. But you must spend time working on this issue. You need to have managers who are trained on how to handle employee concerns; they must be incentivized to take on this compliance responsibility and you must devote communications resources to reinforcing the company’s culture and values to create an environment and expectation that managers will raise employee concerns.

The reason is that its own employees are a company’s best source of information about what is going on in the company. It is certainly a best practice for a company to listen to its own employees, particularly to help improve its processes and procedures. But more than listening to its employees, a company should provide a safe and secure route for employees to escalate their concerns. This is the underlying rationale behind an anonymous reporting system within any organization. Both the US Sentencing Guidelines and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Good Practices list as one of their components an anonymous reporting mechanism by which employees can report compliance and ethics violations. Of course, the Dodd-Frank Whistleblower provisions also give heed to the implementation of a hotline.

What are some of the best practices for a hotline? I would suggest that you start with at least the following:

1. Availability – a Hotline should be available 24 hours a day/7 days a week and toll-free. It should be available in the native tongue of the person utilizing it so if your work force uses more than one language for inter-company communications, your Hotline should reflect this as well.
2. Anonymity – while some foreign jurisdictions do not allow anonymous reporting, the US is not one of them. You need to have a mechanism that allows an employee to make an anonymous report and put in safeguards which will ensure anonymity going forward should the reporting employee desire it.
3. Escalation – after a report is received through the Hotline it should be distributed to the appropriate person or department for action and oversight. This would also include resolution of the information presented, if warranted and consistent application of the investigation process throughout the pendency of the matter.
4. Follow-Up – there should be a mechanism for follow-up with the Hotline reporter, even if the report is made anonymously. This allows the appropriate person within your organization to substantiate the report or obtain additional information at an early stage, if appropriate.
5. Oversight – the information communicated through the Hotline should be available to the appropriate Board Committee or Management Committee in the form of statistical summaries and that an audit trail be available to the appropriate oversight group of actions taken and resolution of any information reported through the Hotline.

In the area of internal company investigations, if your employees do not believe that the investigation is fair and impartial, then it is not fair and impartial. Furthermore, those involved must have confidence that any internal investigation is treated seriously and objectively. One of the key reasons that employees will go outside of a company’s internal hotline process is because they do not believe that the process will be fair.

I would emphasize, yet again, that after your investigation is complete, the Fair Process Doctrine demands that any discipline must not only be administered fairly but it must be administered uniformly across the company for a violation of any compliance policy. Failure to administer discipline uniformly will destroy any vestige of credibility that you may have developed.

What is your FCPA Investigation Protocol?

With the advent of the SEC Whistleblower Program, courtesy of Dodd-Frank, it is imperative that a company quickly and efficiently investigate all hotline reports. This means you need an investigation protocol in place so that the entire compliance function is on the same page and knows what to do. The following is a suggested starting point.

Step 1: Opening and Categorizing the Case. Under this first step, you should categorize the ethics and compliance violation. You should notify the relevant individuals, including those on your investigation team and any senior management members under your notification protocols. After notification, you should assemble your investigation team for preliminary meetings and assessments. This Step 1 should be accomplished in one to three days after the allegation comes into compliance, either through your reporting structure or other means.

Step 2: Planning the Investigation. After assembling your investigation team, you should determine the required investigation tasks. These would include document review and interviews. If hard drives need to be copied or documents put on hold or sequestered in any way, or relationships need to be analyzed through relationship software programs or key word search programs, this should also be planned out at this time. These tasks should be integrated into a written investigation or work plan so that the entire process going forward is documented. Also if there is a variation from the written investigation plan, such variation should be documented and an explanation provided as to why there was such a variation. Lastly, if international travel is involved this should also be considered and planned for at this step. This Step 2 should be accomplished within another one to three days.

Step 3: Executing the Investigation Plan. Under this step the investigation should be completed. I would urge that the interviews not be effected until all documents are reviewed and ready for use in any interviews. Care should be taken to ensure that an appropriate Upjohn warning is issued and that the interviewee clearly understands that whoever is performing the interview represents the company and not the person being interviewed, whether they are the target of the investigation or not. The appropriate steps should also be taken to preserve the attorney-client privilege and attorney work product assertions. This Step 3 should be accomplished in one to two weeks.

Step 4: Determining Appropriate Follow-Up. At this step the preliminary investigation should be completed and you are ready to move into the final phases. In some investigations, it is relatively easy to determine when the work is essentially complete. For example, if the allegation is both specific and narrow, and the investigation reveals a compelling and benign explanation for the conduct alleged, then the investigation typically is complete and you are ready to convene the investigation team and the relevant business unit representatives. This group would decide on the appropriate disciplinary steps or other actions to take. This Step 4 should be completed in one day to one week. It must be cautioned that at this step, if there are findings of specific or discrete allegations of corruption and bribery, a decision must be made as how to handle such findings going forward.

Step 5: Closing the Case. Under this final step, you should communicate the investigation results to the stakeholders and complete the case report. Everything done in the above steps should be documented and stored, either electronically or in hard copy form together. The case report should be completed. This Step 5 should be completed in one day to one week.

Finally, do not forget that you cannot prevent employees from good-faith reporting to relevant government agencies, allegations of FCPA violation; either by employment contract or severance agreement language.

For more information on this Hallmark, check out my book Doing Compliance: Design, Create and Implement an Effective Anti-Corruption Compliance Program, which is available through Compliance Week by clicking here.

Check out my podcast series on the Ten Hallmarks, featuring Hallmark 8 by clicking here.

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