Next week, in a five-part podcast series, I interview Ethics and Compliance Initiative (ECI) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Patricia J. Harned, Ph.D. In the series we consider the key findings from ECI’s Global Business Ethics Survey (GBES), which was released in quarterly in 2018. The surveys were The State of Ethics & Compliance in the Workplace, released in Q1 2018; Measuring the Impact of Ethics & Compliance Programs, released in Q2; Building Companies Where Values and Ethical Conduct Matter, released in Q3 and Interpersonal Misconduct in the Workplace: What It Is, Where It Occurs and What You Should Do About It, released in Q4. We discuss each report in a separate podcast and then in Part V, tie them all together.

We begin the podcast series with a review the survey The State of Ethics & Compliance in the Workplace that reviews why conduct in US workplaces continues to shift. Based on historic findings and current indications, ECI suggests that leaders brace for employee conduct to worsen in the days ahead.Some of the surveys key findings included:

• Rates of misconduct have declined by 8% in the last 4 years, to near historic lows
• Employees are reporting misconduct at the highest rates since the inception of ECI’s research. Reporting has increased 23% since 2000 with 69% of employees saying they reported misconduct
• Pressure to compromise standards is at an all-time high
  • Increased pressure and rates of misconduct go hand-in-hand
• Rates of retaliation have doubled, with 44% of employees having experienced retaliation for reporting wrongdoing
  • Why has retaliation increased so much more than rates of reporting?
• Can strong cultures mitigate retaliation and misconduct?
  • Compared to orgs with strong cultures, those with weak cultures are:
    • 3x more likely to say they experienced pressure to compromise standards
    • 3x more likely to say they observed misconduct
    • 41% less likely to report
    • 27% more likely to say they experienced retaliation for reporting

In Episode II, we consider the survey Measuring the Impact of Ethics & Compliance Programs. It found that most generally corporations have historically organized their ethics and compliance (E&C) programs around a priority to align with legal and regulatory expectations. Yet increasingly, organizations are going above and beyond historic regulatory risk mitigation. With more and more organizations committing to higher quality programs, it begs the question: does it make a difference when a company dedicates more resources and heightens the priority of their E&C efforts? Some of the surveys key findings included:

• When the elements of a High-Quality Program (HQP) are present and perceivable by employees, favorable ethics outcomes are increased more than 10x
  • Why is the perception important?
  • How do we define a High-Quality Program?
• Program quality matters – Reporting/Satisfaction increase with each level of program beyond a minimum standard
  • Why is this significant?
  • What does it say about ECI’s Principles of a HQP?
• With no program present only 34% of employees speak up/report misconduct and only 20% are satisfied with the results of their speaking up
  • In HQP organizations, 94% report and 93% are satisfied – What does this say about creating a speak-up culture and the importance of HQP elements?

In Episode III, we consider the survey Building Companies Where Values and Ethical Conduct Matter. While few would argue about the importance of communication and trust in the workplace; these are well-known ingredients for harmonious working relationships and a productive working environment. But less is known about the reasons that communication and trust are so essential – especially within the E&C space. Some of the survey’s fey findings were:

• What is proactive communication? Talking about ethics + speaking up
  • When employees feel that managers talk about the importance of ethics, they are 12x more likely to believe that they are encouraged to speak up
• What is workplace trust? Accountability + genuine interactions (taking ownership + showing employees they care)
  • Accountability from managers and employees feeling respected go hand-in-hand
  • Fewer than 4 in 100 employees feel that their managers demonstrate respect for employees when those managers fail to demonstrate accountability
• Employees are 15x more likelyto believe that their managers are committed to company values in organizations that can be characterized by having proactive communication + trust

In Episode IV, we review the Interpersonal Misconduct in the Workplace: What It Is, Where It Occurs and What You Should Do About It survey.Over the past decade, companies made headlines for problems such as bribery, financial manipulation and fraud. The attention has shifted though. For the past year, mistreatment of employees, especially abusive behavior, sexual harassment and discrimination, has joined data privacy as a critical issue of our time. #MeTooand #TimesUphave given a name to the larger effort to unearth problems that have festered and to find a path towards safer more respectful workplaces. Efforts to expose the issues have uncovered repetitive patterns of interpersonal misconduct in organizations around the world.

The bottom line is that heightened awareness of interpersonal misconduct and the toll it takes on individual employees and organizations is a positive development. But more needs to be known about the nature of the issues, the scope of problems, the factors that exacerbate problems and strategies for fostering respectful workplaces. Some of the key findings in this final survey were:

• More than 1 in 5 employees observed abusive behavior in the workplace
  • What is even worse? Most were not isolated incidents, with 62% happening on multiple occasions
• Nature of work disparity: Nearly 40% of employees in service/hospitality industries have experienced interpersonal misconduct, while 17% in “white-collar” professional industries have experienced interpersonal misconduct
• While some employees will always act with integrity and others will always act out of self-interest, most stand somewhere in the middle and can be influenced in either direction by the culture and those around them
• Key risk factors include:
  • Poor Ethical Leadership;
  • “Performance”, Not Profit, Focused; and
  • Organizational Change

In Episode V, we tie all four surveys together for a more holistic overview. We consider such questions as:

• What portends the key issues for 2019 for Chief Compliance Officers (CCOs)?
• Are regulators moving towards assessments in these areas?
• Why is the proactive phase so critical?
• With all the talk of tech solutions, what is the human role?

I hope you will join me in this review, as it is an excellent retrospective of where E&C programs have been and where they will be going.

[View source.]