The relationship between compliance, corporate culture, and brand
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Posted in: Risk Management
The Chief Counsel in charge of compliance at a large food and beverage company gave me some food for thought recently on the relationship between compliance, consumer confidence, and brand. We had a wide ranging discussion on compliance and his company’s culture. He said, “as a consumer product company, if consumers ever lose confidence in our products we are out of business.” Because employees at his company inherently understand that food safety and product quality are critical to their jobs and their business, they are more receptive to compliance training because they understand that inadvertently breaking a rule can have severe consequences on the business – and their job. He says colleagues in other corporations say it’s “a fight” to get everyone to listen at a meeting that involved compliance, where everyone “has to be dragged kicking and screaming” because they see compliance purely as a cost issue.
“We all know that human nature is human nature; there will always be people who think they’re smarter than you are, and can get away with breaking the law or stealing. Most will know to do the right thing to play by the rules, but with tens of thousands of employees and contractors around the globe, no matter how good your training program is, some will do the wrong thing on purpose or by accident and put your company and brand at risk.”
On policy acceptance, he says “as a lawyer, I want to make an edict but I always look at things from their point of view. If somebody forces something on you, you won’t be too happy about it." He says that the compliance team conducts focus group tests and surveys on their compliance programs to find out what people thought in order to make improvements. "If we do not get the objective acceptance of a program then the effectiveness is undermined.”
How well does your culture embrace policies? How do you know? And what's the risk to your brand?