In observing hundreds of Fortune 1000 clients develop, manage and mature their ethics and compliance programs, Integrity Research has developed a series of issue management best practices that enable global firms to effectively manage ethics situations from intake to resolution. Central to any ethics and compliance practice, the issue intake and management process is reflective of the complexity of the organization, the scalability of the program and a commitment to continuous process improvement.
Thus, every effective issue management process should:
- Provide as many points of contact as possible
- Offer anonymity, but encourage personal contact
- Acknowledge receipt of issues and act promptly
- Develop an internal process and enforce it
- Act consistently and transparently
- Maintain centralized, accurate records and documentation
- Limit data access to required personnel
- Ensure SOX-required reports are available
Ultimately, any effective ethics and compliance issue management program should empower the company with a high level of visibility to identify patterns and statistical correlations between incidences and other actions taken by the organization. This provides companies the critical information required to proactively identify potential risk areas enabling them to proactively put programs into place to mitigate risks instead of simply being able to react to incidents once they have occurred.
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