Leah Fitzgerald
“I had the opportunity to attend the SCCE Compliance & Ethics Institute in Chicago. Interestingly, I learned that compliance trends tend to happen in healthcare first and then evolve to the corporate world. There was a strong focus on organizational culture at the Institute and I decided to share more about that topic specifically.
Compliance is a vast profession and is largely dependent on the culture of the organization. The organization’s culture can dictate the compliance of the organization and whether the staff feels accountable for compliance. Because the organization’s culture plays a key role in the compliance program, it is important for the compliance officer to understand the culture of the organization. But how does the compliance officer obtain this information in a meaningful way?
Information about the organization’s culture can be acquired through organization-wide surveys. It is essential to survey not only the staff, but the top executives as well. There may be very different perceptions of the organization’s culture between the frontline staff and the executives; it is imperative to identify any discrepancies that lie in the organization regarding the culture. Surveys should be done on an annual basis to keep a pulse on the organization’s culture. The survey should convey attributes as to misconduct, the likelihood of reporting misconduct, accountability, and compliance education, just to highlight a few. The information should be used to assess the compliance program through the eyes of the organization’s culture.
The benefit of fostering a strong ethical culture is not only ensuring an effective compliance program, but also attracting talented employees to the organization and improving retention of those employees. The bottom line is organizations cannot afford to lose talented employees as a result of an unethical culture today because training new staff is costly and inefficient. The culture needs to facilitate ethical conduct across the organization where the staff feels empowered to reports ethical misconduct and implore personal accountability of the organization’s compliance.”